The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Death of the Tory Longhouse

00:00:00.000 Hi folks, welcome back to another one of these political chats that Dan and I have been having.

00:00:04.740 I think it's worth talking about what Nigel Farage is describing as the end of the Conservatives

00:00:10.140 as a national party. Because actually, I think it might be on the horizon.

00:00:14.440 You love to see it.

00:00:15.280 I do love to see it. We were leading the Zero Seeds campaign.

00:00:18.920 The concern is, though, they're not a foe that can be defeated. This is Terminator 1000.

00:00:25.660 You know, it will split and it will reform. And it will come back looking like something else.

00:00:31.460 Yeah, it'll come back with a turquoise rosette.

00:00:33.700 Yes.

00:00:34.340 Which apparently, I mean, it looks, we'll get into it in detail, it looks like it's happening.

00:00:39.520 But I've been saying for a while now that I think this is just the last Labour government

00:00:44.580 that we're ever going to see. And that means essentially the death of the 20th century consensus.

00:00:49.420 So, all's to play for. And as we come to the end of this podcast, you'll see exactly

00:00:56.720 what I mean when I say all's to play for. Because there is no clear winner or frontrunner

00:01:00.920 from any of this.

00:01:01.660 Polls are still interesting, are they?

00:01:02.920 They're very interesting, actually.

00:01:04.320 Okay.

00:01:04.500 It's actually quite exciting.

00:01:05.880 But before we go on, Islander 5 is still on sale, but won't be for much longer.

00:01:10.320 It is honestly the most, I'm unbelievably proud of Islander.

00:01:14.040 He's a very good addition, this one.

00:01:15.900 So superb. They're all superb, though.

00:01:17.720 But anyway, amazing authors, beautiful piece. It's about heroism and modernity and how modern

00:01:24.460 politics is trying to kill the hero. But I think, as we can see from Trumpian escapades

00:01:30.980 recently, whether you agree with them or not, there's a heroic will in there still.

00:01:34.900 Heroes always win in the end.

00:01:36.420 Exactly. So anyway, let's begin with people who aren't heroes. Tim Stanley and the weird

00:01:41.500 conservatives. Mummy is moving to where the votes are. This is not the only article

00:01:46.020 that Tim Stanley has used the term mummy for Kemi Badenock, because there is a really

00:01:51.360 weird aspect to the sort of traditional conservatives, you know, the kinds I'm talking about.

00:01:59.360 I mean, if you are sufficiently posh, it's acceptable to call your mother mummy.

00:02:04.700 If you went to a fee-paying school that's at least like 13, 14 grand a term, you can get

00:02:12.180 away with calling your mother mummy. But it gets really weird when you're applying it to

00:02:16.320 a politician.

00:02:17.340 Yeah, it's really weird and really cringy, because what it implies is these guys have

00:02:23.760 a weird relationship with their mums. And they probably called mummy their nurses or something

00:02:30.040 like that.

00:02:30.860 Yeah.

00:02:31.100 The sort of Churchill was more attached to his letters.

00:02:32.840 That sort of level, yes.

00:02:34.100 You know, it's that kind of old style of aristocratic.

00:02:37.340 Beaten up Land Rover, massive country estate, that kind of vibe.

00:02:40.740 Yeah.

00:02:41.080 Yeah, but also sort of like Victorian era, you know, that is sort of a Victorian hangover

00:02:47.720 where they have like the live-in nanny, like Jacob B. Smallcats, right?

00:02:50.420 Yes.

00:02:50.840 You know, he probably calls his nanny mummy, right?

00:02:53.600 I think he might do, actually.

00:02:54.480 And he probably calls his mother, mother, rather than mum.

00:02:57.980 Yes, that's true.

00:02:58.720 Something like that, right? So there's a weird relationship these guys have with women who

00:03:03.460 are in a matronly role, but are not their mothers. Whereas for me, I just call my mum mum.

00:03:07.960 You know, she's been my mum my whole life, and I've got a...

00:03:10.240 What I think is a really normal relationship with my mum, really good relationship, love

00:03:13.560 my mum. But the conservative men of this stripe, this aristocratic stripe, seem to form attachments

00:03:21.880 with authoritative women who are not their mothers, in lieu of having a good relationship

00:03:28.360 with their mothers.

00:03:29.020 Yes, I wonder if that's...

00:03:29.840 Most relationship.

00:03:30.220 I wonder if it's partly that, but it's also the sort of the legacy Thatcher fetish thing

00:03:36.800 I've got going on.

00:03:37.700 Yeah, I mean, this is what Benedict here points out. We're now going to have to sit through

00:03:41.540 the weird Tory yearning for Thatcher, which means people suggesting Katie Lam as leader

00:03:45.980 because she has the same hair and speaks in complete sentences.

00:03:48.760 I mean, that sounds ridiculous on the face of it.

00:03:50.940 No, it doesn't.

00:03:51.460 Because that is actually how the Tories operate.

00:03:54.340 Yeah, it's weird.

00:03:55.840 Everything is about trying to get back to the 1983 election.

00:03:58.360 Yes, where mummy was in charge and beating up the unions and the RGs and crushing the

00:04:07.260 left and all this sort of stuff. It's like, yeah, but why can't a man do it? Where's your

00:04:11.140 heroic will? It's like, no, I need mummy to do it. And so, as you pointed out, there are

00:04:15.040 lots of people who are posting images like this. Conservative activists who desperately want

00:04:21.240 a Yoruba mammy to be the surrogate mother figure who solves all their problems.

00:04:26.200 Yeah, I mean, I saw this the other week and pointed it out to you and I thought, oh, that's

00:04:30.660 an interesting sort of, you know, relic. But then I've basically seen like a hundred of

00:04:37.980 these pop up in my timeline. Tories are just going around generating exactly this kind of

00:04:43.420 thing on AI all day long and getting very excited about it.

00:04:46.300 If you have a weird relationship with your mother, the Conservative Party is the party

00:04:51.000 for you. Also, if you're gay.

00:04:54.100 Oh, right.

00:04:54.560 The Conservatives, not a secret, the Conservatives are a much more gay party than the Labour Party

00:05:01.320 or the Liberal Democrats.

00:05:02.200 Can we quantify that? I mean, anecdotally, I know this is definitely true.

00:05:05.680 I don't have the number. Oh, no, we can actually. Yeah, sorry. No, I remember. I looked this

00:05:09.620 up. So, say, the 2019 election, there were 43, I think it was, MPs who are

00:05:16.280 openly gay and half of those were Conservatives.

00:05:20.480 Yes.

00:05:21.160 It's, you know, they select for this, right?

00:05:24.160 I can believe in my very brief time, because I did my work experience when I was 16 at Conservative

00:05:30.980 Central Office. And one of the things I was involved in then is somebody had been blackmailing

00:05:37.100 the party with, here's a list of all your closeted gay MPs. Because it was a bit different back

00:05:44.420 then. We didn't like the fruits back then. And he sent this in and they said, right, try

00:05:50.560 and figure out who this guy is so we can have a word with him. And there was all sorts of

00:05:53.740 names on there. William Haye was at the top of the list, but I don't think he's ever officially

00:05:57.460 been declared there. I mean, he's got a wife and everything, but, you know.

00:06:00.120 I imagine a lot of them do. Yes. But the point is, this is a long-running known property

00:06:08.320 of the Conservative Party. Yes.

00:06:10.040 Is that there are lots of members of it who are gay. And now, I'm not making a judgment,

00:06:14.160 you know, it's fine, it's, you know, there are gay people. But why aren't they in the Labour

00:06:20.060 Party, which is an actively campaigning party for homosexual rights? Like, this wasn't an invention

00:06:27.120 of the Conservatives. This is just the Conservatives being weak on every subject.

00:06:30.360 I mean, rhetorically, Labour are that.

00:06:32.800 They don't inflect it. No.

00:06:35.220 Like, actually, a lot of the Labour frontbench are just, like, straight white men or women.

00:06:38.480 Yes. You know, like, and the Liberal Democrats are even more just straight white English

00:06:42.680 people.

00:06:44.860 They're actually English as well. Not paper English, but actually English.

00:06:48.600 Exactly. But the Conservatives are what the left claims to be. They actually are that

00:06:54.200 thing. Yeah, no, we've got loads of foreigners, we've got loads of gays, very few

00:06:57.100 straight white men. And the ones that we have, have a weird relationship with their

00:07:00.240 mums. So trust us, we are the weirdos, and we're going to cosplay as, you know, respectable

00:07:05.700 family men.

00:07:06.600 I mean, it's a big talking point for them. I mean, you know, first Jewish Prime Minister,

00:07:11.400 I mean, that was a while back now.

00:07:13.320 First female Prime Minister.

00:07:14.000 First female, first...

00:07:15.740 Indian.

00:07:16.280 Indian, yeah.

00:07:17.040 Yeah, everything the Labour Party...

00:07:18.280 They love their being, they love their sort of flagpole diversity moments.

00:07:23.680 Yeah. I mean, they're everything that the Labour Party has made of them. Everything

00:07:27.900 the Labour Party argues for, the Conservatives do.

00:07:31.040 Yes.

00:07:31.440 That's the difference. Like, the Labour Party is like the moral innovator in British politics,

00:07:37.900 but the Conservatives are the Labour Party's executor. They're like, yeah, okay, we'll do

00:07:41.920 that. Yeah, we'll do that. Yeah, we'll have, you know, all these women, we'll have all

00:07:45.020 these foreigners, and, you know, we have gay rights, we have everything.

00:07:47.960 That is the one thing they're Conservative for, everything Labour has ever achieved.

00:07:53.700 Yeah.

00:07:53.880 That's what they... I mean, everything from, in the post-war period, the NHS. Why did

00:07:58.960 the first Conservative government not scrap that? Well, because all they have ever done

00:08:02.520 is conserved whatever the Labour Party have done.

00:08:05.420 The British Nationality Act. Like, I mean, we could list basically...

00:08:10.760 Hundreds of examples, yes.

00:08:12.000 Everything from the Blairite era. Like, there are so many examples. But that's the point,

00:08:17.180 isn't it? As you say. We'll skip over the list, trust bit. So, we'll get to Kenny Badenock

00:08:21.760 the other day, sacking Robert Jemmerich, because they had found evidence that Jemmerich was looking

00:08:28.260 to defect. Now, I, at first, thought, well, this is all pretty circumstantial. You know,

00:08:33.260 like, we spotted Jemmerich and Farage having dinner. Conversations were leaked. He allegedly

00:08:37.780 left a copy of his near-final resignation speech lying around. It's like, well, he could have been...

00:08:41.700 That's a bit I don't believe. Yeah, I don't either. I mean...

00:08:43.740 I think what happened is one of his aides flipped because he wants to stay in the Tories.

00:08:49.160 Quite possibly. Who knows? And so, she booted him out with this. Now, this looks like a HR

00:08:57.520 lady that is, via Zoom, giving me a dressing down because I didn't invite the women to a

00:09:05.280 lad's night out or something. We have irrefutable evidence that Robert made one of our plus-size

00:09:10.820 colleagues feel uncomfortable in a Zoom call, and he's now going to get a 45-minute lecture

00:09:15.360 with a blurred background and a shitty mic before he gets his dismissal.

