The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Reform Is Going Down

00:00:00.440 Hi folks, welcome to our latest political chat. I'm joined by Dan and we're going to be talking about how Reformer just going down.

00:00:06.700 This is a plane that has had severe damage to its engines and is just waiting to finally land. I don't think it's going anywhere.

00:00:15.800 I mean, it would be dark for me to point out, but that's the second time Farad has been in that situation with a plane that's going down.

00:00:21.920 That is quite dark. I hadn't even thought that way. Will for us survive twice.

00:00:26.480 yes uh anyway so let's let's begin with the polls and they're not great for anyone except

00:00:31.800 restore britain weirdly enough who are up to five percent in the poll of polls which is uh i think

00:00:37.000 not is it the new high or oh yeah this because there was one poll back here yes that had them

00:00:42.220 on six percent but there are many more polls now where restore britain are polling and that's been

00:00:46.840 going up as you can see the greens and the limb dems have been going down and andy burnham has

00:00:51.540 been eating the greens up labor are on 26 on average reform on 23 and conservatives

00:00:57.480 struggling away on 19 so the interesting thing with the the sort of political system we've got

00:01:03.060 at the moment we've got we've got a two-party political system with six seven parties in it

00:01:06.700 yeah and and basically it just doesn't work so increasingly these numbers are telling you a lot

00:01:12.200 less and i'm sure you're going to come on to the youtube data so not youtube the uh you gov data

00:01:16.840 yes i saw that got a bit excited downloaded all the underlying tables and started having a proper

00:01:22.140 look at them and running a few regression analysis on it in my own modeling and interestingly when

00:01:27.200 you're in this sort of situation with it being split across so many parties you'd be surprised

00:01:31.920 the minimum number of votes you actually need to win an election at this point

00:01:35.800 in fact i worked it out go on you can win an election with this setup with 8.4 percent of the

00:01:42.960 vote yeah because for anyone doesn't know britain has a first pass the post system where we've got

00:01:47.100 650 constituencies uh that each each is its own independent universe when it comes to voting

00:01:53.420 so if you won say if if there were five different parties that were vying for this constituency and

00:02:00.820 each one won about 15 of the vote if you got like 17 of the vote you could win yes and that could

00:02:08.940 happen in enough constituencies for you to form a government of 350 plus uh mp i mean on my

00:02:15.840 analysis i i assumed perfect efficiency so basically that means that you don't get any

00:02:21.640 votes at all in 324 seats and the other 326 seats you get a majority of one vote yeah and and for

00:02:29.700 actually you need a tiny amount of votes to win an election in this kind of thing yeah i mean

00:02:33.620 realistically 20 could be a government in waiting well i mean the key thing is it no longer really

00:02:41.960 i mean it matters to an extent who's got the biggest number actually the thing that matters

00:02:46.240 more is where concentrations yes and this has been i mean this is why the liberal democrats

00:02:52.060 are on 70 mps despite never really breaching what was it 14 in the polls something like that

00:02:57.740 yeah there we go 14 in the polls we go back three years let's see yeah we go back to the last

00:03:02.060 election yeah i mean yeah oh there we go the last election so yeah you can see it there so

00:03:06.760 the liberal democrats got a lower vote share than reform um but reform got significantly less seats

00:03:14.180 than the lib dems because the lib dems are more efficient in their vote yeah uh because they're

00:03:18.480 they're deeply concentrated in mostly the southwest of england so anyway uh going going back to where

00:03:23.400 we are um the burn and bounce has put them above the reform party presumably because they've

00:03:29.440 siphoned away uh people from the greens yeah and i think honestly a lot of this i'm not going to

00:03:34.460 focus on the greens today we can do another thing about the greens another day but it seems to be

00:03:38.600 zach polanski himself that is actually now the lead weight around the greens neck which is

00:03:45.360 interesting because his personal popularity and i said this at the time all we need is for the

00:03:51.600 public to learn who zach polanski is and have some interaction with zach polanski i mean

00:03:55.820 unfortunately has he has a twitter account exactly and so yeah and that's a great point

00:04:00.300 at first his twitter account was the thing that was lifting the greens up yeah that's only because

00:04:06.260 wide-eyed impressionable young women were actually watching what he had on it as soon as he got the

00:04:10.080 slightest bit of attention no no but also because his opponent was kissed armor right it was it was

00:04:15.700 that but it was also okay he he can't convert the unconverted but what he can do is gather the

00:04:20.880 faithful from kirstama because kirstama was the right wing of the labor party uh zach polanski

00:04:25.620 was just running on full lefty nonsense okay that works if you're having an internal left-wing

00:04:30.580 debate about which party you should join when that's when the wider country is exposed to

00:04:35.800 zach polanski and his lunatic opinions oh no i do not like this guy at all of course you don't

00:04:41.480 and so the greens uh i mean 11 is not bad or anything like that so you know it's not not the

00:04:45.600 worst it could be but it's not great and i don't see how whilst we have a left-wing labor party

00:04:51.640 the greens can make any further headway um anyway right so let's let's let's move on

00:04:57.040 this is what uh you gov found as you said uh it would look like if an election were held tomorrow

00:05:03.360 and this is why and we've called it we've said it repeatedly we don't think annie burnham is going

00:05:07.900 to call an election because i mean not only every time annie burnham is asked he says no i don't

00:05:11.960 one election but at the moment he's got 410 MPs he will not be able to replicate that success

00:05:18.040 when we get into I mean because you very kindly let me add a couple of graphics uh in a bit of

00:05:23.320 this when we get into what the coalition building would actually look like on the other side of an

00:05:27.240 election like this it would be absolute torture so I mean look at that just look at that map

00:05:32.140 why what kind of coalition could you build from this well that's the question I come ready to

00:05:37.000 answer and it's a really painful one i bet it is i bet it is i mean wait does anyone have

00:05:45.120 enough like so if you've got labor and the liberal democrats that's only uh 312 seats so basically

00:05:53.580 you need to add up all of the all of the nominee left-wing ones so i think conservative reform get

00:05:59.160 you to 253 yeah to be sure of passing everything you need labour lib dems s&p play cum ray and

00:06:08.320 green you need all of them god or i mean there are some alternatives i'll get into it in a bit

00:06:13.940 but there are some alternatives but it is that is a brutal map though if you're andy burnham you

00:06:18.800 don't want that no no no god no a massive majority yeah but it's a massive majority that you inherited

00:06:25.720 from keir starmer yeah it's far more preferable god you get nothing done like this no you wouldn't

00:06:31.360 and actually there is there is some um i mean some some deeper underlying points that are worth

00:06:35.940 picking out on this i mean for a start a third of all the constituencies that were modeled

00:06:40.740 are within five points yes meaning that very small changes from here let's assume that you

00:06:47.560 got this 100 accurate that is actually what britain is today and i hate to tell people this

00:06:52.820 but you go on one of the most accurate pollsters in the country so yeah if you get very small

00:06:58.240 shifts in behavior and we're talking about the five percent level of five percent of people in

00:07:02.860 the country changing their mind a little bit a third of those seats just go sideways yeah to

00:07:08.780 something completely different and two-thirds of reform constituencies are within five points

00:07:13.920 so they so they are doubly elastic when it comes to small movement in polls so let's say we get a

00:07:20.540 general election three years time and we only shifted from this only six percent of people

00:07:25.740 have changed their mind it i mean it could look like anything yeah i mean you could get if you

00:07:31.260 got just a few more percentage points of people who previously didn't vote coming into the vote

00:07:37.140 yeah all that yeah this whole thing shifts and and and significantly so i mean the point is as

00:07:43.800 we keep saying uh our two-party political system was not designed for six seven parties it just it

00:07:49.380 goes completely sideways yes so for anyone wondering this is this is the worst kind of

00:07:54.280 hung parliament um the uh the the by the way they're still not prompting for restore britain

00:08:00.160 on you go polls yeah as basil here uh checked out but there was another interesting one from

00:08:05.600 more in common which uh they gave their assessment which is not terribly dissimilar

00:08:12.580 to uh you gov i mean it's it's still the same sort of shattered map they have a little more

00:08:19.020 reform i think yeah a few more reforms the only difference with the more in common one is that

00:08:23.420 instead of a third of seats being within five points they've got half of seats being within

00:08:27.660 five points so everything is absolutely razor thin at the moment yeah and i i think it's fairly safe

00:08:33.820 to assume that is actually the case i mean just judging by the mood of the country from our own

00:08:39.620 personal experience it seems that way um brutal but again absolutely brutal uh and then you have

00:08:45.460 another one from electoral calculus

00:08:47.300 which has the much more

00:08:49.620 favourable to the Conservatives on this one

00:08:51.420 but what do

00:08:52.680 what's the notable thing about electoral calculus here

00:08:55.580 they put reform in third

00:08:57.580 place

00:08:58.040 yeah

00:08:58.820 that is rough

00:09:02.940 I mean for a guy who thought that all he had

00:09:05.640 to do was tread water for five years

00:09:07.560 and then he would be Prime Minister to be reduced

00:09:09.600 to this I mean what and and we were talking

00:09:11.620 about this before we before we went on air

00:09:13.340 we've called out the errors as he's been making them on the podcast on this particular show

