The Great Misalignment
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per Minute
186.31699
Summary
It's election day, and there's a lot to cover in this episode of the Political Chit Chat. We've got the latest YouGov poll, an exclusive interview with Rupert Lowe, and a comic that's halfway through its halfway point that's philosophically informed.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hi guys, Islander 5 is out to purchase now. As you can see from this amazing cover,
00:00:05.700
this edition's theme is Heroism, Power and Modernity. And the articles in there, which I
00:00:11.560
have to say are rather good, don't you know? And I'm not just talking about mine, I'm talking about
00:00:16.180
all of them. They discuss what the Heroic Society is and why modernity is destroying it, but why
00:00:22.800
the spirit of the hero is looming throughout everything that's happening. And again, I say
00:00:28.080
the cover goes hard, right? Because, I mean, look at it. You would think that this was tailored for the
00:00:33.920
current events, but no, we're always ahead of the curve. Anyway, it's thicker than normal as well
00:00:38.400
because we just happen to have a load of extra content in there. We've got an exclusive interview
00:00:41.980
from Rupert Lowe, Lutz from the editor, and a comic that's halfway through that's philosophically
00:00:48.060
informed, which I think you'll enjoy. So get it while you can at shop.lotuses.com. The link will
00:00:52.940
be in the description. Hi folks, welcome back to another one of Carl and Dan's political chats.
00:00:57.880
A lot's going on at the moment, and it's really fast, and we've got a lot to cover. So let's just
00:01:03.000
crack on. Polling has been very strange, right? So here's a YouGov poll from today from Sky News,
00:01:11.900
as reported by Sky News. YouGov being, I think, the fourth most reliable pollster in the country
00:01:16.680
out of something like 50. So they're pretty good. They get most things correct. Reform on 25,
00:01:23.220
Labour on 21, Conservatives on 17, Greens on 16, and no one cares about the Liberal Democrats.
00:01:28.900
So that's a low poll. This is sort of a high poll. We'll get Reform on 32, Conservatives on 18,
00:01:36.740
Greens on 17, Labour on 14, Lib Dems on 11, right? So let's have a look at the average of polls, right?
00:01:43.460
So there has been a bit of a downturn recently for Reform, but they got a 1% bump from the Tory
00:01:50.220
defections. Interesting. 1%. The thing that strikes me about this is your first poll. Okay,
00:01:59.040
let's contrast your first poll with your second poll. The second poll, where it was actually quite
00:02:02.200
a strong difference, is something that we talked about a whole bunch of times, and that is Reform
00:02:06.180
are in first place and everybody else is in second place. And that is inherently unstable because in a
00:02:11.280
two-party system, first pass the post is designed to be a two-party system. You can't have four
00:02:15.800
parties in second place, it doesn't hold. But what your first poll shows is you've actually got
00:02:21.140
five parties in second place. There's no clear leader. Now that is wildly unstable for a political
00:02:28.120
system. It's crazy. But like we were talking about previously, what I think we're witnessing is a
00:02:34.520
current realignment, right? The centre is draining out into the fringes, frankly, the extremes. And
00:02:41.760
this is just the process that we are watching play out. And so you can see where we'll come to
00:02:48.760
where these things, who these people are and where they're going in a minute, in fact.
00:02:52.800
But so this gives us some general election predictions, right? This is from electoral calculus.
00:02:56.620
And as you can see, if based on the previous seats, the next one, the prediction for the next one is
00:03:05.760
like roughly what they think they're going to get. So depending on like the average of polls gives you
00:03:10.640
this, could be a lot higher, could be a lot lower. But either way, it's pretty bad for the Conservatives
00:03:17.220
and Labour, right? So if the Conservatives and Labour really hit it out of the park, they get not even
00:03:22.180
250 seats each. Considering Keir Starmer's got 407 at the moment. And I mean, the Conservatives
00:03:28.600
are on like 120, but you know, they should be the major party. Yes. But the low seats...
00:03:34.280
The high seats don't add up. So this is just to be... Each row is to be considered discreet.
00:03:39.240
Correct. But the low seats, I mean, my God, that's pretty bad. Yes.