00:09:19.160 Exactly. That is... And, you know, you're on warning two now, Robert. So, you know...

00:09:24.860 You already complimented some young lass's hair a week ago, and you're on thin ice.

00:09:29.940 Exactly. Exactly. Now, I don't doubt that the Tim Stanleys of the party were very thrilled

00:09:36.540 by this. I doubt they were... Oh, God. Mummy is back. Mummy is putting her foot down. God,

00:09:42.620 I love when Mummy shows her strength.

00:09:45.180 She's burning the heretic. Unfortunately, she's not in the strongest position to do that.

00:09:50.120 No. And also, again, like, there's a distinct aspect of long-housing about this.

00:09:58.400 Yes.

00:09:58.960 Okay, if you want your mammy long-housing you in your party, that's great, but actually

00:10:04.540 most of the country doesn't want this.

00:10:06.300 Yes. The upper-crust stories have got to remember that they look at this getting very excited,

00:10:12.200 but most people are not going to look at this in the same lens at all. They're just going

00:10:16.220 to think, what?

00:10:16.880 Why am I being berated by this immigrant woman?

00:10:20.140 Yes.

00:10:20.780 Why has she got this haughty attitude? Why, you know, this might, like you say, this might

00:10:25.940 work for those Tories, but it doesn't work for most people. And so, let's, I mean, people

00:10:32.060 were like, oh, well, you know, is Jenrick skipping because he's going to lose? And it's

00:10:36.780 like, probably not, to be honest. Probably not. Jenrick was probably going to keep his

00:10:40.420 seat as a Conservative. As you can see, he'd managed to weather reform quite well in the

00:10:46.420 previous 2024 election, and the prediction was that he'd keep it for the next one. And

00:10:51.200 he is the only, as far as I'm aware, Conservative constituency that had gained Conservative councillors

00:10:58.140 in the by-election.

00:10:58.980 Yeah. I mean, it's only a 3,500 majority, but in this day and age, I mean, it used to be

00:11:03.460 the case, anything less than 12,000 was marginal. But in the modern era, 3,500 is actually a pretty

00:11:09.380 solid lead. And you've got to remember that the Labour are going to collapse, and yes, reform

00:11:13.800 would be a lot stronger. But that looks like a seat that he could quite credibly win.

00:11:17.860 Exactly. Like, if you're Jenrick, and you're thinking, I'm going to go for the leadership,

00:11:21.640 you can contest that, and you can win it.

00:11:23.240 Yeah, and you've got the name recognition, whereas whoever they put up from reform probably

00:11:26.140 won't be a paper candidate.

00:11:27.960 Yeah.

00:11:28.620 So he could have stuck it out, waited for the, you know, Kemi to implode, and taken the

00:11:35.400 leadership. And the other thing is, I'm not necessarily convinced that he was on the

00:11:39.280 verge of jumping, because loads of people, loads of Tory MPs will have had a conversation

00:11:44.160 with Nigel Farage, whether that means they're actually going to do it, but they're testing

00:11:48.580 the waters and basically saying, look, can I get a plum job if I come over?

00:11:51.920 Yes, and that's basically what Farage said. I mean, just to hammer on his constituency

00:11:55.880 a bit, if I can scroll right to the bottom where they get to ethnicity, ethnic groups

00:12:00.820 in his constituency, it's 96.3% white, which means English.

00:12:07.200 Oh, right, where is that? Can I move there? Actually, Winchester's already that, but fine.

00:12:11.060 Yeah, yeah, New York and Sherwood. So he's living in a little English ethnostate, hasn't

00:12:16.080 been diversified yet. They're obviously broadly conservative, and he had been doing good work

00:12:23.220 from the right in his activism and campaigning. So, like you say, I think that's a completely

00:12:29.120 winnable seat for Jenrick. Well, you say he's doing good work. He is the entire Tory red

00:12:34.180 meat department. He is. I mean, apart from him, it's what? Post-Blairite managerialists.

00:12:41.960 Yeah, or at least he was the entire Tory red meat department. And so there's no reason to

00:12:46.420 think that Jenrick was about. He's jumping ship because he thinks he's going to lose

00:12:49.500 a seat, actually. There's no reason to think that at all. And like you say, there were

00:12:55.700 belief among Tory MPs that he wasn't going to defect. There's no particular reason to

00:13:00.460 think that he was.

00:13:01.340 That's my reading of it. I think that he did have the conversations with Farage, as a whole

00:13:07.540 bunch of Tories will be doing at the moment. And he's sniffing the wind. And I bet Farage

00:13:12.660 gets this all the time.

00:13:14.160 Yeah. And Farage actually even said this in the press conference. He said, I thought

00:13:19.340 that maybe a dozen people were on the verge of going and it never went through.

00:13:24.040 Yeah.

00:13:24.560 It's just politicians doing what they do.

00:13:26.160 And not just that. It's, you know, everyone is thinking that the election is another three

00:13:30.100 years out. So he might be just putting a couple of foundations down and say, I might

00:13:34.860 build on that later. You know, I've had the conversations. Nigel is amenable to me coming

00:13:38.820 over. I might do. I might not. Who knows? You know, I'll get the things prepared just

00:13:43.140 in case. And, you know, we'll see which way the wind blows because, you know, the polls

00:13:47.960 have been all over the place. So in two years time, maybe it is that actually conservatives

00:13:53.260 are way above because of Jemmerich's constant, relentless right-wing act.

00:13:56.700 Well, because Kimmy got kicked out and he's running it.

00:13:58.980 Could be anything, right? So I think he was just hedging his bets. And in fact, unless he

00:14:04.460 signed it and sealed it with his own blood, just because a bit of paper with his name

00:14:07.680 and doesn't mean it's real, says one MP ally. And I think they genuinely didn't see this

00:14:12.380 coming. I think basically Kimmy has kind of acted a bit spontaneously with maybe a lack

00:14:17.700 of self-control here.

00:14:19.280 Well, I mean, it's good for her because she removes basically her only viable rival.

00:14:25.980 It's bad for her that the only reason people were continuing with the toys, a lot of them,

00:14:32.180 is because they thought they were going to get Jemmerich sooner rather than later.

00:14:34.760 Yes.

00:14:35.100 So, yeah, I mean, bold for her, but you now get to be the captain of the Titanic. Congratulations.

00:14:41.760 Yeah. And I do think there's a bit of a lack of impulse control here because, you know,

00:14:45.860 seeing this, it doesn't look like she had reached out to or interrogated Jemmerich in

00:14:51.800 any of this. It looks like she'd made an executive decision.

00:14:53.820 You're not saying that she's a low-time preference individual?

00:14:56.100 Well, I mean, anyway.

00:14:57.920 Maybe an element of that.

00:14:58.880 Yeah. So, as you pointed out, Alex speaks to many of the MPs and a lot of them were clinging

00:15:05.240 on to Jemmerich becoming the leader, right? Because she's not very popular. She's not

00:15:09.960 doing a very good job.

00:15:10.940 Yep.

00:15:11.060 It seems that someone might, it seems the country might actually prefer not a surrogate

00:15:17.980 mother figure, but a leader.

00:15:20.140 Yes.

00:15:20.520 Who actually wants to do something. And, you know, Jemmerich, he's got lots of faults.

00:15:24.620 I mean, just to be perfectly blunt, the top issue is immigration. And the Tories have picked

00:15:28.600 a first-generation immigrant to lead their party.

00:15:30.400 And Jemmerich is hard anti-immigration.

00:15:32.760 Yes.

00:15:33.200 Jemmerich sounds like Rupert Lowe on immigration.

00:15:35.480 Yes.

00:15:36.000 And he was immigration minister during the whole Boris Waste.

00:15:39.780 Yes.

00:15:40.340 So that does somewhat mitigate against him being based.

00:15:43.720 It does. But I think that's one of the things that's actually come out in, I think that's

00:15:48.840 what's driven him to be such a right-wing outrider on the subject. Because he's consciously

00:15:54.580 occupying the very right-wing space.

00:15:56.800 He can at least make the claim, well, look, I did resign. I walked away from this.

00:16:01.060 And he has made that claim.

00:16:02.940 Kemi has resigned when he was immigration minister under Boris.

00:16:06.680 And he's come out and explained, I didn't agree with any of this.

00:16:10.400 And Kemi has basically primed him to have this lovely narrative where he can say, look,

00:16:15.040 I had to resign. I've been with this party since I was 16. So there was a lot of momentum

00:16:18.960 there. But, you know, I had to resign. And honestly, I couldn't stand the Tories any longer.

00:16:23.380 And I'm really contrite for my mistakes. And I think it's going to hold that line.

00:16:27.240 It's incredible.

00:16:28.320 It dovetails with what Suella Braveman said at NatCon in 2024, where she said, look,

00:16:32.800 I wanted, I knew all the laws. I was a lawyer. So I knew the laws that were in place. And

00:16:37.640 I went to Rishi Sunak and said, I can't get rid of, I can't stop immigration. I can't get

00:16:41.200 rid of any of the illegals until these laws are repealed. Let me do it. And Sunak apparently

00:16:45.620 said no. And so she, like the NatCon thing, you could tell that she was just kind of,

00:16:50.300 right, I'm just going to go for it. And there was a kind of liberation in her saying this.

00:16:53.880 So, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying they're faultless or anything like that. But the point

00:16:56.880 is, it reveals that there was a pressure within the party and in the government to essentially

00:17:02.540 maintain the status quo. And they weren't happy with it. Like they were speaking out about

00:17:06.560 it before it was popular to do so. Um, so they, they, there is, there are some legs

00:17:11.860 to this narrative, whether you, you know, whether they've been contrite enough over the

00:17:17.360 damage that they've done or not, different question. So anyway, um, as people point out,

00:17:22.760 it's like, it didn't really seem like Reform or Jemric knew this was coming. Uh, she does

00:17:26.260 seem to have got the drop on them. And obviously you've got Fraser Nelson, who's just wrong on

00:17:31.520 everything. It's like, well, hang on a second. How do we know that Jemric will help Reform's

00:17:35.380 fortunes? They didn't like Zahawi. It's like, okay, yeah, brilliant. Uh, but anyway,

00:17:39.420 so the, the sort of, there's some factor that I can think of. Yeah, I know. Right. So

00:17:43.760 the, the, the mammy appreciators don't agree with this obviously, but Farage, uh, has done

00:17:49.660 a few press conferences on this now. And he, in this one, he said, well, look, yeah, I just,

00:17:53.980 I've spoken to a number of senior conservatives. We've had conversations and it's basically

00:18:01.080 nothing was signed. You know, I absolutely believe that. Is this the one

00:18:05.040 before, so this is after Jemric has been sacked by Kemi, but before he joined Reform?

