The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The English Revolution

00:00:00.000 Hi folks, welcome to this impromptu discussion on British politics that Dan and I are going to have

00:00:04.860 talking about the fallout from the budget and the way that the British political landscape is at

00:00:10.100 the moment. Because as I'm sure you're aware, because if you're watching this, you probably

00:00:15.140 work, you probably pay your taxes, you probably wanted a future in this country, and you're

00:00:20.780 probably thinking, you know what, I'm not sure that's available anymore. And we're obviously

00:00:25.500 really concerned about this because we're both fathers, we both have kids, we want them to have

00:00:29.100 a future in the country, and we of course work and pay an inordinate amount of taxes. So we are like

00:00:35.280 many other people of our sort of age cohort in the country, we're not happy. And we really are

00:00:41.320 concerned about the state of the country and what's happening in the future. And so anyway, this is

00:00:46.120 you can see on Twitter, Reform UK tops out a new poll after the budget fallout. So this poll was done

00:00:50.720 on the day of the budget by Find Out Now. Now it's probably fair to assume that people knew something

00:00:58.080 about the budget, because a lot of it had been leaked ahead of time. And so people had some

00:01:02.700 impression of what was coming in the budget. And I don't know how long it took them to create a

00:01:08.920 sample of 2,535.

00:01:12.100 But it can be done online now. So it can be done extremely quickly.

00:01:14.520 It can be done online. I don't know if Find Out Now does do online polling, though. But it's entirely

00:01:20.680 possible. And it could have been done after the actual budget was released, which was at

00:01:25.440 1230. So it's fair to assume that people have got a fairly good idea of what the budget is about.

00:01:33.180 Well, she leaked everything that was in it months in advance, and also a whole bunch of stuff she

00:01:37.100 didn't even do in the end.

00:01:38.020 Yeah. So afterwards, as you can see, Labour Party were on 15%, two points behind the Greens, three

00:01:45.820 points behind the Conservatives, and more than half down on reform. And this is very interesting

00:01:53.520 to me, because the general smear campaign against Nigel Farage with him being a teenage

00:01:59.180 jokester, making Nazi jokes and things like that. Well, that's done nothing to impact his numbers.

00:02:04.960 These numbers are incredibly consistent. Well, they've been calling him races for 20 years.

00:02:08.940 So, I mean, it's not like, you know, if you were going to be bought by that line, you would

00:02:12.900 have done it about 20 years ago.

00:02:14.840 Yeah. But the point is, the smear campaign has had no effect on Nigel Farage's polling.

00:02:19.500 He's been around a third of the electorate for, well, ages now, since he took basically control

00:02:26.640 of the Reform Party. And this has impacted nothing. And so I think they're probably, the collective

00:02:34.620 centre, so the Conservatives and Labour are probably looking at this and realising that, again, Nigel Farage

00:02:40.600 has eaten their lunch completely. He basically has as much as they have combined in himself.

00:02:47.260 So he is going to, when this is mapped to a map, we'll have to excuse that this is done by stats

00:02:55.400 for lefties. But it's not looking good. I mean, well, for them.

00:03:00.300 Well, I don't know. I quite like the look of this poll, to be honest.

00:03:03.400 Oh, yeah, yeah. I should frame that position. I was speaking from within the frame of being

00:03:07.760 part of the Uniparty. It's not looking good. As a zero-seats campaigner, for both Labour

00:03:14.040 and Conservatives, I'm totally in favour. This is incredible.

00:03:17.660 So I should point out quickly with polls, is that the polls are fairly decent at making

00:03:25.420 predictions when you've got two outcomes, like a Brexit outcome or Labour Conservative.

00:03:29.940 They start to get a bit wonky when you've got, you know, essentially we've got four parties,

00:03:34.580 so the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, Labour and Conservatives, and all of them are jostling

00:03:39.460 around and effectively second place. Polls tend to get a bit wonky around that. So don't

00:03:44.320 be surprised if it actually comes out different. But the shape of it is, Reform are going to

00:03:49.300 win a majority, and everybody else is fighting over second place.

00:03:53.380 Yeah.

00:03:53.980 But that second place is going to be miles away.

00:03:57.940 Irrelevant, essentially, to anything Farage wants to do. So I think there are a bunch of

00:04:02.780 things worth extracting from this. I think you're completely correct that the polls for

00:04:08.800 the second, third and fourth parties are going to be a bit wonky, as in, you know, the

00:04:14.160 it could be up in the air anywhere, right? But assuming that things go as just in a rough

00:04:21.540 direction that we're being shown here, I think it's fairly safe to say that Reform are going

00:04:26.240 to win a majority. That is enough for a majority. It's not a particularly thumping majority or

00:04:29.760 anything like that. But it is enough to form a government, and Farage will be in the unenviable,

00:04:36.320 enviable position of not having any factions within his own party. He would have created

00:04:42.060 368 new men out of nothing, and they will only have loyalty to him. They're not going

00:04:50.580 to have...

00:04:50.980 Well, they would have been purged by now if they didn't have loyalty to him. He's very

00:04:54.640 good on purging anyone who isn't entirely on his...

00:04:57.200 But even if he hadn't purged them, they're not party... They're not experienced politicians

00:05:01.260 who have had a party that they've been in for a long time, formed connections, joined

00:05:05.260 unions or any other special interest groups from within the party. Like, none of that exists

00:05:09.880 in Reform at the moment, because it's such a narrow tower of Nigel Farage and nothing else

00:05:16.000 around, that he's going to raise these people out of the ground, and they will require him

00:05:20.820 for their legitimacy and position, right? So they are going to do whatever Nigel Farage wants.

00:05:25.400 Well, interestingly, some commentators have actually suggested the opposite on this, because

00:05:29.640 I've not seen any evidence of it, but what Zaya Yusuf, who's really running Reform, keeps

00:05:35.540 on saying is that they're going to get people of high quality. I haven't seen any evidence

00:05:40.460 of it, but let's just go on their word. Let's say they go out and they find business leaders

00:05:43.780 to run in all of these seats. His view is that these people are going to be extremely difficult

00:05:49.400 to manage because they've all done things before, and they're going to be able to have their

00:05:54.260 own opinions on how things should be done.

00:05:55.860 Yeah. I'm going based on the council elections that happened fairly recently, back this year,

00:06:04.900 where they literally just took, like, 19-year-olds. And anyone who was prepared to stand as a

00:06:11.420 councillor who, I guess, their automatic software didn't flag up suspicious...

00:06:15.460 So that's what I have actually seen from Reform.

00:06:18.200 Yes.

00:06:18.580 It's not what they claim they are doing.

00:06:20.340 Yeah, they can claim anything they want, but I'm definitely going on what we've actually seen

00:06:24.480 as historical precedent. So I think there'll be essentially 368 noobs who don't really know

00:06:31.800 much about politics, but are concerned about the way the country is going, and view Nigel Farage

00:06:35.580 as the kind of stick with which to beat the establishment. Because I think a lot of Reform's vote

00:06:40.980 is predicated on a general opposition to the current status quo.

00:06:45.320 Is it a revulsion against, yeah, politics as it has been done for, well, God, post-war

00:06:52.340 at least? Probably longer?

00:06:54.240 Possibly not quite that far. I think a lot of people are viewing this as sort of the 2000s

00:06:58.640 politics, really. The politics of...

00:07:01.680 Of the Blair era.

00:07:02.540 Yeah, the Blair era. And so I think that a lot of people are just using Reform as a stick

00:07:08.480 with which to beat these old parties. But that means that Nigel Farage's MPs, I think,

00:07:12.600 will not be the best and brightest, but they will be people who are loyal to Nigel Farage.

00:07:18.940 And so when Farage, if he were to bring into place something like David Starkey's great

00:07:24.420 repeal bill, they'd vote for it.

00:07:27.860 Yeah, I mean, actually, I've been thinking about what the correct strategy for Nigel Farage

00:07:32.260 is, and trying to marry up those two thoughts I gave you a moment ago. I mean, actually,

00:07:36.880 the logical thing to do would be to take complete noobs, 19-year-olds, you know, retired people,

00:07:43.200 people who've got no clue what they're doing, and completely fill the parliamentary party

00:07:47.220 with them, and then don't appoint any ministers from them. Because what you can actually do

00:07:52.760 is you can then go off and you can get a business leader who's got some running experience.

00:07:56.660 You can say, look, we need you to become a minister. We make you a lifetime lord.

00:08:00.640 Lord, stick you in the lords, and actually, you could completely change the political model

00:08:04.920 by having, by just drawing out the best people, not the best from your 300 and whatever it

00:08:11.500 is, 73 MPs.

00:08:13.120 Yeah, as I understand it, drawing from the MPs is convention, not actually a statutory requirement.

00:08:19.460 You can have a minister, you can have a prime minister in the lords, you can have all of

00:08:22.020 them in the lords.

00:08:22.720 Yeah. So it is actually an option for him to do all of these things. And, I mean, frankly,

00:08:28.180 strategically, I think it would be a good option.

00:08:31.240 Yeah.

00:08:31.380 Because then you have a reliable backbench core that will just vote through anything

00:08:35.580 that you say to vote through.

00:08:36.660 And you can get anyone you want to be a minister.

00:08:39.020 And you can get the talent to actually...

00:08:40.340 Which is closer to the American model, except they don't have to make them a lord first.

00:08:43.740 Exactly. And so that actually... I mean, I don't think Nigel Farage is going to wield this

00:08:50.960 power that he'll gain very effectively, excuse me, but that would be a very definite option

00:08:57.600 for Nigel Farage to really start, just start leathering into the system. And, I mean, he

00:09:02.500 will be able to basically do what he wants, because, like I said, he's not going to get

00:09:05.320 a backbench revolt.

00:09:06.580 Well, he'd be able to do what he wants if he manages the civil service correctly.

00:09:12.140 Well, yeah.

00:09:12.600 And this is my big concern with it. So I have not seen anything from Nigel Farage that suggests

00:09:17.040 otherwise, that he is going to go in there and he's going to sit the civil service down

00:09:20.600 and say, basically, these are my list of factory things written on the back of an envelope.

00:09:25.220 Go off and do them. Now, Tony Blair wrote a book on leadership recently where he explained

00:09:31.220 how it is that you change a country. And Tony Blair is the only man in this country, the

00:09:34.960 last 50 years, who's radically changed the shape of the country. Love him or hate him,

00:09:39.820 and of course we all hate him, he knows how to radically change a country. Now, in that

00:09:43.740 book, he explains his first few days in Downing Street. And he goes in and the civil service

00:09:49.200 basically all turn up, all the senior chaps turn up and say, look, we've been reading

00:09:52.940 a manifesto. We're ready to go on this stuff. And he described his reaction as being utterly

00:09:57.980 horrified by that. He told them in no uncertain terms, no, you are not doing this. He had already

00:10:04.840 arranged his people. He had lined them up. He had briefed them. He knew exactly what they

00:10:09.120 were going to be doing. He put Mandelson in charge of that particular team. And these people

00:10:13.800 went in and they stood over the civil servants and said, you were doing it exactly like this.

