The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Makerfield or Bust

00:00:00.000 folks welcome to another one of our political chats where today we're going to be talking about

00:00:04.040 the battle for makerfield so in wigan there is a constituency called makerfield and it has been

00:00:10.960 triggered for a by-election by the resignation of labor mp john simons now sorry josh simons

00:00:17.000 now this has been done in order to allow andy burnham the current mayor of manchester to have

00:00:24.060 a run at the um parliament so that he can trigger a leadership challenge against kia starmer and

00:00:31.800 save the labor party well i mean that's a theory isn't it that's the goal i mean it's the point

00:00:37.620 let's say you do get andy burnham everything is still going to be broken yes you're just

00:00:43.320 going to have a different person and it i i think that we'll talk about andy burnham's record

00:00:49.860 at some point as well because it's not as uh actually amazing as it might seem well there

00:00:55.960 is there is a reason that he didn't get on in westminster politics and he he went off to um

00:01:01.660 to manchester yes he he's not coming from manchester because he is a once-in-a-generation

00:01:07.820 politician who took westminster by storm that that is not what happened it's certainly not

00:01:14.620 so for anyone doesn't know Andy Burnham represents basically the last great hope of the sort of soft

00:01:20.940 left faction uh he's been endorsed by Angela Rayner and he's to the left of Wes Streeting

00:01:28.880 Wes Streeting represents the the kind of uh Blairite managerialists who really are lined up

00:01:35.600 behind Keir Starmer but have realized that Keir Starmer is the kiss of death is he though because

00:01:40.620 I mean, there's a joke that they tell inside the Labour Party,

00:01:45.280 which is a Blairite, a Corbynite and a soft left MP

00:01:48.900 walks into a bar and the barman says, hello, Andy.

00:01:52.020 They do.

00:01:53.280 And this is because Andy Burnham is not,

00:01:59.420 he's not someone who's excessively ideological.

00:02:03.240 No.

00:02:03.840 But he's in that milieu.

00:02:06.440 And I mean, you can say something similar about Starmer as well.

00:02:10.620 There's a lot of sort of factional positioning in Labour.

00:02:14.220 I mean, you think of Starmer's rise back in Corbyn

00:02:17.020 and then betraying Corbyn

00:02:18.680 and then essentially stomping on the entire Labour Party itself

00:02:23.820 and showing complete contempt for it.

00:02:27.600 Some people are quite hard to pin down,

00:02:29.640 but Burnham, he's got a bit of everything in him.

00:02:33.360 That is true, hence the joke.

00:02:35.380 I mean, people are finding these videos

00:02:37.420 of things that you said over the years,

00:02:38.660 but you can also find a video of him saying the opposite because he he he just he's out for his

00:02:44.260 career yes he does seem like something of a careerist uh but i i i always hate having to

00:02:51.560 hold that against someone it's like you you wanted to be successful and they feel you took moves to

00:02:55.860 be successful it always feels a bit cynical to use that as an angle of attack so i'm i'm yeah

00:03:01.380 not really in favor of saying oh it's careerism i mean there is something to be said for getting

00:03:05.640 in a class of politicians who don't particularly want to be politicians who'd rather be doing

00:03:09.280 something else there is yeah but also uh andy burnham has had some consistencies over the

00:03:15.140 years right so for example he's wanted to have um uh state-run institutions uh such as you know

00:03:22.400 water the buses take manchester for example uh and you know various other um what they feel as

00:03:28.920 vital public services uh they'd like to be owned by the government and to be honest with you there's

00:03:33.320 an argument there to be made yes so it's i don't view him through this particularly an exclusively

00:03:40.200 cynical lens of just being a careerist no i just sort of somewhat reject the suggestion of you

00:03:45.540 know labor's got its soft left and it's hard left and it's right we're starting from a position

00:03:50.540 where state spending in this country is 45 of gdp and indirectly controls another 25 and that's not

00:03:57.760 enough our government compared to china communist china as a proportion of gdp our government is

00:04:05.360 twice the size of china's well remember remember we've covered this before the soviet union was

00:04:10.080 50 of gdp when it fell so anyway let's get back to makerfield um so makefield is like i said a

00:04:17.980 constituency in wigan and these are the results for the 2024 election and see josh simons won it

00:04:23.740 by quite a healthy margin, to be honest.

00:04:27.480 Yes, he did.

00:04:28.700 But I don't know if you've got 2019,

00:04:30.120 because 2019 is perhaps even a stronger example

00:04:32.600 because the whole story of 2019

00:04:34.520 was the red wall has become a blue wall.

00:04:38.620 That was Boris Johnson's absolutely storming election

00:04:41.800 where he won a majority of 80.

00:04:44.480 Even in 2019, Labour won it with a solid majority of 5,000.

00:04:50.720 So this part of the red wall didn't even go blue.

00:04:53.300 This is a proper, proper Labour constituency.

00:04:57.820 Yes, this is one of those constituencies that has just always been Labour

00:05:01.540 since the invention of democracy in this country.

00:05:05.460 Labour are losing these, which is remarkable.

00:05:08.780 I mean, but that's a great point that you make.

00:05:11.400 It's a healthy margin, but it's not that healthy,

00:05:14.440 considering what the constituency is.

00:05:16.720 Yeah, but I mean, this election was not the worst setup for Labour, actually.

00:05:25.000 But yeah.

00:05:26.080 Yeah, no, it was fine, which is why they won it.

00:05:28.940 A 45% vote share, which is very respectable.

00:05:32.320 The interesting thing is, for us, I think, that the turnout was only 52%.

00:05:38.140 So 48% of the constituency just didn't bother.

00:05:43.220 Now, the question here, then, is, well,

00:05:46.280 why did reform fail to turn out the other half of the electorate?

00:05:50.220 Well, yeah, it's almost as if what this constituency really needs 0.67

00:05:53.220 is a party that's really good at getting non-voters back in the voting system.

00:05:56.820 Yeah.

00:05:57.680 And it's the same with Gorton and Denton,

00:05:59.240 where you had about 47%, I think it was, turn out.

00:06:02.420 Despite it being a by-election and national attention,

00:06:05.780 because the argument will be,

00:06:08.280 oh, but by-elections they get more, they get more attention.

00:06:10.640 Well, how come reform didn't do it there either?

00:06:12.380 Yeah. And yeah, exactly. How is it you didn't mobilize the white working class there? So anyway, as you can see, there's no other options from this particular election. The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Greens, and other, no chance in hell, frankly, of them winning.

00:06:33.740 I suspect Greens will do a lot better this time.

00:06:35.600 maybe but um we'll get on to the uh information about the seat actually let's talk about the seat

00:06:42.040 so this is a 65 leave voting area which is pretty um levy um there we go some details there um it's

00:06:52.700 got an average income of 32 000 pounds 150 000 pounds the average house price 58 percent of

00:06:58.800 people are employed 47 of them home homeowners weirdly uh only 32 of them are married in this

00:07:05.220 sort of area you'd have expected marriage rates to have been a lot higher it's not a student area

00:07:08.800 is it it's not a student area it doesn't have a university and it's 95 96 percent white english

00:07:14.880 that's worrying yeah you'd expect the marriage rates to be a bit bloody higher wouldn't you

00:07:20.960 yeah um especially with the house prices being 150k yeah but uh i mean i'm not sure what the

00:07:27.640 difference between locality and ward is on this one but it says in the seat 47 which is about on

00:07:32.720 average for the country so maybe i'm misreading that but um but anyway it's as you can still see

00:07:38.660 it's 68 christian so um this is indicative of uh the sort of working class areas that have been

00:07:47.800 left behind in the country and so actually 90 percent white 97 yeah wow okay so i don't see

00:07:56.600 that much anymore in in in the big cities no but it's quite proximal to uh manchester and other

00:08:03.240 areas of wigan right that are not 97 white quite so uh like like with clacton and great yarmouth

00:08:11.140 uh actually this is not so terribly dissimilar i mean this looks like the sort of seat that

00:08:18.300 reform would expect to do well in yes and they have done well in actually we'll get to that in

00:08:25.500 a minute um we've got some further information here uh oh yeah here's the by-election information

00:08:32.160 uh from 20 uh sorry the local uh oh no what am i looking at here uh oh yeah sorry there's just

00:08:40.280 further information so the other right these are these are salvation uh forecasts and as you can

00:08:46.440 see uh labor predicted with a candidate other than burnham to be absolutely swatted by reform

00:08:54.040 But if they have Burnham as the candidate,

00:08:56.940 it's expected that he will squeak in.

00:09:00.620 Now, whether...

00:09:01.380 So wait, Burnham's personal vote is 18-20%?

00:09:06.000 Yeah.

00:09:06.600 That's a hell of a personal vote.

00:09:08.440 He's the only Labour politician who has a positive approval rating.

00:09:14.220 That's because he's the only Labour politician

00:09:15.760 that anyone has heard of who isn't in Westminster.

00:09:18.060 That's why.

00:09:18.940 I suspect a lot of people haven't heard of him either.