00:09:18.120 it's quite obvious when he's making a mistake but he keeps on making them and he just can't

00:09:23.980 stop doing it i don't know why he's not quite seeing the picture well i mean going back to

00:09:28.660 the polar polls second uh it'd be nice to have an extra five percent in the polls well yeah nigel

00:09:34.060 five percent in this setup is everything i mean it literally literally is absolutely everything

00:09:41.320 as well as we've been saying these are all within literally margins of a few percentage points and

00:09:47.320 this would have kept reform comfortably ahead in all of the polls if he just hadn't kicked

00:09:55.200 rupert low out yeah this unforced error and and the thing is right i mean we we know lots of people

00:10:01.740 in this sphere and there's people that and last election we were in this sort of slightly

00:10:05.520 difficult position where you know we wanted uh farage to win because he's the great hope for

00:10:10.520 the right but at the same time we kind of knew loads of people who he treated really poorly over

00:10:15.760 the years i mean kathleen lebraith we've had on the show uh your friend joel batten yes stephen

00:10:20.920 wolf who's a presenter here and literally dozens and dozens of other people but and we have this

00:10:28.520 weird um discontinuity in our mind it's like okay well we kind of want him to win because we need

00:10:33.360 we need a right winger to win but at the same time it's like why does he keep treating people

00:10:37.040 like this and and when he did that to rupert who was kind of impeachable unimpeachable unimpeachable

00:10:43.100 yeah it it just it just broke the straw and it's like no he's he's gonna keep being a snake forever

00:10:50.520 yes and also he's gonna be he's gonna keep being like a soft lefty forever as well yes which is

00:10:56.600 very frustrating i mean his he frames everything in the left's yeah world view yeah i mean we know

00:11:02.980 what a welshman is thank you yeah someone who's lived there for five years exactly yeah paid taxes

00:11:07.520 for five years which means your welsh children aren't welsh but and actually an interesting

00:11:12.320 an interesting case study of this came up recently that i mean we still don't know the details so so

00:11:16.620 maybe the picture by the time this video comes out tomorrow the picture would have changed radically

00:11:20.520 or when or we won't know anything for six months whatever it was um but that case of that raf base

00:11:25.580 that got vandalized yeah and then the media came out and they said about 30 times in all the

00:11:30.460 mainstream media broadcast these are british nationals yes and and then all the left came

00:11:35.140 out they got very excited by that and said aha they're not immigrants yeah they're british

00:11:39.820 nationals now from farage from me from our frame it's like well what does a british national mean

00:11:44.720 yeah literally nothing i mean this actual rudy cabana was a british national i mean exactly

00:11:50.120 right obviously they're foreign men who have been given british citizenship they may have even grown

00:11:54.420 up here who cares jacob rees mogg nigel farage all of the conservatives are like well they're

00:11:59.500 just as english as you are yeah you know they're just as mongrel as the rest that that guy in kent

00:12:03.840 who plays cricket at the weekend is exactly as british as these guys yep and and that's what

00:12:08.780 british uh civic nationalism will get you into you can't make a sort of distinction where there

00:12:14.060 obviously is one yes anyway so what's interesting is uh you gov did this uh poll in june 2026 and

00:12:23.640 this this was really interesting to me um because it shows that basically um heterosexual men and

00:12:28.860 women thankfully the overwhelming majority uh basically vote the same and in fact women were

00:12:35.040 more likely to vote for restored britain than men were which i think is fascinating so i mean you

00:12:40.040 can see at the top maybe bisexual um men and women i mean that's not a very large constituency and

00:12:46.880 homosexual men and women not a very large constituency so in absolute numbers this is

00:12:50.580 very small but of course the people who are on the lgbtq ideological reservation completely for

00:13:00.060 the greens basically or weirdly uh strangely like reform uh i'm getting weird uh but the

00:13:07.400 heterosexual people are much more in line with basically what the actual polling is showing

00:13:12.820 so essentially you don't need to worry about any other constituency i remember i remember this when

00:13:17.600 it when it came out and yeah i mean the key taker is exactly what you say actually the um sex

00:13:22.740 difference isn't doing much heavy lifting here at all no the important thing is what you do for a

00:13:27.500 living yes if if you actually do something useful if you move things around connect things you're

00:13:32.380 basically you're you're much more likely to vote for reform if you're retired you're much more

00:13:36.660 likely to vote conservative if you have an email job you're much more likely to vote labor and if

00:13:41.000 you don't have a job you're much more likely to vote green i mean the the the you know the working

00:13:45.320 distinction is is the key one not actually the gender one at this point absolutely anyway so

00:13:50.200 let's get on to your uh analysis of the mrp data yeah so basically what i'm trying to show here is

00:13:55.940 let's assume the mrp data um was the result of the general election yeah um the only way it's

00:14:03.280 going to work is well actually there is another way you can make it work which is labor and

00:14:07.420 conservatives form a coalition that would work sorry it's almost inconceivable yeah it almost

00:14:14.300 is but but saying that well i don't know like i mean the greens are so far to their left

00:14:19.640 reform and restore are on the conservatives right it's not inconceivable they feel besieged and go

00:14:26.420 well we're each other's last well the the right wing of the labor party and the left wing of the

00:14:30.900 conservative party are the same anyway yes so you would you you would just actually be i mean it's

00:14:35.700 like lego blocks they would connect together continuously peter hitchens zombie party but

00:14:40.440 You would have just a very broad coalition.

00:14:42.740 So Labour and Conservative would do it,

00:14:44.460 but I assumed, OK, fine, that's not going to work.

00:14:46.540 Assume they can't do it.

00:14:47.360 Assume that they just can't bring themselves to do it.

00:14:49.760 The only thing that actually works

00:14:51.120 is a Labour and Lib Dem governing coalition,

00:14:55.840 but that doesn't get you a majority.

00:14:57.660 That only gets you 312.

00:14:59.720 What you then need is you need the SNP, Plaid and Greens.

00:15:04.720 Well, I mean, technically you only need the SNP,

00:15:06.420 so 352 would be a majority.

00:15:09.780 Not if the Platt or Greens go against you.

00:15:12.680 I don't believe.

00:15:13.760 Yeah, well, you need 352 to create a government, don't you?

00:15:19.180 326, isn't it?

00:15:20.080 Oh, is it?

00:15:20.760 Oh, OK.

00:15:21.340 Well, then they could have...

00:15:24.200 Well, I mean, put it this way, OK.

00:15:25.800 So if Labour and Lib Dems come up to 312

00:15:29.960 and then the Conservatives and Reform come up to 253,

00:15:35.180 the remaining 64 votes is the swing bit

00:15:38.220 because if you add those

00:15:39.400 on to the conservative and reform,

00:15:41.780 you basically get 317,

00:15:43.640 which is bigger than 312.

00:15:44.900 Yeah, okay.

00:15:45.940 The other factor is the Northern Ireland voters,

00:15:48.720 but you can kind of count them out

00:15:49.900 because they don't really get involved in it.

00:15:51.780 So the working day-to-day government

00:15:54.280 would have to be Labour and Lib Dems,

00:15:56.180 and then you'd need some sort of arrangement

00:15:58.100 with the SNP, Plaid and Greens,

00:16:00.500 which is your backers on the King's speech

00:16:03.260 and a budget.

00:16:06.100 but otherwise we basically just need you to to abstain or negotiate on an individual basis

00:16:13.060 do you know the the horror situation though is essentially they all believe the same thing

00:16:18.220 to an extent well to quite a large extent yes i mean they're all they're all divorced

00:16:27.540 from reality in the same way in in the same way some of them even more so than others though

00:16:33.080 and the the only thing they would really argue about is the degree to which yes leftism could

00:16:38.780 be implemented yes so reality could be suspended it's not the most impossible thing to think that

00:16:43.920 a coalition could be established on the left i'd be surprised if such a thing could happen on the

00:16:48.440 right but yeah possibly um but i mean what what the takeaway from this though is is that um

00:16:55.500 you start off with an arrangement which is labor and lib dem and relying on basically

00:17:02.760 you just need one of those three,

00:17:06.000 the SNP, Platt & Greens, to abstain

00:17:08.020 and not to vote against you.

00:17:09.720 If you can just get them to abstain.

00:17:11.520 So it doesn't sound that difficult

00:17:13.080 because what you can kind of do

00:17:14.240 is run a reverse auction.

00:17:15.740 You can say, look,

00:17:16.480 we're trying to get this bill through.

00:17:18.100 What would it cost?

00:17:19.480 Go to three of them.

00:17:20.620 And if you're burning,

00:17:21.800 what you want to do

00:17:22.260 is you want to have that negotiation

00:17:23.260 three times in private.

00:17:25.060 You want to say to the SNP,

00:17:26.560 what would make you abstain or vote for us?

00:17:29.020 Either one works.

00:17:30.400 And the SNP might say,

00:17:31.440 oh, we want a new airport.