00:10:18.860 That is the level of planning and operational control you need to influence in order to

00:10:25.020 change a country. And I've just not seen the slightest evidence that Nigel Farage is doing

00:10:29.800 that. But you're right that if he is doing this in the background, this sort of parliamentary

00:10:36.000 change, he could do it.

00:10:38.160 Now, I actually wouldn't expect it to be Nigel Farage who would do this. I think that if we

00:10:43.220 are speaking to one of his advisors, we would be thinking, does Zia Yusuf have this plan?

00:10:49.940 Because I think everyone understands that it's Zia Yusuf that is making these kinds of decisions

00:10:56.000 for Nigel, making plans for Nigel, as it were. And that's whatever. I don't care. He can be

00:11:02.220 the Peter Mandelson or the Morgan McSweeney or whatever of reform. I don't really care. I

00:11:07.640 just want good things done. And so Zia Yusuf needs to be the one thinking about this. But

00:11:13.220 this puts the reform party in quite an enviable position, because like I said, effectively,

00:11:17.580 they could do pretty much anything, even with 373 seats, which is not a massive majority. But

00:11:23.620 like I said, he's not going to get any backbench revolts. So he should be fine. He should be

00:11:27.940 fine. All of these people will be hardcore Nigel loyalists. And when he says, right, folks,

00:11:32.380 we're going to fix the country. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. He can easily

00:11:35.600 rally them to get them on side. Probably won't even have to whip them. I mean, what's he going

00:11:38.980 to have on them? You know, like they'll just be one. Oh, they'll just do it anyway. Yeah.

00:11:42.720 I mean, just to explain to any non-British viewers, the parliamentary system is absolute.

00:11:47.780 So if Parliament wants to pass a law saying the sun won't rise tomorrow, they can pass that law.

00:11:53.900 There's no separation of powers that says, no, that's unconstitutional. We can't do that.

00:11:57.580 We're going to block that. They can pass any. Now, of course, the sun will rise tomorrow.

00:12:01.920 So these don't have to be reality based, but they can literally pass anything they want

00:12:07.220 to. So if you were to get a proper nationalist party, I mean, you could you could radically

00:12:12.480 change this country within five years. No problem.

00:12:15.380 Yeah. I mean, Parliament. Parliament is the supreme power of the land. It's unbounded by

00:12:20.880 a written constitution or the House of Lords. And even the Supreme Court is a very dicey proposition

00:12:27.540 because you can just wash it away. Exactly. Because it was only founded in 2009. So it's

00:12:31.620 not like it has a long, venerable constitutional history that the public feels that we have

00:12:36.260 to listen to them or anything like that. And he could literally just disestablish it, which

00:12:39.820 he ought really, frankly. So, yeah, Nigel Farage will be put in a commanding position. But

00:12:45.200 what will the what will the second options be? So this 77 for the Liberal Democrats, 64 for

00:12:51.620 the Greens and then 45 for the SNP, 34 for the Conservatives, 19 independents, the Gaza

00:12:56.880 MPs and 12 Labour and seven played Cymru. This this is where you get the kind of cascading

00:13:03.660 effect of. I mean, I don't want to say crabs in a bucket or like, you know, rats in a barrel

00:13:11.160 or something, but isn't the collective now for a group of rats of Parliament? It is actually.

00:13:16.100 Yes. Like which is presumably not coincidental. No. Anyway, so the as you can see, you've got

00:13:22.520 the Liberal Democrats there who are predicted to be on 77 seats. But you'll notice that that's

00:13:26.120 only going up by five seats, because if we scroll down to the bottom there, you can see

00:13:30.080 Labour losing about 400 MPs. Now, this is a catastrophic wipeout. Worse than the wipeout

00:13:38.300 the Conservatives suffered when Nigel Farage was cutting their vote by third when Rishi Sunak

00:13:46.440 called the election. So they the Conservatives lost something like 250 MPs and now have something

00:13:51.900 like 120 MPs, which is pretty bad. Right. That was a pretty bad wipeout for them to go

00:13:57.760 down by 87.34. Oh, it's an extraordinary. I mean, this this is a complete autonomic reaction.

00:14:04.500 This is this is this is a body puking out a foreign body. Exactly. But the Labour Party

00:14:09.820 are getting it worse. Massively. As far as I'm aware, there has never been a party that has

00:14:15.260 lost 399 seats in a single election. No, I don't think so. Yeah, we were talking beforehand

00:14:20.720 with Beau about the election 1922. I mean, that's an interesting one, because we were talking

00:14:25.640 about that also on our election stream whenever that was last year. Let me let me just correct

00:14:30.600 you because they were there in the 1920s. There were four general elections for in that 10 year

00:14:37.540 period. Right. Right. And so in the 1922 one, the Liberals, the Conservatives got 344, Labour

00:14:43.260 got 142 and the Liberals got 115. So not a total wipeout at all. And in 1923, there's another

00:14:49.560 general election. Conservatives get 258, Labour get 191, the Liberals get 158. So they actually

00:14:55.560 do better there. It's in the election of 1924 that the Conservatives get 412, Labour 151

00:15:01.740 and the Liberals 40. Now, don't get me wrong, losing 112 seats is bad, but that's Rishi Sunak

00:15:08.540 levels of bad. Yes. Right. This losing 400 seats. But I mean, to quickly frame why we're

00:15:15.820 talking about those elections, the very broad gist of it was, is that the Conservative Party

00:15:21.560 had a, it might have been prior to 1920s, the Labour, the Conservative Party had a big majority

00:15:27.660 and they got to the position the way they were hated. It was very similar to the last

00:15:31.640 election with Rishi Sunak. I can't remember why they were hated now. I wasn't there. But

00:15:35.980 the thing was, I did read a book. Yes. They lost the election and the Liberals came in in a

00:15:42.720 big way and it looked very similar to the last election. Now, why that was interesting is

00:15:49.040 because you, at the time, you would have thought, OK, the Tories are finished. What actually

00:15:53.280 happened is because the Liberals got a big majority, they then took ownership of this

00:15:57.940 situation and did nothing to make anything better. If anything, made everything worse.

00:16:02.280 And actually, it was the Liberals that wiped out. OK, they weren't wiped out immediately.

00:16:06.420 Well, it wasn't that the Liberals won a majority, but there was hung parliaments and things like

00:16:11.560 this. I see. And so there was this general kind of...

00:16:14.260 But I think they took the premiership.

00:16:15.860 Well, in 1923, Labour formed its first ever government. And then it was the fall of

00:16:23.360 McDonald's Labour government.

00:16:24.760 It was a very choppy series where you radically, quite quickly, got rid of one party and replaced

00:16:30.660 with another. So the Liberals were Labour.

00:16:32.400 Yes. Yeah, yeah. That is what happened. And then in 1929, there was a hung parliament with

00:16:37.560 Labour being the largest party for the first time. So you had this period of extreme political

00:16:45.860 turmoil after World War One. And you are right. It was generally like a body just coughing out

00:16:51.280 some, you know, thing that, you know, is clogging it up. And I think that's basically what we're

00:16:55.680 saying with the Labour Party and the Conservatives here. Because, I mean, this... Toulouse 399.

00:17:00.760 And this is just one prediction. I've seen other predictions that have...

00:17:03.380 It's going to be of this order, though, isn't it?

00:17:05.420 Exactly. It's very likely to be of this order, because everyone hates the Labour Party.

00:17:12.060 So at the moment, Rachel Reeves is the most unpopular chancellor in history.

00:17:14.780 Yeah, Starmer is the most unpopular prime minister in history, since records began. And it's hard

00:17:21.620 to imagine what a Labour voter looks like at this point.

00:17:25.800 Well, I mean, I can imagine he has six kids and he was born in Pakistan.

00:17:30.900 Well, yeah. But even then...

00:17:32.420 Even then, he's got the Green Party together.

00:17:33.760 Yeah, they're Green...

00:17:34.740 Or the Independents.

00:17:35.680 Yeah. So, what is the Labour constituency? And one can only assume, what is it? Someone

00:17:41.260 who works for the NHS? Like, a career bureaucrat? Like, this was the constituency...

00:17:47.720 Because, remember, the Labour Party, for anyone not aware, is traditionally the party of the

00:17:51.760 working industrial north. And this got co-opted by Tony Blair and his managerial elite.

00:17:58.660 Middle-class managerial liberal types who took over the Labour Party. Because the Labour Party

00:18:03.920 wasn't really a very liberal party, really. It was kind of reactionary in many ways. It

00:18:08.740 was always, historically, the most, you know, it was parochial, right?

00:18:14.460 If you go back to, certainly, the 70s, and perhaps the 80s as well, it was the Conservatives

00:18:20.680 who were more pro-immigration, because it was the business stance. Labour, back then,

00:18:24.940 were about the unions, and they were dead against immigration, because it replaced their workers.

00:18:30.880 Yes. And this is why you've got Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, that sort of strand of the Labour

00:18:36.360 Party, is the true Labour Party. Like, that's the true sort of... And it used to be deeply

00:18:41.220 parochial, and frankly, incredibly xenophobic. And not just outside of Britain, either.

00:18:46.100 Xenophobic to the south. Xenophobic on class. You know, it was like...

00:18:50.920 And sexist, as well. I mean, they had all the virtues.

00:18:53.860 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they were pretty good in their day. But this got subverted by Tony

00:19:00.920 Blair and, frankly, woke liberalism. So now Labour has to become an internationalist party

00:19:06.820 that doesn't care about its own nativist, working-class base, and is interested in international

00:19:13.280 finance and international business, and becomes the party of that. So, OK, that's fine.

00:19:17.780 They managed to steal the party from its actual core, and that core has just gone to Nigel.

00:19:24.400 Because Nigel has basically appealed to them on the grounds of 20th-century patriotism.

00:19:29.400 He said, you know, essentially he's, like, you know, representing the sort of bulldog nationalism

00:19:33.520 that the working classes of this country have been born and raised in and truly believe in.

00:19:39.160 It's the somewheres versus the anywheres.

00:19:41.680 Precisely.

00:19:42.120 And the vast majority of the voting population are actually somewheres.

00:19:45.540 They're from a place. They have a family. They connect to wherever it was they were born.

00:19:51.660 They're from their local community.

00:19:52.660 Yeah, and the Westminster class, I mean, Keir Starmer said it himself directly, he's far more

00:19:56.480 comfortable in Davos than he is in Parliament.

00:19:58.000 So, Tony Blair stole the Labour Party from Labour voters and turned it into a tool to remodel

00:20:04.980 the country along the lines of what David Starkey describes as a slow-motion French revolution,

00:20:10.760 which I think is completely correct. This is why he begins this series of really radical

00:20:16.840 constitutional forms. Because if you think of previous Labour governments, they were always

00:20:19.740 kind of going in a sort of left-wing direction, but it was often a kind of British left rather

00:20:25.800 than a continental left.

00:20:26.780 The biggest block piece is, OK, we're going to nationalise this.

00:20:29.700 Yeah.