00:09:21.380 i mean if you were to walk around just you know somerset moors or something and say what do you

00:09:27.440 think of andy burnham yeah i'm sure people in wigan have yeah well exactly yeah and so it's

00:09:31.980 i think it's very regional um but in this region which he happens to be running in yes sensibly

00:09:38.040 um standing in sorry uh he's he's got a lot of political cachet here and he's generally

00:09:44.780 viewed in a positive manner because he seems i mean and just on a personal he seems like a really

00:09:50.300 nice guy right he does seem like a nice chap he's not an inhuman automaton like he may have a soul

00:09:58.640 and he may dream unlike somebody yeah he he comes across a lot more like the kind of naive uh student

00:10:06.560 politician of a sort of Angela Rayner type right so it's she she she wants good things and not bad

00:10:13.480 things yes she likes people they she doesn't hate the country and whatnot best intention unfortunately

00:10:18.620 clueless yeah that's that's genuinely how he comes across and also he's one of the few in

00:10:24.820 labor who's receptive to the idea that actually the white working class being left behind by

00:10:29.840 labor's dance with the radical left under corbyn and extreme blair as a blairite managerialism

00:10:36.580 has not won any favors and what not won any affections from a seat like this right he's

00:10:43.320 actually quite uh switched on to this because of course this is like the ex-industrial heartland

00:10:48.200 of northern england so these are these are people who feel and rightly so i think yes betrayed by

00:10:56.420 labor and that's why the local election results they they got completely spanked by reform in

00:11:01.520 every seat in every ward in uh makerfield uh reform won them all so it's difficult to go on

00:11:10.260 the limited information i have but from from the limited reaching out to people who actually from

00:11:14.860 this area tell me they absolutely hate Labour yeah they feel utterly utterly betrayed and

00:11:23.260 actually the guy I was talking to is saying well don't don't think that just because Andy Burnham

00:11:28.340 is running that means they're all going to vote for him because because even if he does come in

00:11:33.220 and save Labour they don't want that yeah they want Labour Party destroyed much of the same way

00:11:38.260 as we felt about the Tories a few years ago and a massive problem that the Labour Party have is of

00:11:42.920 course keir starman now burnham's primary argument here is well i'm running to unseat keir starman

00:11:49.120 in fact we'll get into that in a little bit so uh burnham does have a kind of mimetic weapon to use

00:11:54.140 against that line of attack um but i don't know i mean i've fooled me once shame on you fool me

00:12:03.240 twice fool me a third fourth and fifth time okay andy burnham comes knocking saying well hey i'm

00:12:08.680 here to change the labor party you know do i want to change the labor party so i'm not a man of a

00:12:13.520 left so i it's i suppose maybe i i have no right to make this claim but i am a creature of the

00:12:19.200 right and when kemi came along and said well look i know we've betrayed you for every single past

00:12:26.060 tory government but trust me with me it's going to be different i'm like no no i i don't think i

00:12:33.260 find that persuasive maybe people on the left will find it persuasive if you just change the

00:12:38.900 leader you know i don't know so i think i think it's important that we actually um define left

00:12:45.120 and right because these are usually um ideological signifiers uh and so we are quite comfortable

00:12:51.460 saying zach polanski is on the left because zach polanski is ideologically essentially just a

00:12:57.000 communist right i i don't think zach polanski has any kind of uh thoroughgoing political or

00:13:03.240 ideological uh or philosophical understanding of the left um i just think he understands it well

00:13:09.540 enough to be able to parrot it in interviews and whenever he's dragged off script you can see he

00:13:14.040 kind of starts just spitting fascist at people but but there's no first order thinking going on

00:13:19.400 no no well no no no it's not even that it's it's all first order thinking it's all uh rationalistic

00:13:24.740 front of the brain without any kind of deep understanding of the theories that led up to

00:13:29.560 this point right um that's not what what wigan and makerfield are as far as i can tell just to

00:13:37.040 be clear i've never been there so i'm just judging from an outsider's perspective but that's not what

00:13:41.080 this looks like to me so to call them left is not to call them left in an ideological sense

00:13:45.940 but more in a practical sense and we've spoken about this before but i think it's worth reiterating

00:13:50.460 I think there are real differences between the North and the South in what they expect out of life.

00:13:57.080 And I think that the North, the industrial heartland of England, much like the Welsh Valleys, are not full of entrepreneurs.

00:14:05.460 They're not full of people who are ruthless capitalists, who expect essentially a kind of life of unlimited and unbounded freedom to pursue their own ends.

00:14:14.480 what these people are i think uh like with the people in the welsh valleys is the people who

00:14:21.120 for 250 years were the industrial backbone of an empire so philosophically their worldview

00:14:31.320 was completely contained within the idea of duty and obligation right northerners are definitely

00:14:38.180 much more somewheres than your average southerner very much so um and so but the

00:14:45.640 but the the perspective is a lot more sort of old british old english we we are providing

00:14:54.580 for the empire and therefore you know as duty and obligation yes and so duty and obligation not just

00:15:01.600 the local communities but to the country at large and so and also they expect the same from their

00:15:06.320 leaders they they expect we give you duty you give us obligation yes they we break our bodies

00:15:12.920 to spend our lives producing the steel the manufacturing the coal that the empire uses

00:15:19.080 to crush our enemies abroad you make sure we are well taken care of yes this so these are people

00:15:25.100 that fundamentally believe in national industries i mean the old trope is the british army is is

00:15:32.420 northern um soldiers southern officers yeah absolutely but and and this this is the i think

00:15:39.980 the north's view on the economy as well and this is why in the north um like if you look at the

00:15:45.940 politicians like you know burnham angela rayner and those sorts of types um they they do not

00:15:52.820 have the same kind of like thatcherite view essex man has yeah in in the south of england

00:16:00.160 we've got a much more skeptical view of state intervention in the economy

00:16:05.000 because we didn't grow up in generations upon generations and generations

00:16:09.180 of people who worked almost exclusively in state industries, right?

00:16:15.080 So these people would have worked in the steelworks or the shipyards

00:16:19.080 or in Wales, the coal mines and things like that.

00:16:21.740 These are not entrepreneurial industries.

00:16:24.960 these are industries that were of strategic importance for the british state and therefore

00:16:31.260 controlled by the british state and therefore these people lived in actually a very quite rigid

00:16:36.380 um yes market right you are going to grow up and if you're in wales you're going to become a coal

00:16:41.980 miner if you're in some way about wigan you're going to be a steel worker or something a factory

00:16:45.680 worker or something like this right so it's the furnace of britain not the shop front exactly

00:16:50.000 right and so one thing on the right that we have to understand is that that means that these people

00:16:54.940 will they're deeply patriotic people as you can see from the election results but they're not

00:17:02.060 rabid free market capitalists and but they're also not dogmatic marxists right so a lot of

00:17:10.260 people will say what they expect out of life is socialism and only in the most general sense

00:17:17.840 if you were to sort of narrow it down to any kind of ideological doctrine of socialism all of these

00:17:23.020 people would reject it as being anti-british right and so like the the the socialism of it

00:17:29.360 is actually the kind of uh paternalistic uh patrician social you've got to remember that

00:17:36.480 the the socialism of you know the the 80s and before um was very much against open borders

00:17:43.000 completely the the the left-wing position was european union borders all of it it was always

00:17:49.520 a right-wing idea, bringing in cheap labour,

00:17:52.340 and that was completely rejected by it.

00:17:53.820 It was only really when Tony Blair came in.

00:17:57.080 And what he did is he skewed the British left

00:18:01.820 from being a somewhere organisation

00:18:04.900 to being a globalist organisation.

00:18:06.800 Completely correct.

00:18:08.180 And you still see the sort of lingering remnants of it

00:18:13.140 in people like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn,

00:18:15.620 that kind of old left, that were sceptical.

00:18:18.740 Yes. 0.52

00:18:19.200 Bernie Sanders calling it a Koch brothers plan is correct.

00:18:21.820 Exactly.

00:18:22.440 And even though Blair broke it

00:18:24.260 because they had been voting for the Labour Party for generations.

00:18:28.360 Where else are we going to go?

00:18:29.360 Yeah, their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents,

00:18:32.300 their great-great-grandparents had all voted Labour.

00:18:35.220 Probably going back to the very beginning of democracy.

00:18:38.160 Yeah, the beginning of the Labour Party, certainly.

00:18:41.120 Absolutely.

00:18:41.400 And so when Tony Blair broke that model,

00:18:45.720 it didn't turn off on a dime.

00:18:47.840 No.

00:18:47.900 but i think i think the penny has truly dropped in the north now that that this brand of left

00:18:54.240 wingism is is nothing like your values yes and this is what the wigan local election results show

00:18:59.840 where um literally reform won every ward uh and so this this is the kind of place that it is as

00:19:07.840 far as i can tell i think i have a bead on it there um and so this leads us into uh i guess

00:19:16.400 we'll just have a look at the current polling it's not changed dramatically reform have had

00:19:19.760 a very slight bump from the local elections uh but not much of one frankly and if i were reform

00:19:26.780 i would have hoped for a much bigger bump out of this so the landscape hasn't dramatically changed

00:19:32.860 it really hasn't has it um and so i guess we'll begin with okay well what's the state of play in

00:19:36.860 the labor party well starmer has said i'm not resigning now the rumors were that he was going

00:19:42.860 set out a timetable for his resignation yeah that he was just going to accept that everyone around

00:19:49.540 him they've been making all of these maneuvers that have been quite public and so kiss camera

00:19:53.520 seen them all and he's just impervious to it i i may have made a bet on the on the last

00:20:00.980 on the last podcast that he that he would be gone um at this point you're a tenner don't you i'd

00:20:09.060 I'd better pay up.

00:20:10.400 There we go.

00:20:11.120 Good point, yeah.

00:20:12.280 There we go.

00:20:13.220 I'll get that afterwards.

00:20:15.120 That's a good point.

00:20:16.120 I forgot all about that, but yeah.

00:20:17.800 Hopefully I can still feed my children tonight.

00:20:21.100 Yeah, I lost that one.

00:20:22.900 Fair and square.

00:20:23.540 Should have made it a grand, shouldn't I?

00:20:25.400 Anyway, so I told you he wasn't going to resign

00:20:27.540 because Starmer holds the rest of his party in utter contempt.

00:20:31.700 And I just thought he's U-turned on absolutely everything.

00:20:34.940 Why can't a U-turn on this?