00:17:32.400 in glasgow or whatever and you might go to the greens and you say what would it make cost to

00:17:37.140 make you abstain or vote for us on this occasion and they might say okay we want a four million

00:17:40.780 pounds into trans newts in norwich or something whatever it is right yeah and and you go okay

00:17:47.320 well a four million pound study is a lot cheaper than an airport so i'll basically just you know

00:17:51.040 i'll just i'll just run this reverse auction every single time so the incentive actually for

00:17:56.480 smp plaid and greens is to get wise to that and form a cartel this is why burnham is not going

00:18:03.620 to call yeah yeah i mean as i'm describing you can just see how painful this will be for burning

00:18:09.840 so so smp plaid and greens they form a cartel and they agree to only ever meet with the governing

00:18:16.400 coalition labor and lib dems in the same room at the same time and to extract something that they

00:18:22.700 all want every time so what would happen almost certainly is for the first year or two you actually

00:18:28.960 get a labour lib dem government which is supported by confidence and supply arrangement with snp

00:18:34.140 plaid and greens after a couple of years at most those guys figure out if we form a cartel

00:18:40.380 we basically become the government we can extract from labour and lib dems whatever we want because

00:18:45.120 otherwise everything they do fails yeah they can't do anything if if those three stick together

00:18:49.400 they get to be the deciding vote as to whether it goes through or not so they can basically steer

00:18:54.680 all legislation going forward so if we were to actually get this you're basically getting an

00:19:01.260 smp plaid and green coalition running the country by by virtue of the fact them having the swing

00:19:06.520 votes so so i mean yeah i mean uh fascinating coalition building and it'll give us plenty

00:19:11.640 to talk about if it were to actually happen great for the content creators and then let's see if i

00:19:16.440 can get to the next one right and then i thought okay um what happens if reform and restore

00:19:23.720 revive their pact idea well it's rupert's pact idea yeah and nigel basically shot it down yeah

00:19:30.820 thought he didn't need it and interestingly at the time that rupert made the offer

00:19:36.700 nigel would have been straight back in leading position he would have been prime minister on

00:19:41.280 those numbers okay with the all the finance stuff that has come out he's managed to erode even more

00:19:47.540 support since when that offer was made and now he doesn't get to be prime minister even with

00:19:53.100 restore support so all those people saying you know restore you need to get on board otherwise

00:19:56.700 nigel won't be prime minister it's like well yeah but you've you've actually pissed away so it looks

00:20:01.340 like it's too late for that anyway yeah it doesn't even get you there but it is significant it is

00:20:06.200 still significant so let's say um reform said to restore look we won't contest you in your 10 best

00:20:12.140 seats so you're basically going to get 10 seats yeah and in exchange you say to all your supporters

00:20:17.100 in all the other 640 seats or however many they're contesting you tell your guys to back us

00:20:22.500 because there's no longer that wasted efficiency between people trading off between the two the

00:20:27.860 efficiency of the reform vote goes up and suddenly they become the official opposition

00:20:31.200 if there's a pact they kind of lead it and now on the flip side it is no longer an option to have

00:20:38.300 the smp plaid and greens on a confidence and supply basis you need to have them in the coalition

00:20:44.760 otherwise you're not getting anything done yeah and so what that would do is is is and if you look

00:20:50.220 at what i've done there look labor lib dems smp plaid and greens all in one governing coalition

00:20:54.640 you know how that works out because we're seeing in germany right now you get the oh what is it the

00:21:00.560 i can't remember all the bloody acronyms for the german parties but that you're getting a whole

00:21:05.980 range of german parties who have completely um incoherent governing philosophy because they can't

00:21:12.500 form a uh a set of governing principles that they can all ascribe to yeah you've got the center

00:21:18.800 right mixed in with the with the right the the far left communists and stuff and what it's doing

00:21:23.140 is it's massively eroding german politics because they look incoherent to everybody including their

00:21:28.120 own supporters i mean at least in in the case of germany they have a kind of monolithic party

00:21:32.020 in opposition whereas reform are not that monolithic party in opposition no like so in

00:21:37.140 the saxony anhalt election where they won was it 44 percent of the vote there's no way reform

00:21:43.100 are getting 44 percent of the vote in britain or anywhere really well i mean i mean there might

00:21:49.840 be some northern assuming assuming lower down you've got farage's popularity i mean we i do

00:21:54.360 yeah we can knock that one out the park now he's not getting he he isn't the monolithic

00:21:58.800 alternative to the entire establishment no that he tries to portray himself as being exactly he's

00:22:04.480 got too many unfavorables yeah but still reform still want to go back to restore and say actually

00:22:11.420 if that pact is still on the table we take because it suddenly makes them the largest opposition

00:22:16.340 party and now you will force the left into forming such an incoherent block um that it that it that

00:22:22.700 it simply won't function and then i thought okay well let's take this one step further

00:22:26.460 because as soon as you end up in that situation effectively you've got a right wing block versus

00:22:31.420 a left wing block and the massive incentive then becomes you notice how much better it got for

00:22:37.260 reform when the efficiency between restore was reduced the friction yeah what if one of these

00:22:42.100 actually does form a block and that's what it looks like if the left wing form a block

00:22:46.860 but the right wing remain fractured the efficiency of the left wing block basically goes perfect

00:22:52.680 well i've got some bad news for you yeah because if there are anyone in if there if there is a

00:22:57.140 constituency in britain that is happy to tactically vote it's the left and if there's a constituency

00:23:02.500 in britain who basically refuses to tactically vote it is the right that is true but also the

00:23:08.440 left is very fractious that is true but for anybody who's listening but hang on but you know

00:23:12.180 it is but when the rubber has met the road in actual like individual by-elections we've got

00:23:16.620 examples of this was it was it yeah yeah uh and um uh gorton and denton and uh makefield right

00:23:25.200 yeah no they they have voted for their guy they've chosen the guy yeah it's played cymru it's labor

00:23:30.120 it's the greens boom we've got those it's like well you don't get that with reform and restoring

00:23:35.140 the conservatives no you don't and but so just for anybody listening if the left form a basically

00:23:41.960 merge into a single party which they essentially are by the way yeah but they're not formally so

00:23:46.880 you get that inefficient yeah you get that inefficiency in the vote when you go to the ballot

00:23:49.860 because you you you know you might win your um labor seat but a lot of a lot of votes you know

00:23:55.480 got wasted on the greens or the lib dems or whatever um if yeah if the left were to ever

00:23:59.500 form a bloc and the right were to stay fractured um the left would win 575 seats i mean i'm sure

00:24:06.660 that's the worst case scenario it is but and then just to be fair i thought okay what happens if

00:24:11.740 the left remained fractured and the right former block same thing their efficiency goes through

00:24:17.020 the roof you've now got a right wing block 445 seats so it's not quite as high but we could get

00:24:22.380 the right wing to be one bloody party it it would move the dial yes the problem is we'd then be

00:24:30.200 sharing a governing coalition with wets and that would irritate us yes but better to be irritated

00:24:35.880 with a bunch of wets in government than to be irritated by a bunch of wets out of government

00:24:41.500 and and so you can see what's going on you can see what's going on here is we used to have a

00:24:45.960 two-party system but both of them became internally incoherent so they fractured they came apart they

00:24:53.640 resorted amongst themselves but inevitably the logic is that they do have to get back together

00:24:58.100 at some point it is going to come and then finally i'll just show you on the mrp poll

00:25:02.100 what it would look like if both of them formed a block at the same time and on the mrp data it

00:25:07.080 would be a left-wing majority and you might think okay is this because there was a left-wing

00:25:11.640 majority in the country like owen jones keeps on saying it's actually not that bad what this is

00:25:16.440 actually this is fast first past the post bias in this the actual underlying numbers is 52 percent

00:25:22.640 left versus 48 percent right still a lot of bloody left yeah but are all lib dem voters and all smp

00:25:31.200 voters actually left wing well this has been my thesis for a long time hasn't it the lib dems

00:25:36.100 might be being misallocated to the left, which is possible.

00:25:40.300 Yeah, very true.

00:25:41.180 And if we actually form two blocks,

00:25:43.140 one is explicitly a right-wing block

00:25:45.160 and one is explicitly a left-wing block,

00:25:46.720 I reckon a load of SNP and Lib Dem voters would come out.

00:25:50.260 And that 2%, well, 4% difference,

00:25:52.400 but that 2% advantage on their side that they've got

00:25:54.920 might actually go.

00:25:56.340 And what you'd actually get back to is perfectly balanced elections,

00:25:59.260 just changing hands again.

00:26:01.020 But the key thing, right,

00:26:03.240 is whoever goes first has a massive advantage.