00:20:30.320 And that was a big block piece that you could basically just undo. You could then come along

00:20:34.260 later and you could privatise it. But it was a series of block piece because the state

00:20:37.340 at that time had a limited capacity and it couldn't do so much. The absolute genius of Blair

00:20:42.200 was he was, I'm going to take every ounce of power that Parliament has and I'm going to

00:20:48.700 hand it to a quango or to an outside body. I'm going to create the Supreme Court. I'm going

00:20:52.700 to create Ofgem. I'm going to create all of these regulators. I'm going to put all of the

00:20:56.760 power in them. And I'm going to set these organisations up in a way that they will always be run by

00:21:02.160 my ideological friends.

00:21:03.360 Yes.

00:21:04.100 And basically, when you get to the point of David Cameron, he doesn't care if he loses office.

00:21:09.940 And also David Cameron believed in it.

00:21:11.960 And also David, yeah. And also David Cameron was effective. Effectively, the Tory party was a Labour

00:21:16.920 party quango at that point.

00:21:18.420 Yeah.

00:21:18.560 So he runs everything. But even if an ideological enemy came in, it doesn't matter because everything

00:21:23.960 is being run by his friends in this dispersed manner. And that is a hell of a lot harder to

00:21:28.140 just, you can't just go and unnationalise it and privatise that. You have to unpick all of these

00:21:35.960 things. Parliament has the power to do it, but it's a lot of work now.

00:21:39.460 Well, and that's exactly correct, though. Tony Blair changed the nature of politics in this

00:21:46.340 country. Whereas before, it was assumed that Parliament would be essentially the seat of

00:21:51.100 the genuine governance of the country. Tony Blair was, well, no. I mean, it wasn't Tony Blair

00:21:56.300 that invented the quango. I think actually Margaret Thatcher invented the quango. But if you've

00:22:01.360 got like half a dozen, OK, that's not such a big deal. There are currently 440 or so quangos

00:22:06.700 running this country. That's a huge, and they control about half a billion. I know, 500,

00:22:11.720 is it 500 billion? I think it's 500 billion of government spending that they control.

00:22:15.300 OK, well, that's almost half of it.

00:22:16.960 Yeah, half of government spending is controlled by quangos. So it's just insane, the scale of

00:22:24.640 the managerial state that Tony Blair has been responsible for. And this was what Pete

00:22:30.080 Hitchens' Cameron delusion was based in. It's like, well, David Cameron is just a

00:22:34.520 playwright. He is just a managerial liberal elite, who is going to put a blue skin on

00:22:40.160 it, but it will carry on damn thing. And you can see this in the way that David Cameron

00:22:43.880 began his party, when he began his campaign to become Prime Minister, because of course

00:22:50.300 he created all women shortlist. He created minority shortlist. He then, in 2022, wrote

00:22:54.620 an article saying, yeah, well, the Conservative Party was pale, male and stale. And I changed

00:22:59.460 that. It's like, right, OK, so the revolution took place, not only in the Labour Party, but

00:23:05.100 in the Conservative Party. And it's that revolution that I think is being rejected.

00:23:09.200 Yeah, I mean, I witnessed that firsthand, because this was in the days when I was working in

00:23:12.920 London, and quite often I'd finish work, and I'd go down to Parliament, I'd go down, because

00:23:17.080 in those days, you could actually just walk in, you're supposed to go through a registration

00:23:19.820 thing. But if you know the system, you can just walk around it, no one gave you a hard

00:23:23.740 time. So I quite often go down to the strangers bar in Parliament after work, and I knew a lot

00:23:27.960 of the MPs there, and I was talking to the Tory MPs. And I was trying to say to them, look,

00:23:33.260 we're coming to the end of the Gordon Brown government. The British public are rejecting

00:23:39.060 this. They can see it's not working. This is the moment where you go back to your roots.

00:23:44.620 And they were all saying to me, yeah, but look, Tony Blair won three elections. And they

00:23:49.020 all adored him. They were all mesmerised by him, because he was a winner, and they wanted

00:23:55.920 that magic to rub off on them. And the most significant thing that David Cameron did that

00:24:00.620 when he came in, and you've already alluded to this, is that before then, it was each

00:24:05.400 constituency picked their MP. So you would have the Conservative Association for whatever

00:24:09.960 it was, Winchester, Bognor Eders, and they would interview a whole bunch of candidates,

00:24:14.320 and they'd be like, yeah, that's a Tory, we're having that one. David Cameron changed it so

00:24:19.440 that they still got to do that, but only from an approved list.

00:24:22.600 Right. And if he put, you know, a bunch of women, ethnic candidates, a bunch of basically

00:24:27.900 Liberal Democrats on that list, you had to pick...

00:24:30.880 That's how this trust got in, actually.

00:24:32.200 And the interesting thing is, you wonder, you sometimes wonder why, why is the Conservative

00:24:36.520 Party so female and so ethnic? And the reason is, is because if you're a white man, you had

00:24:45.080 to be quite un-Tory to get on that list. You had to be very Lib Dem to get on that list.

00:24:50.840 If you're, if you're a black woman, like Kemi Badenoch, you can get away with being an

00:24:56.140 actual Tory, because you're a black woman. And that's why when these Conservative associations

00:25:02.080 have to pick between that white man, Liberal Democrat, or that base...

00:25:06.140 Rory Stewart versus Kemi Badenoch.

00:25:07.180 Yeah, or that base black woman, they say, well, she's the only one who's actually a Conservative.

00:25:11.460 Yeah.

00:25:11.680 So I pick her. And that's why the Conservative Party is full of ethnics.

00:25:15.460 Yes. And also full of Lib Dems.

00:25:18.260 Yes.

00:25:18.920 But yeah, no, no, I think you're exactly right on this. But what I think that the polling

00:25:23.600 here is revealing is literally the public saying, no, I'm tired of the Blairite consensus.

00:25:28.840 Yes.

00:25:29.280 I don't want the Labour Party.

00:25:31.040 Oh, it's a complete rejection. Because reform, I mean, stands to reason. But Lib Dems, they

00:25:36.540 never went through this revolution. They're just a bunch of white middle class, parochial

00:25:41.000 concerns, got a garden. I mean, they're just...

00:25:43.860 Too much noise on the trains.

00:25:44.920 Yes. Yeah.

00:25:46.040 I just don't like it. And that's the thing that I wanted to come to here, right, is with

00:25:50.160 this. So the Conservatives and the Labour Party became the party of the international

00:25:55.220 liberal order, right? They became... That's what the Uniparty is here to serve. We're here

00:26:00.220 to serve the ECHR. We're here to serve the European Union. We're the WEF. We are the international

00:26:07.180 managerial regime that has the liberal order, the rules-based international order that we are

00:26:13.060 going to impose on the country and we're going to abide by, come hell or high water.

00:26:17.420 Yes.

00:26:17.740 Because remember, at any point, the Conservatives could have just undone all of this.

00:26:20.740 The Conservative Party are everything that you just said, except we're going to do it

00:26:24.900 in a slightly more competent way while packaging it as a right-wing thing.

00:26:28.840 Yes. And also, I mean, I would question that competence. I mean, the Boris wave is really

00:26:34.840 one of the... I mean, Tony Blair must be grinding his teeth at the nature of the Boris wave because,

00:26:40.160 of course, people can tolerate 300,000 net a year. They can tolerate that and they have

00:26:44.400 tolerated it. And so the project of the destruction of...

00:26:47.420 It was just clumsy.

00:26:48.200 Exactly. The destruction of the English nation carried on apace under Tony Blair and under

00:26:52.820 Cameron. But Boris, obviously, not that competent.

00:26:56.520 If you're feeding poison into somebody's food, you do it subtly and a bit at a time, you don't

00:27:01.340 just, you know, pour the whole bloody thing on.

00:27:04.320 Exactly.

00:27:04.720 Because they will notice.

00:27:06.060 Exactly. And that's what's happened with reform here. They have noticed. And so... But the

00:27:11.580 point being, the natural constituency now of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are

00:27:17.300 not British people. They began with the Labour Party making it about Tony Blair with his rules-based

00:27:23.140 international order. And the Conservatives adopted that because Tony Blair seemed like

00:27:26.600 a winner because, actually, it was very difficult to detect that that's what had been done.

00:27:31.220 Tony Blair was a magnificent orator. The Labour Party itself in the 2000s was very competent,

00:27:37.340 whether you like them or not. And they accomplished all their goals. And suddenly they have a media

00:27:42.340 apparatus that also believed in the goal. They had the Quangocracy.

00:27:47.300 They have the universities and they have, you know, like, how to describe it, like...

00:27:53.140 I mean, they've probably still got the trade unions, but that's not what I'm talking about.

00:27:57.380 The veneer of legitimacy that comes from being welcomed in other spaces like it. So, for

00:28:04.860 example, Tony Blair would have got rapturous, you know, love from other European leaders

00:28:09.300 or the European Union.

00:28:10.280 Oh, very much so, yes.

00:28:11.120 Things like this. I remember, yes.

00:28:11.980 Like, he would have had a lot of kudos come along. And so that's legitimising. So it's

00:28:17.040 like, oh, OK, well, he must be doing a good job. Everyone thinks he's doing a good job.

00:28:20.360 And the negative consequences hadn't yet manifested in Tony Blair's premiership because he was out

00:28:26.880 in 2007. Was it? It was 2007, wasn't it?

00:28:30.960 Was it? Yeah, it might have been. And then Gordon Brown came. It was about then, yeah.

00:28:33.720 Yeah, Gordon Brown was out in 2009. So, during... Tony Blair had the great fortune of having

00:28:40.000 what was a really homogenous and prosperous country and sneaking this in under the cover

00:28:46.020 of night and setting up actually a strange framework that now you can't get out of.

00:28:51.040 So, I think the electorate, like I said, is rejecting both Conservatives and the Labour

00:28:55.240 Party subconsciously, of course. They're not thinking these things. But they realise that

00:28:59.340 these things aren't for us, right? The Labour Party serves some other master. The Conservative

00:29:03.460 Party serves some other master. Who doesn't look like he serves some other master? Well,

00:29:07.940 Nigel Farage, actually. Now, I'm not saying Nigel Farage is perfect, but he's clearly not

00:29:12.920 just one of them because he was the outrider on Brexit.

00:29:16.560 Well, they have given him that because they have gone out time and time again and said that

00:29:21.960 he is not us, expecting people to go, oh, he's not one of you. Oh, I don't like him

00:29:26.980 then. Exactly. Actually, the precise opposite has happened. Nigel Farage is a creation of

00:29:32.700 the Conservative and Labour Party. They put him there. Absolutely. And not just that,

00:29:37.120 the media class as well, because he is good. He is a great rhetorician and he understands

00:29:42.920 their game and he's played the media game quite well, let's be fair. And so now, Nigel Farage,

00:29:48.740 you know, whether on the right we're not happy with him being, you know, a bit too centrist or

00:29:52.400 whatever, whatever, that doesn't matter. From the normal Blairite position in the centre

00:29:57.060 of the country, Nigel Farage does look like a right winger and he looks like he's outside

00:30:01.420 of the club. And that's where the objection votes come from. Oh yeah, I don't want that.

00:30:08.820 I don't want the Labour or the Conservatives. I don't want Blairism. I don't want the

00:30:11.260 international managerial order. And Farage has a history of campaigning against it.

