The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Reform Is Falling Apart

00:00:00.000 Hi folks, welcome to another of our political chats. Today we're going to be talking about

00:00:03.820 the situation in Makerfield, because that's really the only thing worth talking about until

00:00:08.080 Thursday, or Friday really, which is when we get the results, and we're going to find out how things

00:00:13.040 played out. Before we begin, Dan, have you got any predictions? Dare you make any?

00:00:19.960 I mean, I woefully underestimated what they were going to do in Great Yarmouth,

00:00:24.460 so, but I have no particular reason to disbelieve their internal polling which is coming out in the

00:00:29.780 low 20s so i'll just say that low 20s seems reasonable um i honestly have no idea like the

00:00:36.700 polls are all over the place i don't really believe the establishment polls which we'll get

00:00:41.260 into in a minute this does very very much feel like an exercise in the polls are designed to

00:00:47.640 influence the electorate rather than measure the election yes with these polls yeah the polling

00:00:52.060 companies and there's only a couple of them that got involved and they've only done small samples

00:00:55.380 but it feels like they're taking a hit for the greater good it does it's essentially very strange

00:00:59.760 how disinterested the polling companies seem to be in maker field if this is such a titanic battle

00:01:06.280 for the future of the country if this is really going to decide the next prime minister and

00:01:09.900 only only what two of them are curious enough to do a poll there have been three now oh okay

00:01:15.560 three whole polls from the dozens of polling companies who for some reason were just like

00:01:20.380 yeah no that's boring yeah there's nothing to see here no no no polling to be done here it's

00:01:24.580 really strange yes um but yeah for myself i don't know i mean i honestly i do think andy burnham's

00:01:31.200 probably going to win it so um i haven't been there but we've had lots of our chaps who have

00:01:34.840 been there lots of our activists who are there and you'll see how many of our activists are there

00:01:38.300 when he should i mean he he handpicked this seat yeah he could have gone anywhere i mean he

00:01:43.200 if he's going to be the next prime minister he has so much power of patronage he could have gone

00:01:48.020 to any mp in the whole manchester area and said i'll make it worth your while to step aside and

00:01:52.440 he chose makerfield yeah so he should win well i mean why would he choose it if he's not intending

00:01:59.080 to win uh but also what's the name of the mp is it luke simmons or something yeah that sounds right

00:02:04.280 yeah he he is actually a really well-liked mp in the area he's not from the area but apparently

00:02:09.080 he's done a lot for the area and sort of rupert low fashion actually um so a lot of people are

00:02:14.540 actually disappointed to see him go because he had quite good name recognition even though outside

00:02:19.180 of makefield no one's heard no one's ever heard of this mp but anyway so let's look at some of

00:02:23.600 the polls so here's a poll from uh convergent which is a company i'm actually not familiar with

00:02:29.140 is this a new one it is a fairly new one uh this was from the up until the 12th of june so only a

00:02:35.380 few days ago um and sample size of 525 which is apparently a fine sample size for the size of the

00:02:43.700 constituency but i would be very suspicious about these results so they had labor on 49 i mean it

00:02:50.400 does seem odd and again i'll just keep going back to my point from last week if restore are really

00:02:56.200 polling below the greening party the green party at five percent yeah why is the entire mainstream

00:03:03.720 media and reform why are they talking about nothing but restore if that poll is true and

00:03:09.200 their internal polling is showing the same they would be going after labor but they're not saying

00:03:13.680 anything about labour they're only going after the people who are fourth what exactly like why

00:03:18.860 was the daily mail dedicating an entire front page to calling us nazis yes if we're in fourth place

00:03:24.340 and aren't i mean even the vote splitting argument doesn't work here because even if you added up the

00:03:29.100 conservatives restore and reform you still don't beat labour there so yeah it doesn't make any

00:03:33.320 sense at all what would yeah why are they spurging out about us in this way and so i'm i'm not

00:03:40.000 persuaded by this i mean look at the look at the greens and the conservatives right in in very much

00:03:44.180 the same orbit as restore according to this poll yeah nobody talks about the conservatives they

00:03:49.800 disagree nobody talks about the greens even but they're all talking about this random party that's

00:03:55.640 polling the same as the greens and the why it would be inexplicable yeah if as you said we

00:04:03.760 haven't had a very recent example of why it actually might be that there is a kind of hidden

00:04:09.460 restore vote out there because as you can see at the bottom it says excluding those who don't

00:04:14.860 intend to vote and adjusted by likelihood to vote as a yeah so these are these are figures that have

00:04:20.600 been somewhat massaged based on how did you vote in 2024 how are you how are you feeling about any

00:04:26.460 of these candidates from these parties and of course restores uh constituency seems to be those

00:04:31.580 disaffected people who don't tend to vote so if you are so if they rang you up for this poll and

00:04:36.980 you said i'm intending to vote for restore britain and they said when was the last time you

00:04:40.760 voted and they say 1995 that they are massively deranking you or excluding you yes they're going

00:04:47.660 to manipulate the data based on that uh and so i can't help but feel there's a kind of willful

00:04:54.100 blindness that's been introduced into these polls because if you are going to weight it and adjust

00:05:00.140 it based on how they previously voted well a lot of these people won't have previously voted yeah

00:05:06.360 And so you're carving out a constituency of voters

00:05:10.200 who, like, as people have mentioned,

00:05:12.400 Dominic Cummings with Brexit...

00:05:13.620 Yes.

00:05:14.060 ...brought these people out and blindsided you.

00:05:17.260 And the polls before Brexit were saying

00:05:19.640 it was going to be a slam dunk, an absolute slam dunk.

00:05:21.900 They were going to win by 20 points or something.

00:05:23.260 Oh, yeah. I mean, I thought we were going to lose Brexit.

00:05:24.800 Yeah. And we didn't lose Brexit

00:05:26.900 because they didn't take into account the people

00:05:29.840 who hadn't historically voted.

00:05:31.900 Yes. And so, anyway, like you said,

00:05:34.420 um it doesn't really make sense for them to otherwise be attacking us so intensively

00:05:39.220 but we'll get on to the actual on the ground reporting of it in a minute because again these

00:05:45.100 polls can be useful but are also sometimes wildly wrong and i i've just spoken to loads

00:05:54.860 of our activists in makefield and that's something we don't think that 50 of people

00:05:58.100 in this constituency are voting for labor yeah we just don't think that's the case

00:06:01.820 i mean just just a fundamental question right if polls are good and accurate why does every

00:06:07.280 political party commission their own internal polls that they don't release that's a great

00:06:10.760 why would you bother and why restore britain the only party who did release their internal poll

00:06:14.660 well apart apart from we've heard leaks from various people in labor sure they would say

00:06:19.640 leaks yeah never restore britain just published theirs yes our returns are 24 so but the leaks

00:06:25.820 from labor is like yeah that one's actually accurate the store stuff is accurate anyway

00:06:29.660 we've got more polls uh here's from opinion opinionum i'm pronouncing that wrong anyway um

00:06:37.400 so they found that we were on seven percent and again you can see if you can read there

00:06:44.020 uh this is results of 400 respondents who at least seven out of ten likely to vote and gave

00:06:49.520 a voting intention so again they are carving off a particular number of people who didn't vote or

00:06:56.520 say they're not likely to vote or something like that carving off 30 of the response yeah yeah

00:07:00.300 basically yes and so who knows but again seven percent so i mean at least it's substantive

00:07:05.720 uh above conservatives and greens um and it is enough to feed the splitting the vote narrative

00:07:12.340 and again this was from the 11th of june at the latest so who knows who knows same sort of

00:07:18.820 perspective on this uh then we have a third one which is from more in common um more in common

00:07:24.680 not tremendously reliable um and the thing is i couldn't actually find any granular detail on this

00:07:30.340 so it was originally published in the times i go to the times article and all they said

00:07:34.340 is that uh they polled makefield by sample uh by telephone and online between may the 28th and jude

00:07:40.740 the 12th okay okay so i don't i don't have any further information about this that i could get

00:07:48.060 But this, again, restore on 8%, reform on 40%, Labour on 45%.

00:07:53.580 It's going to be the split-the-vote narrative.

00:07:56.380 But, again...

00:07:57.880 It does annoy me, the split-the-vote narrative.

00:08:00.960 So, come the next election, if there isn't a restored candidate to vote for,

00:08:06.680 I'm not going to vote.

00:08:08.020 Well, yeah, obviously.

00:08:08.960 And that's apparently me splitting the vote.