00:26:06.100 whoever could whoever can coalesce first they would and obviously the dream scenarios is the

00:26:14.180 previous one that i showed which is the left remains fractured yeah and the right does some

00:26:19.460 sort of deal yeah then they just win everything forever god well if only yes if only the right

00:26:28.740 wasn't dominated by certain individuals with extreme personalities that can't stand anyone

00:26:33.920 else with strong personalities around them yeah we are where we are anyway speaking of people with

00:26:40.700 extreme personalities who don't broke any other strong personalities around them let's talk about

00:26:45.160 nigel farage and his 72 million um this i i made the point last time we discussed this i think this

00:26:51.880 was a poison chalice and i i actually don't think this has been something that's been very helpful

00:26:57.340 in at least the short term

00:26:59.900 and Peter Walker

00:27:02.280 at the Guardian has arrived at the same position

00:27:04.080 as me very recently

00:27:05.060 there are downsides to this

00:27:07.620 that are not good

00:27:09.220 and can't easily be overcome

00:27:11.680 with just throwing money at things

00:27:13.960 because actually the money itself

00:27:15.920 was the issue

00:27:16.760 whether you like it or not

00:27:18.880 Britain has become

00:27:21.720 a nation

00:27:23.780 of

00:27:24.500 resentful penny pinchers we don't like it when someone else is doing very well

00:27:33.380 and we have this very deep running streak of envy yeah and and it's different axis that

00:27:43.600 you're trying to solve for so on the one hand you solve all of their organizational concerns

00:27:48.700 yeah they could now put as we talked about in the previous episode they can now put a regional

00:27:53.360 organizer they could probably put a constituency level organizer in 72 million they've got enough

00:27:58.020 money but for everything they gained on the um resource constraints they've now got reputational

00:28:05.400 constraints that have been added to it and actually that's the top of the funnel that's

00:28:09.360 where the votes come yeah and that weirdly enough um it's actually been shown i mean uh the great

00:28:16.240 example was in the new york elections where bloomberg put 100 million dollars into it yes

00:28:21.940 came with like four percent um you you it's very useful to have lots of money

00:28:27.300 but you can make progress without money you just have to ultimately you've got to remember that

00:28:34.540 politics is genuinely about how people feel it's genuinely about what people think how you're

00:28:38.980 perceived uh reputation management is incredibly important in this game and it doesn't mean

00:28:44.000 not having an old tweet that people don't like or something like that it means making sure that

00:28:51.000 people don't feel your party is in some way corrupt or poisonous i mean and a perfect example is is

00:28:58.500 the first trump victory yep he looked like an underdog and the democrats did out raise him

00:29:03.900 and you know he he gave this impression of the whole system is against me i'm having to fight

00:29:10.320 i mean actually he did raise quite a bit of money sure but all the same you know he had this

00:29:14.720 perception of being up against the system yeah farage is engineering himself into a situation

00:29:20.480 where he looks so establishment what i mean he has he as we covered last time he he has raised

00:29:28.900 more money than the entire system did in an entire election cycle yes right the the only time the

00:29:34.780 system entirely was more than what reform has taken in here was in 2024 in that election year

00:29:41.120 but in a standard year he is dominating every every political party which okay sounds like a

00:29:46.960 very useful thing to have if it were organic donations from people organic small small

00:29:54.280 donations that would be incredible and that would be you know an unimpeachable democratic endorsement

00:30:01.100 that he would have well speaking of unimpeachable didn't rupert lowe get offered money by elon

00:30:05.100 and he said no yeah he i mean he thought about it for a bit because oh it would solve a lot of

00:30:09.940 problems but no i can't but it creates a lot of problems as well and it creates a very big stick

00:30:15.300 that the media can use to and this goes back to our point about judgment is whenever um you know

00:30:21.120 rupert comparing rupert judgment against nigel's judgment is rupert consistently says okay now

00:30:26.280 actually we've got to take the harder path yes but the correct path yes and nigel every single time

00:30:32.320 between the hard path and the easy path chooses the easy path and it's it's good for five minutes

00:30:37.080 and it comes back on you and that is exactly the problem we've spoken about before nigel's

00:30:42.420 money-grubbing nature has always um been a thorn in his own side i mean as peter points out but

00:30:50.620 when there are two crypto billionaires living overseas who are going to give you tens of

00:30:57.780 millions of pounds even if they are british citizens which they are it still doesn't look

00:31:03.840 good and crypto itself i mean i personally don't care about crypto at all but the average person

00:31:09.460 in the general public doesn't know anything about crypto they don't know how it came about they don't

00:31:13.640 know how it represents value or chancellor definitely doesn't know anything about it

00:31:18.100 absolutely and in fact they they spend a lot of time stigmatizing it um and so to them it's got a

00:31:23.440 kind of sleazy city vibe that doesn't itself um promote a very wholesome atmosphere when the

00:31:32.520 subject comes up so even though Farage here has done nothing wrong there is the air of having done

00:31:38.940 something wrong about it i think it's less about the crypto and more about the fact that he just

00:31:43.240 took an extraordinary amount of money from very few individuals that that feels like it's both i

00:31:48.020 mean if it if it was say you know bill gates or richard branson or someone donating the money to

00:31:54.160 him okay but at least you understand how they made the money right how did um was it harbourn

00:31:59.940 whatever his name is yeah yeah harbourn and delo who the hell are these guys how did they make their

00:32:04.720 money you're saying if it was i don't know jim rat i mean he's jim ratcliffe has also moved away

00:32:10.360 now because everybody with money is getting out of the country but i see your point if it was

00:32:14.840 richard branson or something yeah richard yeah you'd be like okay well he owns virgin there's a

00:32:18.300 massive series of companies it's understandable that through the regular mechanisms of capitalism

00:32:25.520 richard branson became a very rich man so you you wouldn't think i think there'd still be pushback

00:32:30.500 just not as much i do i do see of course there would absolutely be pushback but there at least

00:32:35.020 wouldn't be the air of this is a grift this is a there's theft around this but and i'm not saying

00:32:41.500 that is the case but i'm saying people i think perceive this to be the case it's sleazy and it

00:32:46.700 has this kind of it's almost got the same sort of coding as um like like wall street's gordon geckos

00:32:54.500 types yeah i mean well this i mean this blew up for well i don't want to say blew up but it

00:32:58.580 this impacted labor back in the 70s when all of their funding and the big the big wigs behind

00:33:05.000 the scenes steering things were just a handful of labor union guys and the public knew that

00:33:09.860 actually you could have a room with the prime minister and five or six other guys behind closed

00:33:14.180 doors where they would basically sort things out between them and you the voter would get very

00:33:19.060 little say on it well it's exactly the same when kirsten had his meeting with blackrock yes that

00:33:23.240 looks awful atrocious faraj is recreating that by taking a handful of individuals money and again

00:33:29.720 it conjures in your mind this image okay if he's prime minister could we have a room a closed room

00:33:34.980 with a handful of individuals in it who get to decide everything yes very obviously and so when

00:33:41.440 faraj is like well everyone knows i can't be bought no yeah everyone everybody knows that

00:33:46.980 you can though that's the problem it's very evident that you can be bought i mean you know

00:33:52.700 Everyone remembers your cameo.

00:33:54.400 Although, as you can see,

00:33:57.320 he did have the dignity of at least shutting his cameo down.

00:34:01.460 So you see Nigel Farage...

00:34:02.680 If only recently...

00:34:03.460 Exactly.

00:34:04.020 It was only recently that Nigel Farage became currently unavailable.

00:34:07.580 I don't exactly know when he did it,

00:34:09.260 but it was obviously not very long ago.

00:34:10.580 I know that it wasn't that long

00:34:11.920 because we've been making this show for not that long now

00:34:14.840 and we did a number of shows where we could go live to this and play it.

00:34:19.240 And we always made fun of him.

00:34:20.420 so maybe some of his guys maybe maybe nigel watches this maybe dan dukes was like look yeah

00:34:24.580 nigel is my last act just shut your cameo down yeah giving you 72 million mate you don't need

00:34:29.060 any more you know you don't need to spend 60 pounds from the maybe that's what the 72 million

00:34:33.960 was for to shut down that's their inside influence maybe cameo so i i couldn't i i was gonna i was

00:34:38.960 gonna commission nigel for us to do a cameo for the show what would you have made him say i i don't

00:34:43.280 know but i i did find someone whose cameo was operative so uh i i asked count binface to tell

00:34:51.080 us why he thought nigel farage lost in uh won in clacton but is uh getting it in the neck from

00:34:56.640 you commissioned this yeah i did

00:35:13.280 to say it ain't a galactic hello to Dan, and now this isn't just about me, now I have

00:35:19.500 called a galactic alliance with Al, and together we want to say a big Al's hello, and also

00:35:26.600 to help answer a question, because apparently Dan, you are bewildered that Nigel Farage

00:35:34.280 would receive not just 5 million, not just 36, but 72 million quid, well I mean 77 really,

00:35:43.280 If you incur the 5 personal million and a 70 silver political one, and it's probably more as wealth, as I understand it, I don't know.

00:35:52.280 Why is he getting that money? Well, of course, a 5 million is an unconditional gift.

00:35:57.280 You can spend that on Ferrari, if you want, but he's such an anti-establishment guy.

00:36:02.280 He probably needs it for all those oysters and champagne.

00:36:06.280 Well, he's definitely not after no good, but I just have a job to eventually make that absolutely fair.

00:36:13.960 And after the 72 million, maybe he needed to catch up because the latest polls say that even with reform funding, they're going to come behind Labour and the story, which is very funny indeed.

00:36:26.400 And maybe then, oh no, maybe they need the 72 million to have a recruiting drive for a new leader for four old guys to get shoved out in practice after the second by-election.

00:36:38.400 What's this hyperspace in a charity?

00:36:41.400 Anyway, well, I mean, you know, that's as savvy as money could be, that's politics for you.

00:36:47.400 I'm here to show, you don't need any of that, so we look at this for thousands.

00:36:51.400 And I hope I'm asking your questions there.

00:36:53.920 And may you watch the skies for fire elections near and far.