00:30:16.300 That's what Brexit is. And so this, to me, is that giant paradigm shift immediately is fantastic

00:30:25.100 to see, because we need to get off of this for a start. But then if you look at the rest of it,

00:30:30.400 the Liberal Democrats aren't moving, right? In almost every election, the Liberal Democrats'

00:30:37.600 constituencies look basically the same. Yes. Because the Liberal Democrats are a racial vote.

00:30:43.100 They're a racial bloc based on Middle England. I mean, Ed Davey literally said,

00:30:48.860 we're going to become the party of Middle England. And what they represent are the prejudices of the

00:30:54.980 English middle class. You don't vote Lib Dem unless you've got a big garden. I mean, that's the way it

00:31:00.260 works. Exactly. You're in a nice four or five bedroom house. It's detached. You're in the suburbs.

00:31:05.660 You've got a nice big garden. Everyone around you is English. And you sit there and go,

00:31:09.700 well, yeah, of course I'm for, you know, liberal values. Of course I'm of British values. Of course

00:31:14.760 I am. But the second there's some ethnic on the train who's making too much noise,

00:31:20.680 well, you strap on your bloody armband. And you're like, no, gulag. That person, I mean,

00:31:26.160 that's literally Ed Davey's campaign. You know, so Ed Davey doesn't, everyone was perplexed by his

00:31:32.000 postmodern anti-political campaign where he's like a fairground or going down a water slide.

00:31:38.760 So I haven't made up my mind on this yet. And maybe you have, but I'm trying to figure out,

00:31:44.000 is Ed Davey's campaign genius or botched? Because he has basically positioned himself to be

00:31:49.860 the burger meat in a McDonald's burger, which is completely and utterly tasteless and therefore

00:31:56.080 unoffensive. It depends what you want, right? So if you are the sort of person who enjoyed

00:32:04.300 the society of the early 2000s, you don't particularly want any changes. And you don't

00:32:10.600 really want to be involved in politics altogether. The liberal Democrats are your party.

00:32:15.260 He just doesn't give you anything to be offended at. His campaigning is, here I am today at a theme

00:32:21.000 park. Here I am falling off a water slide or something. It's like, well, how am I going to get

00:32:25.500 upset with any of that? Exactly. Silly Ed Davey's fallen off a water balloon or whatever.

00:32:30.100 Yeah. But that's, that's the point. Because what he's saying is, I'm not going to try and

00:32:36.220 do anything silly. I'm not going to do anything really, is the pitch. I'm the non-political

00:32:42.220 politician. Exactly. And so you can go to your garden parties and everyone will have a reasonably

00:32:48.020 good opinion of me because I'll be the centrist dad who just represents Middle England. I'm just,

00:32:54.680 you know, just a, just an English dad. I'm going to have a barbecue with my wife and

00:32:58.340 two kids. Exactly. And it's complete normalcy. If, if, if, if somebody brings somebody to your

00:33:05.880 barbecue and they announce themselves as being a reform voter, argument follows. If they

00:33:12.500 announce themselves as a Labour voter, argument follows. Conservative, argument follows. Green,

00:33:17.820 argument follows. Liberal Democrat, oh, that's nice. Here's a burger.

00:33:21.340 So the Liberal Democrats basically represent an English social club. They, they genuinely

00:33:26.540 do. And this is why they've had such reliable constituencies in the areas least affected by

00:33:31.660 immigration. Liberal Democrat constituencies, as you can see, are mostly in the Southwest,

00:33:36.840 where there is very, very, very little immigration. And therefore politics is an abstract game of

00:33:43.200 morality through first principles.

00:33:46.660 So I can guarantee all of those Lib Dem constituencies, and I live in one, by the way,

00:33:51.060 they've all, they all put, yeah, they all put Ukraine flags up because Ukraine is the perfect

00:33:55.860 issue for them. It's a moral stance that isn't happening in my garden.

00:34:00.640 A long way away.

00:34:01.460 Yes.

00:34:02.040 It's a long way away. And doesn't affect anything about their lives. It's all hypothetical.

00:34:07.280 It does affect something about their lives, but they don't know that.

00:34:09.320 Yeah, but they can't tell.

00:34:09.880 Yeah. Like, and then they're, and they're doing reasonably well, you know, the household

00:34:13.520 income is probably a hundred K, you know, so they're doing, they're doing well and they

00:34:17.900 can afford a nice mortgage. They've got their gun and they're looking to retirement. You

00:34:21.080 know, they're in their late forties. It's all gravy for the Liberal Democrat, but that's

00:34:25.560 because diversity hasn't happened to them. And I do think that, I mean, remember the Southwest

00:34:31.080 was as Brexiteery as anywhere, right? The Southwest 54% Brexit, uh, you know, which is just

00:34:37.360 as, you know, I mean, it's not like the Northeast, which was...

00:34:39.840 Well, that still means 46% are against it.

00:34:42.400 Sure.

00:34:43.080 Which is how we get Liberal Democrats.

00:34:44.580 You only need a third of the vote to win a seat.

00:34:46.740 Absolutely. Which is why you're getting Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats have famously

00:34:50.920 an amazing ground game, as in they target constituencies that they know are majority

00:34:55.560 white, majority English, and, um, well to do.

00:35:00.460 If you live in a Lib Dem constituency, you are bombarded with leaflets. I mean, it's, it's,

00:35:05.360 it's an order of magnitude different to all the other parties combined.

00:35:07.920 Yes. And they're, and they're very, very targeted in these areas because they know

00:35:11.900 that they can get the Middle English. They can get those people who are not affected by

00:35:16.360 the financial downturn, by immigration, by daily politics. And the, they become a kind

00:35:22.680 of safety blanket for these people. It's like, oh, I'm going to vote for the Liberal Democrats

00:35:26.800 because nothing will happen. The local MP isn't going to go on a series of radical reforms

00:35:31.920 in the constituency or something like that. You know, they're not going to do anything.

00:35:34.480 They're going to be perfectly presentable when the Christmas lights are turned on.

00:35:39.580 You know, they're going to be just, oh, it's just, you know, normal, complete normal.

00:35:42.380 Zero drama party.

00:35:43.400 Exactly. But they are an ethnic party. They're an ethnic expression of the Middle English

00:35:48.480 and they consciously know themselves to be, even if their actual voters and their, even

00:35:52.880 their MPs don't even really understand.

00:35:54.860 I'm trying to think if, if I think of a single Lib Dem, I mean, maybe there is one,

00:35:59.680 a single Lib Dem MP who is an ethnic. None that spring to mind.

00:36:04.200 They will have a couple.

00:36:05.600 They must do.

00:36:06.340 They will have a couple, but the, the ethnics that they'll have are very integrated

00:36:10.400 ethnics.

00:36:11.300 Yes.

00:36:11.700 People who are born and raised here and have always been.

00:36:14.640 And have a big garden.

00:36:15.660 Have a big garden.

00:36:16.340 Yes.

00:36:16.780 They're in the middle class.

00:36:17.900 Yes.

00:36:18.100 And they're, they're, you know, the one ethnic on the street who has a great job.

00:36:22.700 And he's a dentist.

00:36:24.140 Yes.

00:36:24.420 Yeah, exactly.

00:36:24.940 He's a dentist and he goes to all the functions and everyone.

00:36:28.000 Look how not racist we are.

00:36:29.640 We have our 100% born here, integrated 100K a year dentist immigrant.

00:36:35.080 So you know that we're not racist.

00:36:37.400 We don't hang out in London with the drill gangs or anything like that.

00:36:40.580 Right.

00:36:41.160 So, but that, that's, that's a great constituency to have as the second party.

00:36:45.580 Party, right?

00:36:46.900 Because what this does, reform.

00:36:48.840 It's basically the shire.

00:36:50.180 Exactly.

00:36:51.220 They're the parties of the affluent shires, whereas reform have become the party of disgruntled

00:36:56.760 England.

00:36:58.220 Yes.

00:36:58.800 The average, the average for vote is somewhat angrier.

00:37:01.520 They have a smaller garden or no garden at all.

00:37:03.880 Yes.

00:37:04.240 They're pissed off.

00:37:05.160 Exactly.

00:37:05.900 And they're, and as you can see, like just, it's the entire sort of east of England, as

00:37:12.160 well as parts of Wales are just like, no, we're sick of this.

00:37:14.480 And so it very much, this looks like a map of Brexit, right?

00:37:18.980 This looks a lot like a map of Brexit, apart from the fact the Southwest has flipped to

00:37:23.460 the garden party of the Lib Dems.

00:37:25.580 But it's, it's the, the resentful rage of the English that is being demonstrated in this.

00:37:31.540 The Liberal Dems represent the English who are doing well and don't want anything to

00:37:35.140 change.

00:37:35.520 So the deeply conservative English, but the reform represent the revolutionary English.

00:37:41.300 We have had enough.

00:37:42.460 I want change.

00:37:43.980 I'm not having Blairism.

00:37:45.420 You're destroying our country.

00:37:47.120 This is a revolt that we're watching here on both sides.

00:37:51.300 And it is magnified by this map because what you're not seeing clearly in this map is that

00:37:56.640 there are certain clusters.

00:37:57.820 So you can probably make out London down there.

00:38:00.000 That has as, as many, as many constituencies in it as that large sort of bulge just above

00:38:07.980 it, that, that entire sort of large bulge with the orange, with the yellow bit in the

00:38:11.600 middle, that there's just as many constituencies in that tiny little blob in London as there

00:38:16.020 is in the rest of it.

00:38:16.960 Yes.

00:38:17.200 And that's where you're sort of hiding away some of these other, well, you're hiding

00:38:21.060 away most of the, you'll notice there aren't any Labour seats on here, but there should

00:38:23.700 be 12.

00:38:24.520 You can see one at the top there because the rest of them are all bundled into the cities.

00:38:29.360 But also, of course.

00:38:30.560 One here, one here.

00:38:31.960 I can't even make out that other one.

00:38:33.460 But you're going to have a bunch in London.

00:38:35.940 But also you're going to have a bunch of Greens.

00:38:37.540 Yes.

00:38:38.680 There are supposed to be 64 Greens on the map, but you can't see that.

00:38:42.440 So if you go back 20, 30 years, the Greens would have been competing for exactly the same

00:38:46.720 seats as the Liberal Democrats.

00:38:48.200 They have completely pivoted away from that.

00:38:50.340 They are now basically the industrialisation inshallah party.

00:38:54.480 Yes.

00:38:55.520 That's exactly what they're there.

00:38:56.460 They're the Islamo-communist alliance of convenience against the majority English population of the

00:39:02.740 country.

00:39:03.020 And so, as you can see, they are congregating in those places that are either the most leftist

00:39:09.280 or the most Muslim or immigrant.

00:39:11.940 And so London and Brighton and Bristol and a couple of other places likely are going to

00:39:18.100 end up going green.

00:39:18.900 But there's basically no threat from the Green Party.

00:39:22.100 To be fair, Brighton is another constituency that should probably be Lib Dem.

00:39:28.540 Their old Green Party, Carol Denvers, I think it was.