00:18:09.980 Correct. This was the one in the morning, 11 o'clock in the morning, and he did another

00:18:14.740 press conference at 4.30. Now that press conference at 4.30 was to do with something else, but the

00:18:20.680 Jemric news just overrid it completely. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, it's just, it was very

00:18:28.140 clear that neither Farage nor Jemric had been planning for this to happen. Kemi impulsively

00:18:33.980 acted and forced them to make a choice. And Farage was like, yeah, why not? Jemric's clearly

00:18:40.780 like, yeah, okay, why not? And now this has kind of stolen any thunder from Kemi. Because

00:18:46.520 rather than Kemi looking strong, it looks like she's kind of just accepted and capitulated

00:18:51.580 that she wasn't. Yeah. I mean, if you're looking at it in terms of strength, I mean, is Nigel

00:18:57.380 Farage stronger? Yes. Because he's got the heir apparent, he's got the Prince from over

00:19:01.420 the water of the Tory party. Is Jemric stronger? Almost certainly because this has played out

00:19:05.900 pretty much perfectly for him. He now gets to say, I resigned from the Boris Wave government

00:19:09.900 and I didn't, I'm not a traitor to the Tory party. They kicked me out. Yep. Um, and he gets to-

00:19:15.720 They betrayed the country. Yep. I pointed that out, then they ejected me. And they booted me

00:19:19.300 forward. I've been raising this in the shadow cabinet and they couldn't take it. So they chucked

00:19:23.280 me out. And he gets to plausibly spin his whole I'm contrite for the Boris Wave kind of thing coming

00:19:28.920 in. Um, on the question of whether Kemi is stronger, um, I think Kemi herself is stronger

00:19:36.640 because she loses a rival. The unfortunate thing is the Tory party is considerably weaker.

00:19:42.940 Correct. And we'll, we'll come to that at the end, actually, because, uh, it's kind of weird. But

00:19:47.820 anyway, so, um, I mean, people are like, oh, look, you've, you've always, you know, this was from 2025,

00:19:52.400 only August, right? So you can tell this, this isn't something they've been planning for a long time,

00:19:56.860 right? This, this was what, you know, six months ago. Right. You know, that they, that he's quoting

00:20:03.000 Jemrick, uh, from 2022. So who's quoting him? Farage. Or Farage. So it's not like they've been

00:20:08.840 in cahoots. Jemrick's always a fraud. I've always thought so. Well, if, if they have been having dinner

00:20:14.660 and having conversations, they haven't been doing that for more than six months. Exactly. Right. They

00:20:19.820 haven't been doing it for long. And so it looks like that Kemi, instead of taking any kind of,

00:20:25.580 um, uh, uh, action that would have staunched the wound and quietened the doubts, you know,

00:20:34.080 any, uh, sort of medical action to save the party. She instead is like, no, we can't save the limb,

00:20:39.120 just cut it off. And it's like, okay, but why didn't you have dinner with Jemrick? Why weren't

00:20:43.140 you charming him? Why weren't you being like, right, Robert, what are your ideas? You know,

00:20:47.080 how can we make the Tory party a really, a real right wing, aggressive party that can outflank

00:20:51.900 Farage, get all the populists on board and save the country in the way that you think?

00:20:56.720 I mean, this is one of those dynamics in any alien organization is if, if you're, I don't

00:21:01.820 know, the God Emperor or Starlink or, you know, an Elon Musk or me, you get to choose whoever

00:21:06.580 you want to come and work for you and they will beat up after your door. In most organizations,

00:21:11.500 especially ones that are undergoing stress, you have to work with what you've actually

00:21:14.840 got. And yes, your people might not be the perfect people that you would ideally choose,

00:21:18.860 but you work with what you've got and you make the best of it. And she's certainly in

00:21:23.420 that second situation.

00:21:24.560 Oh yeah.

00:21:25.280 And, and yeah, I mean, and, and party management is, is, is enough about retaining your top talent.

00:21:31.020 And she should have been doing essentially what Farage has just done, which is, okay,

00:21:35.440 this is a very ambitious guy. Instead of making a rival of him, you should make an ally of him.

00:21:41.400 So he bolsters you because it shows that the people around you and who support you are capable,

00:21:47.120 competent and heading in the direction that you're pointing everyone to go in. Right.

00:21:51.520 So, you know, that's leading instead. She's like, Oh God, I'm going to silo him. I'm Oh God,

00:21:55.980 he's posting more stuff on social media. That's not good. Oh, he's had a conversation

00:21:59.440 with Nigel Farage right out. Right. It just looks weak.

00:22:01.680 Cause I mean, he, he, he came a very close second in the leadership campaign and she gave

00:22:05.340 him like shadow justice or whatever it was.

00:22:07.500 Yeah. Yeah. Why is that?

00:22:09.680 Yeah. That was, that was a mistake. It should have been, it should have been shadow

00:22:12.380 chancellor from the get go.

00:22:13.900 Deputy prime minister.

00:22:14.680 Well, yeah, you know, something, something, deputy shadow prime minister.

00:22:17.660 Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. But Alina promised him that position, you know, keep him on side

00:22:20.660 and whatnot. But instead, no, now she's lost one of the few valuable Tories that there are left.

00:22:28.880 Anyway. So Jemric has this press conference and honestly, it was quite good. You know, he's

00:22:35.180 like, I resigned on principle, which is a plural, as you said, the Tories, he said it to the Tories

00:22:40.280 over and over that he wasn't happy with the way things going. They didn't care. So he is now

00:22:44.100 putting country over ambition, plausibly saying, look, I know I can't become the leader of

00:22:48.160 reform. That's Nigel Farage.

00:22:49.740 Yes.

00:22:50.080 Zia Yusuf, who both personally own the party. There's no democratic mechanism within the

00:22:54.420 party. So I couldn't possibly oust Nigel Farage. And if Farage...

00:22:57.520 We didn't say that bit.

00:22:58.400 No, but this is all implied, right?

00:22:59.880 Yes.

00:23:00.080 I can't possibly ousting Nigel Farage. And if something were to happen to Farage, Zia Yusuf

00:23:04.740 takes over. And so I won't, you know, what he's saying with this, I put country over ambition

00:23:08.960 is, I accept I'll never become the leader of that, whereas I could quite easily. I was

00:23:12.860 the heir apparent of the Conservatives. But I'm not going to go for that. I think that

00:23:16.600 actually Farage is the guy who's going to win.

00:23:18.440 Well, I mean, for the number two spot in reform, I mean, what's he up against? Zia Yusuf?

00:23:23.360 Yeah.

00:23:24.040 I mean, that's not going to fly in reform. Richard Bloody Tice? No, I think not.

00:23:29.740 No. And the question is, how long does this alliance last, right? Yes.

00:23:35.100 Farage felt threatened by Rupert Lowe, just contradicting him in public.

00:23:38.840 Well, I mean, the very same press conference. I mean, you mentioned that he said, you know,

00:23:42.800 Nigel is the leader. He said that about five or six times, because he understands how brittle

00:23:47.880 Farage is. So it's like every second sentence was, and of course, Nigel is the leader.

00:23:53.360 Nigel's the man. Just letting you know, boss, because you're incredibly fragile.

00:23:57.840 The thing is, Rupert Lowe wasn't entirely dissimilar. He wasn't like, I need to replace

00:24:01.420 Nigel Farage or anything like that.

00:24:02.720 No.

00:24:03.220 He just didn't approve of the way that things are being done. But anyway, so Farage says

00:24:09.060 that this will bring a lot more people to the party, and that Jenrick and I are on the

00:24:12.160 same page on everything, which is remarkable, because Jenrick's pretty far right, actually.

00:24:17.000 Well, isn't a Farage quote that Jenrick is well to the right of me?

00:24:22.060 I think there is, yeah.

00:24:23.960 It was something like, at the next election, Robert Jenrick will be substantially to my

00:24:29.100 right on something.

00:24:30.340 That's true. That was about six months ago or something, incidentally.

00:24:33.020 Yes. And if there's one thing that Farage cannot tolerate, I mean, this is what me and

00:24:37.320 Beau got kicked out for. It was for being five inches to the right of Farage five minutes

00:24:41.460 before he was.

00:24:42.400 Correct.

00:24:42.920 And that is enough. And with that, well, that's how Rupert went.

00:24:46.340 Yep.

00:24:46.800 Five inches to the right, five minutes early.

00:24:48.280 And so, yeah, that's literally it. And like I've discussed before, Farage is always on

00:24:52.500 the, he's always behind the crest of every wave, right? You know, he waits for others

00:24:56.440 to take the slings and arrows.

00:24:57.820 He is the general melchit of leading. You know, he follows with his drinks cabinet while

00:25:02.420 the boys are at the front line.

00:25:03.540 Yeah, that's exactly it. Anyway, so, you know, Connor here thinks that Jenrick just killed

00:25:09.740 the Conservative Party. And honestly, I find it hard to disagree. The decline is terminal,

00:25:14.900 the post-election merger has been blocked, no cope can save them. Because, of course,

00:25:18.940 at this point, why would reform want to have a deal with the Conservatives when they can

00:25:23.240 just take it?

00:25:23.640 Oh, yeah. What's the point?

00:25:25.120 They've taken loads.

00:25:27.180 And they can just poach the best one or two. But, I mean, on that, on killing the Conservative

00:25:31.980 Party, I mean, obviously this is a topic that we covered on Lotus Years a whole bunch of

00:25:36.280 times. Every single time we try to design a scenario by which the Tories make a comeback,

00:25:42.680 it's always, and then Jenrick takes over as step one, and then blum, blum, blum, blum,

00:25:48.620 blum. Well, step one. The foundation stone of all of those scenarios has just been knocked

00:25:53.320 out.

00:25:53.940 Yeah, the theories always, you know, the wargaming...

00:25:58.140 Yeah, that was a given.

00:25:59.300 Yeah, Jenrick takes over and basically embraces the right. Because that's what people want.

00:26:04.240 All of the polling shows that the public are basically very right-wing on almost every

00:26:08.660 issue apart from the economy. And even then, you can make a kind of paternalistic,

00:26:12.660 conservative argument for a welfare state.

00:26:15.340 And Jenrick is a millennial, and he's online, and he's on the right, so he kind of intuitively

00:26:21.460 gets a lot of this stuff.

00:26:22.800 Do you not remember, like, a year ago or something, that he posted a picture of himself with Tom

00:26:26.720 Skinner and stuff like this?

00:26:27.960 Oh, right, okay.

00:26:28.420 He's hanging out with Tom Skinner. He spoke at the Now in England conference.

00:26:31.480 Like, Jenrick has been courting the online right as a source of ideas and messaging to

00:26:38.300 the general public. And it's been working. Like, Jenrick's had a bunch of viral videos.

00:26:41.720 And it's a rich vein to mine. The online right has a lot of talent, a lot of deep thought.

00:26:46.760 They know how to structure their arguments because they've been censored for 20-plus

00:26:50.260 years. They know exactly how to do this. And it's always been a frustration of the

00:26:54.740 online right. Farage basically just sees them as enemies, to be crushed.

00:26:59.420 He won't listen.

00:27:00.260 Yeah. But he's using it. Jenrick uses it.