00:20:36.340 I'm not going to U-turn on hating the people around me.

00:20:39.060 Well, that's an eternal...

00:20:40.760 He's not going to be able to do anything now. 0.99

00:20:45.200 No civil servant is going to bust their arse over the weekend 0.97

00:20:48.640 on some project of his. 0.98

00:20:50.460 No ministers are going to take it.

00:20:52.020 Nobody is going to be listening to this man.

00:20:54.540 Only if he truly crushes them all in some sort of leadership election

00:20:58.640 will he be able to gain any kind of political capital back, I think.

00:21:02.000 Wes Streeting has resigned from his government.

00:21:04.760 He's not actually declared because it's rumoured

00:21:08.380 and it was assumed that West Street only got 44 people to back him.

00:21:12.640 He needs AC1, so he couldn't actually trigger it.

00:21:15.260 And Keir Starmer just came out and said,

00:21:17.300 nothing's been triggered, I'm going to carry on.

00:21:18.940 44 would have been enough until one of the first things Starmer did

00:21:22.560 is he changed the rules when he came in and he changed it from 40 to 80

00:21:26.360 precisely because he could foresee a situation 0.99

00:21:29.740 where his soulless arse was going to get voted out of office. 0.99

00:21:32.820 Yep, Keir Starlin was properly on it. 0.98

00:21:35.900 so um anyway uh basically what's going to happen well you gov thinks that essentially

00:21:41.700 west street is going nowhere and if starmer is challenged by west streeting uh 59 uh sorry um

00:21:50.700 no 65 think that uh starmer would be preferable to streeting he only got 15 of the labor membership

00:21:57.460 backing him in that if you're west streeting he's got to really burn that you can't win

00:22:05.140 against Keir Starmer in a popularity contest.

00:22:12.280 The most unpopular prime minister since records began

00:22:15.220 and West Street can't beat him.

00:22:17.920 I mean, Starmer, the reason we're supporting Starmer

00:22:20.620 in all of this is because Starmer is leading the Labour Party

00:22:23.200 to absolute destruction.

00:22:24.720 I've got to say, it doesn't bother me.

00:22:26.800 I don't care.

00:22:27.780 I think it's great.

00:22:28.540 No, it doesn't bother me who gets in

00:22:30.460 because this idea that Andy Burnham will save Labour,

00:22:34.400 nothing will change absolutely nothing will change they're all going to have the same set

00:22:39.360 of constraints they're all going to have the same fact that we we've run out of money in

00:22:43.860 let me let me pin that because we will come back to exactly okay because you have correctly

00:22:49.520 presaged precisely what's going to be the case yes uh but anyway as you can see from the polling

00:22:54.980 uh burnham is on 47 compared to 37 31 for uh first preference of lady leadership over starmer so it

00:23:04.260 is likely that if burnham can get in and he will be able to get enough signatures to trigger trigger

00:23:09.280 a leadership election starmer has already said he's not standing down so he will automatically

00:23:13.120 be uh running in opposition to uh burnham and burnham will probably win uh like i agree with

00:23:20.320 you that i don't think it's going to change anything i don't think it's going to save the

00:23:23.080 labor party at the moment i think the brand has been pretty irredeemably tainted at this point

00:23:28.040 um so i don't think that's going anywhere and west streeting and this is the thing with the

00:23:34.520 sort of like the these two factions and the soft left they're not terribly brave because i mean

00:23:40.000 you've seen you've seen uh burnham hovering around this for a long time well he he didn't move you

00:23:47.720 you you don't get to participate in the uni party if you are brave yes that they they very much

00:23:55.700 select for yes men yeah so it's it's not surprised that there was a crashing lack of bravery at the

00:24:01.680 key moment or anything no and this is why catherine west uh someone no one had ever really heard of

00:24:06.640 had to kind of force their hand into it but even then catherine west came out and said yeah if it

00:24:12.020 happens i'll probably vote for starma nice oh okay amazing but uh you know what west street you might

00:24:17.600 not have well anyone else's support but he does have peter mandelson's support because remember

00:24:22.900 well that's worth something i guess he's a manderson protege so yeah how wonderful

00:24:28.800 now he resigned from starmer's cabinet which means that starmer needs a health secretary

00:24:35.100 well i mean there's a few people knocking around to a free aren't there like angela rayner why not

00:24:41.000 invite her he hasn't done that he's invited her but she's refused oh he offered it he offered it

00:24:48.720 Oh, I didn't see that.

00:24:49.700 He offered it, and she was like, no thanks.

00:24:51.800 Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I assume.

00:24:55.380 No idea.

00:24:57.060 So that's why Angela Rayner was in the press a few weeks ago

00:25:01.500 as having given up vaping.

00:25:03.700 Maybe.

00:25:04.100 It was because she was keeping her options open.

00:25:05.740 I didn't see that.

00:25:06.700 Yeah, it was like the sort of thing that, oh, Beth Rigby

00:25:10.460 and all those sort of second-grade political commentators

00:25:13.340 were talking about.

00:25:14.540 And I was like, why is this a story?

00:25:16.120 It suddenly makes sense.

00:25:16.960 She was keeping her options open just in case she agreed to this,

00:25:20.240 but she decided not to in the end.

00:25:22.480 So it turns out that Burnham was chosen as the candidate, by the way.

00:25:25.700 Right.

00:25:25.900 And he gives this kind of false humility

00:25:31.820 that they're all projecting at the moment

00:25:34.180 that everyone from the Labour tries to project.

00:25:36.340 And he ends it with,

00:25:39.540 I would feel privileged to be given the opportunity

00:25:43.000 to represent Makesfield.

00:25:44.100 It's like, well, okay, everyone can tell

00:25:45.740 this is entirely um machiavellian right it's very obvious you're not doing this you didn't you didn't

00:25:52.520 give up mayor of manchester because you you suddenly felt actually screw the rest of manchester

00:25:57.240 it's this this is the bit i like no it's clearly not that is it it's because it's because starma 0.98

00:26:04.000 is absolutely dying on his ass out there that's why you're doing it yeah um just to be clear he 0.95

00:26:09.020 hasn't given up the mayorality of manchester right so according the way that the system works 0.99

00:26:14.320 is to be a candidate in the election.

00:26:17.140 He doesn't have to give up the mayorality.

00:26:19.680 If he wins, then he does.

00:26:21.520 So if he loses, he carries on as he is.

00:26:24.660 So actually, this is minimal risk for Andy Burnham

00:26:27.540 in order to save the Labour Party.

00:26:29.540 Now, weirdly enough, Keir Starmer has endorsed him.

00:26:32.380 Well, I suppose he has to.

00:26:33.860 Oh, you kind of do, don't you?

00:26:35.440 I mean, publicly.

00:26:36.660 Yeah, but you blocked him from being able to run previously.

00:26:39.460 If Keir Starmer wants to completely sabotage Andy Burnham,

00:26:44.320 He should go to Makerfield and campaign for him.

00:26:47.080 And stand next to him at every single photo opportunity

00:26:50.820 with his arm around him.

00:26:51.780 According to all of the sort of like insider podcasts,

00:26:58.020 like the Times podcast and things like that,

00:27:00.060 Burnham has begged him not to come.

00:27:02.800 Keir Starmer, in fact, during the local elections,

00:27:06.260 he made the fewest number of public appearances

00:27:09.420 with the candidates on campaign.

00:27:12.100 He only made it 11 compared to, like, Farage's 44

00:27:15.220 because everyone was well aware that actually turning up

00:27:18.700 with Keir Starmer in tow is bad for you.

00:27:21.240 But that's how Keir Starmer sabotages him.

00:27:23.700 It is.

00:27:25.080 Anyway, yes, Keir Starmer, in a show of magnificence,

00:27:29.360 has said, no, Angela Rayner, I'm not threatened by you.

00:27:31.520 Come on in, even though she was thinking about running as the candidate.

00:27:34.200 Oh, Andy Burnham's running specifically to unseat me.

00:27:36.420 I support him 100%.

00:27:38.060 I mean, the last time he tried to run for a seat,

00:27:40.220 he rigged the process so that andy burnham couldn't run for it i know so it's gone from

00:27:44.940 at least 49 to 100 bloody quickly isn't it but you can tell that the the feeling in the labor

00:27:52.620 party is oh this is really getting quite existential now so the nec is not the nec is not a unified

00:27:59.880 body i watched the times podcast from one woman who was a member of it who clearly was very anti

00:28:06.880 starmer and pro burnham explaining the process of how they're going to essentially strategize to

00:28:12.920 get burnham through he did get through he is the candidate so this obviously worked and basically

00:28:18.740 what this is what this must have meant is persuading the starmerites on there that look

00:28:23.120 starmer's going to get us all killed like what are you doing politically we are crushed what are

00:28:27.560 you doing you've got to let us at least have a chance is the argument i've been making these

00:28:30.660 shows for months it's just just just pick anyone angela rayner andy but just just just throw a

00:28:36.920 bloody dart in in the tea room and whoever it hits make them because you're heading towards

00:28:41.880 four seats no good so even if you get seven seats you've won yeah no let them have it this is what

00:28:48.120 kemi badenock's uh local election celebrations are about we only lost 500 seats 700 seats i'm a

00:28:54.920 winner anyway so um who who is who is andy burnham right so we'll go through a bit of a profile on

00:29:00.600 andy burnham why is he titled pretty straight um because does he have one or two experiences at

00:29:06.620 university that no no he's he's quite boring basically right so he's born in 1917 in aintree

00:29:13.380 studied english at fitzwilliam college cambridge uh before entering parliament he worked in

00:29:18.720 political and public policy roles including for tessa jowell the and the nhs confederation and

00:29:24.520 a football task force so he's never had a real job right he's got an english degree obviously 0.99

00:29:29.120 the man to lead the country then yeah never looked at a p&l in his life let's make him the leader 0.96

00:29:35.080 yeah never had a job that actually pays taxes outside of working for the state yeah became a

00:29:41.520 labor mp for lay in 2001 holding a seat until he left the commons in 2017 to become mayor of

00:29:46.180 manchester during the new labor brown government years he rose quickly through ministerial office

00:29:50.860 He served in the Home Office, Department of Health, Treasury, and then became Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2007, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in 2008, and Health Secretary from 2009 to 2010, when Labour was kicked out by the Lib Dem Conservative Coalition.