00:36:58.700 And when you're taking the votes, what are you going to do?

00:37:01.400 Make your votes.

00:37:02.720 Thank you for that, Carl.

00:37:05.580 £60 well spent there, wasn't it?

00:37:08.780 So it was about the same price as Nigel's, wasn't it?

00:37:10.860 It was, yeah, yeah.

00:37:11.520 But you get a whole two minutes, whereas you've only got like 30 seconds with Nigel,

00:37:14.780 or even less than that.

00:37:15.520 So that's good value, that.

00:37:16.400 But at the end of the day, though, what does Count Binface represent?

00:37:20.060 the kind of libtard establishment what you you could hear that i mean it started off quite amusing

00:37:25.060 but sure he got so left-wing coded as he started going for ferraris and oysters but it's but it's

00:37:31.060 all real that's the problem that farage has here is yeah he went on nick ferrari's show and was

00:37:36.800 like i could just spend that money on ferraris he did get stung in clacton eating oysters meeting

00:37:43.100 with a foreign billionaire and the issue is is okay this is ridiculous it's a man in a bin suit

00:37:48.340 doing your number yeah he's got your number night yeah and this is but the issue is is it was is it

00:37:54.180 was absurd when farage was doing it as well yeah even though he wasn't wearing a bid on the face

00:37:59.460 he was still doing cameos and he wants to be prime minister but also the narrative that

00:38:04.140 count bin face here has given us is just the stock narrative you hear on sky news it's the

00:38:09.560 stock narrative you hear on the bbc well he took five million from chris harbourn he took another

00:38:14.000 32 from these from harbourn and this other guy and oh you know look at the look at the the sting

00:38:19.740 that channel 4 did i think he's like a bbc comedy writer or something so so he he's fashionable

00:38:25.340 lefty yeah yeah but but you're right those things actually matter to the fashionable leftists and

00:38:31.200 they're all true and they will say them repeatedly on tv everywhere until you've basically just got

00:38:36.060 that narrative that bin face has given us being the narrative of the general stench of corruption

00:38:41.280 around yeah there's nothing original in there no but it permeates because the bbc is a bloody big

00:38:47.880 platform and they can just repeat it endlessly and millions of people sounds bad yeah none of

00:38:53.100 it seems to have actually been bad like christopher harbourn can give nudge for us as much of his

00:38:57.180 money as he wants i don't care about any exactly and i don't i don't care if he does spend the

00:39:00.900 five million dollars on ferrari's and oysters there are loads of billionaires who give labor

00:39:04.500 figures like look at all the expenses scandal that kia slama had and all the donations that

00:39:09.220 he had to be like okay i'm going to stop taking political donations yeah that lord alley guy

00:39:13.060 kept on buying him underpants yeah yeah he kept getting you know like all these free goodies and

00:39:17.960 stuff yes right at the beginning of his premiership it's like okay they all do this it's just that

00:39:22.460 nigel farage happens to be the villain of the week for these people and so that's why binface

00:39:28.400 is giving us that narrative right so anyway the point is that of course farage has got no good

00:39:34.000 answers to any of this and he looks like he's on the defensive when he's responding i mean this is

00:39:41.880 an interview he did with sky news

00:39:43.320 so nigel farage has been here in edinburgh for meetings with his scottish team the party is

00:39:55.880 pretty flush with cash at the moment after two massive donations 36 million pounds of

00:40:01.320 I'm sorry.

00:40:11.300 Absolutely.

00:40:17.260 I haven't seen theseised cases there.

00:40:22.040 I think I've never been actually.

00:40:26.240 The government did not do legislation that would go back.

00:40:33.240 Well, if they do that, they may as well be used to.

00:40:40.240 We may as well be used to.

00:40:44.240 There's a point of principle, isn't it?

00:40:46.240 What a principle, what?

00:40:48.240 If someone is going to be influencing democracy,

00:40:52.240 see look how weak his response is that's it he looks like a small child in the headmaster's

00:41:10.680 office yeah he looks defensive when the sky news guy is just giving the bim face narrative yes

00:41:15.800 and it's just okay well now and and there's different ways to have you could have pushed

00:41:20.080 back on the trumpian way would be to say well that makes me smart what why can't i do this

00:41:25.060 you're just jealous because you didn't get it you're losers i'm a winner that's how trump would

00:41:29.120 have this is how the system works and i was just using the system as you already use it yes and

00:41:33.460 and as we've already covered rupert lowe would have not got himself into this situation in the

00:41:37.920 first place which is the smartest i'd imagine rupert lowe probably could come back with a

00:41:40.840 better answer but he just sidesteps it by not getting into that situation in the first place

00:41:45.100 was was nigel here he fundamentally accepts the left's worldview and cannot push back against it

00:41:53.540 without feeling you can tell that he feels guilty yeah he looks guilty yeah and what's more is and

00:41:59.500 then it's like well we're just east germany it's like yeah we've been east germany for a long time

00:42:03.540 now knowledge you know this has been very self-evident you can't appeal to a sense of

00:42:09.140 fair play with these people because they don't think your existence is fair i mean you you try

00:42:13.740 being a you know a white male zoomer in this country i mean try being a white male of any age

00:42:19.720 yeah but i mean everything is stacked against you it's just like oh okay well you know this

00:42:25.680 is going a bit far no it's gone a bit far for a while yeah we don't want we don't want to just

00:42:29.860 unwind back to well basically you know where conservatives were under um cameron or something

00:42:37.560 and the thing is this is not the only thing that the only problem that reform have been grappling

00:42:41.840 with i mean for example you've got durham council right oh yes durham council oh by the way before

00:42:47.740 we continue though i mean this is the number of councillors that since the local elections have

00:42:51.980 left reform uh as you can see 45 have resigned 60 have become independent 24 have joined restored

00:42:58.020 nine joined tories five joined advanced two have been disqualified one joined the sdp

00:43:01.960 one started their own party and that's since may 2025 but durham county council was called by

00:43:08.500 nigel ferrari's their flagship council because they won loads and loads of seats on durham council

00:43:14.580 65 out of 98 i think it was huge i can't remember exactly how much it was but it was huge and so

00:43:19.700 it's like right we've got total domination of the council what's going on well it turned out they

00:43:23.840 had a massive hole in their finances 83 million pounds um and it's just been i mean i don't even

00:43:32.260 have a good metaphor to describe it but it just seems awful uh the culture of the council has

00:43:40.340 been really really bad and so you've got the councillors coming out and saying look i'm

00:43:45.660 resigning you're all betrayers you've all like you've all been acting in very very dramatic ways

00:43:53.200 and this has become as you can see the bbc thrilled to be reporting on this yeah this is

00:43:59.960 oh incompetence now as well so it's but not just incompetence it is a negative culture in reform

00:44:06.760 itself i think this one largely comes down to a lack of experience what's going on because

00:44:12.080 actually council finances are incredibly difficult to do everything with yeah from the outside you

00:44:17.540 always assume that they're just very wasteful organizations yeah actually they're not most of

00:44:24.020 their spending and it's and it varies between 70 to 90 depending on what time type of council is

00:44:29.140 of their spending is mandated from government so they get the money in and then they have to pass

00:44:33.960 it out and a lot of it's on things like adult actually the bulk of it is on adult social care

00:44:38.840 and so when it comes to the things that they've actually got discretion over it's actually a tiny

00:44:44.120 amount of the budget and actually you don't find wasting councils what you find is that it's got a

00:44:49.920 whole bunch of departments and they've all been cut so many times but they exist but they they

00:44:56.620 can't actually do anything because they don't have any money you need to start chopping functions

00:45:01.160 and more importantly you need to revisit the mandatory spending things like adult social care

00:45:04.900 that's where you need to go and and i think the reason they're getting into difficulty with this

00:45:08.940 is because let's say you become a conservative council or a labor council you know you you've

00:45:13.240 just won your election you go in there you you speak to some guy and it's like how long have

00:45:16.680 you been a council he's all 37 years i'll take you under my wing and i'll and i'll show you how

00:45:21.640 this stuff works and you're and you'll kind of get absorbed into it so if you're a right winger

00:45:25.440 you go well why can't we cut money and it's like and he basically saying something like i've just

00:45:29.900 central government will literally demand that you spend yeah it's just it's just all possible but

00:45:34.080 reform have come in and they've got no hierarchy everybody was hired at the same time nobody's got

00:45:39.840 any experience for how it works and nobody realizes how useless councillors actually are and how they

00:45:44.360 don't actually have any power and and there's just no coordination going on and and it could be the

00:45:49.540 same if you suddenly get almost almost with any new intake of politicians right and it'll be the

00:45:56.280 same for westminster absolutely if they get 200 300 mps it's going to be like herding cats yeah

00:46:01.720 and and this isn't even like a way of attacking reform here no no yeah i i'm not i'm just saying

00:46:08.800 this is what the narrative being presented to the public is right i actually i'm sure that people

00:46:13.320 on reform council uh the durham council the reform uh people have done their best but

00:46:19.320 it's been as you say a sort of jostling for position because all of them are new

00:46:23.980 so it's been very difficult i think they're down to a majority of foreign yeah it's been brutal

00:46:29.800 it's been brutal um but the the point is it's not really farage's fault but he's one who's

00:46:35.540 holding the bag for it at the end of the day because again uh sky news and this is the sort

00:46:41.220 thing. All he can come out and say is, I don't know.