00:27:02.680 Yes. And the thing is, the online right basically is a reflection of the genuine feeling of the

00:27:07.600 country. Like, the majority of people in the country are the online right. They're just

00:27:11.520 not online, right? They don't want immigration. They don't want, you know, massive welfare state.

00:27:17.100 It's just the traditional...

00:27:18.360 Oh, I don't get to test this often. But, I mean, occasionally you'll be in a taxi.

00:27:22.120 Yeah. Or in a parking lot.

00:27:23.040 They sound like the online right.

00:27:23.880 If you ever just ask somebody about what's going on, don't lead them. They don't know

00:27:29.360 who you are. Just ask them what's going on. You'll immediately hear our talking points.

00:27:33.780 I get this all the time when I go to London. The guys don't know who I am, but they'll

00:27:37.980 just be like, oh, God, I hate Starmer. Or I'm not happy with this. And then they'll just

00:27:43.100 start coming out with, oh, there's too much immigration and stuff like this. It's all the

00:27:46.720 online right talking points, because we are just reflective of the same thing. So, anyway,

00:27:50.360 Jemric comes out swinging. And, again, like with Sweller, he seems kind of liberated, to

00:27:54.880 be honest. He can come out and just start hammering the Tories for the state of affairs.

00:27:59.620 And Jemric, I think, had a lot of sway on the Tory right. And so, I think this is behind

00:28:03.900 the recent spate of defections that Nigel is now taking in. This is Andrew Rosendale.

00:28:10.340 No one had ever heard of him. I kind of remember where he's from, actually.

00:28:13.660 Well, did he flip after Jemric?

00:28:18.420 Yep, just after Jemric.

00:28:19.460 And he's an MP?

00:28:20.200 He's an MP.

00:28:21.080 Oh, right. So, they've got another MP.

00:28:22.980 For somewhere that nobody's heard of.

00:28:24.840 Right, okay.

00:28:26.240 He came out and was like, well, I'm not happy about the Chagos Islands, or something like

00:28:31.340 that. He's not like a based patriot, but he sees the way the wind is blowing. But then

00:28:38.960 more defections are coming. So, five sitting MPs are in formal discussions with Farage

00:28:44.280 about defecting, including Sweller-Bravenman, whose husband is a member of reform already.

00:28:49.320 Oh, right.

00:28:50.500 Okay.

00:28:50.920 Husband, Rail-Bravenman.

00:28:52.380 Yeah, and an outspoken activist.

00:28:55.020 Yeah, and her rhetoric just fits perfectly.

00:28:57.500 Yeah, of course.

00:28:57.880 And all of that.

00:28:58.420 That's where she's going to go.

00:28:59.940 So, one of the clever things that Farage did do was set that time limit.

00:29:05.140 Yeah, so he said, and no more...

00:29:07.180 Oh, the May elections.

00:29:08.020 Yeah, after May the 7th.

00:29:09.460 Yeah.

00:29:09.680 I mean, that's quite a long way in the future, frankly. I would have put a more stringent

00:29:13.620 time limit on it.

00:29:14.420 Well, it's a nice concrete one, the May elections. But, I mean, that really sort of sets it to,

00:29:19.880 you know, if you're going to do this, you have to... And that focuses minds. And the reason

00:29:23.900 it's clever is because then it will focus minds. It will get people to go over.

00:29:28.240 However, we've already had two, as we talked about here, potentially five more. And at

00:29:33.180 that point, it just becomes a cascade. And then he's captured the narrative, and then

00:29:37.620 that sets him up for the next election.

00:29:39.580 That is exactly true, as the Conservative Party. Because a lot of people are pointing

00:29:44.340 out, well, hang on a second. You know, AI-generated images are actually useful for politics.

00:29:52.460 It's clear that Nigel Farage is just reassembling the T-1000.

00:29:56.380 Yes.

00:29:56.820 And he's reassembling the T-1000 from the people who did the damage.

00:30:02.440 I've got some thoughts on party alignment, but I'll save that for a moment and then come

00:30:07.440 back to it. But it does fit with this.

00:30:09.200 Yeah. And it's very difficult for Farage to deny that. Like we talked about in the last

00:30:13.180 one, the number of Tory MPs in reform outnumbers, or ex-Tory MPs, outnumbers the number of reform

00:30:23.800 MPs by a long way. Right. And yeah. As far as I can tell, only two of the...

00:30:27.620 Danny Kruger, Lee Anderson...

00:30:29.420 Farage himself, Tice himself...

00:30:33.820 Oh, if you're counting just membership.

00:30:35.580 Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. And then...

00:30:36.820 Well, pretty much all of them then.

00:30:37.940 Well, exactly. Right. And there were only two. We covered it in the last one. So, like,

00:30:41.980 it's very difficult for Nigel to deny this angle of attack. It's like, look, you're just

00:30:46.220 collecting a bunch of Tories, many of whom were part of the problem. It's like, yeah.

00:30:50.040 Yeah. And he noticed he's been lauding his inevitable Labour defection. Well, where is

00:30:54.340 it? I mean, maybe by the time we've recorded this...

00:30:56.080 Believe it when I see it.

00:30:57.060 Yeah. But entirely possible, someone from the Labour, right, like Lee Anderson-style

00:31:00.780 person, comes over. But again, okay, now you're assembling the Uni Party into a formal

00:31:07.120 party? Is that what we were actually asking for?

00:31:09.660 Yeah. I can see the argument that if they're going to have to work with Whitehall, then they

00:31:14.180 need to understand how Whitehall works.

00:31:15.980 The thing is that nobody wants them to work with Whitehall. Everyone wants them to destroy

00:31:19.940 it utterly.

00:31:20.880 Correct. Everyone wanted an insurrection. And, I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying

00:31:26.540 it doesn't even make sense from Farage's position. You know, he did a press conference.

00:31:30.340 But he is ultimately a managerialist.

00:31:32.860 In a way, I don't think he's temperamentally a managerialist. But he did a press conference

00:31:37.280 today in which he was explaining, no, these people do know how government works. And he used

00:31:42.840 the example of Five Star in Italy, saying Five Star in Italy were total aliens to politics.

00:31:48.800 To be fair, that is actually quite a good argument.

00:31:50.860 It is a good argument.

00:31:51.600 The argument being is that Five Star in Italy, they went down the route so we're just going

00:31:56.160 to cut ties with the establishment. They got in and they decided to work through it and

00:32:02.560 they didn't know how and it just collapsed.

00:32:04.320 Correct. And that's exactly what Farage framed this as. And so in that, I think he probably

00:32:08.980 does have a point. However, it should have been a kind of one-in, sort of one-to-one

00:32:16.360 ratio. Because, okay, so, I mean, you're reformed. You're leading at 30-plus points in the polls.

00:32:23.580 Okay, you could take the old Tory, but why not take in two or three businessmen, doctors,

00:32:29.340 lawyers, people who are not actually a member, and make them a big headline name?

00:32:33.680 Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't be able to get them seats, but you could get them lined up.

00:32:36.680 Maybe they'll have seats in the next election, right? When you win, they're going to get

00:32:41.660 seats. And this is our shadow, provisional, you know...

00:32:45.660 So the Tories did a similar thing to what you're describing. I can't remember his name,

00:32:50.660 but he was the chairman of ASDA. So he understood business and the Tories got him in a good

00:32:54.840 emergency. What Farage will be doing, as you're saying, is they should be lining up. So this

00:32:58.920 guy, here's his CV. He's never been in politics, but he's going to be our spokesman for

00:33:05.000 whatever. This is what they do with Zia Yusuf.

00:33:07.180 Yeah, yes. Not an MP, but he's called to the party. And everyone's kind of accepted that now.

00:33:12.080 You know, get in some businessman, some doctor of something, some lawyer, whatever, and just

00:33:16.820 have them as part of the sort of family of faces of reform. So, you know, you'll get them

00:33:20.580 out. So Zia Yusuf has gone on question time, will it be this guy, this guy? And you can take

00:33:24.340 a couple of Tory MPs, but take a couple of others. Start building a big coalition. So when you've

00:33:29.160 got like half a dozen or, you know, 10 Tory MPs who have defected, it doesn't look like

00:33:34.340 you've just reconstituted the Tory party. So you've got all of these other people who

00:33:37.500 are not in politics. And you say, well, no.

00:33:39.280 Yeah. So let's say those five Tory MPs come over. The way to do it is to have, you know,

00:33:43.520 a big table, 10 people on it. Five of which are five Tory MPs that just come over. And five,

00:33:49.700 these are these businessmen that we're announcing or whoever they are.

00:33:52.600 Whoever it is. Academics, you know, whoever, right? People with credentials. And instead,

00:33:57.500 he has left himself open, very vulnerable to this. This is just a reconstitution of the

00:34:03.160 Tory party.

00:34:03.620 And some, actually, some journalists should ask him, you know, you state very clearly that

00:34:09.960 the Tory party was responsible for the ruination of Britain with the Boris Wave and everything

00:34:14.160 else that came on up with it. At what point have you bought up so much of the Tory party

00:34:18.320 that you own that failure as well?

00:34:20.180 Great question. And they have been asking him that. And he's been, honestly, not given great

00:34:24.800 answers to them. The answers have always been a bit,

00:34:27.040 well, these guys, I mean, he literally said, I, I, these guys have shown contrition.

00:34:32.420 They've, they've come over because they're not happy with this. It's like, okay, but that's

00:34:36.380 a narrative, you know, like.

00:34:37.620 Yeah. But ultimately we need these German scientists to work on our rocket program.

00:34:41.960 Yes. It does, it does kind of have that aspect of it.

00:34:45.640 Yes.

00:34:45.940 And that's why I think it's not been landing with people. But anyway, let's, let's go to

00:34:48.860 some polls because the polls haven't been released. So these are the polls from 14th

00:34:52.160 of January, right? So that, that is.

00:34:54.340 14th of January. So frame this for me.

00:34:56.120 So that is now six days ago. So last week's poll.

00:34:58.980 So that would have been two days before Genric.

00:35:00.880 Yes. Okay.

00:35:02.280 Not great that Farage's star has been sinking somewhat, right?

00:35:07.460 Yeah.

00:35:07.620 In both the Servation poll and Find Out Now poll.

00:35:10.720 I mean, they're off. And like you say, they're not great.

00:35:13.420 But they're not terrible.

00:35:13.980 They're still comfortably first place though.

00:35:15.940 Correct. They're still very comfortably first place. And so if you're seeing this,

00:35:19.120 you're like, okay, but why are we dropping four or five points in the polls?

00:35:22.940 Yeah.

00:35:23.360 That's, that's not great actually.

00:35:25.320 I mean, maybe it was because the Guardian ran there. He's a racist at school thing for

00:35:29.140 the 17th time on the front page.

00:35:30.900 No, no, no. That, that pumped him well up in the polls.

00:35:33.160 Oh, did it? Oh, right. Okay.

00:35:33.960 You don't remember?

00:35:34.960 Yes.

00:35:35.300 We covered it the other day. It's like, Guardian calls him a Nazi plus three in the polls.

00:35:38.940 So I, so I don't know what's behind that.