00:30:06.140 Then he ran against Corbyn and got trounced.

00:30:09.900 Yeah, yeah, he did.

00:30:11.520 After Labour lost power in 2010, he remained prominent in opposition.

00:30:14.260 he was shadow education secretary shadow health secretary shadow home secretary and ran twice

00:30:19.760 unsuccessfully for the labor leadership um so what this tells us is a man who's just never been

00:30:27.020 outside of labor party politics yeah his entire life his entire career okay yeah well uh his

00:30:36.600 politics became associated with a soft left public service focused labor tradition around the nhs

00:30:40.840 social care transport housing and regional inequality in 2017 he left westminster and was

00:30:45.760 elected the first mayor of greater manchester re-elected in 2021 and again in 2024 he focused

00:30:53.000 on rough sleeping developing public services skills housing policy housing policy and transport

00:30:58.100 policy his flagship achievement is the b network including bringing greater manchester buses under

00:31:03.440 public control through franchising that only helps so much in makersfield because makersfield is very

00:31:09.420 much a commuting town it's not it's i mean it's it's i mean it's a bit weird i mean it is in

00:31:15.060 manchester but it's also sort of in liverpool you know they're in with they're in the greater

00:31:20.040 manchester area but a lot of them support everton in liverpool so yeah but it's it's

00:31:25.300 so does burnham burnham sports everton yeah but uh i mean of of the sort of key policies the one

00:31:30.580 that people always say is the bus stuff that won't make any difference to people in makersfield i

00:31:34.120 don't think yeah um he gained a lot of notoriety during the covid pandemic as he clashed with the

00:31:40.560 conservative government i will give him that i'll totally give him that he he was one of the very

00:31:45.840 few people who was pushing back in any way he wasn't straight out coming coming out and saying

00:31:51.100 the stuff that i would have said with this which this is complete nonsense he was arguing about

00:31:54.800 the tiers structure and stuff like that but he was at least one of the voices who was pushing

00:31:59.480 back on that madness i'll give him that and uh this uh helped him get his sort of northern

00:32:06.080 champion reputation king of the north as it were people keep saying king of the north that's nice

00:32:11.000 king in the north dummies anyway well and also nobody north the m25 actually says it's a very

00:32:18.860 westminster coded thing yes or i mean possibly andy burnham himself says that he's king of the

00:32:25.180 north but nobody else says it yeah so he's he's got quite a prominent uh profile especially in

00:32:33.800 the labor party but not really very far outside of the north uh if you are someone who's just

00:32:40.560 somewhere else in the country in the midlands in the south andy burnham's main doesn't really mean

00:32:46.040 all that i'm pretty sure if i knocked on my neighbor's door and asked they they won't have

00:32:48.880 heard of him yeah absolutely my normie friends won't have heard of him absolutely and there's

00:32:52.280 no particular reason they should have done um which is why he's got an approval rating of about

00:32:57.160 37 positive about 25 negative and then the rest is just no particular opinion i'm confident we

00:33:05.200 can get those numbers down if if he does end up becoming prime minister those numbers will be

00:33:08.980 gone in no time yeah and it's it's because he just doesn't really know what he's doing but we'll

00:33:14.420 talk about manchesterism in a bit uh so that's the candidate for uh the labor party the lib dems have

00:33:19.960 said they're going to be standing a candidate which seems like a waste of 500 pounds um i don't i

00:33:26.520 don't think makersfield is a particularly big garden place well no we we've already covered

00:33:32.560 it haven't we it's 32 000 pounds 150 000 pound house on average this is not lib dem territory

00:33:37.860 no no um the as uh you gov has have actually come out there's a little graph here where

00:33:44.300 that proved our point

00:33:46.940 because we were running on

00:33:49.420 vibes

00:33:51.200 but

00:33:51.960 there we go, voting the attention by

00:33:55.200 income level. The average

00:33:57.360 Lib Demer is somewhere between

00:33:59.240 $40,000 to $70,000 plus.

00:34:02.960 So yeah, just average wage

00:34:05.500 in Makerfield

00:34:07.680 is $32,000.

00:34:09.300 This is why Lib Dems never really have had

00:34:11.320 any particular standing

00:34:13.280 here and the greens are also standing a candidate even though caroline lucas is like this might be 1.00

00:34:17.460 a bad idea because what if we split the labor vote and allow some evil far writer in somebody 0.99

00:34:23.780 should point out to her she that she's in a political party and what political parties do

00:34:27.440 is they stand candidates for election yeah i mean you say that but jacob reese mog is like i don't

00:34:34.320 think the tories should stand candidates okay radical idea how about we let the voters decide

00:34:43.300 who they want to vote for that is a radical idea uh but anyway so yeah the greens are going to be

00:34:48.840 standing candidate uh i'm not very concerned about the greens in this constituency uh there's no

00:34:55.020 students for foreigners no i mean that simply is literally there must be one or two impressionable

00:35:01.540 young women left but so i'm sure they get something yeah yeah they'll get a few percentage

00:35:06.960 points doubtless um but i like i said i i just don't think this is one of those constituencies

00:35:12.840 we're not going to be seeing the greens campaigning entirely in bangladeshi those videos weirdly i

00:35:18.220 don't think they will i mean there's just there are very few people in maker field who just

00:35:22.040 genuinely hate their own constituency in the country at large right this is not one of those

00:35:26.440 It's not Bristol or Brighton or anywhere like that

00:35:29.360 or, you know, Bradford South or wherever.

00:35:31.980 You know, this is a place of normal English people

00:35:34.500 who are sick of the way the country's being run

00:35:36.520 and don't want that anymore.

00:35:38.980 So no more of Zach Polanski.

00:35:40.500 Like I said, the Tories,

00:35:41.420 Jake Friesmog said, look, the Tories shouldn't stand.

00:35:43.920 But Kemmy Baden-Ox said, no, I am going to stand a candidate.

00:35:48.000 She's the leader of a political party.

00:35:49.400 This is what they do.

00:35:50.220 Yeah, and honestly, like,

00:35:52.440 everyone's like, the Tories are going to split the vote.

00:35:53.820 It's like, well, there's no evidence for that.

00:35:55.160 yeah even in the best possible scenario makerfield was not a tory place in 2019 for example no i mean

00:36:03.260 to be fair they they did come second back in the days when you had two choices

00:36:08.240 like i said under optimal conditions they couldn't even win it uh so yeah they're gonna

00:36:17.820 stand a candidate but i'm sorry just the energy just isn't there and i mean i could maybe if it

00:36:23.600 was jeremy clarkson or something mashed a run then yeah whatever the i mean he's a bit oxford

00:36:29.940 isn't he but whoever whoever northerners like yeah yeah it's unlikely that maybe one of those

00:36:35.560 ant and deck things i've watched ant and decks as i was a kid uh anyway so uh yes so the tories

00:36:45.580 are going to be running the lib dems are going to be running the greens are going to be running but

00:36:47.920 i think these are all going to be um non-entities uh reform are the people who we're going to be

00:36:53.480 watching most closely i think because i actually think that the over i think that burnham star is

00:36:59.500 being overestimated i've heard uh reports from people in the area that the the burnham love

00:37:06.660 is over egged yeah i i find i find this difficult because i i see a lot of people saying that sort

00:37:13.000 of thing on vox pop stuff and but at the same time whenever i see pollsters who've done their

00:37:17.700 focus groups apparently and they've really dug into it they seem pretty convinced that Andy

00:37:22.840 Burnham is going to win but they are pollsters yeah and they get everything wrong I mean they

00:37:28.420 predicted that they predicted that the vote for leave at the Brexit referendum was going to be

00:37:32.280 like 15-20% so but but to be fair the people who do this full-time for a living are convinced that

00:37:38.600 Burnham is going to win but I think you're right it's it's not gonna I don't think it's going to

00:37:43.520 Yeah, that way.

00:37:44.320 But anyway, so Reforma, of course, throwing everything at it.

00:37:48.260 With a weird sort of Saruman-esque attitude,

00:37:52.940 we're going to be closely monitoring the attendance

00:37:56.640 of all of our campaigners and candidates.

00:38:00.740 We'll expect you to demonstrate that commitment in practice

00:38:04.640 and not just on paper.

00:38:05.720 It's like, all right, Jesus Christ, steady on.

00:38:09.080 There's a very strange attitude.

00:38:11.660 They're appealing to, not loyalty, not support.

00:38:16.860 They're not appealing to anything positive in this.

00:38:19.760 This is just, you have been told.

00:38:22.980 Yeah, very much so.

00:38:24.200 And this has been the attitude that the local branches in reform

00:38:26.620 have objected to in the past.

00:38:28.420 Why the local ground game for reform has not been very strong.

00:38:31.780 I mean, if every communication is written like this,

00:38:34.520 I'm surprised they have any branches left.

00:38:36.680 Yeah, I know.

00:38:37.160 I mean, I can see why a lot of them have defected before.

00:38:39.140 I mean, just look at the, as you will be aware,

00:38:41.540 the forthcoming Makerfield by-election represents a hugely important opportunity for the party.