00:47:11.220 look how look it's the same defensiveness but look how eager this guy is to drive in the knife

00:47:29.880 look how much he's enjoying this right now i'm not saying this is farage's fault or anything like

00:47:35.100 that i don't know what i would have done differently in his position but this is the

00:47:40.100 circumstance you find yourself in right and now if you if you can't do anything other than look

00:47:45.820 defensively and say well i don't know i don't know well okay but there are other people who get a

00:47:51.620 favorable response from the media and who don't get this kind of daggers out investigation yeah

00:47:57.560 like you're like andy burnham who just get a free ride and they they come out and will give you a

00:48:01.440 positive message and it's like well sorry night yeah you know i can't i think he should know as

00:48:06.120 well he should he should have a briefing i mean i i don't know what's on the slate when you when

00:48:11.040 you pull it up but i mean i i knew at least a bit about what's going on in durham council i at least

00:48:15.920 knew the numbers i don't think nigel farage even knows that i don't think he knows the outline

00:48:20.240 well he's not a details guy is he i'm a details guy either i mean but you'd need to know this

00:48:25.840 but things i'm not leader of reform yeah and he is yeah so i mean where where is his time going

00:48:32.220 that he can't he can't be at least on the surface level top line details of what's going on in his

00:48:37.760 flagship council i mean you bloody well should be to be honest if if you can't be why accept an

00:48:42.800 interview like this why would you accept an interview from this sky news you think donald

00:48:46.600 trump would have accepted this interview well yeah and donald trump would have told him get out of

00:48:49.900 the room and and i think you go back a year before we kind of fell out with uh reform you know we

00:48:55.600 invited them on yeah you can come on whenever you like guys yeah i gave you a favorable hearing but

00:49:00.060 they didn't want to know no you you online scum instead who watches who watches the internet

00:49:05.220 laughs the boomer instead Nigel Farage gets picked apart yeah by these little you know dagger

00:49:11.940 interviews with Sky News anchors it's like okay well why would you want to do that again you're

00:49:17.400 being interviewed by Count Binface here Nigel I mean it might actually be Count Binface well yeah

00:49:22.780 we don't know in my mind that is exactly what Count Binface looks like under the bin is they're

00:49:27.040 all going to be the same type absolutely and it's like okay well you accept an interview with count

00:49:30.240 bin face but you wouldn't accept an interview from anyone from the right yeah and so now they're just

00:49:34.820 picking you apart and this is just showing in the approval ratings right andy burnham's got an

00:49:40.000 approval rating of plus 10 which is pretty good uh kevin bay not plus 1.5 ed davie minus 4.6

00:49:45.260 rupert load minus 11.6 zach polanski minus 24.1 the nigel ferrari's at the lowest at minus 24.6

00:49:52.020 I mean, Rupert Lowe's issue here is that, unfortunately,

00:49:54.940 not enough people know of him yet.

00:49:56.940 Sure, and he's going to get nothing but negative press.

00:49:59.340 Yeah.

00:49:59.840 But the negative press will be, Rupert Lowe is an extremist

00:50:03.580 and wants to deport millions of people.

00:50:06.200 That said, that we do have a case study of people

00:50:08.560 who actually do know who he is, and it's reform supporters.

00:50:12.440 Yes.

00:50:12.900 And reform supporters actually think quite highly.

00:50:14.980 They do.

00:50:15.840 It doesn't go the other way around.

00:50:17.620 So, basically, the only people who like Nigel Farage

00:50:19.840 are some reform supporters but not all reform supporters yes but that doesn't but that doesn't

00:50:26.160 go the other way around so the tories for example tory supporters hate farage yes and obviously the

00:50:31.220 greens yeah we've got we've covered this in previous episodes um but isn't that interesting

00:50:35.640 the only other person who comes near to be as disliked as nigel farage is zach polanski who

00:50:41.860 is a nutter yeah he's completely bonkers so it's remarkable how like i said the british public

00:50:47.120 just need exposure to polanski to realize oh this guy's evil yeah he wants to destroy everything

00:50:52.000 about britain and this as we showed last time has been going on for a while and for us is now down

00:50:58.400 to just sort of net favorable 24 unfavorable 69 from you gov i mean there's two different trackers

00:51:04.960 and and that's a real problem so in in vc we had in venture capital we have something called um

00:51:09.680 your total addressable market your time it was a standard thing you looked at what is the total

00:51:13.600 market you can go after 31 yeah 69 is off the table for him yeah i mean and and this is the

00:51:21.340 problem with haraj he has spent decades getting to where he is by being a snake and backstabbing

00:51:26.660 other people who got even remotely close to him you can do that once or twice if you need to

00:51:30.780 if you make a political habit of that over 26 year political career plus you add on so so the

00:51:37.180 right is alienated from him lots of the right you alienate the left with a bit of money stuff which

00:51:42.100 we don't consider an issue like just like the left doesn't consider the backstabbing rightoids

00:51:46.180 a problem but but remember you're not like you're not speaking to zach polanski in his constituency

00:51:50.760 no what you're speaking to the kind of softy left types who have always voted labor yeah

00:51:54.780 marge from leeds or something yeah and and they don't really follow politics very closely yes

00:51:58.960 you know they they know who you are they know who labor is they know the tories are and they're

00:52:02.980 going to pick one exactly and and so the right the right people on the right have enough reason

00:52:06.900 not to like him because people on the right think he's a snake and people on the left think he's

00:52:10.240 sleazy but interestingly this this tracks really well with the general poll polling decline of

00:52:16.960 reform come back to uh yeah there's august 2025 reformer on about 31 nigel farage's personal

00:52:24.380 favorability rating was about 32 there we go and it's just been a downswing ever since

00:52:30.880 down to 24 which is really close to what they're currently on the party is him because he won't

00:52:36.600 let anyone else outshine him exactly him and the party are the same thing and it's the same with

00:52:40.820 the greens if the party rises and falls on the popularity of one chap and he becomes very

00:52:45.240 unpopular when you made your bed you know this is what you get um and worse for nigel farage

00:52:53.660 is that people are going to tactically vote against him now yeah when it's like reform versus

00:52:59.860 labor as you can see people are way more inclined to vote for labor than reform when it comes to

00:53:06.160 reform versus conservative as you can see people are way more inclined to vote conservative than

00:53:10.640 reform and the same goes for liberal democrats when it comes to voting labor or conservative

00:53:14.940 there's a lot less in it when it comes to lib dems conservatives a lot less in it

00:53:19.280 but no when it's farage they're like no just don't like him well this goes back to our point

00:53:26.040 that we started on about having a a two-way political system with six parties in it yeah

00:53:30.000 that is why reform is looking as good as it is even though it's now dropped third in many polls

00:53:35.000 it's because it benefits from a very split system as soon as the split system starts to go away

00:53:40.700 reform's comparative advantage disappears with it they're not capturing the imagination of the

00:53:47.220 people as a whole but also like polanski one of reform's greatest weapons was keir starmer

00:53:53.800 keir starmer hates the country he hates the far right he hates people he was clearly dead set

00:54:00.700 against all of this and farage looked like a strong alternative in the same way that zach

00:54:05.140 polanski looked like a strong alternative andy burnham doesn't seem hateful yeah i think andy

00:54:10.100 burnham is massively misguided he follows the wrong ideology he's a bumbling david brent type

00:54:15.760 figure yes but i don't think he hates me no i don't think he wants my children to be stabbed

00:54:20.620 by a somalian yeah and i don't think he's going to come to the somalian's defense if he does

00:54:24.680 yeah right but keir starmer would literally be that somalian's human rights lawyer yes you know

00:54:29.960 so it's like

00:54:30.680 again you can say

00:54:31.720 whatever you like

00:54:32.200 about Andy Burnham

00:54:32.820 he isn't going to

00:54:34.120 generate the kind of

00:54:35.080 visceral hatred

00:54:37.180 loathing

00:54:38.320 that Keir Starmer

00:54:39.000 I don't know

00:54:39.660 don't loathe him

00:54:40.520 I just think he's a prat

00:54:41.340 I just don't want him

00:54:42.920 in government

00:54:43.300 I don't hate him

00:54:44.620 I'm sure he's a lovely

00:54:45.280 guy when you're down

00:54:45.760 the pub and whatnot

00:54:46.340 but that

00:54:47.240 this kind of perception

00:54:49.080 is important

00:54:49.840 God can you imagine

00:54:50.540 being stuck in a pub

00:54:51.340 with Keir Starmer

00:54:52.140 that'd be

00:54:52.660 I mean I would make

00:54:54.480 the best of it

00:54:55.100 because as a

00:54:56.380 political commentator

00:54:57.360 I would like to ask

00:54:58.840 those cold dead

00:54:59.580 macro eyes staring at you i'd like i'd like to ask him you know so what was your favorite

00:55:03.500 human rights experience kit you know what what are you most proud of the guy doesn't dream i

00:55:08.880 doubt he has a favorite anything oh it'll be getting child murderers off the death penalty

00:55:12.560 i'm sure that's what he'd say anyway i would have some opinions on that anyway so um as as we've