00:03:44.280
The reform, the lowest they think they're going to get is 135. Now that's not great. But considering
00:03:48.580
they've got eight MPs at the moment, there's still a lot of ground gained. The average being
00:03:54.020
274, but of course the high, 396. So if you're Nigel Farage and you're looking at this, you can
00:04:00.000
think, well, a bit of solid campaigning, right? With my 28% average...
00:04:06.000
I think that is really the danger. And I think this is what not just Nigel Farage, but the
00:04:10.740
entire political class is doing. And not just the entire, everybody in SW1. So I'm including
00:04:16.380
all the mainstream media... The entire Westminster bubble.
00:04:19.940
Yeah, the entire Westminster bubble. What I think they're doing is they think that they are playing
00:04:25.220
pre-Brexit political chess. And the reason they think that is because they literally don't know
00:04:31.280
anything else. Not only their entire careers, their entire lives have been pre-Brexit political chess.
00:04:37.680
And not only their entire lives, the lives of their grandparents.
00:04:41.020
Oh yeah, going back to whatever it is, 1930 or whatever it is. Whenever it was that the Labour
00:04:46.680
Party emerged, yeah. Literally, all modern political calculation has ended.
00:04:53.500
Yes, all living memory is this political chess move where you do this, I do that, and then
00:04:58.980
one of us gets checkmate and then we win the election. Or we form a working party with a
00:05:04.900
hung parliament or whatever it is. I'm not sure that's what's actually going on. What I think
00:05:10.060
has happened is that the political legitimacy itself is drinking at the last chance saloon.
00:05:16.140
And that what you're actually seeing is we're in a shake-up where legitimacy is preceding
00:05:23.040
parties and not the other way around. Because what I think the average commentator, well,
00:05:28.460
the SW1 bubble thinks is that what is going on is a process of elite realignment. And then
00:05:34.880
once the elites have worked out what that realignment is, legitimacy follows from that,
00:05:40.620
normal governance resumes. And that's probably why you see this sort of tacit approval for
00:05:46.900
reform, even amongst things like the BBC who are giving in the time of day and stuff like
00:05:50.920
that. What I actually think is happening is that reform are dancing on thin ice in between
00:05:58.620
the rotten political establishment and something which is not allowed to exist yet. And that is
00:06:06.800
made up of excluded parties. And I've not been thinking about this long, but the three excluded
00:06:13.300
parties I would highlight on this is one excluded talent. Rupert Lowe is an example of this.
00:06:20.600
Now, what I mean by excluded... So, for example, I don't think... And I think even Rupert himself
00:06:24.640
would agree with me if he heard this. I don't think that Rupert Lowe is a once-in-a-generation
00:06:30.160
political talent. I think that he is a once-in-a-decade leakage from the excluded part of the
00:06:37.560
political world to the included part. He wasn't supposed to make that transition. You're normally
00:06:43.020
excluded. Nigel Farage himself is probably the last decade's leakage from the excluded world into
00:06:49.120
the included world. These people don't get across normally. I think, actually, there are dozens,
00:06:53.680
if not hundreds, of Rupert Lowe's out there, ready to act who could, if it were not the fact
00:07:00.120
they're excluded. And they're excluded for a number of reasons. They're excluded because
00:07:02.460
the political system, one, doesn't want them in, and two, the political system is so rotten,
00:07:08.540
they don't want to go in either. So there's a kind of double exclusion mechanism going on there.
00:07:12.460
The second excluded field is where do the narratives that resonate come from?
00:07:17.720
And I think they come from us. Sometimes, literally, you and I, people in this office,
00:07:26.500
And we know this is true because the amount of times where we've done some serious thinking
00:07:30.420
on something and compressed it into a narrative or phrasing that then resonates and people
00:07:38.040
understand. And then we're watching a Nigel Farage press conference two months later,
00:07:42.060
and we see a very specific bit of phrasing that we've used.
00:07:53.520
And Max Tempers, in particular, has been very effective. He's only got like 20,000 Twitter
00:07:58.300
followers. But Max Tempers-isms end up percolating upwards into the mainstream.
00:08:04.620
And I understand why this is happening. This is happening because even though we are persona
00:08:08.740
non grata for Nigel Farage and the SW1 bubble, the people working for them, they're all watching
00:08:16.800
Right? So when they see something, they're then like, oh, okay, I'll jot that down. And
00:08:20.940
I go to the boss and I say, you could phrase it like this. And he's like, bloody hell, that's
00:08:28.500
I mean, I don't mind if they steal it. They're welcome to.