00:08:11.560 Well, they do feel entitled to your votes.

00:08:13.720 As far as I remember, it's the Jacob Rees-Mogg political socialism philosophy.

00:08:19.140 Everyone who votes was guaranteed to vote,

00:08:21.840 and all of those votes are shared out among various political parties.

00:08:25.540 So you need a slice of your pie.

00:08:27.140 In his view, it is split solely between are you a right-winger or a left-winger.

00:08:32.220 His political view is genuinely as simple as that.

00:08:35.700 It really is.

00:08:36.340 And if you are nominally right-wing, well, okay,

00:08:39.900 that means that you have to vote for reform,

00:08:41.680 which is odd because he's literally a member of a party which is running a candidate in makerfield

00:08:46.420 and that's all but as we've spoken about before it's also just wrong-headed as in there there is

00:08:53.360 not just this fixed pie of voters that are automatically shared between the different

00:08:58.040 political parties no people actually choose different things based on how they feel the

00:09:02.580 country is going on what's on offer and sometimes they vote sometimes they don't vote this is

00:09:06.220 actually a free market so this kind of you're splitting the vote political socialism argument

00:09:11.920 is really weird coming from jacob reese mogg who is an ardent free marketeer but also is not

00:09:16.020 accurate well and also if the jacob reese mogg view of politics was correct why do we bother

00:09:22.160 having elections you just when you get to 18 you just mark a card that says your left ring or white

00:09:26.260 ring yeah and then they just tot it up and they just why would you bother voting yeah so what's

00:09:32.120 weird though is the betting markets have got all the money on restore now this isn't a prediction

00:09:38.780 this isn't a poll this isn't anything other than people's gut feeling yeah it's it's the

00:09:44.560 weight of money invested so yeah yeah exactly it's weight of money invested uh people you know

00:09:49.900 taking a gamble on restore winning so they put 100 quid on it or whatever they might make i don't

00:09:55.580 know however much you know grand or something like that however much out of it um but it's just

00:09:59.180 really weird that that's where the betting markets went it's just really strange and again i just

00:10:05.160 can't believe the uh labor 45 percent number now there is definitely a burn and bounce but remember

00:10:11.160 in the local elections uh restore stormed them reform stormed them won everything all of the

00:10:18.940 council elections in makefield uh in that area um and there was something like 25 seats or something

00:10:23.980 like this that there was in this sort of the area around this constituency um Labour have been on

00:10:30.200 the downswing now is Andy Burnham personally enough to pull all of that back I don't know

00:10:35.600 maybe but I just I mean I suppose it's possible that the people of Makerfield just desperately

00:10:41.320 desperately want Keir Starmer out it's the easiest way to achieve it I mean and I can sympathize

00:10:46.880 with that yeah I mean maybe maybe but again trust the Labour Party at your peril um anyway

00:10:53.960 so a lot of people like well why aren't you on the right um particularly bothered about andy burnham

00:10:59.220 because andy burnham isn't a radical frankly like just think of some of the things that

00:11:06.600 has done or pledged to right over the last two years right first thing first he came out and was

00:11:12.380 like i'm against the british public because rioting over south port he just came out and

00:11:16.740 just said no this is unacceptable 24-hour courts you're going to jail for being upset that a bunch

00:11:21.780 of children were murdered yes and then you've got other things you've got the the jury trials

00:11:26.000 you've got the digital ids which is cramming through now yeah all of these things are insane

00:11:32.320 and this i mean if you're not from britain to give any idea of just how hated keir starmer is

00:11:38.300 right my kids found out yesterday that he's going to ban youtube oh yeah that's it um my kids don't

00:11:44.460 even know who keir starmer is they loathe the man yeah they were like who's doing this and i said oh

00:11:49.900 the prime minister and they were both like we hate him yeah because even people even people

00:11:55.720 who don't know who he is yes spies him like everything he does is overbearing everything

00:12:01.100 he does is um extreme in its own way and so is andy burnham going to be worse than that no

00:12:08.100 andy burnham is just going to be a kind of soft left socialist right where he's going to put

00:12:12.980 government money into manchester because that's where he's from and that's that's his constituency

00:12:17.420 and he might actually build some stuff frankly like you know it doesn't benefit me i'm not

00:12:23.520 in manchester the remarkable question here that lucy is asking is and i've seen a lot of people

00:12:27.540 do this is saying oh we've we've all got to coalesce around reform because otherwise we're

00:12:32.160 going to get a labor government it's like we've got a labor government yeah exactly we've already

00:12:36.100 got a government it is just we're going to be changing a completely awful soulless prime

00:12:42.620 minister for a clueless labor prime minister i would rather have a clueless prime minister

00:12:46.440 rather than an actively evil one,

00:12:49.300 who is operating on 50 years of Fabian programming

00:12:54.220 to undermine the tenants of the country.

00:12:57.080 I don't have any particular respect for Andy Burnham's political career.

00:13:00.860 He's failed every leadership challenge he's mustered.

00:13:03.300 So I'm not even convinced that he can unseat Starmer.

00:13:06.500 I think actually a lot of them would just be like,

00:13:08.020 well, better the devil you know.

00:13:09.300 And also it would tear the Labour Party apart.

00:13:10.900 Of course.

00:13:12.140 But also, Andy Burnham, the rumour around him,

00:13:14.820 oh, he's going to call the general election.

00:13:15.960 world god that would be no way yeah there's no way there's no way he's going to do it but imagine

00:13:20.260 if you're a labor politician sitting in parliament you're like but is he going to call the general

00:13:25.400 election and i lose my seat to the greens or to reform or to restore to whoever then why would

00:13:30.620 you know no i might just stick with kirsten because kirsten like you're saying kirsten is

00:13:34.400 like an evil robot sent from the future to destroy this country but at least if you're a labor

00:13:38.900 backbench mp you get to draw an 80 grand salary for the next three years exactly that's why you'd

00:13:43.680 stick with keir starmer but for the average person like okay let's say i mean it's inevitable that

00:13:48.840 it happens uh burnham overthrows starmer becomes prime minister and then the next day there's a

00:13:53.800 southport right another southport happens yeah does he come out and threaten the british public

00:13:58.920 probably not actually um you know whatever you whatever you think but by the same token he's

00:14:04.420 not going to come out and say millions must go no of course so so good he's still going to

00:14:08.980 completely unsatisfy people yes we're still going to end up with a change of government in three

00:14:12.680 years yes and he's committed to shabana mahoud's immigration policies committed to rachel reeves's

00:14:18.060 economic policy uh he's committed to ed milliband's green policy and and half of those things you just

00:14:23.120 mentioned are the reason why the why the labor so yes the labor party are losing something like

00:14:28.560 17 of their vote to the right but they're losing 16 to the left yes so with those policies you just

00:14:35.020 put out none of them are going to satisfy the right or the left the labor party is still going

00:14:39.100 to get ripped apart in three years time but for the reasons you've outlined he can't win a

00:14:43.680 leadership election by promising to hold an election afterwards so he's going to have he's

00:14:47.280 going to have to assure all those labor backbenchers don't worry i'm not going to do an election

00:14:51.120 and keir starmer can just say he is going to by the way he's going to he's going to ruin us and

00:14:56.820 but moreover like i said like okay andy burnham i mean already andy burnham's net favorability is

00:15:03.740 going down right because it looks like he might become the leader of the labor party and the

00:15:07.580 salience of Andy Burnham in the public mind

00:15:09.560 is that people are like, oh, good, another Labour

00:15:11.540 politician, great. But on a

00:15:13.540 personal level, he seems like a likeable guy, and

00:15:15.540 he seems like a human, which

00:15:17.460 would be a step up from what we've got at the moment.

00:15:19.640 He's just got no concept of how the economy works.

00:15:21.780 Of course, yeah, of course. It's just

00:15:23.440 going to be more tax and spend.

00:15:25.320 But the point is, like, for us

00:15:27.520 on the right, this is no particular difference.

00:15:30.120 People are like, would you like to eat a bowl

00:15:31.500 of cat feces or a bowl of dog feces?

00:15:33.620 It's like, well, I don't really have a preference.