00:55:19.280 seen before as you mentioned in fact reform voters actually do have a very favorable view

00:55:23.920 yeah low uh only less than half of reform voters don't know where he is and almost half of reform

00:55:29.340 voters think he's great so basically nine in ten reform voters are up for grabs for a store

00:55:34.220 yeah so as soon as and it will happen we've been saying it for ages reform is going to unwind i

00:55:39.960 know a lot of people don't want to hear that they want to hold on to it um but as soon as it does

00:55:44.420 unwind the store goes through the roof yeah and and actually another thing right there's a whole

00:55:51.460 bunch of shows that basically watch this show and then comment on it yeah and their argument

00:55:57.180 because i don't i don't generally watch them because they're too long-winded and unfocused

00:56:00.380 and they're not very good at it and all that kind of stuff but the arguments that they do make

00:56:04.340 are basically well reform is higher in the polls therefore support reform because you have to

00:56:10.360 support whichever right-wing option is highest in the polls i bet they've shut up why wouldn't i

00:56:14.880 vote the conservatives now because the conservatives exactly are being reform in the polls yes exactly

00:56:18.980 reasons i don't support these parties beyond the polls exactly and now it as it starts to look

00:56:25.180 because the clock is ticking yeah or when when nigel farage decides i'm going to america yeah

00:56:31.120 i'm going to make two million pounds a year more than that probably actually no he's making a

00:56:35.280 million a year on gb news he can make 10 to 20 million in america clock is ticking on when he

00:56:41.320 just buggers off and does that yeah and then 90 straight over yeah anyway so let's let's uh talk

00:56:47.860 about reform then uh restore sorry and how things are going because i mean to be honest with you

00:56:52.520 seems that things are going pretty well here's a very recent poll from um more in common uh

00:56:59.960 that had them on six percent which is only a couple of points behind the green party

00:57:03.860 which is a significant step up from well only a couple of weeks ago frankly with 90 90 percent

00:57:12.060 about 22 percent in play but also the other thing about restorative i'm pretty sure they get a lot

00:57:17.140 of they activate a lot of people who hadn't voted before that's correct i actually forgot to include

00:57:22.480 that i think it's 38 of their it was about 40 of the support that yeah literally is people who

00:57:28.000 didn't vote previously so when rupert lowe was saying oh yeah and great yarmouth i mean great

00:57:31.500 yarmouth is a great example of it of course we were saying we're bringing people into the political

00:57:34.840 uh experience that previously checked out that is true that is a correct uh point um so not only

00:57:41.580 are reforms uh voters up for grabs but a huge number of otherwise uninvested voters are up

00:57:48.920 and also they don't it's not impossible they get plenty from the conservatives and even a few from

00:57:54.160 from labor and certainly the lib dems as well well i suspect that a lot from labor could actually

00:57:59.240 come across and we'll get into that more from the lib dems than we would expect um this was a very

00:58:05.840 interesting one everyone was complaining about this because luke from more in common had broken

00:58:09.980 down a bunch of numbers here but as you can see men for some reason are most likely to vote for

00:58:14.060 labor women for some reason most likely to vote for conservatives um but interestingly women were

00:58:19.840 more likely to vote the the number of women versus men supporting restore was at seven percent

00:58:25.640 compared to six percent so why are women and we saw this in the previous poll as well um why are

00:58:30.980 women more likely to vote for restore well they're the ones who stand to benefit the most i would

00:58:35.340 like to public safety i'd like to immediately retract what i've been saying for the last two

00:58:39.220 years that women shouldn't vote i've changed my mind yeah i know it looks like women are going

00:58:42.400 put rupert lowe in government yeah good old women i've always said women great yay very interesting

00:58:50.160 uh anyway the next one is a bmg poll which had restored seven percent and as we saw in the poll

00:58:56.980 of polls they'd um ticked up to five percent on average and a couple of polls have had them

00:59:03.280 quite again one point behind the lib dems two point behind the greens like this this is becoming

00:59:09.000 a serious national party.

00:59:10.780 And they're not even a year.

00:59:11.580 When did they come up on their year?

00:59:12.360 It was about seven months old.

00:59:13.680 Seven months.

00:59:14.360 Maybe eight months.

00:59:15.120 I can't remember.

00:59:15.560 But it's not even a year old

00:59:17.000 and already it's 7%.

00:59:19.080 I mean, you've just never seen a party,

00:59:21.040 not that I can think of.

00:59:22.520 I mean, maybe the SDP,

00:59:24.020 but that didn't really count back in the 80s

00:59:25.780 because it just took a whole load

00:59:26.960 of existing Labour MPs.

00:59:28.180 Yeah, I mean, probably not in our living memory.

00:59:30.520 I can't think of a political,

00:59:32.540 not in the last hundred years.

00:59:33.960 I mean, maybe the Labour Party back in 19...

00:59:36.960 Yeah, probably the creation of the Labour Party

00:59:38.620 or something like that but this this is this is a lot and it's very interesting how despite the

00:59:46.300 attempt of obviously the mainstream media and the other parties to bury restore there has been this

00:59:52.360 slow and incremental growth where people have clearly come to the conclusion it's got to be

00:59:57.460 something serious when i listen to the mainstream podcast because unfortunately i have to yes um

01:00:02.260 it's regularly happening now where they'll be talking about reform or labor or something and

01:00:07.440 then the guest panelists will be and you've got to consider restore and you can see the host is

01:00:11.100 like really annoyed it's like oh please stop bringing up restore but but look at this it's

01:00:16.320 statistically significant it's very significant i mean reform on 23 percent would be in the lead

01:00:22.780 if they had the restore votes yeah they don't okay well that's a bit of bad news for nigel

01:00:28.280 but he's always he's always making his own bed and now he's being forced to lie in it

01:00:32.720 so restore britain did their own polling and the through bmg uh and this was an interesting result

01:00:41.180 where they found that um 29.6 percent would consider voting for restore britain uh or restore

01:00:48.100 britain candidate at the next election uh that slightly beat out whether they'd consider voting

01:00:52.640 for a reform candidate this goes back to my earlier tan point the total addressable market

01:00:58.100 i mean to be getting a third well not quite a third but almost 30 percent of people yeah who

01:01:04.100 are willing to say i i would consider voting for restore it doesn't mean this isn't the same as

01:01:08.420 it's not a poll because they might consider several options yeah exactly this is not a poll

01:01:13.560 but it's again what what it what is the constituent in potential as things stand now

01:01:19.800 and that's as things stand as bad as it's the potential addressable market yes and the potential

01:01:24.840 addressable market for his seven month old party is already exceeding reform yeah and despite the

01:01:31.260 fact that they're um the the knowledge of well the penetration yeah of reform is way greater than

01:01:40.420 the penetration of restore and already they're getting results like this so again that's it's

01:01:47.420 just indicative of a very strong direction of travel for restore britain and a weak direction

01:01:52.980 of travel for reform and i think i think he's blown it i just and the thing is well let's just

01:01:57.940 be clear that's terrible for labor too when starmer came in he was on 52 percent in the polls

01:02:03.300 yes that is abominable for labor like it's just to be clear that's if if labor's total market

01:02:11.480 share it caps out at 32.5 percent okay you might be able to form a government but it explains why

01:02:18.280 we're looking at all of these shattered hung parliaments yeah right that's not good and that's

01:02:23.320 again that's just i would consider it two-thirds people i would not consider labor yeah two-thirds

01:02:29.020 people i would not consider reform yeah like okay star moon his dead fish eyes yeah have just

01:02:35.120 this is andy burnham's 20 this is andy yeah well yeah but this is yeah this is andy burnham's

01:02:41.060 labor as well so isn't that interesting and uh as uh they pointed out so restore britain were

01:02:47.080 polling at 10 over 118 constituencies because as we were saying earlier it's about concentration

01:02:51.960 yes right now that is very interesting uh again a huge number and that that lines up with what we

01:02:59.240 were seeing in the by-elections uh what was the the most recent by-election where they got 10

01:03:04.100 percent i can't remember the name of it now was it the manchester one of them but the point is

01:03:09.520 there have been a bunch of recent by-elections yes and like manchester where restore britain

01:03:14.020 have come well above their national polling and okay it's not a win don't get me wrong but it was

01:03:20.000 what is it seven cent in makefield and i think it was nine percent in the manchester mayoral

01:03:26.300 something like that and it's just okay this is that's a chunk and the way it works past the post

01:03:32.540 is is nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing a handful of seats wins hundreds of seats yeah and

01:03:38.540 that's what nigel farage was relying on in 2024 i mean he literally said well this is gonna be our

01:03:43.080 beachhead from which we conquer parliament yeah and and he he was on that knife edge he was on

01:03:47.380 nothing nothing nothing five seats and then he was projected to go to like something like 350 seats

01:03:52.740 oh and then like 400 seats yeah you know like you know the following election yeah but he's he's just

01:03:57.420 managed to sink it through his grasping ways that's what this all comes down to it's the sense

01:04:04.180 of corruption that people have and the sense of unreliability sleazy miscalculations and and i

01:04:11.440 remember when we started this show and and he was absolutely storming ahead in the polls right yeah

01:04:17.160 and and we were showing the constituency maps where it's just all turquoise we're like my god

01:04:21.900 yeah yeah you could see the turquoise glow from mars yeah and and one thing that i said at the

01:04:27.620 time is is internally because obviously we get people from inside these parties from all of them

01:04:32.280 whisper things to us from time to time and and the phrase being used inside reform was we got

01:04:38.080 to carry this Ming vase across

01:04:40.020 the ice rink and we've got to tread

01:04:42.020 carefully and Nigel Farage

01:04:44.140 interpreted that to mean is

01:04:45.780 what we've got to do is

01:04:48.100 basically people are rejecting the

01:04:49.940 Uniparty so we need to carry this Ming

01:04:52.020 vase over to the Uniparty, fill it up

01:04:54.060 with Tories and then

01:04:55.980 presumably that will be how we

01:04:57.860 get across the line. We need to break apart

01:05:00.040 the right wing coalition to beat the

01:05:02.060 Uniparty. It's like no that's wrong

01:05:04.220 and we beat them by hiring them all

01:05:06.320 Yeah, it was...