00:39:32.720 I mean, she was winning that seat.

00:39:34.100 I mean, she's been winning it since the days of Blair.

00:39:36.180 Yeah.

00:39:37.380 The New Greens, they're inner cities.

00:39:40.560 They've got big beards and they've got a family of seven, most of whom are highly inbred.

00:39:45.620 Yes.

00:39:46.340 And so the Green Party have a natural cap on the potential limit that they can achieve.

00:39:52.660 They don't represent the native population of the country.

00:39:55.740 Not at all.

00:39:56.120 They represent a bunch of radical student politicians and the ethnic minorities that they're weaponising

00:40:01.600 against the majority.

00:40:03.060 So, I mean, 64 seats is not nothing.

00:40:05.720 That's very significant.

00:40:07.120 No.

00:40:07.380 And actually, given the vagaries of these poll, I would not be surprised in the sight of the

00:40:11.200 Greens with the opposition.

00:40:12.280 It could well be.

00:40:13.300 But on the plus side, the Labour Party disguised itself as being for the majority population

00:40:21.640 of the country.

00:40:22.420 Right.

00:40:22.940 And so did the Conservatives.

00:40:24.120 And so it was, what kind of interpretation for the majority do you want?

00:40:27.740 But the Greens don't do any of that.

00:40:29.600 The Greens don't pretend to be for the majority party of the population of the country.

00:40:33.860 No.

00:40:34.060 They have a gay Jewish leader and a Muslim Pakistani as the leader and the deputy leader.

00:40:41.440 And so it's like, right, okay, this is not making present any natives at all.

00:40:46.660 No.

00:40:46.900 Right.

00:40:47.160 And so it's, and I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not talking bad about them.

00:40:50.500 It's just what is being made present?

00:40:51.860 And what does the electorate see with the eye when they are being lectured by Zach Polanski

00:40:57.140 or Mothin Ali, right?

00:40:58.800 Well, they see.

00:40:59.280 It's a Middle Eastern party.

00:41:00.740 Basically, yes.

00:41:01.780 And so they have a natural cap on their potential constituency, which is going to be those parts

00:41:08.600 that have been diversified.

00:41:09.720 So until the country is majority diversified, the Green Party are never going to win anything.

00:41:14.840 So we don't need to worry about them.

00:41:16.160 The SNP are, of course, another racial party, coasting on the fact that they've got Scottish

00:41:21.580 in their name.

00:41:23.100 And thankfully, the Scots are presumably too drunk to actually look up what the Scots and

00:41:28.860 the SNP are doing to Scotland.

00:41:30.060 Well, it's supposed to be the Scottish Nationalist Party.

00:41:32.380 And there was, again, back in the 70s and 80s and even 90s, they were a Scottish Nationalist

00:41:38.300 Party.

00:41:38.680 They then became the Scottish Internationalist Party by wanting to basically be ruled from

00:41:42.920 Brussels.

00:41:43.260 And now, I mean, I'm kind of surprised they're still doing as well as they were, because they

00:41:48.760 had Alex Salmon, who was a charismatic leader.

00:41:52.520 Then they had that little weird...

00:41:54.860 Cranky girl.

00:41:55.420 Cranky girl, yeah.

00:41:56.220 I can't remember what she was.

00:41:57.720 And I'm not even sure where they've ended up anymore.

00:42:00.440 So they're kind of running on fumes as well.

00:42:02.680 Exactly.

00:42:03.220 They're just running on the name Scottish National.

00:42:05.580 Yes.

00:42:05.820 And the Scots are like, right, okay, it's not the English Conservatives.

00:42:09.540 It's not the English Labour Party.

00:42:10.960 It's not the English Reform Party.

00:42:13.000 It's not, you know...

00:42:13.920 They're basically the shitter version of the Lib Dems, except for Scottish people.

00:42:17.260 Yes.

00:42:17.740 Yes, that's exactly what they are.

00:42:19.020 The Lib Dems for Scottish people.

00:42:20.940 And this is why reform...

00:42:21.920 I mean, they've got one potential constituency in Scotland.

00:42:24.980 Like, Nigel Farage looks too English for them.

00:42:28.280 And I think this is what the problem...

00:42:29.400 Yeah, he does.

00:42:30.220 Yeah.

00:42:30.360 And this is the problem they have with the Conservatives as well.

00:42:32.900 They're the English Conservatives.

00:42:34.260 They're the English Reform Party to the Scots.

00:42:37.220 So I don't think they'll get anywhere in there.

00:42:39.060 But thankfully, they won't need them, so what difference does it make?

00:42:41.860 And then, yeah, you've got the Independents who will be the Gaza MPs.

00:42:44.800 They'll probably eventually form their own actual Islamist party, unfortunately.

00:42:49.060 Well, and maybe wrap the Greens into it as well.

00:42:52.580 I mean, just chuck out the Jewish guy at the top, because, I mean, he's window dressing only.

00:42:56.220 You might as well just form an Islamic party.

00:42:58.560 To be honest with you, I wouldn't be shocked if one just comes out of the woodwork anyway.

00:43:02.340 Well, and actually, look at the numbers.

00:43:03.780 If they were to do it, if they were to take the mask off, and I think they're a bit smarter than that,

00:43:09.300 because they've got these clean-shaven gigolos that they put in front of the cameras,

00:43:12.520 I think those guys would be saying, no, don't take the mask off.

00:43:15.220 But if they did, on this poll, they would clearly be the opposition, the Islamic party.

00:43:20.520 Yeah, they would.

00:43:21.160 They would.

00:43:21.760 But I think if they were to do that, the Greens would actually lose a core block of the voters,

00:43:27.160 which are the ones who actually do care about the environment.

00:43:30.460 Because you'll notice that the Greens...

00:43:32.360 There are still some of them.

00:43:33.400 Yeah, but there are.

00:43:34.320 I saw a poll the other day, internally in the Greens, where it's about 30% of them actually are there for the environment.

00:43:41.340 Right.

00:43:41.560 But there's no other party that seems to be saying environment, so there's nowhere else they can go.

00:43:45.560 Yeah.

00:43:45.860 And so they're watching their purportedly environmental party getting diversified out of existence.

00:43:51.620 So, basically, they will lose about a third of their own constituency when they finally go mask off,

00:43:57.360 as actually, we're here for Islamo-communism, guys, not the environment at all.

00:44:01.720 And so you've got...

00:44:03.120 This is the landscape in Britain at the moment.

00:44:06.440 What else do they have here?

00:44:08.620 Yeah, so there are other ones who have Labour on six seats.

00:44:12.400 Wow, six seats.

00:44:13.720 Yeah, and 12.

00:44:14.320 So it's, you know, who knows, right?

00:44:16.120 Who knows?

00:44:16.500 But the point is, this is just a preposterous bloodbath and indicative that there is a political revolution happening in the country.

00:44:25.560 Should we talk about what Rupert Lowe should do?

00:44:30.300 Yeah, go on.

00:44:32.520 Let's...

00:44:32.920 Might as well go back to the other one, just to show us the numbers.

00:44:36.280 But the question is, OK, at what point...

00:44:39.020 Because we know that reform are going to disappoint.

00:44:40.980 I mean, we talked about on this stream, what is it that reform...

00:44:45.340 What is it that Nigel Farage and Zaya Yusuf need to do?

00:44:47.620 And it is an enormous amount of work.

00:44:49.680 It's basically Trump 2.0, it's not Trump 1.

00:44:52.160 Yes.

00:44:52.400 If they do Trump 1, they're going to get hacked to pieces by this quangocracy, by the established left.

00:44:59.320 I mean, the Bank of England will just rip them apart.

00:45:01.400 You know, they're just waiting for them to do their first budget.

00:45:03.580 They'll sell some bonds in the background.

00:45:07.060 Things will blow out.

00:45:08.000 The media will collaborate to write the stories.

00:45:11.360 They're going to get picked apart if they don't go in there with a game plan.

00:45:15.200 And I fear that's my concern.

00:45:17.460 So I hope I'm proved wrong.

00:45:19.300 But I think that reform are going to be a disaster.

00:45:21.960 They're terribly, terribly naive.

00:45:24.500 So we obviously here, we much prefer Rupert Lowe.

00:45:28.260 Because he actually knows what he's doing.

00:45:29.760 He's run organisations.

00:45:31.000 And also he's based.

00:45:32.340 He thinks like us.

00:45:33.200 He's ethnically conscious.

00:45:34.420 He just says...

00:45:35.720 Yeah, he's boomer Jesus, exactly.

00:45:38.780 What should he do?

00:45:39.880 Because at the moment, he's like, well, the reform train is so strong.

00:45:44.500 And actually, we talk about it all the time.

00:45:46.460 But the attention span of the average voter is just reform.

00:45:49.620 Yeah.

00:45:49.820 And they can't see that they're doing anything wrong.

00:45:51.440 And they haven't got any wrong intentions.

00:45:52.920 And actually, they're not doing anything wrong.

00:45:54.820 They're not doing anything wrong.

00:45:55.820 The average voter...

00:45:57.900 Like, people in the political sphere forget that the average person doesn't want to be very involved.

00:46:03.260 And I have these conversations all the time with young people about politics.

00:46:06.380 And they just say, oh, it's time for reform.

00:46:07.720 It's time for reform.

00:46:08.680 Yeah.

00:46:09.000 And I thought, should I get into how he's probably...

00:46:11.600 No, I won't bother.

00:46:12.400 It's just...

00:46:12.880 There's no point.

00:46:13.200 There's no point.

00:46:13.880 So, the question is, at what point does Rupert Lowe step up?

00:46:19.160 Because, I mean, reform would be in a champion situation if the top team included Rupert Lowe.

00:46:25.000 And he was in charge of putting the plan together.

00:46:27.760 But Nigel Farage is so ego-fragile, he can't tolerate him.

00:46:32.920 So, what does Rupert Lowe do?

00:46:34.360 And at the moment, he's decided, okay, well, now I'm going to have a movement so that I can connect things.

00:46:39.760 I can have conversations.

00:46:40.680 I can build coalitions.

00:46:41.940 But I'm not actually going to go into the political sphere.

00:46:44.260 What are we building to do?

00:46:45.220 You know, that's the question.

00:46:45.860 Yeah.

00:46:46.040 Well, at some point, it has to be political power.

00:46:47.960 Yeah, exactly.

00:46:48.800 And he has said this expressly.

00:46:50.920 But it's like, okay, well, to gain political power, you have to have people you can vote for.

00:46:55.420 And that gives him basically two options.

00:46:57.480 One is to start his own party.

00:46:59.900 I don't think there's any chance of him going back into reform.

00:47:02.300 So, it's going to have to be start his own party.

00:47:03.900 Or number two, if the Conservatives get desperate enough that they realize

00:47:09.140 that they're going to become an ex-party, they would have to reach out to him and say,

00:47:13.580 come and be our leader, and you've got a clean hand to do whatever you want.

00:47:17.660 I mean, honestly, the Conservatives are in such a dire strait at the moment.

00:47:22.620 It's surprising they haven't already done this, right?