00:35:41.340 Well, I think, I think it's a lack of solid messaging, right? Because Farage has been very

00:35:46.700 engaged in the kind of slug, slime throwing fight between the Tories and Labour and the

00:35:52.640 sort of, you know, Westminster triangle that is, whenever you see it in the House of Commons,

00:35:57.220 you've got Keir Starmer looking over at Farage on the benches, ignoring Kemi. And so Kemi

00:36:02.160 has a little attack at the moment.

00:36:03.860 They do it to each other during PMQs.

00:36:05.940 Yeah.

00:36:06.440 Kemi will stand up and ask a question, which is actually about reform.

00:36:10.000 Yeah.

00:36:10.160 Yeah. And Starmer will give an answer that's actually about reform.

00:36:13.260 You see him looking at Nigel.

00:36:14.380 Yeah. They're both, they're both just talking about Nigel the entire time. He doesn't even

00:36:17.800 get, he's been objecting to this.

00:36:20.220 He's like, reform doesn't even get called during PMQs.

00:36:22.900 Exactly. And, and Nigel has been making a big deal of it saying, I'll, I'll go and sit

00:36:25.740 in the spectator gallery if I have to, you know, because why am I there if you're just

00:36:29.360 going to talk about me rather than, you know, having a dialogue, right? And, and rightly

00:36:33.060 so. And it just makes them look afraid of him. But I think getting mired down in the

00:36:37.740 sludge of this kind of, you know, partisan shit flinging is actually not great for reform

00:36:43.900 because it makes them look like just part of the group, right? It's like, yeah, okay.

00:36:48.200 You, all politicians bicker about this sort of stuff all the time. And what Nigel's not

00:36:52.960 doing while he's doing that is coming out with high-minded proposals.

00:36:57.180 Yeah. Well, I'd like to hear a vision. Sorry?

00:36:59.980 I'd like to hear a vision. What is, what is your vision?

00:37:02.900 Yeah, exactly. Because like, I was having a conversation with the tax driver today and

00:37:07.500 he was, he was a conservative. He, you know, he, he just came out with all this. He didn't

00:37:10.660 know who I was. He was, he said, oh yeah, I'm a conservative, but Nigel Farage, he just

00:37:14.840 hates immigrants. And it's just like, there's no policy is what he was saying. And he was

00:37:18.340 like, yeah, hating immigrants is probably enough to get them across the line, but it's not

00:37:21.080 enough for me to want to vote for him because what's he going to do? And, you know,

00:37:24.400 if Nigel were to come out and make a big play and say, right, look, all of the quangos are

00:37:30.700 going to be subservient ministers. The ministers, we're going to go through all 440 quangos and

00:37:37.660 assign them to a minister. And the minister will be given dictatorial power over the quango, right?

00:37:43.640 So he can hire and fire and set the agenda of the quango at will. And the constitution of the

00:37:48.360 quango is completely at the beck and call of the minister. And the minister is of course

00:37:52.800 accountable to the people. And that will put Britain at least some way back onto having

00:37:57.520 That is very Dominic Cummings kind of thinking. I mean, this is this whole thing. The state

00:38:03.800 used to be responsible to ministers. Now ministers are basically salesmen and it's the civil service

00:38:09.160 and the quangos who run everything. But I mean, quickly a point on your vision. It just occurred

00:38:12.860 to me that for a long time, politics in the entire Western world has not been about a positive

00:38:20.740 vision. It's been about the other guys are bad. Yes. And making you more afraid of the

00:38:26.320 other guys. Therefore, yeah. And then this Trump guy came along and he was like, OK, here's a

00:38:31.920 positive vision. This is why we're going to be great. Yes. And it worked. People resonated

00:38:37.860 to that. Politicians just don't do it because they don't have a positive vision. Build a wall

00:38:42.500 and make Mexico pay for it. Where's Farage's catch line? Yes. That's I should be able to

00:38:46.880 give you Farage's catch line. Right. But he doesn't have one. I think this is really starting

00:38:51.720 to hamstring. Whereas he gets wades more and more into the muck of Westminster politics.

00:38:57.760 The message is not cutting through. And so people are kind of rolling on a legacy message

00:39:03.060 of why he's against immigration. I think that's going to, you know, that's something

00:39:06.760 about Farage. But it's like, no, no, he should be coming up with, you know, concrete structural

00:39:10.940 reforms. Because, like, people aren't going to know the structure of the clangocracy or

00:39:14.800 anything like that. But he can clearly articulate, like I've just done, and just say, right, so

00:39:19.580 bottom line, what I'm going to do is make the state responsible to you. Respond to what you

00:39:26.120 want. No longer can the people in these clangos just go about their day ignoring the ministers.

00:39:32.900 It's something like, I am going to tame the faceless state. Something like that.

00:39:37.520 Yes. A bit more punchy, but that's the gist of it.

00:39:39.840 Exactly. And people will take away, right, okay, so we're going to get control over the

00:39:42.940 government again. Thank God. Because if there's one thing that I think people feel at the moment

00:39:47.280 is that the state has gotten away from them. Yeah.

00:39:49.200 But they don't have any control of it. It doesn't matter who they vote for. Because either

00:39:52.200 way, I'm just getting the same faceless clangocracy. So I think the lack of, and this is just

00:39:58.020 one thing, you know, he could have like just these high-minded states, comes out, you know,

00:40:03.060 gives a press conference and says, this is going to be our policy. We're going to get

00:40:06.480 our lawyers and whoever to write this policy and this law, and we're going to pass this

00:40:12.680 on day one. Day one.

00:40:14.220 Well, I mean, today he could come out with a vision element, which is, this is what we

00:40:17.420 want to achieve, and it's whatever it is, remigration and, you know, making elections

00:40:22.400 matter again.

00:40:22.840 But yeah, taming, taming the state. And then he can just, and then journalists will stand

00:40:27.460 up and say, how are you going to do that? And he said, well, over the next two years

00:40:30.200 leading up to the election, we're going to roll out a series of politics. But then people

00:40:32.960 know, okay, this is the direction we're going in. Details are going to follow. And as long

00:40:37.600 as he comes with those details, fine, jobs are good and he wins the election.

00:40:40.720 I mean, literally name like the doctors and lawyers who are going to work together as a

00:40:44.260 think tank.

00:40:44.460 My team is working on this and look at them. Aren't they credible?

00:40:48.020 Exactly right. So, and I think it's this lack of vision, like you say, being projected,

00:40:52.620 that is causing him to slide in the polls. And then, then we get the sense. The only

00:40:56.760 vision is make me prime minister.

00:40:58.700 Yeah. And that's, that's basically what Jemrick was saying as well. And then we have

00:41:03.460 this YouGov poll, which YouGov, as we covered the other day, are actually in the sort of

00:41:08.160 top four, top five of pollsters when it comes to accuracy. And that's not good. That's on

00:41:13.640 the 18th and 19th of January. So that's after the Zahawi defection.

00:41:17.900 Right. And Zahawi is a major shareholder in YouGov. So that's the best they could do on

00:41:21.840 that.

00:41:22.840 Yes. And, and that's, that's after the Jemrick defection as well. So it was only yesterday.

00:41:26.980 Right. So this covers the Jemrick defection. Now it might be that the public just haven't

00:41:31.340 had time for it to sink in or whatever, but the point is there is no Jemrick bump. There

00:41:35.440 is a Jemrick loss to the conservatives, but this is not an improvement for reform.

00:41:41.980 Yeah. To be, to be fair, we know who Jemrick is. Our audience knows who Jemrick is.

00:41:46.740 The public does it.

00:41:47.400 No, I don't think they know. No. Jemrick who?

00:41:50.580 No, no. That's, that's literally it. It's name recognition, Jemrick who. And so when you,

00:41:55.980 I mean that, like you were saying, that's the thing essentially split into fifths, right?

00:42:04.100 Well, that is such an unstable configuration in a first past the post system.

00:42:08.620 It's mad.

00:42:08.980 It just, it just doesn't, two parts, a first past the post system should have two parties

00:42:16.840 of government and a spare. Yeah. And for years we had that. Yeah. But this, this is just,

00:42:23.620 no, this is going to tip upside down very soon.

00:42:26.000 It is crazy. Yeah. How reform are only 5% ahead of the most hated party and prime minister

00:42:31.580 ever, right? How the conservatives are below the most hated party and prime minister ever

00:42:37.620 as the opposition party and how the greens as a radical insane party that promises nonsense

00:42:44.020 are snapping at all their heels. So this, this is mad. And when you map this into the number

00:42:50.280 of seats, right, look at those numbers. That is mad. Yeah. That's a bit unstable. I mean,

00:42:56.580 even if you did an alliance between the conservatives and reform, that's not a majority. It's not

00:43:02.160 even. It's 321. It doesn't, you need 326 for a majority. I mean, some, some Northern Ireland

00:43:07.080 MPs won't turn up. So you might just, but it would be. But from those numbers there, right,

00:43:12.100 that is not even a hung parliament, right? Because, okay. That's just a mess. Exactly.

00:43:18.320 Right. Conservative and reform are 321. No majority there, right? Who is going to side with Nigel

00:43:23.440 Farage out of the Remainers? This is a parliament that gets a caretaker leader, collapses in six

00:43:29.800 months and does it again. Yeah. He, he would probably be having to appeal to a very, you

00:43:35.420 know, like a few, um, as you say, Northern Ireland ones, or maybe even like the Muslim

00:43:40.400 independence or something. Like, you know, it's genuinely. Yeah. We, we, when we re-migrate

00:43:45.020 you, you get a first class ticket. I mean, I don't, I don't know what, what the deal would

00:43:48.000 look like, but yeah. So, but the point is the conservatives reform can't form a government

00:43:51.180 out of that. And if you add up all the rest, neither can they. The rest is 310. So even if

00:43:57.380 Labour, Lib Democrats, Green, SNP, Plaid Cymru, and whatever the seven on the million.

00:44:02.240 Well, you have to include the Tories. Well, yeah, exactly. They, that doesn't form a government.

00:44:07.380 So this is, as you say, just a mess. And it's like, Nigel, you should be on 40% at this

00:44:13.980 point. This has to break apart and reorganise. And I've been thinking about how it, how it

00:44:19.200 does that. Let's look at each of those and think, okay, I know this is a little simplistic.

00:44:23.380 You can't take it down to the individual MP, but I'm going to simplify it for the point

00:44:26.800 of, because it's basically right. Each of those is a two group coalition. So the Labour

00:44:32.740 Party are Blairite managerialists and old fashioned socialists. The Conservative Party is...

00:44:37.820 Well, actually, there's the immigrant bloc as well in that.

00:44:40.960 Yeah, that's basically...

00:44:42.020 That's a moment. Yeah.

00:44:43.440 Yeah, yeah. Sorry, go on.

00:44:45.100 And the Conservative Party are Blairite managerialists and old fashioned Tories, which is small state,

00:44:50.280 all that kind of stuff. Reform is actually one of those, it's dissuaded between,

00:44:56.620 between the FNATs and the SIVNATs. So the FNATs are the vast majority of the supporters.