00:38:46.400 As somebody who has applied to become a prospective parliamentary candidate,

00:38:49.520 there's an expectation that you play an active role in supporting major life campaigns such as this. 0.94

00:38:54.340 All right, bloody hell. 0.81

00:38:55.800 There's not a single sentence in that, which is, we would value, we need you, we want you. 0.97

00:39:03.280 I mean, if you ever find yourself talking to your spouse like this, your marriage is doomed.

00:39:07.780 Oh, yeah, my wife would be bloody angry.

00:39:10.840 We are therefore asking all parliamentary,

00:39:13.000 we're not inviting you, we're asking.

00:39:16.300 The parliamentary candidate applicants

00:39:18.400 to commit to attending Makefield

00:39:20.060 for a minimum of three full days campaigning

00:39:22.080 between now and polling day.

00:39:23.600 Attendance we've closely monitored and noted.

00:39:25.880 Like, oh, Jesus Christ, all right?

00:39:28.020 Like, what kind of attitude is this?

00:39:30.300 Anyway, so they did choose their candidate,

00:39:34.080 and it's a good one, to be honest.

00:39:36.380 Yeah, I don't mind this guy, actually.

00:39:37.380 yeah robert kenyon uh very you you've got a hand to them because so uh dr david bull yesterday

00:39:44.280 resigned as the chair of the party and everyone knew the announcement was coming today so i was

00:39:49.360 like please god so my take on that was i thought that they were going to run um dr david bull

00:39:58.600 because they were convinced that he would match gpt it that he would he would crash and burn

00:40:03.660 which would send burnham to westminster which would mean that they could have a run at the

00:40:08.660 mayor of manchester i thought they were going to throw it but no it looks like they they do

00:40:13.040 actually want to try and win yeah i mean reformer put into a very strange position at the moment

00:40:17.220 with messaging because you remember in the local elections the message was vote reform to get star

00:40:21.540 out yes well that didn't happen to now vote reform to keep starmer in yes it is and so it's it's a

00:40:28.480 very strange time for reform we've always been at war with eurasia kind of stuff yeah yeah no no

00:40:34.640 very much so um but we can we can watch this chap's video because it is is a very we'll watch

00:40:38.820 a pub it's a very strong video i was born in makerfield if i was elected i'd be the first

00:40:43.520 person born in the constituency to become the mp i don't think any mp that's ever stood in

00:40:48.520 makerfield was actually born in the area i'm a plumber gas engineer i've done that for a long

00:40:53.260 time i did my apprenticeship when i was 18 i love being a plumber i do enjoy it it's hard

00:40:58.400 But I do enjoy it because I do take pride in my work.

00:41:00.900 I think it gets me a bit emotional sometimes thinking there's a chance that I could be

00:41:04.220 representing people in Parliament because it's a massive honour and people will be thinking

00:41:08.740 oh in a minute, he serviced my boiler last week.

00:41:11.800 Labour and probably the majority of the other parties have got career politicians, you know

00:41:16.380 they go to private school, to university, they get a job at a think tank or they're an

00:41:21.160 assistant to an MP and then before you know it they parachute into somewhere they've never

00:41:26.080 even visited to stand as an mp now they might know the system they might know how politics works

00:41:31.120 they might know westminster but they don't know the area or the people you know you could read a

00:41:36.320 book about something but you'll never understand it until you actually do it for andy burnham

00:41:41.540 makerfield will be a stepping stone but for me it's the only place i've ever wanted to represent

00:41:48.580 and we'll stop it then so you've got a good impression of uh the kind of candidate he's

00:41:53.620 currently a counselor he did in the ashton and in makerfield award and he was the candidate that

00:42:01.140 they ran in 2024 who came second so he's got a local profile and he will be someone i mean he

00:42:07.700 like he actually comes across as an actual plumber yes like hannah from gordon and then

00:42:12.340 she was supposed to be a plumber yeah she was also meant to be a plumber and obviously she 0.73

00:42:17.220 wasn't really a plumber she she installed what was a the uh heating system the heating engine 1.00

00:42:24.420 there was some outside heating thing but she apparently she did administration anyway

00:42:28.980 so so this is the type of guy that 100 would have been your bread and butter labor voter in the 70s

00:42:36.760 even labor mp is really only after the blair river that sort of guy just got ejected from it

00:42:42.620 yeah absolutely but i mean but he runs his own business if if the labor party was full of guys

00:42:49.120 who'd run their own business we would be in a radically different situation and he's got he's

00:42:53.600 got a good track record he was a plumber served in the british army worked for the nhs for six

00:42:57.860 years and he's a counselor there already for reform uh so he's a strong strong candidate

00:43:04.280 very strong candidate no he's a good guy seems like a really nice chap um not sure about the

00:43:09.140 line of attack though no it's the well all of the candidates we get are private school boys who have

00:43:15.360 never been to the constituency well Andy Burnham isn't not from this place he's not just a drop

00:43:21.340 in from nowhere he is someone in the region and has roots there already so it's not I think he's

00:43:29.100 from that side of town I don't think he's he's exactly within the Makerfield board but I mean he

00:43:33.600 is he's he would have been mingling with people from Makerfield yeah he'll probably be able to

00:43:38.820 say yeah yeah when i was growing up you know i used to ride my bike over to here yeah it's my

00:43:43.020 friend's house or something like like it so it's it's not that he can be like oh he's the carpet

00:43:48.160 bagging matt goodwin who's just yeah that won't work that that's not going to work right so the

00:43:53.360 appeal to um the sort of the very right-wing appeal to play some parochialness is is just

00:44:00.160 not a strong fact here so really you've got to focus on um uh burnham himself uh anyway can i

00:44:07.680 Can I just quickly say how nice it is that we're back in an era

00:44:10.940 where candidates are from the place they're from.

00:44:14.000 Oh, thank God, yeah.

00:44:15.040 When I first got into politics in 97, I then had to watch.

00:44:17.880 I mean, one of the first elections I got involved in

00:44:20.060 was the Uxbridge by-election, long before Boris Johnson was there.

00:44:23.040 This was a time long before.

00:44:24.880 And the Labour candidate was like something slaughter.

00:44:28.080 He was a top London lawyer who got parachuted in

00:44:30.800 and the Conservative guy was again.

00:44:32.380 I can't remember who the Conservative guy now was, but that's nice.

00:44:36.160 getting back to actual people of the country representing the people of the country that is

00:44:40.520 good i mean i i for me rishi sunak i found the most annoying one yeah because he was plugged

00:44:47.200 out of southampton and dropped in richmond in york and it's just like sorry latterly of southampton

00:44:51.820 anyway well yeah yeah but he was grew up in southampton but we've got a super safe safe seat

00:44:57.500 in richmond in york so it's like sorry you don't you're not from this but you do not represent

00:45:01.680 this place at all no what are you doing here oh this is entirely cynical to get the goldman

00:45:06.020 sachs lawyer richmond is a long way from south ampton yeah uh so yeah like like you say i'm

00:45:12.940 actually excuse me i'm actually really glad to see at least there is this understanding now

00:45:19.360 that local people do not have to just vote red or blue and the abandon and it was this

00:45:25.180 pure commitment to where you've got the red or the blue rosette so and this place votes for red 0.88

00:45:31.100 or this place votes for blue so it doesn't matter which pig we pin the rosette on we can just dump 0.93

00:45:36.760 some alien pig in your thing and pin the rosette to it and you're going to vote for it well that's 0.76

00:45:42.220 good that that paradigm is broken yes no what that means is i need someone authentically from 0.98

00:45:47.380 this area because i can't just pin the blue rosette on the pig and expect you to vote for it

00:45:51.960 so it's like fantastic that's a great start as a great change so uh what are reform going to

00:45:59.280 campaign on well apparently brexit really what yeah what was that then i have no idea i assume

00:46:09.520 it's because andy burnham has made the foolish mistake of saying yeah i'd like to rejoin the eu

00:46:16.220 hang on let's watch this rejoin the eu or stay out long term i'm going to be honest i'm going

00:46:22.480 to say it i i want to rejoin it i hope in my lifetime i see this country rejoin the european

00:46:28.420 so i mean we've just spent the last 15 minutes bigging up reform oh yeah great candidate we

00:46:37.040 like that guy that's good everything yeah that's really good but okay if he wins he's not going to

00:46:44.480 be able to rejoin the eu and even even if he had that power which he would never get that across

00:46:50.740 the lining he's not going to be able to do it even if he did he now represents a seat which

00:46:55.980 is 70% leave 65 but close enough yeah he he's not going to touch it this is a politician who

00:47:02.960 has advocated almost every left-wing position on all sides Blair right soft left Corbyn it's all

00:47:08.780 of them he's not going to touch this at all in fact not not only that right but if he doesn't

00:47:15.700 win then we're going to get Miliband or Rainer right Miliband represents I think Starmer stays

00:47:21.120 in well or starmer stays in starmer is more likely to do it he knows that he's out um miller band

00:47:28.940 represents doncaster north which was a mildly leave constituency and he's actually more likely

00:47:35.300 to do it because he's got a solid majority and angela rayner is 100 going to lose her seat at

00:47:40.140 the next election and literally has nothing to lose she is more likely to do it whereas if he

00:47:45.760 wins this constituency he's going to go into the next election expecting to win it he's not going

00:47:52.160 to upset his 65 percent leave back so so this whole attack line for this is not the attack line

00:47:58.540 that you pick what you do is you say oh actually i can't think of any reform policies that are good

00:48:04.700 um we we will try and appeal to islam so that we can win in 2015 yeah we'll come to that in a second

00:48:11.340 So, what's interesting here is this is very clearly,

00:48:16.620 Andy Burnham has said, oh, I'm very much against the Westminster bubble,

00:48:19.520 but it's the Westminster bubble that's obsessed with Brexit.