01:05:07.140 And actually, that MRP poll...

01:05:08.360 But also by salami slicing our own supporters off.

01:05:11.260 Yes, and that.

01:05:12.460 It's like, no, that was silly.

01:05:13.560 Another thing I should have said on the MRP poll is that,

01:05:16.480 and this will make you laugh, right,

01:05:18.280 is that, how was it,

01:05:21.220 Suella Braveman and Robert Jenrick...

01:05:24.540 Will lose to the Conservatives?

01:05:25.880 Yes, lose to the Conservatives.

01:05:28.480 They jumped out of the Conservatives

01:05:30.360 to go to reform to maintain their seat,

01:05:32.060 and now they're going to lose it to their old parties

01:05:33.680 who don't even have the incumbency effect

01:05:36.400 of being an existing MP.

01:05:38.080 Yeah.

01:05:38.700 A series of mistakes have been made.

01:05:41.660 And remember, Nigel Farage,

01:05:42.560 the downswing began by taking in the Tory MPs.

01:05:45.940 Yes.

01:05:46.360 That's where it began.

01:05:47.280 And you probably would have got away

01:05:49.760 with Braverman and Jenrick.

01:05:51.640 Yeah.

01:05:51.920 Because there are...

01:05:53.020 Taking loads of terrible mistakes.

01:05:54.720 I mean, they took that weird vaccine guy.

01:05:57.440 Zahawi.

01:05:57.500 Yes.

01:05:58.760 Yes.

01:05:59.460 Nadine Dorries, Boris Ponson,

01:06:01.800 and various others.

01:06:02.540 and it's just okay you didn't need to do nigel you didn't need to do that it definitely hasn't

01:06:07.620 helped um anyway so here here are um a list of the very good ones from rupert lowe obviously

01:06:13.980 great yarmouth no surprise ashfield which is um is that uh

01:06:20.380 reform jumped from the tories to reform the guy who posts bacon sandwiches on twitter why

01:06:28.760 can't remember his name um lee lee anderson yes right i think that's lee anderson's one okay um

01:06:34.620 but you've got a lot of the ones in the north you know and then you've got a lot of them in

01:06:38.940 the south wolverhampton that's good a quick football fact england has never won a world

01:06:42.800 cup without a wolverhampton player on the squad that is yeah but how many world cups have we ever

01:06:47.720 one one still true i'm sure it's still true anyway plymouth the clacton yeah yeah well there we go

01:06:59.200 yeah yeah there we go clacton plymouth oh that would be funny well that's the thing right that's

01:07:05.940 the thing there's going to be a second by-election in clacton yes because parliament are probably

01:07:11.600 going to call them back and say well that's okay we might have to rally the troops get some people

01:07:15.600 down there well it might actually be worth going and fighting that now oh yeah you know nigel

01:07:19.080 farage has exhausted himself fighting the first one i mean you know we'll get count bin face on

01:07:24.380 maybe um but the point is maybe it's actually worth us going and contesting clangton who knows

01:07:29.800 right but again like mertha tidfil in uh wales that's you know that's probably not familiar

01:07:36.040 with that one it's a it's a welsh constituent my wife used to live near right it it's probably

01:07:41.180 voted Labour forever since democracy was invented well I'm bloody sure that Hull has always voted

01:07:46.660 Labour yeah yeah Wigan I'm looking at this list they're a weird mix aren't they they are a weird

01:07:55.340 mix they're a very weird mix and it's it what's interesting about Restore and Pontypreet wife

01:08:01.580 before me and my wife married she lived there for a bit as well again Labour forever just very

01:08:06.720 standard hartley paul was um oh the disgraced um friend of jeffrey epstein was a was a u.s

01:08:14.080 ambassador um oh um he was controlling the labor party don't get old guys because this is what

01:08:23.540 now what's his bloody name um oh why is it escaping my memory anyway prince of darkness

01:08:30.500 yes mandelson mandelson that was so he he i'm pretty sure he was hartley paul wasn't he

01:08:36.060 i can't remember now actually but um but what a weird mix it's like coastal tory towns and it's

01:08:42.780 bristol northeast hard left towns rural welsh towns makerfield okay that's on there yeah so

01:08:49.020 literally the prime minister's seat yeah um isn't that a really eclectic mix of places across the

01:08:56.020 country so it's not just any one thing and in fact we have a map right so here's a map now

01:09:02.200 obviously 20 to 35 percent the only one that registers there is great yarmouth um but that's

01:09:09.180 very interesting now i kind of notice we're a bit light on the lib dem areas so we need to start

01:09:15.340 thinking about those they're the zero to fives um but that's that's very interesting that the heart

01:09:21.700 of england and wales are just like oh no we need to do something about this like no no things are

01:09:27.420 going to have to go quite right wing before we're satisfied with the situation in this country

01:09:32.700 that's not bad that's not bad at all i mean it's an i mean what you don't want to be is a party

01:09:39.420 that can only win in well i mean it's not like plav kumrai it's not like the snp it's not people

01:09:44.420 who can only win in a particular area this is a i mean it sounds bad to make this comparison but

01:09:50.260 this is like bread going moldy and the spores are popping up across the whole loaf well i guess it

01:09:55.320 is i need a better analogy if i'm ever going to use that again but you see where i'm going with

01:09:59.820 this yeah i like the coastal seaside towns who are getting it as well yeah all of these places

01:10:03.860 are like ah yeah you know what we've had enough of this interesting how the welsh is just like

01:10:08.060 yep got it we we message received loud and clear and of course in the diversified areas those bits

01:10:13.240 that remain english and yeah they get it it's not the inner city it's the bit that has to live

01:10:19.440 around them yeah yeah oh no we're gonna we're gonna need something quite serious about this

01:10:23.880 again the southwest of england where the lib dems all live and come from

01:10:28.560 cotswolds area yeah okay that that's not feeling the pain at the moment so we've

01:10:32.800 got a lot of work a bit like your video about your reminiscences on winchester

01:10:35.620 they're just not feeling the pain they're not don't get it but like i said

01:10:39.220 i was getting recognized a lot so they are paying attention

01:10:41.500 so and i and i said this in the previous chat

01:10:45.080 if anyone could win over the lib dems onto the right

01:10:48.540 it's oh yeah it's either kemi badenock or rupert low

01:10:52.500 it's not nigel farage no no he's he's the thing that basically is keeping them lib dem i i think

01:10:58.180 his peak we we we are past peak reform well past well past and i and what what's worse though is i

01:11:04.860 don't i don't see any method for them to claw it back right the the the stains that have been put

01:11:10.560 upon them are too lasting like nigel would have to have some crazy you know saw of tarsus moment

01:11:18.500 where he's on the road to damascus and gives up all of this money so he's like no i can't be

01:11:23.240 taking this money i give it back i give all this back all right give it to charity is there any

01:11:26.860 speech that nigel farage could give that would make you go yeah actually i trust him now well

01:11:31.460 because just once trust is gone it doesn't and and for nigel farage again 30 years in politics

01:11:37.220 a lifetime of being we know what we're getting exactly you know exactly what you're getting so

01:11:41.640 if you like him you like him if you hate him you hate him and the country has decided on nigel

01:11:45.940 farage character and i find it unlikely that's going to change i mean there is only one scenario

01:11:50.720 that i can think of but it's a bit it's a bit out there well go on labor conservatives and

01:11:55.680 libdem merge and appoint keir starmer as their leader i mean that is pretty i think that's the

01:12:00.960 only scenario i can see which which raj is going to win the next general election at this point

01:12:05.400 i don't see it i don't see any any way out for farage but this does mean there's fertile ground

01:12:12.180 for restore britain which of course if you're wondering we are supporters of uh so anyway i

01:12:16.640 guess we'll leave that there but like i said and we've said this prior i think it's i think it's

01:12:21.500 bad for reform and i think we are on a ticking clock until i'm saying nigel fray to retires

01:12:28.260 it's only marriage i mean let's compress this entire episode into two very simple points

01:12:32.380 one burnham's not going to call a general election so therefore we have three years

01:12:37.260 and the second part of the podcast

01:12:40.320 is that everything is going in the right direction

01:12:42.500 Oh yeah, for us anyway

01:12:44.260 Yeah

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - September 30, 2026

Reform Is Going Down

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