00:15:36.180 And then Restore Britain, Swag

00:15:37.480 into the room and goes what wouldn't you rather eat this delicious medium rare fillet steak and

00:15:41.360 we go yes that sounds brilliant and then reform enters and say hi we're a miserable gray flat

00:15:47.060 plastic burger that's been heated up after sitting in the abandoned freezer for 10 years

00:15:50.220 why don't you vote for us and then you don't have to eat the dog feces or the cat feces

00:15:54.100 it's like but i could just have the steak yeah that sounds good and so anyway this i think is why

00:16:00.880 and i really do think this is why the um passion for reform seems to be completely absent in this

00:16:08.920 election right so i put up a tweet the other day because i just said look while we've been talking

00:16:15.320 about this i put up dozens of videos uh many many tweets i've seen what the reform guys are saying

00:16:22.080 i am yet to see the positive case for reform yeah and that's been reform's problem not just

00:16:30.160 in this one this is of course the problem with gorton and denton yes matt goodwin running around

00:16:34.480 like alan partridge saying keir starmer's gonna put your children on a flight to mars and you

00:16:38.980 know whatever all this nonsense but what but i mean seriously and and i put this tweet up and

00:16:43.760 specifically said to all the performers out there please give me the positive case for reform

00:16:47.520 dan wouldn't did the same it all didn't happen which isn't one just we're not we're we're not

00:16:53.020 gonna let andy burnham get into government it's like that's not the threat that you think it is

00:16:56.340 well the argument used to be we're not the tories at the last election but then they hired all the

00:17:01.400 tories and now it's we're not labor okay but but what is starmer out what is the reason for you

00:17:08.200 i mean in the in the locals it was get starmer out but that didn't yes that's flipped now it's

00:17:12.360 starmer loses a bunch of local elections and that gets rid of starmer well that didn't happen did

00:17:16.880 it so now it's literally keep starmer in for whatever reason that's like so sorry i actually

00:17:22.480 do you think Andy Burnham would be a step up from Keir Starmer?

00:17:25.680 Yeah.

00:17:26.020 But anyway,

00:17:27.520 the point being is this lack of positive message is not,

00:17:31.840 it's not inspiring the country to come out and support restore reform.

00:17:38.160 So this is the,

00:17:40.360 the two canvases on Saturday.

00:17:44.280 So the Saturday for all of the parties,

00:17:46.680 it's like the last big day.

00:17:47.740 They can get a bunch of activists there.

00:17:49.120 And for restore,

00:17:50.540 for reform,

00:17:51.240 probably about 60 people.

00:17:52.480 there's not that many and and what's even worse was it tice or whatever one of one of the top

00:17:58.880 reformers came out and said reforms brought an army yeah and i replied to that and said look

00:18:03.160 that's not even a platoon yeah that's whereas you look at restore uh restores one yeah that's a

00:18:08.840 battalion yeah um for from reports of our friends on the ground uh they reckon about a thousand

00:18:14.980 people turned up going and the thing is this photo doesn't capture it but when you see the video of

00:18:19.860 this they pan around and there's loads of people behind this it's that all the way around yeah uh

00:18:25.320 so we're completely mogging them on the number of activists that we have actually there and you see

00:18:31.760 like this empty bus driving around now you know in their defense they're probably just trying to

00:18:36.320 raise awareness but it looks kind of bad when it's just an empty bus driving around maybe the

00:18:41.260 store would have filled it uh yeah absolutely and people got emails saying well hang on a second

00:18:46.460 uh reform were charging people to go on the bus originally 50 pounds to go up to makefield to

00:18:53.240 canvas for them uh but they've they've reduced it to zero pounds to encourage people to go up

00:18:58.800 so uh so they cut it to zero pounds bus was still empty the bus was still empty and uh as we saw

00:19:06.460 uh they only got about 60 people up yeah whereas everyone for restore are paying as far as i'm

00:19:12.700 we're paying for it out of our own pocket and this this is um where the enthusiasm gap is oh

00:19:20.020 there's yeah there's a bit of a gap yeah yeah and so it's just very strange right why is reform

00:19:26.200 the sort of party that really is it's it's currently you know leading in the polls but

00:19:30.960 unable to actually muster an organic grassroots groundswell of support why is that the case

00:19:37.000 very very strange isn't it and it it could be because the political activists have gone elsewhere

00:19:42.700 deal well exactly that's exactly the point i wonder how many of those activists were reform

00:19:48.180 activists three years ago and how many of them were paid because this uh indian chap who will

00:19:53.360 coleshill um found uh putting leaflets through doors uh refused to talk to him obviously but

00:19:59.960 apparently afterwards a few of our chaps were there and they messaged me going uh we think

00:20:05.180 these were paid uh activists as in um they they they seem to have a kind of like a particular

00:20:12.040 composition.

00:20:15.660 Yes.

00:20:16.540 And they have a small number of groups going around

00:20:18.820 and they think they were paid activists,

00:20:20.640 which is why they had no interest in talking.

00:20:21.580 Is it by,

00:20:22.700 because I mean,

00:20:23.060 it's totally a thing you can do.

00:20:24.640 You can hire people in your local area

00:20:26.600 to go and deliver takeaway menus

00:20:28.100 or double glazing.

00:20:29.880 And they often look a bit like that, Chad.

00:20:32.420 Yeah.

00:20:32.740 And that's,

00:20:33.400 none of the reform activists,

00:20:35.120 the canvassers,

00:20:36.460 want to talk to the media or anything.

00:20:39.200 That's interesting, isn't it?

00:20:40.060 Yeah, the restore ones,

00:20:41.220 there are lots of you can't shut them up yeah exactly you can't shut them up no they grab the

00:20:44.720 mic and give you a 20 minute monologue yeah exactly um so it's just hmm is this a case of

00:20:51.180 there is a reform sort of you know air war going on but actually on the ground war reform are very

00:20:57.940 very weak and don't seem to actually be getting the job done on the doorstep because i mean as

00:21:03.820 you pointed out the daily telegraph did a whole video where they went up to make i love this video

00:21:08.980 and they were trying to ask people you know who interested in talking to and was it not that they

00:21:15.180 didn't find a single reform vote so this video was so funny because they didn't talk about restore

00:21:20.020 at all in their intro or the beginning bit the first 10 minutes they didn't mention restore at

00:21:23.680 all and they're saying we're going to go up to make a field and we're going to find out what's

00:21:26.740 going on between labor and reform right they get up there and they start looking for a reformed

00:21:32.240 person to speak to and all they can find is uh a reformed person speak to all they can find is

00:21:36.640 restore people and this one guy they go and talk to and they come out afterwards and tim stanley

00:21:42.540 who is obviously a bit of a cuck he comes out and he's like he was so reasonable and made such good

00:21:46.760 points i thought that restore were a bunch of raving neo-nazis but this is just a sensible 0.67

00:21:51.320 middle-class guy and then there's an even funnier bit before that where they're stood out on the

00:21:56.860 street right and all these cars are going past honking and they think wow everybody knows two

00:22:04.420 obscure journalists from the daily telegraph and then they look around and realize they're

00:22:08.060 stood next to a restore sign and they're like oh people think we will restore yeah yeah yeah

00:22:15.600 it's like right that's interesting isn't and then again enthusiasm gap yep and and then they go to

00:22:21.160 the reform hq to say we're from the telegraph can we speak to anyone not a person and it's like no

00:22:28.580 you can't you would think the daily i mean the daily telegraph has been running defense for

00:22:33.200 reform for months now so in this country for anyone who's followed we used to call the the

00:22:38.700 telegraph the tory graph it is now a hundred percent the reformer graph yeah just like the

00:22:42.900 daily mail at this point actually um but yeah like you said they were getting honks for restore

00:22:47.960 they found in fact this is only a minute long let's watch this because it's just great you're

00:22:51.580 actually a rupert lowe fan i am yes um i did follow reform for a little while i was a labor

00:22:58.320 support a long time ago right um but things seem to have shifted they don't seem they personally

00:23:04.680 the labor side of things don't seem to be following sort of the sort of working class

00:23:09.600 routes that they sort of started off on um i did start to go to reform and follow a lot of their

00:23:16.180 things i do work um security at an airport so i see a lot of the border issues and things like

00:23:21.860 that um i actually started following rupert like when he was still in reform and then sort of saw

00:23:28.120 what happened and quite a bit disenfranchised really with Farage um I don't really trust the

00:23:36.380 guy um what a lot of things he said he always seems to follow the popular tack and suddenly

00:23:43.400 he'll jump onto things and say oh yeah this is the latest and greatest but looking at things

00:23:48.620 recently with his sort of voting and the thing how much time he's actually spent in parliament

00:23:53.260 rather than smoothing with his pals and going off and going on holidays and all sorts of things

00:23:57.640 um i started forward to rupert low yeah it's exactly what we've been saying right this was