00:48:23.240 They're the people who never got over Brexit.

00:48:26.220 If Andy Burnham's like, oh yeah, I represent the true north.

00:48:28.740 Well, the true north was Brexit, really quite heavily in some places, actually.

00:48:32.920 Really heavily.

00:48:33.920 Some of the most Brexit areas of the country,

00:48:36.440 like some of them are 65%, 70% in Oldham.

00:48:39.820 very very heavily brexit because it's that kind of old british socialism that's insular and

00:48:47.240 isolationist it's not islington lefty lawyer no and that's what he's appealing to yes applaud for

00:48:52.920 me applaud for me it's like no no no this was only in december 2025 as well right so it's not

00:48:58.120 like you go oh that was four years ago during the referendum six years ago during the referendum

00:49:01.420 no this was just last year because you never got over it being part of the london bubble

00:49:05.560 like you think you're not but you reveal yourself to be and of course that means that farage and

00:49:11.580 reform like ah yeah we're going to put brexit at the heart of it great i really don't want to have

00:49:16.520 to talk about brexit again i'm really tired do you not think we're exhausted of talking about brexit

00:49:21.760 but it it doesn't take a lot of political skill to square the circle all burnham needs to do is

00:49:28.900 come out and say well yes it's an ambition of mine um but i would only ever consider it if i

00:49:34.460 don't know these four tests are met um and and he'll make one of them that it that it benefits

00:49:41.320 the people like the people in makersfield that'd be one of and then he set the other three criteria

00:49:46.420 so that they're basically impossible and everybody will look at it and go oh yeah that's not going

00:49:51.420 to happen is it and then he squared the circle of yes i support it no it's not going to happen

00:49:56.740 so he he can neutral if he's got a modicum of political skill which he has he will neutralize

00:50:03.940 this attack line in two minutes he would but he hasn't managed to he's just like well i'm just not

00:50:07.540 i'm just not proposing this election okay i'll put everything i just said in a tweet and at him

00:50:13.040 i mean you are i think you're exactly right we just literally set a four criteria yes that we

00:50:18.760 can't meet and then you can just step past it yeah it doesn't meet the criteria moving on he

00:50:22.340 hasn't done that um but anyway he's he's sort of backtracked on this but that's not persuasive

00:50:26.660 either so now essentially andy burnham has is going to be dragged into discussing brexit in the

00:50:33.340 eu by reform with an electorate that doesn't really want to talk about brexit because we know

00:50:41.520 this because if you just look at what the most important issues facing oh is it going to be

00:50:45.240 economy and immigration boy shockingly shockingly economy and immigration like no nobody wants to

00:50:52.040 talk about brexit right now let's just check so let's see if we can get i mean these are just the

00:50:57.340 top issues but is that oh there we go leaving the eu is 14 oh look it was really high when we were

00:51:04.660 in the eu and now it's not because we're not in the eu yeah and so you've got a country who are

00:51:10.460 just flat out exhausted about this subject where like 13 14 of people want to talk about this

00:51:16.260 whereas 50 of people on both like 55 and 49 put that put immigration and the economy as the top

00:51:24.840 issue right so london bubble obsession is going to be projected onto makerfield obviously it's

00:51:30.740 immigration and the economy but but well i i know i know the answer to why reform doesn't want to

00:51:37.240 talk about those things because well they're they're they're weak on immigration because they

00:51:43.560 they don't want to they don't want to send anyone back i mean i think they've made some noises now

00:51:47.880 after after spending three years explicitly ruling it out yes they've now come out and said oh well

00:51:53.000 No, they sent Zaya Yusuf out to do it.

00:51:55.060 Yeah. 0.99

00:51:56.000 Well, he's dark enough skinned to be able to say it. 0.98

00:51:58.160 That he's allowed to. 0.93

00:51:59.280 He can say, we can't, but he can say it.

00:52:01.660 Literally, Beau and you weren't allowed to say exactly what Zaya Yusuf said.

00:52:04.160 No, we were thrown out of the party for saying that.

00:52:06.520 Yes.

00:52:06.840 Exactly.

00:52:07.460 So, not exactly reliable, but dragging up the ghost of Brexit,

00:52:11.940 I think, is actually a really poor manoeuvre.

00:52:13.980 Yeah, it doesn't work.

00:52:15.760 Like, if I were on the doorstep and I had a reform candidate

00:52:19.840 or a reform canvasser, I'd be like, hi there,

00:52:21.940 Did you know that Andy Burnham wants to take us back into the EU?

00:52:24.680 God, I'm not voting for him either.

00:52:26.900 You know, just Jesus Christ.

00:52:29.060 It's just not on my radar at the moment.

00:52:32.060 Thank you very much.

00:52:32.440 Somebody knocks, the Tory knocks on the door.

00:52:34.720 Andy Burnham is going to repeal the Corn Laws.

00:52:36.880 Is that what I'm saying? 1.00

00:52:41.100 Anyway, Andy Burnham wants to just build council houses for foreigners. 0.99

00:52:46.600 He wants to, like, shock and surprise, 0.97

00:52:49.380 he he wants to do all of this uh like what i guess what you would call manchesterism for the

00:52:55.880 rest of the country it's like okay but the rest of the country isn't the industrial heartland of

00:52:59.620 uh the north um we actually not do not necessarily want a massive council house building program on 0.98

00:53:07.220 the scale not since seen since world war ii because we know who's going in those goddamn 0.99

00:53:11.220 council houses mate and it's not going to be the um the white british children exactly and 0.95

00:53:17.440 what's worse for burnham and i think this is a real mistake is that he has said on the doorstep

00:53:24.080 that he's doing this to save the labour party listen to this i did do um yeah a protest vote

00:53:30.340 yeah now that you're back on board oh really right that means everything that's why i'm doing it i'm

00:53:35.400 trying to get this party back to where it solidly should have always been you know and that's what

00:53:40.180 i'm that's why i'm doing it there we go just out of the horse's mouth i'm doing this because i'm

00:53:46.380 trying to save the Labour Party.

00:53:48.100 But, I mean, this is it.

00:53:49.460 People don't remember that they have built him up in their minds

00:53:52.740 to be this titanic figure of mythos.

00:53:57.920 I remember when he was in the cabinet, he was considered C-list.

00:54:01.880 Oh, yeah, very much.

00:54:02.580 He was considered a second-rate politician, and that's why he buggered off.

00:54:05.760 Very much an Ed Miliband sort of level.

00:54:07.520 Yes, yes.

00:54:08.540 It was so funny when Ed Miliband became leader.

00:54:11.140 Yeah.

00:54:11.440 Yeah, and the fact that Ed Miliband is one of the leading lights of Labour now,

00:54:15.340 It's like, okay, the degradation of your party.

00:54:18.240 Now Andy Burnham is the thing that's coming forth to save it.

00:54:21.100 It's like, okay.

00:54:22.880 I mean, he genuinely is one of the best in the Labour Party.

00:54:25.940 Which is a damning indelible for the Labour Party.

00:54:27.780 But he's not going to revive the fortunes of Labour.

00:54:32.320 If he somehow wins this election, I simply don't care.

00:54:35.600 But look at what the woman said. 0.90

00:54:36.760 I use them as a protest vote,

00:54:39.420 which is a thing that I think reform have got to be wary of,

00:54:41.920 as we've talked about previously.

00:54:43.380 and i i said i don't think people are die hard reform commitment uh i mean evidently not because

00:54:49.420 they didn't vote for them at the last election when they were an option exactly yes and this

00:54:53.160 woman said well i use them as a protest vote but now you're here and you're going to fix the labor

00:54:57.520 party i can finally go back to my ancestral party is what she's saying now what this means is that

00:55:03.760 makerfield is being expressly used cynically here by burnham he's just saying it oh yeah no he

00:55:10.420 literally said elsewhere as well no no this is a vote to change labor right so i'm using i i may

00:55:16.480 have been a great mayor of manchester but i'm using makefield to save the labor party now the

00:55:22.300 people at makerfield have to ask us do i want to save the labor party is that what i actually want

00:55:27.260 at this point can i trust them to actually do what they should have done all along or is the

00:55:33.500 party too compromised well if the soundings that i've taken are anything to go on absolutely not

00:55:38.520 under no circumstances they want Labour to crash and burn.

00:55:41.980 Which is what I've heard too.

00:55:43.320 Yes.

00:55:44.160 Now, like very much how we in the South feel about the Conservatives.

00:55:48.260 Yeah, yes.

00:55:48.620 Because these genuinely were just the North-South party.

00:55:50.900 I assume it's the same.

00:55:53.860 I mean, people in the comments, if you're Northern, you can explain.

00:55:56.300 But I want the Tory party to be destroyed.

00:55:58.740 I will not vote for the Tories. 0.99

00:55:59.920 Under any circumstances whatsoever, they must be annihilated completely. 0.99

00:56:04.980 And this is coming from somebody who was a member 0.89

00:56:06.320 who worked in CCHQ for a while.

00:56:08.280 I'll dream of my work experience when I was 17, 18 or something.

00:56:11.160 I despise them.

00:56:13.260 Tell me in the comments if that's your impression as the North.

00:56:16.080 If you're in the North and you're in Manchester

00:56:17.600 and you feel the same way about Labour, let us know.

00:56:20.600 Anyway, so like I said, it's a cynical attempt 0.97

00:56:22.840 to save the party that deserves to die. 0.97

00:56:25.240 I mean, he literally says,

00:56:26.500 a vote for me is a vote to change Labour.

00:56:28.140 So I found this sub-stack,

00:56:29.320 because I don't know anything about Manchesterism.

00:56:31.180 I'm not an economist or anything.