00:47:25.440 Because, I mean, in an era of anti-immigration, putting an immigrant in charge of the party is just genius.

00:47:31.060 And the alternative is the guy who brought in 25,000 Afghans and lied about it.

00:47:35.420 Yes.

00:47:36.100 Yes.

00:47:36.840 The alternative is someone who has an awful record.

00:47:40.460 Robert Jenrick.

00:47:41.360 Yeah.

00:47:41.680 Yeah.

00:47:42.060 And, you know, is part of the Boris wave.

00:47:45.760 So, and the thing is as well, politics is determined by the X Factor, whether people want to admit it or not.

00:47:54.220 Right.

00:47:54.880 So, the only reason we have Keir Starmer is because Nigel Farage wielded his X Factor against the Conservatives.

00:48:01.380 Yes.

00:48:01.740 Cut out a third of their vote, and in every constituency, just legged them.

00:48:05.780 Knocked their legs out from under them.

00:48:07.220 So, the Conservative vote completely collapsed, and Keir Starmer comes blinking out into the light,

00:48:11.980 being like, oh, am I the Prime Minister?

00:48:13.920 Oh, dear.

00:48:15.080 You know, because nobody thought Keir Starmer could have become Prime Minister in a normal electoral cycle.

00:48:20.280 Like, if Nigel Farage was going to be like, okay, I'm going to stand down like I did for Boris or something,

00:48:23.820 then we'd have a Conservative PM right now.

00:48:26.660 Right.

00:48:27.000 But that didn't happen.

00:48:27.920 And now Keir Starmer is, honestly, a genius move by Farage here.

00:48:32.120 He's now saddled with destroying the Labour Party.

00:48:34.920 So, superb.

00:48:36.040 You know, the Labour Party have got the most unpopular Prime Minister ever.

00:48:38.500 And they all know.

00:48:39.620 I mean, I haven't talked about the budget, but what the budget was, and I'll do a daily video on this shortly.

00:48:46.100 Yeah.

00:48:46.160 First of all, it was making sure that Keir Starmer stays in control of the Labour Party

00:48:51.040 by throwing any unaffordable red meat to his backbenchers.

00:48:54.020 Right.

00:48:54.220 Number one, it was a jobs budget.

00:48:57.500 And the job was his.

00:48:59.480 One job.

00:49:00.500 Yep.

00:49:00.640 Right.

00:49:01.200 The second thing, it was throwing money at large immigrant families to accelerate the takeover of that.

00:49:07.000 Yep.

00:49:07.120 And number three, it was laying a huge fiscal bomb in 29-30.

00:49:12.500 So, all of the spending is front-loaded.

00:49:15.160 All of the tax rises are back-loaded.

00:49:17.660 All of those back-loaded taxes are things that will kill growth.

00:49:20.840 So, you'd be insane for reform to actually go ahead and do those things.

00:49:25.060 Because you'd just be killing the economy if you did it.

00:49:27.580 It would be like applying speed fines to job, to pay slips.

00:49:34.080 You know, it's just, we're going to punishment fine you every time you get your pay slip, even more so than now.

00:49:38.780 So, they are perfectly well aware that they're not going to win the election.

00:49:44.300 And they have to poison the world to the greatest possible extent.

00:49:48.020 Not just this election.

00:49:49.740 Any election.

00:49:50.600 Oh, yeah.

00:49:51.080 It's, if we can't have the country, no one will have it.

00:49:53.840 Exactly.

00:49:54.860 If this plays out, as Stats for Lefties here is projected, and again, this is not the only poll that has the Labour government completely collapsing, right?

00:50:05.640 I mean, I've seen polls where they lose 100, 200, 300, you know, like, their party is just in freefall.

00:50:12.900 It's how far down they go.

00:50:14.760 And it's potentially, they could go to nothing.

00:50:17.240 Oh, yes.

00:50:18.280 I mean, I expect they'd drag on with one or two seats for decades to come.

00:50:22.060 Yeah, yeah, there'll probably be like 12 Labour Party.

00:50:24.580 Probably be like that for the next 30 years, but yeah.

00:50:26.440 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:50:26.820 Like with the Liberals.

00:50:28.200 I mean, another thing about the budget is because I was watching the budget, I watched the PMQs just beforehand.

00:50:33.740 And it was weird.

00:50:35.060 And all the PMQs are like that now because it's supposed to be Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch.

00:50:39.420 Everyone's thinking about Nigel Farage.

00:50:41.180 They're supposed to be tearing chunks out of each other.

00:50:43.640 And basically, the two of them stand up and they're talking about Nigel Farage.

00:50:46.640 Yeah.

00:50:47.240 They both know what's going on.

00:50:49.580 Exactly.

00:50:50.160 It's a parliament of zombies.

00:50:51.860 Yes.

00:50:52.040 It's a parliament of dead men walking.

00:50:54.100 So we're going to lose about, well, I mean, nearly 500 MPs.

00:50:59.240 The parliament's only 650.

00:51:01.020 Yeah, you do.

00:51:01.640 The parliament's only 650 MPs.

00:51:04.100 So what should Rupert Lowe do?

00:51:07.920 Well, should he do this before the election?

00:51:11.320 Or should he wait until afterwards when reforms start botching things up because they haven't thought

00:51:16.640 it through?

00:51:17.440 Well, before I answer that, I think it's worth really emphasising the dead nature of the parliament.

00:51:22.680 It's literally like the rump parliament at the moment where they've got no legitimacy.

00:51:26.980 They're not coming back.

00:51:27.980 And they're just stuck in this place.

00:51:30.760 And it doesn't even look like it.

00:51:32.000 There was a debate the other day.

00:51:34.260 And I mean, I tweeted about this on Twitter.

00:51:36.480 And I think a number of people basically had the same angle on this.

00:51:39.220 Yeah.

00:51:39.340 Is the discussion with Shabana Mahmood and she was standing up and the conversation was

00:51:43.460 that how many immigrants do we let into the country?

00:51:45.600 And you see everybody talking about it.

00:51:47.540 It was a collection of ethnic women deciding how many immigrants get to come into my country.

00:51:54.400 How?

00:51:55.040 Shabana Mahmood somehow had the far right position.

00:51:58.040 She was just using far right talking points to stamp them all down.

00:52:01.640 Yes.

00:52:01.960 You know, the conservatives, I'm never listening to you.

00:52:03.880 What could the Greens possibly have to add to this?

00:52:05.520 But nevertheless, it was a group of ethnic women deciding how many immigrants come into the country.

00:52:09.600 The parliament doesn't even remotely pretend to be a British parliament.

00:52:14.700 It's not representative of the country at all.

00:52:17.660 And that's why they're going to get cleared out.

00:52:19.780 And it's like all of this, whether you like it or not, I think subconsciously,

00:52:22.920 this is the revolt of the English that we're watching here.

00:52:25.920 They just don't articulate in such a sense.

00:52:27.540 It's taken a while, but glad to see it.

00:52:30.580 But we do things slowly in this country.

00:52:33.080 But the point is, yeah, it's a parliament of zombies, dead men walking,

00:52:38.360 and they're all about to get absolutely flushed out.

00:52:42.060 It's going to be the most dramatic toilet cleaning in the world.

00:52:45.700 Thank God.

00:52:47.100 And it will be at least fresh and new.

00:52:49.160 So one problem that we have is that it's difficult to predict what's going to happen

00:52:53.500 in such turbulent circumstances.

00:52:57.140 Because, I mean, this is pretty unprecedented.

00:52:59.500 Politics in Britain has been really sclerotic for a century.

00:53:03.680 You know, it's been, yeah, you're getting the Labour or the Conservatives to some degree.

00:53:07.820 You know, and it's...

00:53:08.640 And it's been like that since whatever you said, 1924?

00:53:11.360 Yeah, 1929, I think it was.

00:53:13.660 So it's turgid.

00:53:17.340 Yes.

00:53:17.580 And so a cleaning of the board being on the horizon is quite exciting.

00:53:25.320 And so the question is, yeah, as you came to, what does Rupert Lowe do?

00:53:29.000 Now, I don't have a good answer to this.

00:53:33.460 I don't think anyone does.

00:53:34.740 Because, like you say, you've got a few options.

00:53:36.860 You could start a party.

00:53:38.040 Right?

00:53:38.140 Now, that's an uphill struggle.

00:53:39.540 But on the plus side for Rupert Lowe is that he's already an MP and he has an incredible

00:53:45.360 social media game.

00:53:47.000 So, you know, tens of millions of people see...

00:53:49.160 I mean, like, I was talking to my wife's aunt the other day.

00:53:52.120 She's come around to visit.

00:53:53.140 And she was saying, oh, yeah, this is all really bad.

00:53:55.400 I keep seeing Rupert Lowe on my Instagram feed.

00:53:58.020 And I was just like, she doesn't, like, care about politics, but it keeps coming up for

00:54:01.760 her.

00:54:01.980 And this is all becoming intrusive in her life.

00:54:04.940 You know, politics is happening.

00:54:05.160 I don't use Instagram, so I'm glad to see that he's all...

00:54:07.200 Presumably, he's all over Facebook as well, because that's where the voters are.

00:54:09.780 Yeah, he's got a really good social media team.

00:54:12.180 We should take some advice from his team, really.

00:54:15.420 Yeah.

00:54:15.780 And build a social media.

00:54:16.460 Or we know them all, so...

00:54:17.300 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:17.720 And for people who are wondering, we've only got one guy doing our social media.

00:54:22.020 Yeah.

00:54:22.580 We're sending to reform for a week.

00:54:25.080 It's not just that.

00:54:26.000 We should get a team of guys to do it.

00:54:27.980 But anyway, it should.

00:54:29.120 The point being, Rupert Lowe is in a position where he...

00:54:33.140 And the Restore network that he's bringing together is a useful thing.

00:54:38.260 Because if he were to transform that into a party, I think he'd probably get a bunch of

00:54:42.660 defections from reform councils, the local...

00:54:46.860 What do they call them?

00:54:48.720 The branches.

00:54:50.240 Yeah.

00:54:50.360 I think he's apparently had a bunch of them contact him saying, well, we'd happily join

00:54:54.800 you.

00:54:55.660 Because Nigel shits all over the local constituency parties just as much as he does over people

00:55:02.140 that try to be MPs for him.

00:55:03.480 All the time.

00:55:04.140 No respect for them at all.

00:55:05.080 And he'd get a bunch of the half-decent conservatives flipped to him.

00:55:11.860 And so he would have something, would erect itself out of the ground and it would have

00:55:16.600 some legs.

00:55:18.060 He'd also...

00:55:18.900 I mean, they've got tens of thousands, 30, 40,000 members of the movement already.

00:55:25.560 And just huge kudos.

00:55:27.320 I mean, if you start a new party, I mean, I love the guy, but Ben Habib, I mean, what

00:55:31.660 has he actually managed to achieve with a new party?

00:55:33.440 Nobody...

00:55:34.780 It wasn't joined up enough.

00:55:36.380 No.

00:55:36.720 That's the thing.

00:55:37.520 I like Ben too.

00:55:39.500 But I think that he pulled the trigger too quickly in advance.