00:24:05.480 farage's to lose and he lost it on his character his argument his point that you know i was a

00:24:11.100 labor voter obviously but labor were terrible so i started following him from because farage was

00:24:14.400 the thing in the media and he got my attention but then rupert low was actually doing the work

00:24:19.640 and so then farage kicked him out and i was like well farage is the used car salesman of british

00:24:24.020 politics i don't really trust him uh and she's just like oh my god a resource but he's completely

00:24:29.680 normal man yes i've i work at the airport and i see the problem it completely blew tim stanley's

00:24:35.180 mind because because in tim stanley's mind restore were just the most extreme neo-nazis imaginable

00:24:40.320 yeah and it's actually just normal people good arguments yeah no i bet i bet he's a dad i bet

00:24:45.220 he's you know married with kids yeah he works doing normal things and he's like oh god we have

00:24:49.740 to change this and who's the one person who's actually saying speaking to him in a way that

00:24:54.080 resonates it's rupert lowe and the reason why the telegraph knocked on that door is because they'd

00:24:58.560 spoken to reform hq before and said what part of makerfield is your prime territory so that's why

00:25:04.720 they went there so it just just remarkable i mean what we we um uh we've got this uh more from the

00:25:11.720 daily mail and we can't show you because you've got to subscribe but dan hodges has been strangely

00:25:16.300 fascinated with restore and as we covered last time it's like they're going to start attacking

00:25:20.780 restore and that's just going to increase the salience he was he was right yeah and he was

00:25:24.100 right and he's been speaking to voters and it's just the same sort of story it's the same story

00:25:28.420 no we're disappointed with farage we're disappointed with reform uh we want something

00:25:32.600 that's actually the red meat of politics and so you saw a lot of um uh like reform sports

00:25:39.180 weiss extreme left-wing journalist burnham sycophant and renowned reform hater dan hodges

00:25:43.740 there oh it's because he's a big fan of rupert lowe no it's because he understands this dare i

00:25:48.820 say it he's doing a bit of journalism right well the thing is he he's established enough that he

00:25:54.000 can actually say what he wants to say exactly yeah he can actually go down and because he's

00:26:00.040 like he's a reform hater he thinks reform are going to win the next election so for him this

00:26:05.000 is already a lost course right there's no point doing activism for dan hodges at this point so

00:26:09.740 he's actually resigned to doing journalism for his sins and so what's he found well he's he's found

00:26:15.900 a lot more support than he expected and this has been a thing that's perennially been popping up

00:26:21.380 for all of them in all of their podcasts have been covering like the times the daily telegraph

00:26:25.540 new statesman they'll say wow there's actually really quite a lot of organic support for us

00:26:29.320 still britain here and they all follow the same format they frame it as we're going to do some

00:26:34.020 investigation to find out what's going on between reform and labor and then they get there and

00:26:38.360 everyone wants to talk about restore yes uh and uh so yeah like this is uh dan hodges did another

00:26:44.700 one on this sorry not dan hodges uh robert hardman sorry uh got the same sort of thing

00:26:50.660 where again look look it's going to be closer than you expected because restore um they

00:26:56.860 can tell that there is something going on in makefield that is not normal in the the traditional

00:27:04.300 paradigm that we are so uh slowly but surely dragging them out of and so unwillingly being

00:27:11.720 dragged out of this paradigm they're like but i love red and blue and nigel farage is established

00:27:16.460 and therefore he fits nicely into the sort of cinematic universe of british politics these

00:27:20.900 people have a simple conception of politics which is there's a right-wing party and left-wing party

00:27:24.600 it's labor versus tory and and in their minds they've just said okay well the form is going to

00:27:29.360 substitute tory but it's the same mechanism it's always been it's all the same politics yeah it's

00:27:33.820 the same container just we're just we're just doing a half-time sort of a substitution that's

00:27:37.560 exactly and rupert lowe has come down like an absolute lion on this and he is causing them

00:27:44.440 hell and they know it and again the daily mail has been the one publishing hit piece after hit

00:27:49.820 piece after hit piece yes they hate us but they can't deny us that's the point uh and like for

00:27:58.180 example you've got so many of these great clips that are coming out this is um owen jones went

00:28:03.420 down to uh makefield come on play this come on owen jones went down to makefield and i was

00:28:08.780 watching his video on it and it was it was incredible all right so say they'll literally

00:28:13.020 millions of people will leave the country they'll be they'll be deported millions millions well good

00:28:19.600 there's a reason that people are flipping to restore there's a reason for it it's because

00:28:28.060 millions of people are going to get deported i absolutely love that owen jones said to her that

00:28:33.740 millions of people would be deported expecting her to recoil like a vampire in the sunlight

00:28:38.520 and she was just good yeah that's where the british people are now yes a large percentage

00:28:46.060 of the british population are at the point where like that's what i want actually yes you can't

00:28:50.560 scare me with this that's that's threatening me with the only the only way you could have

00:28:55.220 upgraded that clip if she has said no it needs to be billion anyway so this is a clip that uh we

00:29:03.460 got because uh luca went up and they filmed an entire street flipping to restore from reform

00:29:09.220 because well why would you want the reheated burger why wouldn't i want the freshly cooked

00:29:15.660 juicy steak and so the activists have gone to the street spoken to everyone on the street

00:29:19.640 and they said yeah no no actually we think you're right we are going to vote for restore

00:29:23.440 we'll put up the restore signs instead of the reform signs and it happened all at once because

00:29:27.620 the signs got delivered all at once yes and so they took down the signs and put it up a lot of

00:29:32.220 reform activists online were very upset by this but um that's just too bad frankly that's just too

00:29:38.140 bad anyway so we've got lots of reports from our guys on the on the ground and makefield because

00:29:42.600 of course we have thousands of people have gone up and canvas for us right so we can just listen

00:29:47.620 to what they say now i don't know whether what they're saying is accurate i don't know whether

00:29:51.640 what they're saying is because of a selection bias or a filter because they're there but the

00:29:56.540 point is this is what our people are saying this is what their experience on the ground is this is

00:30:01.960 what dan hodge's experience on the ground is this is what the daily telegraph's experience on the

00:30:06.660 ground is this is what owen jones's experience on the ground is i haven't been there i can only go

00:30:13.240 from what people are saying but this chap says from the scenes in makefield today is going to

00:30:16.960 be very very close with restore and labor reform are done the tables are flipped restore easily

00:30:21.200 second from what we saw on the ground make film the uk need restore of course so okay i mean i

00:30:26.080 don't know i don't know but all i can say is the people on the ground are saying stuff like this

00:30:31.000 this is just i mean i don't know who this guy is but we've got loads of friends loads of subscribers

00:30:35.260 to the podcast who are in makefield you know saying by the way this this is looking amazing

00:30:40.540 so i heard this the first few times and i thought no it's too good to be true i can't believe it

00:30:44.780 exactly but it it's like dozens of people that we know that we know are like solid but also

00:30:50.320 are telling us the same thing exactly people who we know personally we've known for years we've

00:30:55.400 like we've worked with four years who've gone there and we know are not hysterical we know

00:31:00.040 they're liars and we know they know they're supposed to check their biases yes we know

00:31:04.220 they know this because they're long too long in the tooth and it's not like they're telling us 0.99

00:31:07.880 something different in private hand on heart they're telling us they're telling us the same

00:31:11.000 thing in private all this and well to be honest with you they're telling us things that sound

00:31:14.100 better than this in private yeah that's true yes but again it's it's it's i'm exactly that

00:31:19.700 i don't want to bring myself to believe it but the thing is my um personal skepticism is why i've

00:31:25.700 called every election for the last decade wrong right yes i call every single election the complete

00:31:30.920 i may as well be the inverse kramer right like if you'd bet on every election i called in the other

00:31:36.180 way you'd have been right almost 100 of the time because i get that self-doubt in the back of my

00:31:41.440 mind i go no that can't be it can't be that we're going to win brexit it can't be that trump's going

00:31:44.700 to win it can't be that you know we're going to get a clean sweep in great yarmouth it can't be

00:31:50.280 that we're going to win makerfield and so i'm i don't know all i've got is that voice of self

00:31:56.700 doubt but all of the signs are like no this is going to be a place where we perform admirably

00:32:02.340 at the very least yes five percent i doubt it right now five percent yeah judging from just

00:32:08.780 the things that we see coming out of it so anyway you've got uh as you said they don't even make

00:32:14.900 the positive argument anymore right um this is just an incredible meme by gramesma games