00:56:33.640 But maybe you want to do brokonomics on this at some point

00:56:36.940 and explain uh burnham's philosophy better to us because burnham uh seems to just have made his

00:56:44.080 entire name on handouts right and that's literally what it seems to be uh so burnham as he they say

00:56:56.920 in here as uh this chap says in here which i like i said i've been watching a lot of podcasts

00:57:01.420 talking about this and this seems to be the most distilled way of uh actually framing it and

00:57:06.640 actually with some numbers right so um burnham thinks he can ignore the bond markets because as

00:57:12.720 he previously said he doesn't want to be in hock to the bond markets right yes uh and this article

00:57:18.280 does a great job of explaining well the bond markets are a market right if you want to borrow

00:57:22.580 money you want to sell bonds you know then you have to have uh essentially um the uh market

00:57:30.620 actually in your favour to do so?

00:57:33.380 Well, when you, on your monthly or weekly basis,

00:57:37.460 however often you're doing, how short you are on money,

00:57:40.560 when you offer up the bonds for sale,

00:57:42.620 somebody then has to come along and say,

00:57:44.240 yeah, I'll buy them.

00:57:45.120 Yeah, there has to be desire to buy them.

00:57:47.600 I mean, they can force it to a little bit

00:57:49.940 by making banks and insurance companies hold them,

00:57:51.960 but that doesn't get you very far.

00:57:53.920 You need people to want to buy them.

00:57:55.920 So if he doesn't want to be in hock to the bond markets,

00:57:58.100 don't borrow 132 billion from them every year and then you won't be in hock to them but but what

00:58:06.680 this is this this is a bit like you getting home tonight and your and your seven-year-old is stood

00:58:11.560 there with his arms crossed and then saying um i don't want to be in hock to daddy anymore

00:58:16.540 by the way can i have my pocket money yeah yeah it doesn't work no no that's exactly right if you

00:58:23.940 if you expect to sell the gilts to the market then you have to have more demand than supply

00:58:31.260 for it to be worth your time and if you don't the yields will blow out and that's what's happening

00:58:35.520 now and exactly and therefore the amount you have to spend on the um interest and debt payments

00:58:41.320 whatnot is is just way higher so okay great and so as uh marlow here says right uh he's

00:58:50.180 And Andy Burnham's outriders are claiming that he's going to bring the markets to heel,

00:58:54.940 which means one of three things.

00:58:56.820 Burnham is planning £340 billion of tax rises.

00:59:01.080 Burnham is planning £340 billion of government spending cuts,

00:59:04.380 or he is just delusional.

00:59:06.140 And honestly, I think we're at his just delusional part.

00:59:10.040 So tax rises won't work, because if you put taxes up from this point,

00:59:14.660 you'll actually collect less revenue.

00:59:16.460 Oh yeah, Rachel Reaves has discovered this. 0.96

00:59:17.680 In fact, we're already starting to see it on some taxes.

00:59:19.920 It's the tax rate has gone up and people just stopped doing stuff less

00:59:22.740 and so the tax rate collections will fall.

00:59:25.820 Laffer curve is undefeated.

00:59:27.120 It's clearly not going to be spending cuts

00:59:29.260 because Labour are psychologically incapable of this.

00:59:32.120 Not just Labour.

00:59:33.020 This is completely anathema to Andy Burnham's personal record as well.

00:59:36.400 Well, yes.

00:59:37.260 And therefore, by process of deduction, it has to be delusion.

00:59:42.360 Absolutely.

00:59:43.360 And he concludes in this, right?

00:59:46.000 Thinking that you can just ignore bond markets

00:59:47.820 when you are relying on them to lend you the money to pay for public services is insane

00:59:51.640 burnham has promised huge amounts of public spending such as nationalizing water companies

00:59:55.660 and the way he's going to pay for it and the way he's going about it implies he has no idea how the

01:00:00.440 government is going to get the money to pay for it he has spent in the last decade of mayor of

01:00:05.220 great manchester right 1.5 billion pound sorry 1.4 billion pounds of debt which is 825 percent

01:00:13.160 of his authority's annual revenue

01:00:14.920 that he has borrowed

01:00:16.380 all from the central government

01:00:17.960 via the Debt Management Office.

01:00:20.220 He has never had to consider markets

01:00:21.840 nor convince anyone

01:00:22.780 who's good for the cash.

01:00:24.020 The Treasury has just cut him a check

01:00:25.560 at preferential rates

01:00:26.620 any time he wanted the money.

01:00:29.060 That's what underpins Manchester.

01:00:31.200 Well, that's how local government works.

01:00:33.100 They can basically borrow

01:00:34.280 at the interest rate,

01:00:37.720 the Bank of England rate,

01:00:38.880 plus like a quarter of a percent

01:00:40.960 or even less.

01:00:42.100 Yes.

01:00:42.440 And so it's just an open piggy bank.

01:00:44.180 Yes.

01:00:44.540 And that's how Manchesterism has made Manchester a success.

01:00:48.240 It's been subsidies from central government, right?

01:00:50.860 Yeah.

01:00:51.120 They've just, yeah, he's like, we're going to give it to you.

01:00:53.220 We're going to give you an incredibly preferential interest rate.

01:00:56.460 So you get all of the benefits of essentially the country subsidizing Manchester, right?

01:01:03.100 That's why this is working.

01:01:04.540 The second that stops or can't be done, well, then what happens then?

01:01:09.820 The thing fails.

01:01:11.220 and it's not like Burnham is actually going to go outside of any of the established rules

01:01:16.940 he's already told us. Andy Burnham is fully ruled out changing Rachel Reeves's fiscal rules.

01:01:23.020 He's just going to stay within the system as it is, which another point is what's actually

01:01:28.080 substantively different between Burnham and Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves or anything like that?

01:01:31.740 They want to do exactly the same things. This is what I've always been saying.

01:01:35.540 all of the constraints still apply all of the limitations still apply all of the

01:01:42.920 he won't the only way that you can get greater degrees of freedom is by rejecting the system

01:01:50.940 as it stands rejecting the liberal assumptions that it is based on it is to do things which

01:01:57.840 will be considered incredibly painful because they involve disruption yes and he's not going

01:02:03.260 do any of that no he's he's told us explicitly uh the and he wants to do all of the same things

01:02:09.440 as keir starmer more social housing more things like starmer declared the other day he was going

01:02:14.340 to bring steel into public ownership for example which okay fine i'm not even saying it's a bad

01:02:18.460 idea but just we're still on the same tracks and we're still heading in the same direction right

01:02:23.240 we're still fiddling the same broken dials that aren't connected to anything exactly so nothing

01:02:28.100 even if burnham wins nothing substantial is going to change he's going to get in and say well can i

01:02:33.720 just start spending money and the treasury and whoever else will just say uh no you're not the

01:02:39.200 mayor of manchester anymore like what the bond markets have said no and he's gonna be like oh

01:02:44.320 jesus christ what does that mean and so he's going to find himself like you've said just up against

01:02:48.640 the brick wall when he's in the same system he can't move anything he can't change anything he

01:02:52.820 will get set down by the permanent secretary who will explain it to you prime minister what you

01:02:57.880 have to be aware of is and then he just and he will just end up doing everything that keir starmer

01:03:03.000 did exactly and and keir starmer just did everything that boris johnson did and so that's

01:03:07.980 how how it works because nobody's rejecting the underlying structures here yeah anyway another

01:03:14.060 attack line that reform are going to have on him are the grooming gangs because uh he failed at

01:03:19.680 the sort of last hurdle on the grooming gangs um to really plunge into the issue properly because

01:03:26.580 of course this is an issue that he as a labor party grandee doesn't really want to have anything 0.88

01:03:32.340 to do with but who else failed on the grooming gangs nige oh that's right you i was just thinking 0.99

01:03:37.320 a reform sure that they want to expose that flank because what if what if there's somebody out there 1.00

01:03:43.800 who's got a far better credible line on this than he does yeah what if what if there is yeah nigel

01:03:50.940 didn't do the work uh burnham didn't do the work but rupert did do the work right and the things

01:03:56.720 that we saw coming out of the growing rupert called it the most harrowing two weeks of his

01:04:00.820 life yes going through this uh and so let's talk about the one percent prediction

01:04:06.580 now uh all of reform's talking heads and just to be clear web restore talking heads 0.89

01:04:14.120 uh have said no you're not going to win you're going to lose it's moronic and then we started

01:04:19.900 getting well okay well if we're going to get one percent then it's our deposit to lose right 0.68

01:04:24.520 you're not going to be that bothered about it you're not even going to notice one percent are

01:04:28.020 you so so i don't know why you're bothered exactly then then it started getting to well you're going

01:04:33.660 to split the vote it's like right so we're going to do better than one percent then so you're

01:04:38.140 expecting a significant percentage and therefore we should stand down to make sure that andy burnham

01:04:42.780 doesn't get into parliament and doesn't become the leader of the labor party yeah so everything

01:04:48.440 remains exactly the same so to be fair i am i am in winchester not not makersfield but for example

01:04:54.080 i didn't vote in in the council elections because there was no restore candidate and if the general

01:04:58.920 election comes around there's no restore candidate i won't vote again so if i vote for restore

01:05:03.180 candidate i'm somehow splitting the vote am i yeah that's another point that a lot of people have

01:05:06.780 made say well i wasn't going to vote for reform yeah but i will vote for us and we know that what

01:05:12.120 they do is they activate non-voters because we've literally just had 10 elections in great yarmouth

01:05:17.920 that demonstrate exactly that.

01:05:19.680 They activate the non-voters.

01:05:21.920 By a massive margin.

01:05:22.980 Yes.

01:05:23.920 By a massive margin.

01:05:25.800 And Ferraz had a good post that was going around

01:05:28.540 pointing out, look, this is actually existential for reform

01:05:31.380 because of the threat to the right.