00:08:30.440
No, no, but not, I mean, we put it out in the public for free, right? But not only that,
00:08:33.780
it's not even that they necessarily are watching us, although I think a lot of them are.
00:08:37.640
Well, they are, because they message us sometimes.
00:08:40.680
Well, yeah, of course, I know which ones are. But the milieu ends up being curated in the
00:08:45.820
direction that we want it to go, because we create the memes, or we compress the ideas
00:08:53.800
Well, we're the only ones actually doing thinking as opposed to responding to headlines, which
00:08:59.040
I like your point about this is not about elite realignment, and I think you're right.
00:09:05.160
I think what this is about is the public realignment, because...
00:09:10.420
We'll come to that a bit later on in the podcast, if that's all right, because we are in a democratic
00:09:14.660
system. For all of its faults, we still have the power of selection, right?
00:09:19.800
It is actually up to the public to decide what MPs they return to the parliament.
00:09:23.480
Okay, so I'll return to my third excluded group, because that will almost certainly flow
00:09:28.520
Well, what it is, it's the voters who showed up for Brexit, never had before, never had
00:09:38.040
Put a pin in it, we'll come back to it, because you're exactly on the money, I think, there.
00:09:42.060
But you are right, and this is why Farage taking all the ex-Tories is so weird, and everyone's
00:09:49.400
Well, that works by the logic of the 20th century.
00:09:54.580
Yeah, well, why wouldn't I just take these known, and a lot of them are MPs, or have
00:10:00.060
been MPs, have been in government, well, yeah, if I just bring them over, logismacy
00:10:07.960
Nigel Farage thinks he is gaining logismacy by doing this.
00:10:11.920
However, having our ear to the ground, we're like, oh, people are not happy with this.
00:10:17.540
I mean, like, there are a lot of people who hate Zia Youssef for being a Muslim.
00:10:23.160
Now, I'm not saying I'm one of them, or anything like that, but, like, you can't
00:10:25.860
deny that, and Lalia Cunningham has had this exact same point.
00:10:29.600
Read the comments on her trigonometry interview.
00:10:33.000
She's a fluent, clear speaker, and she's obviously not a raging Islamist, and yet, a large portion
00:10:38.840
of the British public just hear the word Muslim, and are just like, don't like it.
00:10:43.340
I listened to that in the car on the way in the morning.
00:10:48.860
Yeah, the issue is that there was acute demographic stress because of the decisions of the elite.
00:10:54.760
And so, you know, people are kind of at the point where politics has been secretarianized.
00:11:00.980
You know, it's like saying to, you know, a Protestant in Northern Ireland at the height
00:11:05.760
of the Troubles, you know, this Catholic over here can articulate your views really well.
00:11:12.620
And it's like, well, because they're a Catholic.
00:11:17.020
And so, they are playing with the deck chairs on the Titanic, rearranging them, thinking
00:11:22.140
that this will give legitimacy as to the seating arrangement, but actually, everyone's already
00:11:29.660
It's because it always has that worked that way before.
00:11:32.180
People wait for the elites to come to a consensus between them.
00:11:36.320
Everybody at home gets told, OK, the elites have agreed, and therefore, this is a good
00:11:43.740
And the public have been spending, it depends on how old you are, if you're 60, you've been
00:11:46.660
watching the political class do that for 60 years and produce failure after failure.
00:11:51.400
The political system as a whole is drinking in the last chance saloon here.
00:11:54.920
It's not a question of whether the elites agree.
00:12:00.360
And what legitimacy that reform did have is we are not them.
00:12:06.760
Yes, it's a weak form of legitimacy, but it's good enough in this moment.
00:12:11.760
And they are stamping on the we're not them by hiring everybody who is them.
00:12:31.860
You know, very mediocre Tory reform bounce, reform Tory bounce, I guess.
00:12:39.100
And, of course, with this kind of polling, not good.
00:12:43.620
Like, it's a hung parliament, any way you slice it, like we were talking about the other day.
00:12:47.440
There isn't, sorry, not even really a hung parliament.
00:12:50.900
You know, like, how are you, it would have to take the Lib Dems or something to come over.