00:32:19.640 they don't even attempt to argue the policy because every policy they come out with is

00:32:24.800 reforms policy from a month ago restores policy from a month ago right you saw the other day that 0.89

00:32:29.980 nigel fros was like here here's my sub stack oh demographic change in britain isn't good isn't it

00:32:35.400 did i hear just as i was coming into the podcast people talking in the office just as i was going

00:32:39.360 out saying that jenrick has now come out and said millions must go yes i wonder where he got that

00:32:45.320 line from yeah i wonder do you remember they started saying detain and deport as well it's

00:32:50.060 like sorry like we know you're stealing our our recipes and why would i want to eat at your cheap

00:32:58.480 knock-off burger joint when i could go to the steakhouse yes i just don't understand what you

00:33:03.400 think you're winning here and why you have to be a day late and a dollar short on every single 0.97

00:33:08.800 goddamn policy it doesn't make sense that you hamstring yourselves in this way and again i 0.79

00:33:14.160 extend the same offer i mean i read the comments on the video below this when it goes out on 0.98

00:33:17.480 youtube if you're a reformer supporter and you can make an argument as to why reform are better

00:33:21.660 on their own merits than restore make the argument and i read it and i put that out so many times and

00:33:28.240 i haven't seen one argument yet one argument that i've heard me is well they're not racist so well

00:33:34.340 that's a that's a superb argument that's really persuaded me that nigel farage is the man of the

00:33:39.280 hour anyway so let's go on to nigel farage in fact because there's a lot that's happened with

00:33:44.580 nigel farage recently and uh it seems that he is beginning to crack at the seams i noticed a bit

00:33:51.300 it seems that the pressure is getting to him yes because this like we said follows in the wake of

00:33:56.500 actually a bunch of reform failures so we've talked about how they've been dipping in the

00:34:00.580 polls where they should be rising in the polls i mean like reform i mean remember when boris

00:34:05.320 johnson came in he was on 52 percent when kia starmer came in he was on 41 percent something

00:34:10.100 like that yeah that went down a bit of course it went down a bit but nigel farage has never

00:34:13.720 managed to crack more than 31 percent and that yeah 31 percent was where they maxed out in the

00:34:18.780 polls right and that was reform not not his personal approval rating no his personal

00:34:24.840 reform as a party in the polls 31 and that was a year ago right now they they dipped down to 24

00:34:32.260 they're back at like 25 26 so okay a quarter of the electorate supporting you that's not i mean

00:34:38.720 that does put them in the lead admittedly but that's only because we've got such fractured

00:34:42.020 politics at the moment but it's not good and you should be at 40 plus in the polls you should be

00:34:46.740 the right wing insurgent party who's like no we're just going to storm everything and

00:34:50.080 so well what happened in the local elections you underperformed by hundreds of council seats

00:34:54.820 seats labor and the conservatives kept or advanced in some areas like in london where you did minimal

00:35:00.340 campaigning and expected to just sort of swagger in as if it was your time like hillary clinton

00:35:05.780 well i mean i remember kemi baden not celebrating because she only lost like 6 000 seats well no no 0.95

00:35:10.520 500 or 800 or however it was but it was considerably less than she was expected to lose

00:35:16.560 whereas reform they weren't celebrating even though they had won seats because it was considerably

00:35:21.780 less than they were supposed to win they were celebrating that's the thing but it's like but

00:35:25.680 keir starmer has already managed the expectations of the laid party oh yeah we'll lose some but it

00:35:30.480 won't be as bad as you think and it wasn't as bad as they thought and the same with the

00:35:34.780 conservatives where kemi baden was actually celebrating this and of course get vote vote

00:35:39.780 reform get starmer out well he didn't go because you didn't deliver the mortal blow to him and then

00:35:44.880 in gordon and denton you lost to the greens you didn't mobilize the disenfranchised white working

00:35:50.420 class why not and then like i said the other day frage puts out the subset going well the the

00:35:55.000 demographics of britain are a concern it's like yeah but that flies in the face of everything

00:35:59.040 you've said about the demographics of this country stephen edgington sat you down and said are you

00:36:03.860 concerned about the demographics of country and he said emphatically no richard tice well i'll be

00:36:09.960 long gone that's even worse this and this is why yeah people think reform have this kind of used

00:36:18.180 car salesman attitude about them just like well they don't care they're just here to sell me a

00:36:21.940 product and get my vote and then they get money and whatever but they're not here to actually

00:36:26.740 substantively fix any of the problems so anyway he did a press conference in makefield the other day

00:36:32.180 and he did an interview with nick ferrari the other day and these these were very very very

00:36:37.940 interesting we've got the uh we've got the appropriate clips um but so yeah as kevin

00:36:43.620 points out here right Nadja Farage's uh response to Nick Ferrari here is just very bizarre let's

00:36:49.020 watch this do you want to be prime minister do you know something Nick not for the sake of the

00:36:53.780 office or the title because I couldn't give a damn about that never been interested in that

00:36:58.440 for me politics is not about is is it's it's not about what I become in terms of a personal status

00:37:05.540 is about what i can do right now i believe i'm the only person that's got sufficient public report

00:37:15.260 and the courage to take on the establishment and do what needs to be done right now i'm the right

00:37:20.740 person may well be in a couple of years time or more somebody else comes along who's better

00:37:25.180 equipped right now i do believe it's me so you okay so two points here first of all the bit where

00:37:33.100 he does that yeah which he's been doing a lot lately yeah yeah yeah the second thing is he's

00:37:41.480 already talking about quitting before the next election yeah two two years is before the next

00:37:45.900 election i mean this is really weird like this is a stress response yes where he's like you know

00:37:50.660 this is what i do when i walk into the room and my kids have made it's it's it's i think it's a

00:37:55.940 specific stress response because i i mean i i've only ever seen um whatever i'm 46 years old now

00:38:01.460 I've only ever seen people do that when they have screwed up and it's their

00:38:07.040 fault and they bloody know it.

00:38:08.580 So,

00:38:08.720 I mean,

00:38:08.940 a few years ago I watched somebody basically for no conceivable reason

00:38:13.660 driving to the back of a car and he did that.

00:38:18.820 That is the face that you make when you know you screwed up.

00:38:21.220 Oh yeah.

00:38:21.460 It's the face I make when I know I've let my kids play on their own for too

00:38:24.940 long and they've wrecked one of the rooms.

00:38:26.860 Yeah.

00:38:27.160 It's like,

00:38:27.580 oh,

00:38:27.700 I should have.

00:38:28.460 Yeah.

00:38:28.880 This is my own fault.

00:38:29.920 I knew it was my own fault.

00:38:30.880 but again another couple of things on this is really weird um he's like i'm the only person

00:38:36.920 who can who i don't i don't care about being premier so it's like i don't really believe that

00:38:40.400 um i've been following nigel farage for long enough to know that he is an egotistical man

00:38:44.800 and he does like the prestige and social status that comes with all of uh his position and he's

00:38:51.480 he's viciously defended this social status in the past yeah and this is why restore britain even

00:38:57.220 exist because remember the first thing he came out and said after kicking uh ripple out of the

00:39:02.320 party was he was trying to take over the party it's like but that's that's that's a question

00:39:06.300 of status he can't possibly have had the actual mechanical ability to take i mean there's no way

00:39:11.040 to do it exactly there's just no way to you don't have elections or anything he can't wrench the

00:39:15.620 company off your own company's house there's nothing he could have done so it was all about

00:39:19.640 prestige it was all about who the perceived popularity exactly right so i don't believe

00:39:24.980 that for a second right don't believe that you don't consider this a big popularity contest i

00:39:28.960 know you do right but secondly he's like oh i'm the only person who is prepared to do what needs

00:39:33.440 to be done in the face of the establishment so okay but why don't you do it then like because

00:39:38.580 you are in parliament you have a suite of tools at your disposal to actually do things yes do

00:39:45.040 anything clangton you don't put the parliamentary notes in i mean you literally tend to one to

00:39:49.560 rupert lowe's parliamentary notes you don't actually do the things that this office empowers

00:39:54.960 you to do well for example you could have done the thing that you'd promised to do

00:39:59.680 the the rupert lowe then ended up doing that has been released today which is the great the rape

00:40:04.340 gang inquiry right again you said you were going to do things but you don't and then you come and

00:40:09.400 say well i i just want to do the right thing to say the country well well then do it yeah nothing's

00:40:13.660 stopping and bear in mind the reason why rupert lowe did the rape gang inquiry he didn't actually