00:45:02.300 Yeah.

00:45:02.760 The SIVNATs are the vast majority of the operatives.

00:45:05.360 Correct.

00:45:06.620 LibDems, again, is dissuaded. It is mostly Blairite managerialists.

00:45:12.000 Correct.

00:45:12.360 With a small rump of Liberals, but I mean, the older ones, I mean, they're basically died

00:45:17.960 out. I mean, that was pre-Nick Clegg. I mean, they're kind of gone.

00:45:21.060 There are a few sort of middle class leftists in it, but not many.

00:45:23.520 Yeah. There's the Green Party, which is eco-mentalists, woolly-haired people with big gardens,

00:45:29.720 and oh, wouldn't it be nice to save the rivers, and I'm voting Green because I've got a big

00:45:33.060 house in Brighton.

00:45:34.060 Well, the Greens are now the Islamo-Communist Alliance, remember?

00:45:36.560 And the Islamo-Communist Alliance, which is basically the, probably if you haven't mapped

00:45:41.520 them anything else, closest to the old-fashioned socialists, but even more insane.

00:45:45.240 Yeah. I mean, the Greens have already lost a bunch of, loads of councillors to the Labour

00:45:49.740 Party.

00:45:50.400 Yeah. So when you split those first...

00:45:52.760 From the Labour Party.

00:45:53.440 Yes. So when you split those first five parties down the middle in those groupings, well,

00:45:57.360 suddenly a new system emerges. The old-fashioned small market conservatives go to the Sivnats

00:46:03.800 because they basically map together. I mean, they're basically the same thing.

00:46:07.920 The conservative, which is majority Blairite socialists and the Labour Party, well, that

00:46:12.540 faction can go together. The Lib Dems can go with them. So we are almost certainly going

00:46:17.240 to see a merger between at least two of, if not all three, the Blairite wing of Labour,

00:46:23.940 the Blairite wing of Conservatives, and the bulk of the Liberal Democrats.

00:46:28.000 Yes. Yeah. So this is great. So as you can see, just under the main number, you can see

00:46:32.580 the minuses and the pluses, right? So who's going where? And so what you can see is this

00:46:36.620 is, as we've been saying for a long time now, the cannibalise, people cannibalising the

00:46:41.000 centre. Because the centre is just full-on collapse, right? And I think you're absolutely

00:46:44.600 right with which coalitions or which constituencies are in each party, right? So the Labour, the

00:46:51.520 Greens are going to gain a huge, they're going to gain the Islam and Communists. So the Jeremy

00:46:56.480 Corbyn Muslims, Jeremy Corbyn types and Muslims are going to go to the Greens. But you are

00:47:00.780 right, there's still actually a majority, and this is how Keir Starmer got elected in the

00:47:04.540 Labour Party, who are the Blairite managerial student types, right? You're right, they're going

00:47:10.000 to go to the Liberal Democrats, because that's their natural home.

00:47:13.620 Or the Liberal Democrats go to the Conservatives, because they're all also Blairite managerialists,

00:47:18.600 or all three of them merge.

00:47:20.540 Well, I think that what's... See, the Liberal Democrats have got no incentive to actually

00:47:24.460 give up their own party, right? They've got no incentive to merge. They...

00:47:27.600 Well, the thing is, they're the third party, they can't survive as the fifth party. So I

00:47:31.800 think they do have an incentive.

00:47:32.800 Hang on, let me lay it out, right? So I think that what's happening with Labour and the Conservatives,

00:47:36.500 I think that Nigel and I are right, he thinks Conservatives are done, I think the Labour are

00:47:41.480 done. And I think that eventually, in a couple of years' time, like, the internals of the

00:47:47.000 party will be in such shambles, and both parties will be in such shambles, that the activists

00:47:51.620 and they're all like, right, okay, we're done in politics if we carry on like this. We need

00:47:55.720 an escape plan, right? And the Conservatives at the moment, as we've covered today, they

00:48:00.460 know that, oh, it's reform, right? We're going over to reform, yeah, no, screw it, this is done.

00:48:03.840 So the right of the Conservatives are going to go to reform. Now, the right, right, will

00:48:08.700 be a bunch of old Tories, but it also means sort of, you know, civ-nat types.

00:48:12.700 Yes.

00:48:12.960 But people who don't hate Britain, right, people who don't hate Britain, they might not be

00:48:16.860 hardline Steve Laws fans, but they're comfortable with Nigel, you know, they were always comfortable.

00:48:22.620 The Brexit-y sort of side of it, right, of the Conservatives. Let's say that's half the

00:48:26.720 Conservatives. So let's say reform get another 30, 32 seats, something like that. That sounds

00:48:32.780 plausible to me. So reform, I think, would gain that. Now, there are going to be a bunch

00:48:38.140 of Labour supporters who have already gone to reform who are the sort of old left, old

00:48:43.560 English left, right? So they are very socially conservative. They're also economically left

00:48:49.640 wing, right? They want redistribution, but they don't like foreigners, they don't like

00:48:53.840 woke stuff, and they do on a person...

00:48:56.020 I mean, that was the entire left wing movement before 1980.

00:48:59.060 Yeah. That's the left wing movement that, frankly, Jeremy Corbyn should have been leading.

00:49:03.020 Yeah.

00:49:03.540 He should have been, but he went woke, right? But there's going to be a serious percentage

00:49:08.100 of those, probably like 25% or something, because you've already seen it in the jury trial

00:49:13.660 thing. There are a few, there's rumblings of a backbench revolt against David Lammy over

00:49:19.140 this, because they're like, well, hang on a second, you know, we can tolerate David Lammy

00:49:23.360 in this crappy Blairite party. But we're not getting rid of jury trials, we're Englishmen.

00:49:27.920 Yes.

00:49:28.200 You know, that's a sacred...

00:49:29.680 And they understand it instinctively.

00:49:31.340 Exactly. And so I reckon there's probably about 25 more who will go across from Labour

00:49:36.000 to reform, right? So reform end up about 310, 320, something like that, as a natural constituency

00:49:42.100 that forms in this new blob. Then the rest of them, as you said, I think, like, the Labour

00:49:49.140 party, Keir Starmer has actually done a good job of excising the leftist and Islamists,

00:49:54.420 right? So Jeremy Corbyn, Zahra Sultana, those sort of people. You've got the Diane Abbots,

00:49:58.900 but she's a bit old these days, so she's probably going to be retiring.

00:50:00.780 Yeah, she's relatively toothless at this point.

00:50:02.860 Yeah. But there is still a rump of quite left-leaning people, like the Jess Phillips

00:50:07.540 types, you know, who are not natural Blairites, who probably will go to the Greens, because

00:50:13.640 the Greens will be speaking their language the most. So let's say about 25% of that goes

00:50:18.660 over to the Greens. So that puts the Greens roughly in the position that the Lib Dems

00:50:22.720 are in now, right? And then the rest of them, being the managerial Blairites, probably around,

00:50:29.460 I don't know, 50 MPs, something like that, go over to the Lib Dems, making them the second

00:50:33.080 party. And so then you've got what I think is going to be the new settlement with reform,

00:50:38.140 Lib Dems, and then the Greens in the Lib Dem position, in the roughly those numbers.

00:50:42.800 So my analysis is very similar. I've just not put party labels onto it, but I'm fairly

00:50:48.940 sure that what it's going to be is Sivnats are the majority, and they've got a fringe who

00:50:55.160 is Fnats, who are blue-balled and kept on the side. Majority of support, but they're their

00:50:59.860 fringe. You get the managerialists, and that is the second block, and that is a perfectly

00:51:05.920 viable, competing for elections, strong opposition.

00:51:09.400 The managerialists can draw people in from Lib Dems, Tories, and Labour. And the third

00:51:18.120 party in this system, the place that Lib Dems used to occupy as a third party, that will

00:51:22.860 probably go to old-fashioned, nutty socialists, and that will probably cluster around Greens.

00:51:28.640 Nutty socialists and immigrants. Because the immigrant voting bloc is substantial in these

00:51:32.880 cities.

00:51:33.540 So now you've got back to a two-and-a-half-party system, and then your fringes are Fnats, old-fashioned

00:51:39.140 liberals, which are unreconcilable with things, pro-EU old-fashioned liberals, and the Islamo

00:51:46.740 sort of hard, just the Islamic party.

00:51:50.120 Yeah.

00:51:50.280 Yeah, so you've now got back to a two-and-a-half-party system, which is what a first-past-the-post-electoral

00:51:55.960 system demands that you have. So it's going to get back there. Which of those parties is

00:52:01.860 the cover label for the managerial party. I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it's Lib Dems,

00:52:07.100 maybe it's some other coalition. But I'm pretty sure that is what it will look like.

00:52:11.060 Yeah. I mean, the dramatic thing here is how little the Lib Dems are gaining, frankly.

00:52:15.840 So whereas I'm saying, oh, the Blairites will go to the Lib Dems, I mean, maybe they won't.

00:52:20.400 You know, because the Lib Dems are only gaining...

00:52:22.180 I think a deal is inevitable, and I think the Conservative one is more likely, and a Labour

00:52:29.260 one is also pretty likely, and a three-way merger is not off the table.

00:52:33.300 It's not off the table, but I think the Lib Dems are quite prideful. I actually don't

00:52:37.160 think they'll want to do that. I don't think they'll want to merge it. I think they'll take

00:52:40.520 in defectors, but I don't think they'll want to merge. But the fact that they're only

00:52:45.320 getting nine MPs after such collapse is really interesting, as it shows the sort of natural...

00:52:49.420 So what's the bottom number? Is that how many... So this is what they're predicted to get

00:52:53.580 next time, and how many... Yeah, how many they gain?

00:52:55.520 How many they gain if these numbers are correct. That's not much.

00:53:00.140 So Labour's still scheduled to get 113. I mean, that's...

00:53:03.900 But that's only because, you know, these numbers are crazy, right?

00:53:07.060 They're on... Yeah.

00:53:07.720 You know, the state workers are voting for Labour in the same way that they voted for...

00:53:12.080 Yeah, that's the state party at this point. Yeah.

00:53:14.100 So maybe they own the managerial block, I'm not sure, but, you know...

00:53:17.260 Maybe, but I think a lot of them will go into the Liberal Democrats. I suspect the Liberal

00:53:20.400 Democrats will kind of up their game a bit on that. But the Labour Party will continue

00:53:24.800 on as a rump for... Like, at the moment, the Conservative Party is a rump of, like, 120 MPs.

00:53:30.000 It's the same sort of collapse...

00:53:31.600 According to this, it's going to be the fourth party.

00:53:33.820 The Conservatives will, yeah.

00:53:35.040 There's just simply no point with them at that point.

00:53:37.580 And they'll just keep collapsing. Yeah.

00:53:39.200 They'll just keep collapsing. Because Kelly Begnaut doesn't seem to have any desire to

00:53:44.700 give up her power over this... The Queen of the Ashes. But anyway, the point being, everyone

00:53:49.980 hates everyone, right? So, Ed Davey and Zach Polanski are two of the least recognised politicians

00:53:56.740 in the country. More than half the people when polled don't know who they are. And of those

00:54:02.160 that do, they have a negative view, right? So, minus 8%, minus...