01:05:33.980 If Restore do better than expected,

01:05:37.540 and in fact, if Restore win,

01:05:39.740 then what's the point of reform?

01:05:41.780 That'll be the second high-profile by-election

01:05:44.560 that reform will have lost.

01:05:47.280 Yep.

01:05:47.920 So the right and the left, showing that they are a centrist uniparty

01:05:51.880 and the public have gone against centrism.

01:05:54.320 And before we found out it was Burnham,

01:05:57.140 they were massively the favourites to win this.

01:05:59.700 By far.

01:06:00.320 Yes.

01:06:01.020 Like somewhere 85% likelihood of them winning.

01:06:04.340 And with Burnham, it's on a knife edge.

01:06:07.360 It's within a few percentage points.

01:06:09.300 So the point that Forrest is making, I think, very well,

01:06:13.480 is essentially nothing changes very much for restore if we don't win this right if we get

01:06:20.380 if i mean if we got one percent okay that'd be egg on the face it would be yeah but it doesn't

01:06:25.640 change anything in the grand scheme of things it's one by election if we get 10 or 15 that's

01:06:33.980 not a bad showing actually where we were predicted to get one percent and shows that the ground game

01:06:40.140 has teeth i mean any number higher than the polling average precisely any any number higher

01:06:45.260 than four percent basically yes is a win for restore and if reform were to lose this that's

01:06:52.400 bad for them yes very bad i i think if restore does the work it's not silly to say they can win

01:06:59.380 well that's a great point now who's restores candidate well the bbc have given us a rather

01:07:06.520 a mild article about her this is rebecca shepherd she's 53 she's a local business owner in the area

01:07:14.360 and she's very concerned about the way things are going in the country like everyone else

01:07:20.400 she's actually not terribly dissimilar to um the chap that reformer running okay then just local

01:07:27.000 person who is concerned about the way things are business owner local business parent business

01:07:31.680 owner yeah good yeah as the bbc tell us she's a local businesswoman 53 has described the party

01:07:36.100 is understanding firsthand the pressures facing local businesses

01:07:38.720 and working families across the area.

01:07:40.840 Very sensible.

01:07:42.880 Got some, again, coverage in The Spectator

01:07:45.180 and coverage in GB News,

01:07:47.400 which was all just surprisingly normal.

01:07:50.380 Wow, they were actually covering Restore?

01:07:52.120 Yeah.

01:07:53.040 Wasn't expecting that.

01:07:54.380 Yeah.

01:07:55.220 This video has been put out,

01:07:56.740 but honestly, it was a very small video

01:07:58.760 that didn't tell us that much.

01:08:00.700 But you can tell that she's a very normal local person.

01:08:03.240 I would say a common sense party

01:08:05.220 with a trustworthy leader who cares about his um people his constituents um doesn't try and

01:08:12.940 lie about anything and just really wants the best for the people so that's why she's joined

01:08:19.100 restore britain and why she's standing um okay it's not a slick reform production which honestly

01:08:24.820 i do think is a mistake we do need high quality production values um but she's normal yeah she's

01:08:31.680 not some radical like absurd candidate or anything like that she's very normal and apparently she's

01:08:37.340 doing very well on the doorstep we are okay good liably informed so let's have a look at the odds

01:08:42.360 trackers um if i can get rid of that so the odds oh this is a three horse race these odds have been

01:08:50.780 getting dramatically better since this morning when i prepared this podcast so you can see labor

01:08:56.160 4 to 7

01:08:56.920 reform

01:08:57.820 2 to 1

01:08:58.900 or 15 to 8

01:08:59.960 we're still

01:09:00.780 we're in 5 to 1

01:09:01.640 in many of the

01:09:04.060 leading

01:09:04.780 betting markets

01:09:06.580 so

01:09:07.400 for a few months

01:09:08.520 old party

01:09:09.060 that's not

01:09:09.480 bloody bad

01:09:10.220 and for a party

01:09:11.200 where like

01:09:11.820 reform and labour

01:09:12.660 should have this

01:09:13.360 completely sewn up

01:09:14.400 so to have some

01:09:15.560 outsider

01:09:16.260 who's on

01:09:17.460 I mean look at the

01:09:18.520 Greens and the

01:09:19.020 Conservatives

01:09:19.460 200 to 1

01:09:20.320 500 to 1

01:09:21.620 it's funny

01:09:22.720 how the Conservatives

01:09:23.620 just aren't

01:09:24.660 every so often I see a clip

01:09:27.780 and it's from a conservative

01:09:29.220 and I remember that they exist.

01:09:32.180 They're just, they're so done.

01:09:33.640 Yeah, it's only when they put

01:09:34.600 Kemi Badenock in my face. 0.97

01:09:35.840 They're 500 to 1. 0.96

01:09:38.220 There's just no,

01:09:39.200 they're done, they're tanked.

01:09:41.140 But, so as I said,

01:09:42.300 this is a three horse race.

01:09:43.760 Now, there are two horses in the lead,

01:09:45.360 but this was 7 to 1

01:09:47.320 when I started, 7.5 to 1

01:09:49.060 when I started this morning.

01:09:50.460 So the fact the odds are shortening

01:09:51.700 at the bookies is very interesting.

01:09:54.000 Now, that's not polling or anything,

01:09:57.100 but it's very interesting how literally the day after this has been announced

01:10:00.940 or two days after this has been announced,

01:10:02.900 this is what people are thinking and feeling in the arena.

01:10:10.880 We just don't have much information on Restore in elections at this point

01:10:16.380 because the only elections they've ever fought in,

01:10:19.980 they have triumphed so completely

01:10:22.180 but it kind of blew out the metrics yeah uh and so yeah like ben habib has said look we're not

01:10:27.980 going to be standing a candidate here uh and we urge people to get behind rebecca which is great

01:10:32.140 um and so everyone's out canvassing there's lee anderson canvassing in makefield as well

01:10:37.860 and of course there's our guys out canvassing in makefield uh so i mean it's all to play for

01:10:46.080 i mean for a small party it's a huge turnout it's it's impressive how passionate people are about

01:10:51.120 this i mean it used to be the case that the liberal democrats didn't do that well in elections but

01:10:55.780 they always had a strong ground game and it was always attributed to the fact they'd spent decades

01:11:00.700 building it up well quite obviously restore because it launched a few months ago has not

01:11:04.480 had decades to build it up this is because this well this is basically because there were five

01:11:09.360 parties running in this in this um by-election who are left-wing and one party that's right-wing

01:11:15.080 basically and and people are like i finally have something i want to vote for yes and this

01:11:21.080 there's a real feeling of insurrection about restore like no no farage and his tories they're

01:11:29.580 men of the system you know i'm sick of the system farage is clearly being accepted by the system as

01:11:35.660 well i mean one of the one of the frequently uh left-wing complaints about reform about the bbc

01:11:41.120 is how often reform are on like question time and things like this right they're like oh look

01:11:45.200 reform are constantly getting coverage and promotion from the mainstream media it's like

01:11:48.960 yeah they are actually in a way that's not wrong and that does act as a kind of campaigning arm for

01:11:55.040 them and show that they've been accepted by the status quo's consenters so bbc basically endorsed

01:12:00.100 them at this point basically yeah and so the the lefties are not wrong when they level this critique

01:12:05.720 about the mainstream media and their acceptance of farage and it's funny watching the lefties 0.59

01:12:10.720 spurg out about farage because he's just not what you think he is i mean christ's sake if if nigel

01:12:17.840 farad was what the left think he is i would vote for him and campaign for him myself that's why i

01:12:22.920 vote for rupert low anyway so russian has been up on the ground he's uh he's from manchester so he

01:12:31.360 uh he knows the area a lot better than we do uh he says been in make for 15 minutes and george's

01:12:36.300 flags everywhere union flags everywhere rupert low stickers we've got this so i don't know right

01:12:41.980 so all i'm saying is this this these are this is what i have seen that i think is worth presenting

01:12:46.800 It would be amazing, but it's not impossible.

01:12:49.700 It's not impossible.

01:12:51.000 Like, I think the betting markets probably have it right now.

01:12:55.480 But remember, we've got a month until these elections.

01:12:57.880 Yes.

01:12:58.120 So these are 18th of June.

01:12:59.700 We have got a full month, and it is going to be rampant.

01:13:03.300 And you know full well what's going to make the difference

01:13:06.440 between coming third, second, or first.

01:13:09.180 It is doing the work.

01:13:12.180 If you want to save your country, don't leave it up to Rupert

01:13:16.100 or the five guys around him or just click like on a video every now and again turn up and save

01:13:22.880 your country and it starts here yes so if if you are a restore britain member and supporter and

01:13:29.060 volunteer uh definitely would recommend you go to make field we're gonna we're gonna see if we can

01:13:34.680 get a crew to go up there make some content speak some people on the ground and uh see what we can

01:13:41.760 discover from me i mean if if everyone who backs a store and there's a lot of people who backs

01:13:47.580 a store if everybody can just do a day just go up for a pick a day that works for you and go up

01:13:52.900 we could do this because they exactly i mean if this is how it begins yes like on day two

01:13:59.720 it's like this on day 30 who knows it could be a great yarmouth so and it's very clear that the

01:14:08.040 people in reform are very worried about this oh i've i had noticed they're very salty online

01:14:15.300 that rupert lowe dare as you said you know do the thing that parties do and contest it yes

01:14:20.760 that's only because it looks like actually this could go somewhere and uh who knows maybe the

01:14:28.700 people of makefield aren't just going to be like yeah i'm voting for the protest vote maybe they

01:14:33.640 will vote for what they actually want and maybe that will be revealed to be restored

01:14:39.560 because it's going to actually be on the ballot.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 20, 2026

Makerfield or Bust

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