00:40:18.400 make that commitment it's just that he was he was sat next to Nigel Farage when he made that

00:40:24.880 promise and Rupert Lowe felt that because he was on the bench next to Farage in the party when that

00:40:31.540 commitment was made when he realized that reform were not going to do the rape gang inquiry he

00:40:37.260 felt but he felt beholden to do it because it was part of his promise by being there he was in the

00:40:43.020 party when the promise was yes so his personal commitment compelled him and he spent an enormous

00:40:47.880 amount of his own money doing this but he felt personally compelled that he had to do it i mean

00:40:53.840 i didn't i i'm only about 15 pages actually into the rape game i bet it's horrific it was released

00:40:59.360 about an hour before we started recording this i haven't had that much time to read i was in the

00:41:02.280 podcast i haven't seen it yet it's awful i mean jesus christ like horrors like you wouldn't believe 0.75

00:41:07.820 yeah but again you didn't do this nigel you could have done any of it you promised to do it 0.66

00:41:12.920 you didn't do it so all i'm saying is i don't really believe and for 90 for 90 percent of the 0.75

00:41:19.460 time when lowe was doing that restore was a was a movement not a party yeah so anyone including 0.95

00:41:25.500 reform could have said okay we come on board and do it pick it up with you so of course nigel can't 0.91

00:41:30.080 do that because of the bitchy way that he tries to destroy his political opponents um but anyway 0.89

00:41:35.100 so they you had um like so this where he again and and that's the third point that you made like

00:41:41.040 why are you basically checking out before the election right now i'm the only person who could

00:41:46.480 do it but what i realize my star's on the decline i realize that i'm not going to make it to the

00:41:51.100 next election i'm teeing up zia yusuf or robert jamrick or whoever i'm going to put a muslim or 0.86

00:41:55.760 a tory in charge so that you you know they get to be the prime what are we saying here nigel 0.82

00:42:01.140 like and as this is why i got this chap's comment here it's like it's just weird he he brags about 0.92

00:42:06.660 being ahead in the polls 200 polls consecutively uh but can't just say yes when he says he wants

00:42:11.480 to be the prime minister that is by far the easiest answer to give it's if that were me i'm

00:42:16.620 like well yeah and judging by the way the polls are it looks like i'm going to be so here's what

00:42:20.280 i'm going to do right this is what happens when the british people millions must go in terms of

00:42:24.980 political interview that is that is teeing you up to then give a three-minute monologue on all the

00:42:30.140 things you're going to do in government tony blair would have knocked that out the bar i mean you

00:42:33.400 You would have lost the rest of the interview to Tony Blair

00:42:36.000 while he started doing his Blair hands, talking about everything.

00:42:38.780 But Farage just makes that face and is like, well, I...

00:42:42.300 Why is he putting his head in his hands here? 0.56

00:42:44.960 Why does he look like, as you said, he knows he's screwed up?

00:42:48.900 This wasn't the only time.

00:42:50.420 In this press conference at Makerfield,

00:42:54.760 Beth Rigby asked Nigel a question.

00:42:56.500 Now, Beth Rigby is asking him to needle him,

00:42:59.320 as UK John here points out.

00:43:00.720 He is right.

00:43:01.980 She's definitely doing this for a reason.

00:43:03.400 But why doesn't Nigel Farage have a good response to it?

00:43:05.980 Let's watch.

00:43:06.440 And when it comes to Makerfield,

00:43:08.700 Restore are doing well here,

00:43:10.900 and it could really hurt you.

00:43:14.020 What's Rupert Lowe got

00:43:15.800 that it's appealing to some people over you?

00:43:19.320 Thank you very much.

00:43:20.520 Elon Musk, thank you.

00:43:24.480 Most people here who say Restore,

00:43:27.880 and by the way, it's not a very big percentage,

00:43:30.220 most people here would not recognise a photograph of him.

00:43:33.400 This is stuff that pops up on their phones.

00:43:36.160 That has been the problem with it.

00:43:37.800 I do not believe for a moment it will last.

00:43:40.680 And look, whatever the family said in Belfast,

00:43:44.500 the fact is things kicked off in Belfast.

00:43:47.620 Well, he goes on to about Belfast.

00:43:50.040 Again, like, where was the...

00:43:52.380 Yeah.

00:43:54.060 Just, like, again, this looks like stress and tension

00:43:58.700 that he can't manage properly, right?

00:44:01.640 Yeah.

00:44:01.800 And his answer, oh, it's Rupert Lowe.

00:44:04.660 It's Elon Musk, sorry.

00:44:06.000 It's like, no, Rupert Lowe, like, Elon Musk personally promotes him, sure.

00:44:12.040 But, I mean, why isn't he personally promoting you?

00:44:14.820 But Rupert Lowe's primary social media outlet is Facebook.

00:44:19.800 He's got, you know, 1.6 million followers on Facebook.

00:44:24.140 The numbers are just staggering.

00:44:25.660 Something like half a billion impressions a month, something like that.

00:44:28.100 It's wild, because, of course, they post very regularly,

00:44:30.100 and these go very far on Facebook.

00:44:31.800 And the normies who are still on Facebook are like,

00:44:34.960 oh, yeah, this is pretty good stuff.

00:44:36.680 It's not the Milk Toast Farage nonsense.

00:44:39.840 And so, like...

00:44:40.760 The thing is, right,

00:44:42.320 we know that Farage has continually assassinated...

00:44:46.680 I mean, even Stephen Wolfe, who used to be on this podcast,

00:44:49.840 he was one of the guys assassinated.

00:44:51.740 I mean, in his case, slightly more literally,

00:44:53.720 in that he had somebody actually beat him.

00:44:56.360 But he...

00:44:57.300 Kilroy Silk...

00:44:58.180 I mean, there's too many names to mention.

00:45:00.040 Dozens.

00:45:00.560 Yeah.

00:45:00.860 It literally does.

00:45:01.420 dozens of names so he is he has kicked out dozens and dozens of people over the years to make sure

00:45:07.660 that nobody becomes more popular than him being popular being the top girl in the class is is

00:45:12.940 clearly a very important thing to him now before he did that to rupert lowe so if you go back to

00:45:18.000 the last election uh the entire right were huge for our fangirls we used to have him on our video

00:45:24.280 wall for our lads hour because he was the only guy we could put our name behind he had so much

00:45:28.880 adoration he could go out into any street and people be like nigel that doesn't happen anymore 0.63

00:45:35.440 yeah and and he he's no longer the most popular girl and it is eating him and he and the the 0.82

00:45:44.700 thing is as you said he's the person to blame there's no one else who can point the finger

00:45:49.300 out here if you're feeling besieged by rupert lowe you're gonna ask yourself well why isn't 0.73

00:45:56.800 he a reform mp because he was a reform mp nigel like you brought him into the parliament and he

00:46:03.620 would have boosted your star 100 because if if the more popular that rupert land rupert lowe was 0.80

00:46:09.060 becoming very popular at the point they kicked him out it would everyone would have looked at

00:46:13.420 that and said look nigel's doing great he's got great people underneath him like rupert lowe it

00:46:19.140 would have it would have boosted him because he's on top of the organization but the and he couldn't

00:46:24.720 But also, Nigel thought he could control the direction of politics in this country, right? 0.79

00:46:31.660 And so he was like, oh no, Rupert Lowe wants to deport the Pakistani rapists and their families because they're complicit.

00:46:38.100 And as he said in the press conference the other day, that was too far right.

00:46:42.160 We had to get rid of him and that's just how things are going to be, right?

00:46:45.000 No, how things are going to be, Nigel, is that you're going to get dragged to the right by Rupert Lowe with you, like it or not, right?

00:46:50.340 no matter what happens, you are going to scramble to catch up to Rupert Lowe setting the agenda of

00:46:55.800 the country. Because at the moment, Rupert Lowe is setting the agenda of the country. He comes out,

00:47:00.700 gives a very sensible position that happens to, in our insane politics, fall far to the right of

00:47:06.380 whatever the Blairite, Cameronite consensus is, that you're trying to ingratiate yourself into,

00:47:11.060 and you are dragged to it, physically dragged to it. Now, that could have been because he could

00:47:16.120 have been your bright star in your party and Rupert Lowe comes out and says something you have

00:47:21.100 to go on Sky News and Beth Rigby's like do you really stand by Rupert as I said and you can look

00:47:24.940 at the popularity and go well I mean it's it's quite a hard-line thing but really there's something

00:47:29.680 to it isn't there Beth which is why everyone's supporting it and that's why he's in my party

00:47:34.140 and there's nothing that Rupert Lowe has said that would raise an eyebrow from either a conservative

00:47:39.200 or a Labour supporter in the 1960s they would have just gone what we we have massive amounts 0.92

00:47:45.720 of Pakistani rape camp. 1.00

00:47:46.880 Yeah, of course. 1.00

00:47:47.180 Just like the woman

00:47:47.900 talking to Owen Jones. 0.94

00:47:49.180 Millions would go.