00:12:56.840
Is the Black in the Middle or the Northern Ireland Party?
00:12:58.380
Oh, yeah, sorry, the Northern Ireland Parties would have to decide it.
00:13:00.700
Now, they'd definitely go for the reforming conservatives.
00:13:07.700
Like, this, as you were saying, this is indicative of a political system that has lost legitimacy.
00:13:12.700
Right, and the, it is, it is the, and the people who are actually being realigned are the voting public.
00:13:20.140
Like, they are realigning themselves in spite of what the elites are doing, right?
00:13:26.920
My entire argument can be boiled down to legitimacy is preceding the elites, not the other way around.
00:13:32.260
And that's a shock for the system, and they don't know how to process it.
00:13:34.980
And it's creating a weird series of misalignments that I think that people aren't really thinking about.
00:13:39.880
So, of course, we have the Tory defectors from, to reform, which, as you can see, five MPs.
00:13:47.920
So, now they have more Tory defectors MPs than they had reform MPs.
00:13:57.180
Lee Anderson, at least one as a reform candidate.
00:13:59.300
So, they've got, you know, four Tory MP defectors now.
00:14:03.260
And that's pretty unprecedented as well, when you think about it.
00:14:05.860
Like, I can't really remember political defections before now, right?
00:14:10.100
Like, political defections were really unusual.
00:14:18.100
And, I mean, there was, I mean, there always is one per parliament.
00:14:22.180
I remember the Labour government had somebody who defected.
00:14:35.100
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if we get off this
00:14:37.600
and discover there's been another one while we're in here filming.
00:14:43.980
We literally had to scrap an entire episode of this.
00:14:50.120
But the point is, the Tory party is clearly a bleeding, wounded, dying animal.
00:15:03.300
But yes, for the political system as a whole, yes.
00:15:07.540
The reason they're bleeding is because nobody understands
00:15:13.260
And they're like, oh, right, well, we've got to move.
00:15:17.740
But we don't know why we're doing what we're doing, right?
00:15:20.740
Is the Tyrannosaurus chasing after the Diplodocus,
00:15:29.540
But they're like, well, you know, reform back...
00:15:36.960
You know, Farage was like, oh, I wouldn't take Swell of Braverman
00:15:47.220
Because you think you're gaining legitimacy that flows from the elite.
00:15:54.060
so people can know we're a professionalised party
00:15:57.940
It's like, well, actually, that's not where the trust is coming from.
00:16:01.340
The trust was coming from the fact that you wouldn't take the Tories.
00:16:05.100
There's a deeper piece of thinking that I'm doing on my next Brokonomics,
00:16:15.760
and I think it is not anything like the story we're told.
00:16:18.980
The actual story is a system of risk management.
00:16:27.140
How do I avoid risk of incompatibility with international treaties?
00:16:32.200
And when you view it as a whole series of risk ownerships,
00:16:35.060
changing the people doing the narrative construction element of this
00:16:54.560
But anyway, the question is, is this going to last?
00:16:57.680
Because, I mean, like, obviously you've got Zia Youssef pointing out
00:17:01.640
that, well, you know, we'll repeal the Online Safety Act
00:17:06.300
I mean, Dorries was literally the author of it.
00:17:17.240
You know, eight months ago is not that long ago, actually.
00:17:22.720
that now they have to go completely back the other way.
00:17:26.400
Oh, no, I've always liked Swella Braveman and Robert Jemreich.
00:17:32.700
Do we think this is an alliance that's going to last?
00:17:35.580
Very interesting conversations are going to be had behind the scenes.
00:17:39.000
Zia, if you want to get in touch and tell us what you really think,
00:17:47.140
Especially as he's got a controlling stake in reform.
00:17:52.920
You know, and you don't pay 200 grand for that for nothing, right?
00:18:02.740
There are going to be personality conflicts, I think, in this.
00:18:07.000
The election is still three years out, probably,
00:18:09.260
unless it comes sooner, which no one can guarantee.
00:18:11.900
I mean, to be perfectly fair, if the party consisted of two MPs
00:18:15.560
and one of them was Nigel Farage, there would be personality conflicts.
00:18:19.200
They're almost certainly going to be in a party of ten now.
00:18:28.920
And you can treat Tyson Lee Anderson as your butler.