00:55:43.560 I think so.

00:55:44.760 But if you become the leader of the Conservative Party, that is instant kudos.

00:55:48.540 That's true.

00:55:49.060 People all over the world know what the Conservative Party is.

00:55:53.340 You know, every media institution, even if this happens and the Conservatives go down

00:55:58.240 to, what is that?

00:55:59.580 Is that fifth place or fourth place?

00:56:01.760 With 34 MPs, they're still going to be the Conservative Party and they can still get themselves

00:56:06.360 on TV whenever they damn well want.

00:56:08.200 And they'll probably still be invited to question time all the time.

00:56:11.000 And if they got a radical leader who kept saying exciting things...

00:56:14.520 Yes.

00:56:14.800 And the Conservatives started going up in the polls, because the public will know who the

00:56:18.100 Conservatives are.

00:56:19.180 They just are annoyed by the way...

00:56:20.820 If the Conservatives had a really strong survival instinct, and they do have a survival instinct,

00:56:26.100 but if they had a proper survival instinct...

00:56:27.480 Oldest party in the world.

00:56:28.440 They do, yeah.

00:56:29.420 What they would do is they would appoint Rupert Lowe now, and they would tell him, you can

00:56:33.140 hire and fire everyone.

00:56:34.040 And what he would do is basically deselect every single MP they have.

00:56:37.420 Maybe one or two would stay on.

00:56:39.160 Yeah.

00:56:39.440 And then he would rebuild them.

00:56:41.520 Yeah.

00:56:41.620 And he would actually have something that could go from strength to strength as reform, prove

00:56:46.780 themselves to what I think is going to happen, is to be under-prepared for the task at hand.

00:56:51.360 Really.

00:56:52.300 The problem is the Conservative Party are too proud.

00:56:54.660 Yeah.

00:56:55.160 But I mean, moreover, we're still four years out from an election, right?

00:56:57.880 Nigel Farage, in 2021, joined reform and built this up in four years to this.

00:57:04.920 Okay.

00:57:07.260 That's...

00:57:07.780 I mean...

00:57:08.780 Yeah.

00:57:09.160 Sorry, he didn't join in 2021.

00:57:10.620 He joined in 23 or whatever.

00:57:11.740 But the point is, reform have gone from nothing to this in four years.

00:57:15.220 So that's debatable.

00:57:16.940 Did Nigel Farage form the Reform Party in four years and get it off the ground?

00:57:21.560 Or is the Reform Party the Brexit Party that was UK?

00:57:26.180 Sure.

00:57:26.600 It absolutely is, the continuity of that.

00:57:29.060 But Richard Tice kept this alive.

00:57:32.680 And was it?

00:57:33.280 It was 2023, I think it was.

00:57:34.700 He went back to it.

00:57:35.820 But it was because it was beginning to pick up in the polls, right?

00:57:38.240 Ahead of the election.

00:57:39.040 And Nigel came back.

00:57:40.040 Yeah, and when the Clacton poll came back, that Reform were going to win it.

00:57:44.240 Because remember, it wasn't...

00:57:45.500 And again, you wouldn't know from looking at this, but it really wasn't clear that Reform

00:57:49.040 were going to win any seats.

00:57:50.320 Yeah, and that poor sod in Clacton, he had paid his deposit.

00:57:54.600 Totally backstabbed by Farage.

00:57:55.840 Yeah, totally backstabbed, chucked out.

00:57:57.460 They didn't even refund him the deposit.

00:57:59.080 They didn't do anything for him.

00:58:00.000 They promised him a bunch of stuff and did nothing for him.

00:58:02.100 Yeah.

00:58:08.700 Sorry, I'll just...

00:58:10.040 And it's this way that Nigel keeps treating people.

00:58:16.000 Yeah.

00:58:16.360 I mean, we've seen him do it dozens and dozens of times.

00:58:19.900 And when he chucked out Rupert Lowe, for many of us, that was the last straw.

00:58:23.240 Because this man simply cannot be trusted.

00:58:25.640 Which brings me back to the thing, I don't think they're going to be able to hire the talent.

00:58:28.800 Because the talent can perfectly well see what Nigel Farage is.

00:58:31.920 And he's an egomaniac.

00:58:32.880 The second that you're inconvenient to him or feel threatening to him, you're done.

00:58:37.640 So the point being, it wasn't at all clear that reform were going to end up in this position at all.

00:58:42.380 And so, okay, four years is a long time in politics, especially now, where things are so up in the air.

00:58:48.820 Everything is so turbulent.

00:58:49.860 I mean, you wouldn't have predicted 10 years ago that the Labour Party might end up on 12 seats.

00:58:54.060 No.

00:58:54.400 You know, you wouldn't think there would be a single poll that would suggest anything, even vaguely like that.

00:59:00.860 You know, it'd always be about 250 seats at minimum, you'd expect.

00:59:03.720 But here we are in the new frontier, in the new era.

00:59:07.240 And, okay, so, yeah, what do you do?

00:59:09.940 Now, if Rupert Lowe, his main strengths are the fact that he is likable.

00:59:19.380 He has the X Factor.

00:59:21.020 And it's because he's got that sort of Trumpian energy to him, in a British mould.

00:59:25.340 As in, he's obviously a very proud Englishman, and he doesn't care what they think.

00:59:29.960 And this is very powerful.

00:59:31.720 I mean, that was a proper breakthrough.

00:59:34.320 Yeah.

00:59:34.620 I mean, I can't remember exactly what point it was, but at some point, they went after him,

00:59:39.800 and they used the magic word.

00:59:41.460 Yeah.

00:59:41.860 They called him a racist.

00:59:42.620 I mean, Emily Maitlis.

00:59:43.960 Yeah, I mean, that was a good on-screen example, but I think it happened on Twitter before then.

00:59:47.320 But essentially, they went after him and said, we're going to use our magic word now.

00:59:52.000 Watch you shrivel.

00:59:53.220 Yeah.

00:59:53.380 And he was just like, I don't care.

00:59:54.420 Yeah, I don't care for you.

00:59:55.200 And he keeps saying, I don't care.

00:59:55.800 And I've been waiting for a politician to do that for a decade or more.

00:59:59.600 Exactly.

00:59:59.960 And he just restates his affirmative position, and then they're like, okay, well, I have to engage with that now.

01:00:04.600 Calling you a racist didn't make you back down.

01:00:08.200 And that's Rupert Lowe's true strength.

01:00:09.940 He doesn't care what their opinion is.

01:00:11.800 He doesn't respect them.

01:00:13.280 And he does know what he wants to do.

01:00:15.920 It's one thing not respecting your opponents.

01:00:18.260 If you don't have an affirmative plan of your own, then that's no good.

01:00:20.760 But he does have something.

01:00:22.980 And so it's honestly not beyond the realms of possibility that if the Conservative Party basically admits, yeah, okay, we've screwed it.

01:00:30.660 We've totally stuffed it.

01:00:32.800 Kemi is not coming back.

01:00:34.860 She's not building the Conservative Party back up.

01:00:37.320 She's, in fact, one of the reasons that it's collapsing.

01:00:40.300 And we need a complete overhaul, not just of who is managing the party, the sinews of the party, but the prevailing philosophy of the party.

01:00:52.800 But Kemi Baynock is the leader of the party.

01:00:56.200 I mean, all the leadership is invested in Parliament.

01:00:59.180 Yes, to some extent, they're controlled by their, to an element, they're controlled by their backers and their funders.

01:01:05.360 Now, I don't know what their funding situation is, but in order for, because Rupert would have to basically clear out the Parliamentary Party.

01:01:12.280 And the Parliamentary Party controls the party.

01:01:14.720 So we'd have to get to the situation where post-election, their membership, their funding, their donations, everything dries up to the point.

01:01:23.160 Where a backer can say, look, you guys are going to have to close down as a party because you literally cannot pay your bills unless you put Rupert Lowen.

01:01:30.720 So I just can't see a deal like that being done until after the election.

01:01:33.880 Well, I've heard that apparently the Conservatives don't really have local constituencies anymore.

01:01:38.760 Not really, no.

01:01:39.340 They only have parties.

01:01:40.280 Apparently, they've all just packed up.

01:01:42.180 A bunch of them defected to reform, and those that were left have just given up.

01:01:46.100 Because it looks like there's no coming back for them, right?

01:01:49.480 Yeah, they still have bills to pay, though.

01:01:51.040 They do.

01:01:52.800 But the point being, I think it is possible that the 1922 Committee and the sort of internal infrastructure of the party realizes that they are essentially looking at the existential end of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.

01:02:05.900 And Kimmy Badenock is part of that process, right?

01:02:10.460 She's part of the reason.

01:02:11.660 Because say what you like about Kimmy Badenock, and I did enjoy her in the budget the other day, mean-girling Rachel Reeves.

01:02:18.740 She was genuinely funny about it, you know, when she was mocking her about mansplaining.

01:02:23.800 But she's not a charismatic leader.

01:02:25.320 She doesn't have the X Factor, right?

01:02:27.440 She doesn't have it.

01:02:28.460 Rupert Lowe does have it.

01:02:29.660 And so it is entirely possible that it could be impressed upon the Conservatives.

01:02:35.720 Look, you are just tinkering, fiddling on the deck of the Titanic, right?

01:02:41.400 This is going down.

01:02:42.640 And unless you actually do something significant, then you're going to go down.

01:02:48.100 Well, they were the party of government just over a year ago.

01:02:51.480 Yeah.

01:02:52.260 And they're now looking at 34 seats.

01:02:54.880 Yeah.

01:02:55.980 Like, Boris had 52% approval rating when he came in.

01:03:00.060 Yes.

01:03:00.860 He had a super majority.

01:03:02.380 Yeah.

01:03:02.640 Majority of 80.

01:03:03.320 He could have done anything he wanted.

01:03:04.920 But he had, he also had the goodwill of the country behind him.

01:03:08.820 Yeah.

01:03:09.500 You know, 52% approval is just mad.

01:03:11.680 Like, Kirstama had like 48% or something like that.

01:03:14.520 And that just tanked instantly, obviously.

01:03:16.660 And so the question is, how could the Conservatives recover?

01:03:19.080 Well, it would be a hard-fought campaign against Nigel Farage.

01:03:23.020 But I think, actually, Nigel Farage is beatable from the right.

01:03:26.480 Right?

01:03:26.720 You can beat Nigel Farage from the right.

01:03:28.220 And the only reason that nobody's beating Nigel Farage from the right is because everyone is essentially to his left.

01:03:32.980 Even then, like, Keir Starmer is more right-wing on many issues than Nigel Farage.

01:03:36.140 Oh, yes.

01:03:36.940 Right?

01:03:37.600 Yes.

01:03:38.080 You know, but the problem that Keir Starmer has...

01:03:39.560 Shibana Bakbu definitely is.

01:03:41.060 But the problem that they have is the reverse Midas touch.

01:03:43.740 Right?

01:03:44.180 Everything they touch is seems like a bad idea.

01:03:45.940 Like, because the public were generally quite in favor of digital IDs until Keir Starmer was like, we're having digital IDs.

01:03:50.440 Everyone's like, oh, no, we're not.