00:47:50.480 Good.

00:47:50.740 Good, yeah.

00:47:51.900 That's the point.

00:47:53.400 It's only because

00:47:53.920 we've been so bent out of shape

00:47:55.440 with the Great Awokening

00:47:56.560 over the last 20 years.

00:47:58.060 The Western nations

00:47:59.100 have lost their mind.

00:48:01.000 That's why Rupert Lowe

00:48:02.080 appears to be right wing.

00:48:03.580 Yeah, and so you've seen memes

00:48:04.820 about this all over Twitter.

00:48:06.220 And, you know,

00:48:08.000 this is not good optics

00:48:10.300 for reform, right?

00:48:11.560 It's pretty much indefensible

00:48:13.220 that when Farage is put

00:48:14.460 in a spot under this sort of pressure he's folding he's not doing a good job and so I mean

00:48:22.700 if you're the public you're looking at this like well why don't this guy because I mean like every

00:48:26.640 time you see Rupert Lowe he's got a bit of a cheeky chappy smile on his face like no we're

00:48:30.780 on to something good here and we're going to win and every time he's challenged he just says I

00:48:35.320 don't care and I'm not backing down when I mean and it's every issue as well so oh when he when

00:48:40.240 he's talking to um what's her face on the news agents um simply emily matliss and she's like 0.93

00:48:46.360 well you're a racist rupus i don't care what what about this activist in your party who said these 0.84

00:48:51.660 things so we don't care we're not going to police the membership we're here to win yeah we're not 0.99

00:48:54.880 here to like you know british citizens can back whatever party they want exactly but we're not

00:48:59.860 here to like morally police the tone police the the things that members of the party say on twitter

00:49:05.320 that's just irrelevant nonsense and farage is here for that that's why rupert lowe's been kicked out

00:49:10.980 that's why you got kicked out and that's why like bow that's why so many people was no shortage of

00:49:15.960 people who've been kicked out of reform and he just thought there'd be nowhere else for you to go

00:49:19.300 that's what it was he thought there'd be nowhere else anyway so apparently um harry cole has uh

00:49:25.780 reports from the sun has reported that nigel farage sought donald trump's advice on how to

00:49:30.400 deal with elon musk's increasingly deranged attacks on reform and support for rupert low

00:49:34.000 uh well i mean what could you do like what are your options here i mean you're trying the only

00:49:40.440 thing that you know how which is to adopt his positions but it doesn't seem to be winning

00:49:44.900 well you could get behind you could you could you could do everything in your power to make

00:49:48.840 sure that keir starmer remains prime minister and x gets banned i guess that's your only option

00:49:55.680 actually at this point um but that's the point isn't it if farage is now like ring up donald

00:50:02.080 trump who has been distancing himself from farage for some time uh not convinced they are actually

00:50:07.200 the buddies that he thinks they were um well you look at the first trump election he had

00:50:12.100 stage with his arm around him second trump election uh farage said i i'm going to take

00:50:18.260 a break from gb news to come and campaign for you and trump was like no you're not wasn't even

00:50:22.920 invited yep and so yeah so now and now if he's like donald i need help donald trump doesn't like

00:50:29.220 losers i mean i'm amazed that he managed to get the call through if yeah i mean it's a bit ambiguous

00:50:34.180 as to whether trump took the call or not yeah i imagine he asked his advisors for advice you know

00:50:38.660 um but then you had gwayne towler out doing expectation management on times radio and this

00:50:45.440 is just very interesting i think it's a very very hard ask i really do um i think if it was

00:50:52.080 anybody but burnham i think we'd be a shoo-in but burnham does change the weather let's be honest

00:50:57.360 about it and we've also had this uh experience where tory supporting and labor portion papers

00:51:05.700 have made a massive massive effort to big up the presence of restore um i have as you know kate

00:51:13.280 by calling us nazis mate great towler has seen the reform internal polling

00:51:21.280 and is setting up a narrative for what comes after the media ginned up restore support yes

00:51:28.160 and what does he immediately talk about he talks about labor probably winning and restore coming

00:51:34.080 second that's that that is that is what he's inferring yeah that seems to be what he's implying

00:51:38.980 and so again i mean that and that that doesn't sound unplausible to me it doesn't sound and it

00:51:45.980 will actually be that reform was splitting the votes and allowed burnham in if that's the case

00:51:50.800 and again i don't i'm not making any predictions i don't know you can't you can't think that's too

00:51:55.020 crazy because that is exactly what happened at the last election so so the the the narrative

00:51:59.460 was from um you know uh peter hitchens and all the rest don't vote reform because you'll split

00:52:05.500 the tory vote and actually it turned out that it was it was the tory splitting the reform vote well

00:52:10.500 i mean technically the tories did get more votes than reform so yeah but i mean very very soon

00:52:16.080 after the election that Tory support just melted away yeah and and and if the right had back reform

00:52:21.560 then we wouldn't have had a Labour government so yeah reform were the direction of travel it's just

00:52:26.400 the election was like a snapshot in time on that journey yes well this is another one of those

00:52:30.660 cases where there's a direction of travel here and reform and now the snapshot in time in the

00:52:36.580 direction towards restore I think it's very analogous to 2019 yeah and so it very much is

00:52:41.920 and so as you said

00:52:44.060 Gwaine is kind of

00:52:45.240 managing expectations here

00:52:46.680 by saying look

00:52:47.180 as you say

00:52:47.900 I've seen the internal polling

00:52:49.160 just saying

00:52:51.640 it's not going to be good for us

00:52:52.580 and I need a narrative

00:52:53.440 and I'm setting it up now

00:52:54.720 yep

00:52:55.140 and so

00:52:56.140 you're the ones who have

00:52:58.020 bigged up restore

00:52:59.520 and it's like no

00:53:00.200 the thousand activists

00:53:01.800 who turned up

00:53:02.360 who didn't turn up for you

00:53:03.400 because you kicked their guy

00:53:04.700 out of the party

00:53:05.240 but they could have turned up for you

00:53:06.560 they could

00:53:07.480 I mean again

00:53:08.080 it didn't have to be

00:53:09.220 that Rupert Lowe started his own party

00:53:10.500 you could just be like

00:53:11.440 okay well

00:53:11.800 what we're going to do is i mean and this has always been the problem with farage he's afraid

00:53:15.520 of the media he's terrified of the media he's always been afraid of it he is a creature of

00:53:18.680 the media he's always used the media to his advantage and for some reason he just didn't 0.81

00:53:21.960 have the balls to go uh full trump on this and be like okay we're just going to do exactly what

00:53:27.400 owen jones is doing and we'll have uh something that is so concretely desirable but also so 0.95

00:53:33.520 demonstrably outside of the current consensus that merely uttering it will be oh yeah that

00:53:39.220 sounds great and they won't be able to not tell people what we intend to do right so the whole

00:53:43.960 the whole trump playbook exactly the whole trump playbook and then we'll just have this massive tent

00:53:47.960 so we'll just get everyone in literally from like you know richard tice to stephen laws was get

00:53:53.820 everyone in so everyone is just singing from the same hymn sheet it's reform blah blah blah and

00:53:58.800 then we will win everything all the time everywhere yeah i mean i will just point out the what what

00:54:03.640 Farage did is exactly the same mistake that Starmer made so reform basically cut off the right wing

00:54:10.560 yep um and that has obviously backfired on but but Labour did the same thing where as soon as

00:54:16.000 Starmer came in he he just starlinged a whole bunch of him I mean he even tried to kick out

00:54:21.940 Diane Abbott and on the assumption that the left would have nowhere to go and they've all got and

00:54:26.600 formed the Greens now and the Greens are going to eat their lunch in a bunch of seats yes a bunch of 0.98

00:54:31.000 so so what was happened is is both the hegemons on the right and left have made exactly the same

00:54:36.140 mistake and i just come back to my earlier prediction it's going to end up being greens