00:18:32.340
But can you get away with treating Swilla Braveman and Robert Jemreich that way?
00:18:38.540
Anyway, so Farage explains to us why he's taken these people
00:18:45.900
It's like, okay, well, if you take Swilla Braveman,
00:18:48.920
If you take Nadine Dorries, why wouldn't you take Boris Johnson?
00:19:00.940
but you're filling reform with the very people that broke it.
00:19:05.840
Well, the Conservative government did break it.
00:19:09.280
But you see, there are people like Robert Jemreich who resigned as a matter of principle.
00:19:13.740
People like Swilla Braveman who spoke out on ECHR,
00:19:17.120
said we should leave and was removed from her post.
00:19:19.980
So we are taking people who tried their best to fight the system at the time
00:19:30.100
Well, another way of looking at that is we're only going to take people
00:19:33.720
who've been given the Rupert Lowe treatment, except in the Tory party.
00:19:38.280
But the theme here is, yes, they did all this damage,
00:19:58.660
No, he stood down because he knew he was going to get canned.
00:20:01.760
Right, so Farage's own framing doesn't even apply to him?
00:20:07.540
Because these are clearly incidents of convenience.
00:20:11.480
Well, these are the two he's being asked about at the moment.
00:20:13.400
If the interviewer was a bit sharper, she would have said,
00:20:19.560
Because this isn't about him already having a sort of pre-established line,
00:20:23.760
because otherwise that pre-established line would have been what it was
00:20:28.260
No, this is a political chess player noticing an unguarded pawn or bishop.
00:20:34.740
Thinking that legitimacy flows from the top down,
00:20:37.920
which I think you are right about and he's wrong about.
00:20:42.860
and it puts him in a strangely vulnerable position.
00:20:45.500
There's a very febrile narrative that he's weaving
00:20:48.700
to make this seem like a good common sense move, right?
00:20:52.500
Because, I mean, everyone's noticing, well, hang on a second.
00:20:55.780
I mean, Jonathan Pye's like, this isn't even Tory light, is it?
00:20:58.760
It's just the Tories with special guest star Nigel Farage.
00:21:05.920
The best example I can think of is when, in season seven of Stargate,
00:21:10.660
Colonel O'Neill retired and they got that new guy in,
00:21:16.900
And the thing is, that's what Calvin Robertson has pointed out.
00:21:22.220
but it really is just the conservative party with extra steps.
00:21:32.140
you're just creating the uniparty consensus in the middle,
00:21:34.760
I think that's the public impression of what's happening.
00:21:40.720
oh, well, I don't take that left-wing guy seriously
00:21:42.560
because he brings a particular ideological agenda,
00:21:48.460
But there's a philosophical theory of truth called convergence theory.
00:21:52.780
It's like when everyone happens to have converged on the same point,
00:21:57.720
Well, I mean, bear in mind, we live in a society
00:21:59.440
where you couldn't have Calvin Robinson or Jonathan Pye
00:22:11.400
But moreover, the public is definitely just going to see this.
00:22:17.740
like ex-conservative MP Robert Jenrick or whatever,
00:22:31.040
Nigel is actually taking a big gamble with these people as well.
00:22:38.700
we literally just listen to him call them failures,
00:22:44.040
Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be a turncoat from the Tories.
00:22:50.700
And also, it looks like they're going to lose their seats.
00:22:55.880
Swallow Braverman's seat is hardly a done deal.
00:22:58.460
But then neither is Robert Jenrick's in Newark and Sherwood.
00:23:02.520
He's actually put himself in a minority position here.
00:23:05.180
Now, I don't know how many conservative or voters
00:23:10.420
But on paper, it might not be that many, actually.
00:23:14.640
So there's a couple of ways of looking at this.
00:23:16.340
The traditional political theory is that a long-established MP
00:23:23.000
that element is worth about 10% of the vote share.
00:23:27.920
what should happen is those two just neatly switch
00:23:30.080
and reform goes to 53% and conservatives go to 43% and they win.
00:23:34.480
If the broader political narrative that we often hear,
00:23:40.360
is that the votes of the conservatives and reform
00:23:50.920
however, that hasn't filtered through to Normiland
00:24:46.380
But I don't think anything could be taken as red.
00:26:28.120
how the hell do you wrap your head around this?