00:54:05.440 Is this just the people who actually know who all five are?

00:54:07.880 Correct. Okay, well, this is a niche subset of the British population to start with.

00:54:13.320 It is. It's, I think, about 40%, 45% who know who Polanski and Davey are.

00:54:17.820 How can you know who Zach Polanski is and not hate him? Why is he only on minus 8?

00:54:22.220 Because about a quarter of the country are rabid leftists. Even if they don't vote for

00:54:27.780 the party, they still have a reasonable opinion because they're rabid leftists.

00:54:31.940 Begnaut's on minus 10%. Again, she has got the problem that most people don't know who she is.

00:54:35.280 I don't know how you can know who Ed Davey is and have any opinion on them because he's

00:54:39.120 the blandest blandman of all times.

00:54:41.500 And yet he's still on minus 8.

00:54:43.720 Yeah.

00:54:44.940 Farage, everyone knows who Farage is.

00:54:47.300 Yes.

00:54:47.700 And the fact that he's only on minus 15 on average is really good.

00:54:52.240 Oh, yeah.

00:54:52.680 Because normally he's on about minus 30.

00:54:54.260 Well, you only need, if you get a third of the people to vote for, you are going to

00:54:59.280 romp home.

00:55:00.280 So minus 15, fine, whatever.

00:55:01.760 And then just Starmer, just the most unpopular man since he's.

00:55:05.020 Yes.

00:55:05.720 Frankly.

00:55:06.020 I mean, that, even 50%, even first past the post is not going to help you there.

00:55:10.480 That is, I mean, minus 50%.

00:55:12.660 Yes.

00:55:13.480 Like, that is two to one ratio of people who hate you that don't hate you.

00:55:19.700 That's mad.

00:55:20.620 You've really, really screwed up there.

00:55:22.660 Anyway, so, Bade Nock, she looks rattled.

00:55:27.180 I won't bother playing this, just for time's sake.

00:55:29.600 But she, I watched this.

00:55:30.980 She looks absolutely distraught.

00:55:32.880 I watched this clip after you mentioned it before.

00:55:34.860 Lots of rapid eye blinking, lots of gulping.

00:55:37.740 I'll play it without the sound on.

00:55:39.140 Oh, yeah.

00:55:39.440 Any random part of the interview, you're, yeah, there you go.

00:55:43.320 Look at that.

00:55:44.800 That is.

00:55:45.620 She looks like she's about to cry.

00:55:46.880 Yes.

00:55:47.160 I mean, that is.

00:55:48.820 That is somebody sat outside the headmaster's office because they were caught doing something

00:55:53.000 that they shouldn't have done.

00:55:54.020 Yeah.

00:55:54.300 She looks rough.

00:55:56.380 Honestly, she looks, you know, this is very fragile at this point, right?

00:56:03.320 And people are mocking this.

00:56:05.260 So, yeah, total incompetent ethnic girl boss victory.

00:56:07.560 Because that's what the Conservative Party seems to actually consist in now.

00:56:11.860 I mean, Priti tells the shadow home secretary or something at the moment.

00:56:15.480 Why?

00:56:15.920 Yeah.

00:56:16.640 She was terrible.

00:56:17.780 But anyway, very, very weak position.

00:56:22.080 Because after the five MPs were like, yeah, we're in talks to defect.

00:56:26.660 She's like, right, okay, I've got to now summon them all in and make sure they don't defect.

00:56:32.080 It's like, okay.

00:56:33.540 But this is looking like, you know.

00:56:35.160 The long housing will continue until the defections have ceased.

00:56:38.940 Yes.

00:56:40.200 And is, you know, do you want to be in that room?

00:56:43.880 Do you imagine the atmosphere in the Badenock bunker?

00:56:47.220 I have done everything in my power to, after I left school, make sure I was never in a room

00:56:51.500 like that.

00:56:52.060 Exactly.

00:56:52.260 Getting a long housing.

00:56:53.280 You're getting a long housing from the HR Yoruba Mammies.

00:56:56.920 And it's just like, oh God, you know, I mean, I'm sure Tim Stanley's thrilled.

00:57:03.200 But there are going to be a bunch of them who are...

00:57:05.560 He's just got his ear pressed up against the door, pleasuring himself.

00:57:08.380 Yeah, exactly.

00:57:09.340 There are going to be a bunch of them that are like that, but there are also going to

00:57:11.140 be a bunch of them who are not like that.

00:57:12.840 And who are just like, yeah, okay, this is screwed.

00:57:16.060 And the thing is, the messaging is terrible from Badenock.

00:57:19.260 She's like, oh, I'm cleaning out the rubbish from the Conservative Party.

00:57:21.540 Okay, but Jemryk wasn't the rubbish.

00:57:23.580 I mean, he was the best you had.

00:57:26.140 Yeah.

00:57:26.560 So if he, yeah, okay, fine.

00:57:27.960 If he qualifies as rubbish, then good luck to you.

00:57:30.240 Exactly.

00:57:30.900 You know, Jemryk obviously not happy with being long housed.

00:57:33.460 And then you've got, like, her contradicting the messaging of Farage and Jemryk.

00:57:41.100 Farage and Jemryk are obviously correct that Britain is broken.

00:57:45.520 There's obviously...

00:57:46.180 So, Badenock, Britain is not broken.

00:57:48.280 I mean, it bloody clearly is.

00:57:49.820 And then the second one is, we will fix broken Britain.

00:57:52.220 Oh, okay.

00:57:53.160 Yeah.

00:57:53.800 Yes, those two don't play well nice together.

00:57:55.960 So, Farage and Jemryk are saying, look, Britain is broken, and it needs reform.

00:57:59.240 Yes.

00:57:59.420 It needs fixing, and we're going to do this.

00:58:01.780 And Badenock appears to be in denial about reality, totally out of touch, and delusional.

00:58:08.860 They say, oh, no, Britain's not broken.

00:58:10.340 It's like, okay, again, it feels like...

00:58:15.160 No, go and have five random conversations with five random Britons anywhere outside of

00:58:22.020 the SW1 postcode, and ask them, is Britain broken or not?

00:58:25.840 All five will tell you yes.

00:58:27.320 Yes, and it feels very much like Hitler in the bunker, like we were talking about the

00:58:33.300 Starmer the other week, Hitler in the bunker moving around phantom divisions that just don't

00:58:36.740 exist.

00:58:37.460 It's like, okay, you seem deranged and delusional and completely out of touch, and desperate

00:58:42.540 to cling onto power, and it's slipping through your fingers like sand, as more of your MP start

00:58:49.040 defecting, and you're like, right, okay, I'm going to put down my foot and say, okay, I just

00:58:53.060 don't think that's going to work.

00:58:54.060 I think you've got to admit, you've screwed this up, you've destroyed the Conservative Party,

00:58:58.100 thank you so much, and the time is passing and the new paradigm is being born.

00:59:03.740 Yeah, I mean, to be fair, Boris and Rishi teed it up perfectly.

00:59:08.260 Oh, yeah.

00:59:08.860 They set up the shot, and to be fair, she doesn't...

00:59:11.580 She's left holding the bag.

00:59:12.380 Yeah, she doesn't need a lot of skill to land the destruction of the Tory party at this

00:59:15.840 point.

00:59:16.320 No, but like you were saying, it's very clear that things are moving, that the sort of six-party

00:59:21.200 paradigm is not going to persist.

00:59:22.800 It's completely unstable.

00:59:24.500 Completely unstable.

00:59:25.580 Things will start settling into a new paradigm that just won't include Labour and the Tories.

00:59:29.560 And do you think they're aware of it?

00:59:30.720 Because it's perfectly obvious that what I'm saying is, it's obviously a first-past-the-post

00:59:35.520 system, you are not going to have six co-equal parties.

00:59:38.660 Yeah.

00:59:39.240 Well, I can only hope that they're all aware of this, and they are feverishly working on

00:59:45.320 what the new settlement looks like, because whoever moves first is going to have the advantage.

00:59:48.920 I think they're in denial, and I think that's why Nigel Farage is accepting all the Tories.

00:59:53.440 It's like, no, we're going to be the...

00:59:55.680 Well, because his coalition is just falling into place by virtue of him being first.

00:59:59.440 He's the black hole that is sucking in the old Tories.

01:00:04.220 Correct.

01:00:04.820 Who are compatible with his Sivnat stuff.

01:00:08.180 Yeah.

01:00:09.480 But whatever that second and third block is, they need to figure it out, and they need

01:00:14.160 to realign fast.

01:00:15.220 Correct.

01:00:15.520 And going back to the Badenock bunker, this is apparently from...

01:00:20.560 This is from The Spectator.

01:00:22.740 Sorry, New Statesman.

01:00:24.080 I'm going to read it on this screen just because it's easier, right?

01:00:26.620 Apparently, she left a diary or a private notebook at a hotel.

01:00:31.360 What can we do?

01:00:32.040 Yep.

01:00:32.240 And it was filled with handwriting that seems to match her own, contained a scribbled mind

01:00:37.160 map that outlines the points she made at the Shadow Cabinet meeting, from the words

01:00:40.560 Buffoon, and a note, Unforced Errors, D-Day.

01:00:43.760 The words mirrored her criticism of Cynac's gaffe, which was a little late at the time.

01:00:46.800 The notebook also contains affirmations about public speaking, linked to the heading Personal

01:00:50.800 Improvement.

01:00:51.500 Breathe, breathe, breathe.

01:00:52.520 Pause, pause, pause.

01:00:53.740 You are a serious person.

01:00:54.960 You do big things.

01:00:56.160 You are a big girl.

01:00:57.880 Hivot to attacking labour when uncomfortable.

01:01:00.120 Remember, you're the standard bearer of the right.

01:01:02.580 Don't let people think you are easily wound up.

01:01:07.500 That's not good.

01:01:09.140 Dear diary, remember you are a strong and special girl who can do big girl things.

01:01:15.220 Don't let the nasty, scary man get you down.

01:01:17.880 I mean, what this seems to imply is that Kimmy Badenock has imposter syndrome.

01:01:24.080 Yeah.

01:01:24.480 She doesn't.

01:01:25.160 I mean, apparently most people do.

01:01:26.440 Apparently, yeah.

01:01:27.080 I don't, because I feel like I've earned where I am.

01:01:29.200 Yes.

01:01:29.760 You know, I didn't get there for any of them.

01:01:31.080 I'm under no bloody doubt whatsoever, but...

01:01:33.540 Yeah, exactly, yeah.

01:01:35.160 Apparently, most people do feel this.

01:01:36.980 Well, no, like, really.

01:01:38.380 And it's like, okay, but then you don't feel that you earned where you are.

01:01:41.180 I've had to struggle for everything that I have.

01:01:43.160 Kimmy Badenock, has she struggled?

01:01:44.740 No.

01:01:45.180 She has to make little reminders.

01:01:46.300 No, they...