00:54:40.800 versus restore oh yeah that's one i don't know when it gets there but it will get in like a

00:54:44.680 decade's time yes it's definitely going to be yes you know maybe a lot sooner exactly it could be a

00:54:49.480 lot sooner but that is the direction of travel and i think it's inevitable at this point uh anyway

00:54:53.980 so we see the weakness of reform everywhere as we covered last time uh their leaflets are turning

00:54:59.860 suspiciously like our leaflets like they just have to be using the dark blue on their website

00:55:04.380 they've changed the dark blue rather than the teal that everyone recognizes and no picture of

00:55:08.100 nigel farage on the leaflets of right interesting and that's because uh oh sorry another one as

00:55:14.020 well gemrick has now started coming out millions must go who the hell said that in their in in

00:55:19.620 their announcement video when they were announcing their brand new party it wasn't nigel farage was

00:55:24.360 it nigel farage no i don't want mass deportations to my name now is millions must go millions

00:55:29.660 must go is basically the online catchphrase for restores that's exactly it's what we say all the

00:55:35.600 time i mean it was in the it was in the uh video that he put out yes it was yeah and then that's

00:55:41.100 where it really originated and then um reform like okay but we can go on the mainstream media

00:55:48.820 and we can borrow this phrase and pretend it came from us yes so again once again they've just

00:55:56.240 caught up with rupert lowe's rhetoric with restores uh policy which means again whether

00:56:02.240 you like it or not nigel we're dragging you to the right rupert could have done that in your party

00:56:07.060 but you couldn't take it and so now it's going to happen outside of your party and you're probably

00:56:10.880 going to lose because of it and when polls lord ashcroft polls did a very interesting thing about

00:56:17.760 restore reform voters which party would you vote for a general election if for some reason no

00:56:22.820 reform candidate was standing in your constituency wow that's a pretty large percentage for restore

00:56:28.060 britain you remember what i was saying about preference cascades yes at some point it becomes

00:56:33.640 apparent to everyone that actually no i don't want this thing i'm just going to go for this thing

00:56:36.800 we're just going to do it and that's what happened to reform in the 2024 election right there was a

00:56:41.580 preference cascade in favor of reform yes because it was clear the tory that was the point i was

00:56:45.920 trying to make earlier yeah yeah they declared the tories which is terrible and a large number

00:56:49.400 of people are like yeah okay we're just going to do that well that's already happened inside

00:56:52.440 reform but i mean what this is telling us right because i know i've said several times that i've

00:56:57.160 been asking reform voters what is the positive argument apart from we're more likely to win

00:57:04.180 because that is the only argument they've got what this is telling me is if restore come second

00:57:08.440 or first in makerfield against labor 42 of the vote have no reason not to immediately peel away

00:57:16.620 enjoy restore yes so that's about 10 percentage points yes polls let's be like i mean probably

00:57:22.100 probably a bit more probably like 12 percentage points in the polls yeah so like yeah okay well

00:57:25.420 i'll support restore then because i just want the right to win is what they're saying right yes okay

00:57:29.680 yeah great you know i want a patriot strong patriot party that's going to win well this this shows that

00:57:35.360 you are actually a kind of hollowed out shell now right so the preference cascade has already

00:57:39.660 happened in reform you're just the current thing the blockage that's holding things up it's like

00:57:44.940 well i guess while we're here we've got to vote for reform but when they disappear i'm going to

00:57:50.200 restore say almost half of their own voters and that is wild that's absolutely wild i mean a large

00:57:57.580 number of them won't vote more but like still that is that is terrifying if you're reformed

00:58:04.240 because what that means is that essentially you have to keep that don't split the vote narrative

00:58:09.040 going for as long as you can because the second somehow got to do it for three years yeah exactly

00:58:14.640 because the second that narrative buckles even slightly,

00:58:18.360 half your votes are gone.

00:58:19.520 Yes.

00:58:20.100 And that is terrifying for them.

00:58:23.160 And so, again, this is why you see them turning to the right.

00:58:26.400 Again, like, this is the funniest thing, right? 1.00

00:58:29.020 So you remember that guy who said that he was going to melt down Nigerians 1.00

00:58:31.480 and turn them into pot hole filler? 0.96

00:58:33.100 Yes.

00:58:33.420 And they were like, oh, you're out.

00:58:34.780 They haven't made him shadow transport minister.

00:58:37.340 Not yet.

00:58:37.880 Right.

00:58:38.180 But they have reinstated him quietly.

00:58:40.040 Okay.

00:58:40.600 After kicking him out.

00:58:41.620 It's like, yeah, but why did you kick him out then?

00:58:43.000 That was a bit performative.

00:58:44.000 exactly why kick him out because you're afraid of them because you don't understand they're the

00:58:50.320 enemy and you're trying to gain acceptance from them and so like you've got um what's his name

00:58:55.240 uh i can't remember kenyon uh robert kenyon um for him making silly comments right it's just

00:59:02.100 silly comments that he made online because whatever uh and carol vorderman has been out

00:59:06.380 here demanding an apology over him sexualizing her which is like oh come on sexualizing carol 0.98

00:59:12.880 woman who went out and bought the tightest knitted top that she could find when she was on

00:59:18.340 countdown for she she has been sexualizing herself for decades yes in public against my will frankly 0.67

00:59:25.540 yes i know about carol vorderman's sex life because it's constantly in the newspapers yes 0.54

00:59:31.460 yes i don't want to know about carol vorderman's sex life so for her to be like oh i'm gonna get

00:59:36.940 very precious about this man sexualizing me on a twitter post obviously not that 12 people saw 0.53

00:59:41.780 15 years ago no i'm sorry carol i'm not buying that but but what i hate is the way that kenyan

00:59:47.240 responded to it he had obviously been given media training and and advice maybe from tice

00:59:53.300 which is this is how you apologize on on question time for this it's the wrong tactic he should have

00:59:58.960 just turned around and said yeah i'm a plumber and i banter with my mates what of it it was a joke

01:00:04.100 don't care yeah and you know what right finally after stepping on this rake over and over and

01:00:10.160 over frage finally got dragged to that point as well and he finally got dragged to this point

01:00:15.940 on the past social media comments i'm going to say this you know these comments were posted a

01:00:20.920 decade ago uh they've been taken wildly out of context but they're the sort of comments

01:00:29.860 that you won't necessarily get if you're an oxford educated career politician living in a

01:00:38.020 nice postcode in london but i tell you what they're the kind of comments you'll hear in every

01:00:42.460 pub in the country every evening and we should be unapologetic that rob is an ordinary bloke

01:00:50.840 who's carved quite a career for himself had the guts to set up a business served as an army

01:00:55.980 reservist is a patriot likes his rugby likes the odd pine and said a few laddish thing on

01:01:01.900 things on social media 10 years ago do you know what i'd say to that

01:01:05.800 i'd say so what and what about that is so similar to what we said on this show last week with connor

01:01:19.360 yes why can why did it take a week of them raking you over the cold well presumably because somebody

01:01:26.060 reform had to watch our stream from last week and then go to farage and say oh i've got some more

01:01:31.740 brilliant political you know i always come to you on a wednesday nigel after having some brilliant

01:01:36.820 political insights but it's wednesday again yeah and i've just had a new political brilliant

01:01:41.960 political insight what you do is and nigel was like yeah that's bloody good this guy's good

01:01:46.560 isn't he did rupert lowe also do that yes he did he said i don't care yeah well then that'll be but

01:01:51.040 why wasn't this your first step forward two years ago because like he doesn't really believe this

01:01:57.020 stuff exactly because he's not courageous he doesn't really believe it and we're at the point

01:02:02.080 where he has been dragged to the right wing and forced to stand on his own candidate because of

01:02:08.440 course he can't replace kenyon i mean you know if this had happened six months ago he would have

01:02:12.460 just kenyon out don't want any media storms new person in who's never had a social media presence

01:02:18.360 and it's not very interesting or anything like that it's too little too late is what i'm saying

01:02:22.460 nigel and so i i mean like i said it's going to be uh by the time you get this will be tomorrow

01:02:27.900 that we get the makefield election results um i think they're going to be very interesting and

01:02:33.520 i think from as you said from gwayne tallow's response from farage's stress the reform internal

01:02:40.680 polling is not good we know the restore internal polling which is about 20 to 24 percent and has

01:02:46.260 been repeatedly over the past couple of weeks so all i'm saying is that this was yours to lose

01:02:52.760 and it looks like you've lost it

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 17, 2026

Reform Is Falling Apart

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