01:03:51.840 Not from you.

01:03:52.740 You know, we read you as an enemy.

01:03:56.280 You read to us as an enemy.

01:03:58.540 Whereas Nigel Farage doesn't read as an enemy.

01:04:02.380 And this could...

01:04:03.860 We're running out of time, so we're going to have to wrap this up.

01:04:05.660 Basically, Rupert Lowe would have to have a hard-fought campaign that was polarizing on the most important issue in the country at the moment.

01:04:13.280 And that issue is immigration.

01:04:16.140 It would have to be that he essentially has a campaign that says, not one more.

01:04:21.700 And that would put Nigel Farage and everyone else to his left.

01:04:25.520 And Rupert Lowe would be the only person standing on the right.

01:04:28.220 Like, Donald Trump would build the wall.

01:04:29.860 Right?

01:04:30.220 Not one more.

01:04:31.120 So everyone in the country, every party in the country, would have to argue that Rupert Lowe, oh, no, that's outside of the bounds.

01:04:38.760 We can't do that.

01:04:39.780 And so Rupert Lowe, what he would have done is corralled his entire opposition onto the same plantation and crushed them there.

01:04:47.060 Right?

01:04:47.220 So, you know, the Labour Party, the Lib Dems, the Greens, the SNP, and reform would all be like, no, no, no, we're not going to just stop immigration entirely.

01:04:54.820 And it would turn the election into a referendum on immigration.

01:04:59.280 Yeah.

01:04:59.580 Are you for it or are you against it?

01:05:02.080 And we already know that the British public is against immigration.

01:05:04.840 So do you think the time to act is now?

01:05:07.260 Yes.

01:05:07.900 Okay.

01:05:08.140 If, I mean, I don't, loathe as I am to save the Conservative Party, I think the way that they can pull this back is to literally make a big song and dance about this.

01:05:18.700 Right?

01:05:18.900 And honestly, you kind of want Kemi Badenock, she'd have to get over herself.

01:05:22.880 Right?

01:05:23.300 She would have to admit you're not the person for the job.

01:05:26.500 Yeah.

01:05:26.700 That's what you have to admit.

01:05:28.300 I mean, in the middle of an English revolt, a first-generation Nigerian immigrant.

01:05:32.080 Exactly.

01:05:32.560 It's not going to cut it.

01:05:33.360 Now, I'm not saying that they need to kick Kemi Badenock out of the party.

01:05:35.500 So actually, Kemi Badenock says many things, but I actually don't think she's terrible.

01:05:39.780 Right?

01:05:40.120 Yeah.

01:05:40.380 What you want her to be is like the hatchet woman in charge of a department.

01:05:44.420 Right?

01:05:44.740 I mean, you could put her in charge of the Home Office if you like, you know.

01:05:47.320 But basically, you want Kemi Badenock to essentially bully the crap out of the civil service.

01:05:51.460 Right?

01:05:51.940 Because obviously, she doesn't care about them or their feelings.

01:05:54.320 It's just that she's not the leader.

01:05:56.220 Right?

01:05:56.340 She's not the leader.

01:05:57.560 She's not a coalition builder.

01:05:58.760 She can't bring this back.

01:06:00.440 As you say, an immigrant in the middle of an English revolt.

01:06:02.840 Not the right person.

01:06:03.580 But she could be like the, you know, the Morgan, not Morgan McSweeney, but like the person who makes a bunch of unpopular decisions with the civil service.

01:06:13.820 It's very rare for somebody to voluntarily put themselves in the background, though.

01:06:18.340 It is.

01:06:18.780 But they're going to lose.

01:06:20.840 So it's literally driving.

01:06:21.700 Even in those situations.

01:06:23.080 Look, you can keep driving the car, but we're going off a cliff.

01:06:25.640 Are you sure you want to keep driving the car?

01:06:27.520 Because we're all going off the cliff.

01:06:28.880 Most people drive off the cliff in that situation.

01:06:30.380 They do.

01:06:30.760 They do, but they don't have to.

01:06:32.920 They actually do have the option of saying, look, actually, we're going to do something radical.

01:06:38.580 Now, this would have a couple of effects.

01:06:40.480 It would be, like you say, very unusual.

01:06:42.840 So it would be very noteworthy.

01:06:43.960 All of the political commentary out.

01:06:46.280 They'd be like, oh my goodness.

01:06:47.420 She's stepping down.

01:06:48.080 Who are they bringing in?

01:06:49.580 Oh my God.

01:06:49.900 And then Rupert Lowe, Conservative Party Conference, gives a banger speech.

01:06:55.220 Where he's just like, this is the problem, this is the problem, this is the problem.

01:06:57.820 And finally, not one more.

01:07:01.080 Not one more immigrant.

01:07:02.860 Every, and he literally invoked Enoch Powell.

01:07:05.840 Right?

01:07:06.300 Bring it in.

01:07:06.940 Like, since the days of Enoch Powell, the British public have been against mass immigration.

01:07:11.180 And now the country is 70% English.

01:07:14.800 Not one more.

01:07:15.720 That would be a hell of a pitch.

01:07:18.080 It'd be everywhere.

01:07:19.060 Right?

01:07:19.220 Suddenly, what would Farage say?

01:07:21.020 Who cares what Nigel Farage has got to say?

01:07:23.300 Nigel Farage, oh no.

01:07:24.000 No, no, no, I would never, I would never, I'm not a racist.

01:07:26.740 I would never go down that road.

01:07:28.120 No, we have to appease them until they take over is his stance.

01:07:30.920 Exactly.

01:07:31.480 And so that puts Nigel Farage, Lib Dems, the Greens, the SNP, and the Labour Party, all on the same page.

01:07:38.460 They are pro-immigration.

01:07:40.340 They are the pro-immigration parties.

01:07:41.980 And the Conservatives, under Rupert Lowe, would be the only anti-immigration party.

01:07:47.380 Explicitly stated.

01:07:47.980 I don't wildly hate this happening after the election, though.

01:07:51.480 Because I don't think anything stops this reform train.

01:07:53.720 Not at this point.

01:07:54.920 I think that would stop the reform train.

01:07:57.480 And I think that you run a very aggressive campaign.

01:08:02.480 You can easily find lots of clips of Nigel Farage saying, I'm actually foreign immigration.

01:08:07.700 There was one the other day saying, I'm not a populist.

01:08:10.500 Do you remember that?

01:08:11.540 Where he was being interviewed by the Times or something.

01:08:13.200 He's like, oh, I've realized I'm not a populist.

01:08:14.580 No, you're not a populist, Nigel.

01:08:16.220 You're pro-immigration elitist.

01:08:17.780 I agree with you.

01:08:18.620 Yeah.

01:08:18.760 You could easily do it if you were Rupert Lowe and you had to charge of the Conservatives.

01:08:22.140 Isn't populist just the Greek word for democracy?

01:08:24.320 Yes, that's correct.

01:08:25.620 No, it's the Latin word for democracy.

01:08:26.920 Oh, the Latin word.

01:08:27.860 Democracy is the Greek word.

01:08:29.000 But yes, that's exactly what it is.

01:08:30.100 And this is the weird thing about politics is they come out and say, I'm for democracy.

01:08:34.280 I'm against populism.

01:08:35.440 They're literally the same thing.

01:08:36.540 Yes.

01:08:36.780 That's exactly correct.

01:08:38.840 But the point is, Rupert Lowe could polarize the national debate on the election into two

01:08:44.720 camps, him and everyone else, and he would actually have the position that the public

01:08:49.480 actually support.

01:08:51.020 The pushback you're going to get from reform if you did that is that if this movement,

01:08:56.800 if this reform train gets split, what if it puts in the Green Party or a Green Tory Labour

01:09:06.400 coalition?

01:09:07.320 That's a great question.

01:09:10.400 Reform are the ones who split the Tory votes, right?

01:09:12.880 And have now, by dint of not being the Conservatives, got to this position.

01:09:20.420 But the Conservatives have lost their place because they're not Conservative, because they're

01:09:25.100 not representative of what the country actually wants.

01:09:27.940 I think that Rupert Lowe and a reformed Conservative Party, being incredibly aggressive, and again,

01:09:36.360 Trumpian, right?

01:09:37.140 He has to understand.

01:09:38.920 And Rupert Lowe, thankfully, has already established, I don't care about their opinions.

01:09:41.640 He has to understand, he will arouse the ire of all of the Liberal intelligentsia, up

01:09:47.560 and to and including the Reform Party, right?

01:09:50.920 But the public will agree with him.

01:09:54.260 The public, and we know this from polling from the 1970s till now, about 70% of people

01:09:59.800 just do not want any more immigration.

01:10:02.020 They're just tired of it, they've had enough, they either want it reduced a little bit or

01:10:04.980 a lot, and if you turn it into a binary question, immigration, yes or no, it'll be like

01:10:11.220 Brexit.

01:10:12.380 People will just vote, yeah, no, I just don't, I'm voting for the no, because I'm sick of

01:10:16.460 it.

01:10:16.700 Look at those fucking foreigners everywhere.

01:10:18.080 I'm sick of it.

01:10:18.980 And that's what Rupert Lowe could do if the Conservatives understand that this is the only

01:10:24.320 path they have to survival.

01:10:26.100 Yeah.

01:10:26.260 And if they don't...

01:10:27.100 I don't think they understand that yet.

01:10:28.560 I don't think they do either.

01:10:29.760 And the thing is, I don't even think it would take very long to do this, right?

01:10:33.800 Like, Nigel Farage has flipped this very, very quickly, while we still...

01:10:38.100 So whilst I agree with you that it's possible to do it before the election, I think what

01:10:41.900 you're describing probably pays out after the election.

01:10:44.940 Quite possibly.

01:10:46.000 Quite possibly.

01:10:46.700 But if I were the Conservatives and Rupert Lowe, and I wanted...

01:10:50.700 Because Rupert Lowe keeps saying, oh, it's got to be 2029 that the Patriots win, right?

01:10:54.720 He doesn't stipulate himself.

01:10:56.840 He says, the Patriots, you know, the base side of it has to win.

01:11:00.000 And I genuinely think that what I'm proposing here is a route to a majority.

01:11:06.640 So anyway, that's...

01:11:08.260 Alright, good chat.

01:11:09.780 We'll leave that there.

01:11:11.020 But anyway, let us know what you think, folks.

01:11:12.580 We'll, of course, be reading the comments on this.

01:11:15.040 But, like, I mean, what we've said, none of this could come to pass.

01:11:18.040 Like, nothing here may come to pass.

01:11:20.220 Because, like, four years out from the election, four years is a long time in politics.

01:11:23.960 Who knows what happens?

01:11:24.800 You know, maybe Nigel Farage, like, you know, has a heart attack.

01:11:27.620 Something interesting is going to happen, though.

01:11:30.000 The point is, there is a kind of revolt going on.

01:11:33.040 And we are in uncharted waters.

01:11:35.000 So anyone who tells you this is definitely going to happen,

01:11:37.960 they know what the future holds with this, they don't.

01:11:41.620 So, anyway, exciting times.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 28, 2025

The English Revolution

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