01:01:47.300 I won't say rigged.

01:01:51.200 They eased her passage into the leadership.

01:01:53.580 Yeah, very little friction.

01:01:55.160 Yes.

01:01:55.340 You know, like, very well-oiled.

01:01:57.060 Whereas there's been a huge amount of friction for us to get to wherever we are, right?

01:02:00.140 Yeah.

01:02:00.520 So, interesting.

01:02:02.540 Anyway, so she looks like she's on the edge, right?

01:02:05.880 She seems very stressed out.

01:02:08.180 I'm starting to feel bad about attacking her now, I've read this.

01:02:11.080 Right?

01:02:11.920 Yeah.

01:02:12.220 And it's not that...

01:02:14.220 It's just, Kimmy, it's time for you to go, right?

01:02:16.600 And now, I'm happy for you to oversee the death of the Conservative Party, the death of

01:02:20.220 the Tory Longhouse.

01:02:21.000 Oh, yeah, please stay.

01:02:22.060 I mean, just carry on doing what you're doing.

01:02:23.880 But for our sake, stay in the Conservatives.

01:02:26.000 Because at the end of the day, like, one thing that you'll notice about a bunch of the Tories

01:02:32.440 that Farage has taken in is they're not the weird, old, aristocratic types, right?

01:02:39.000 Jemrit comes from a modest, middle-class household, but he didn't have a mammy, you

01:02:44.380 know?

01:02:45.820 Nadeem Zahawi is a foreigner, he came from Iraq, you know, worked his way up.

01:02:49.880 Lee Anderson is basically working class.

01:02:52.200 Very working class, right?

01:02:52.680 Yeah.

01:02:53.000 You can see him with a packet of chips and a cheap pint.

01:02:55.700 Zia Yusuf, obviously not the same.

01:02:57.120 Tice is probably the closest to have likely to have had a mammy, but even then, he doesn't

01:03:00.380 seem weird.

01:03:01.300 Yeah.

01:03:01.440 You know, he's with Isabella Oakeshott, okay, that's fine, that's not weird, you know, he's

01:03:04.120 got, he seems normal with women.

01:03:05.660 You could invite him to a party without him embarrassing you.

01:03:08.080 Right.

01:03:08.720 And so, like, Farage might be taking the Tories, but he's not taking the weird Tories who have

01:03:13.720 a weird relationship with women and their mothers.

01:03:16.200 And so it's like, okay, that's actually good, right?

01:03:19.760 They're actually staying with Kemi Bates.

01:03:21.480 Most of those guys are in the commentariat.

01:03:23.840 They're working for the Times or the Telegraph.

01:03:26.300 But no, no, they're also behind the scenes in the party.

01:03:28.780 Yes.

01:03:29.300 Yes, that's true.

01:03:29.920 And so, like, Farage not taking those people is actually allowed, because they're the people

01:03:35.860 who cooperate with the Longhouse.

01:03:37.460 They're the infrastructure of the Longhouse.

01:03:39.820 Well, they don't just cooperate.

01:03:41.120 They quite like it.

01:03:41.880 They love it.

01:03:42.300 Yeah.

01:03:42.500 Oh, goody, I'm going to get Longhoused.

01:03:43.840 Exactly.

01:03:44.720 They love to be Longhoused.

01:03:46.120 And Farage is actually taking those men who were like, no, I'd like a straight white man

01:03:50.940 as the leader, please.

01:03:52.200 Like, that's genuinely what's happened here.

01:03:54.960 And, okay, you know, I mean, I don't like Farage taking all these Tories in such concentrated

01:04:01.380 numbers.

01:04:01.940 You should be diluting them with lots of other people.

01:04:03.660 Fine.

01:04:03.840 But he could do it worse.

01:04:05.560 But this aspect of it, it's an anti-Longhouse.

01:04:08.820 Okay, that's a good start.

01:04:10.100 That's something positive.

01:04:12.780 And this is the thing, the Conservatives, there's such myopic vision at the moment.

01:04:19.000 It's like, why is Rupert Lowe polling at 10% and not leading the Conservative Party, right?

01:04:24.440 Well, that goes back to my split that I talked about earlier.

01:04:26.980 It does.

01:04:27.420 Reform is a coalition between SIVNATs and FNATs.

01:04:31.840 FNATs overwhelmingly in the supporters.

01:04:34.080 SIVNATs overwhelmingly in the leadership.

01:04:37.980 Rupert Lowe's just an FNAT.

01:04:39.400 Oh, yeah.

01:04:40.740 Well into that category.

01:04:42.520 But why not, as the Conservatives, let him lead your party?

01:04:46.240 Well, he's not going to longhouse you.

01:04:48.740 He's going to expect greatness out of you.

01:04:51.060 He's going to say, right, I'm going to put you in charge of that.

01:04:52.420 Do a good job, right?

01:04:54.260 He's not going to be constantly watching over you and nitpicking you.

01:04:58.280 So I think prior to David Cameron, he would have nailed that position.

01:05:02.900 Oh, yeah.

01:05:03.200 I think in the modern Conservative Party, the faction that is not Blairite managerialists,

01:05:10.600 is probably about seven or eight people at this point.

01:05:15.020 But the point being, the Conservatives have left all this talent on the table.

01:05:20.980 How can you let Jemryk defect?

01:05:22.840 How can you, you know, you are famous for cooing your prime ministers.

01:05:27.620 You should have six months ago gone, right, Bainock isn't the girl.

01:05:30.280 She's not the person.

01:05:30.980 And she's, you know, we're getting longhoused.

01:05:33.200 The public hate us.

01:05:34.420 We need someone with vim.

01:05:36.940 And, okay, Jemryk's pretty good, but Lowe's way better.

01:05:40.140 Jemryk would have been a good second in command to Lowe,

01:05:42.280 because Lowe being older, with more authority,

01:05:44.640 and also he's a bit harder on his rhetoric.

01:05:47.100 Yeah, the more I think about this,

01:05:48.660 I don't think that Rupert Lowe fits into the Conservatives.

01:05:51.740 Not now.

01:05:52.860 Yeah, not now.

01:05:53.700 It'd be like trying to insert Thanos into Fraggle Rock

01:05:57.140 to become their leader or something.

01:05:58.360 It's just a complete and total tonal mismatch.

01:06:01.600 I think Lowe needs to start his own party.

01:06:04.460 It didn't have to be.

01:06:05.560 And if I were leading the Conservatives,

01:06:08.560 or I was like,

01:06:10.660 excuse me, part of the, you know,

01:06:13.660 the Conservative wagon that's approaching the looming cliff edge,

01:06:17.440 we're like, right, okay, we're going to have to do something.

01:06:19.620 We could veer to the right and have a flank for us.

01:06:22.340 There is a guy literally sitting on the table, ready to be taken.

01:06:26.000 And there's also a bunch of activists.

01:06:29.880 Now, I think that Thomas Skinner has joined Reform

01:06:32.040 because he was friends with Jemric.

01:06:33.480 You remember Jemric posting the picture with Thomas Skinner?

01:06:35.600 Yeah, you mentioned it, yeah.

01:06:36.540 Yeah.

01:06:37.680 And why wouldn't Fraggle just start sucking up the talent,

01:06:41.600 the cool, the influencers?

01:06:44.120 You know, Fraggle's got the momentum.

01:06:46.100 Well, people who, unlike him, actually understand the online right.

01:06:49.360 Yes.

01:06:50.200 Like, why wouldn't he do this now?

01:06:52.800 You know, he needs something.

01:06:53.600 If he just sits there coming out, he needs to be the high-level guy,

01:06:56.880 give him the vision,

01:06:57.840 and let the activists act like the outriders

01:06:59.760 and do all the dog work for him.

01:07:02.180 He doesn't need to be doing it himself.

01:07:03.420 I think Farage goes home in the evening,

01:07:05.280 he turns on the BBC,

01:07:06.740 he gets the Sunday papers,

01:07:08.720 he doesn't go on Twitter.

01:07:09.740 I think that's his thing.

01:07:10.960 He's just too much of a boomer.

01:07:12.500 Very much like Trump, frankly.

01:07:14.100 But this is what the Conservatives have left on the table,

01:07:17.460 and now it's just like, okay, well, if your party is in collapse,

01:07:19.900 a bunch of your MPs are going to go.

01:07:21.080 So you've got no sort of cultural cachet.

01:07:25.700 You've got nothing, and you did this to yourselves.

01:07:29.060 Go better than that previous one.

01:07:31.320 I mean, any good political strategist coming at this from first principle

01:07:34.940 should be looking at it and saying there is 30% up for grabs there,

01:07:38.480 at least 30%.

01:07:40.400 If I can come along and I'm clever, I can carve out 30%,

01:07:44.680 and that makes me a party of government straight away.

01:07:48.020 Oh, yeah.

01:07:48.700 I don't understand why they're not doing it.

01:07:50.560 Yeah.

01:07:51.640 And so the Conservatives have just completely left all the pieces

01:07:55.160 scattered on the board,

01:07:56.240 and Nigel is just slowly but surely picking them up one at a time.

01:07:59.600 And the Conservative scope, the compass of the Conservatives,

01:08:03.340 is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking

01:08:04.680 until they're just a little long-housed Maidenock bunker

01:08:09.600 where nothing can happen except finally for the sort of Soviet tanks

01:08:14.680 to finally roll into Berlin.

01:08:16.780 It's just like, what a way to die.

01:08:18.420 She's in a bunker calling her longhouse meetings.

01:08:21.600 Yeah.

01:08:22.480 Yeah.

01:08:23.020 And none of them have got the balls to stand up to.

01:08:24.960 But anyway, so that's the current state of play of UK politics.

01:08:28.640 Honestly, it's genuinely fascinating.

01:08:30.820 And like we were saying earlier, it's everything to play for.

01:08:33.600 I was worried when we started this series we might run out of material,

01:08:37.940 but if anything, this is like the Tiger King,

01:08:41.780 a series on Netflix.

01:08:43.080 It just keeps getting better as it goes.

01:08:45.640 Like you were saying earlier, it's genuinely everything to play for.

01:08:49.300 Nobody's actually playing their hand very well,

01:08:51.580 and the split in everything is just crazy.

01:08:55.120 I mean, this is just a mess.

01:08:56.180 This is just waiting for somebody with a strategic brain

01:08:59.480 to come along and do stuff.

01:09:01.160 Yes.

01:09:02.980 Unfortunately, we don't seem to have any strategic brains

01:09:05.180 operating at the top levels of politics

01:09:06.760 because they're too focused on responding to journalists

01:09:09.220 and remembering to breathe in and out and pivot to Labour

01:09:12.540 when somebody questions if they're a big girl or not.

01:09:15.540 Remember, you're the standard bearer of the right.

01:09:17.180 It's like, if you have to say that,

01:09:18.740 no king has to say, I am the king.

01:09:21.140 You know what I mean?

01:09:22.180 Anyway, thanks for joining us, folks.

01:09:23.480 We'll see you next time.

01:09:26.180 Thank you.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 21, 2026

The Death of the Tory Longhouse

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