The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Last Blairite

00:00:00.000 Hi folks, welcome to another one of our political chats, I'm joined by Dan, and today we're

00:00:04.720 going to be talking about the end of the Starmer Reich.

00:00:07.760 Oh.

00:00:08.140 The thousand-year Starmer Reich didn't come to pass.

00:00:10.940 No.

00:00:11.220 So the stormtroopers are on suicide watch today.

00:00:14.020 It's pretty bad.

00:00:15.040 But are we saved?

00:00:16.060 Have we got a new Prime Minister and everything is going to be okay now?

00:00:18.980 Well, we have a new Prime Minister.

00:00:20.340 Right.

00:00:21.020 But presumably all of those constraints that were set on Starmer that made him utterly

00:00:24.460 hated, they're just gone now.

00:00:28.040 Well, you know, it's really interesting.

00:00:30.000 is no that's not the case oh no oh what a shocker yeah if you can if you can imagine

00:00:36.700 uh things are gonna get worse because weirdly i i've i've got a bit of a prophecy here i think

00:00:42.660 we're gonna kind of um we're gonna miss starmer right oh definitely we're gonna miss starmer in

00:00:48.700 that starmer was a man of the system he was like the last proper blairite in parliament

00:00:54.360 uh who understood that the system was more important than the ideals system was to deliver

00:01:01.680 the ideals and if the system fails then the ideals never come to pass whereas uh people like

00:01:08.440 andy burnham and the sort of uh rachel uh not rachel reeves um what was the deputy pro angela

00:01:14.500 rayner people the sort of like the soft left they don't understand this right they they think well

00:01:20.120 we can just do the thing that we're being promised by the system it's like well no it doesn't work

00:01:24.660 that way and you're going to find out like essentially what we're i think we're going to

00:01:28.220 move into is an accelerationist government at this point yes possibly starman was actually

00:01:33.700 real conservative for the blairite order well you're always conservative about the thing that

00:01:38.160 you value the most that's only true but i don't know if you remember this is a few years ago now

00:01:42.720 but um oh uh welsh chap um a leader of the labour party uh ball with tufts of tufts of ginger neil

00:01:51.520 kinnock there we go neil kinnock right so do you remember back in whenever it was i mean this had

00:01:56.480 been years ago this probably would have been uh 90s um when he stopped being labour leader

00:02:02.480 and was um and he then went on have i got news for you now i remember it yes so and basically

00:02:11.220 what sounds like something that would happen yes now basically he went on that and and he had

00:02:16.380 become this sort of figure of hate figure of fun nobody liked him anymore including labor people

00:02:21.440 they didn't like him anymore and he went on have i got news for you which just going to show how

00:02:25.460 long that has been running and he came across as funny as personable he could give good answers he

00:02:30.660 could he could you know make jokes off the cuff all that kind of stuff and you know even me as a

00:02:36.000 young right winger because i'm one of those weirdos that never went through a lefty phase i've i've

00:02:40.200 always been right-wing in fact if anything i'm getting slightly less right-wing as i get older

00:02:43.700 i mean these days i'd let most people off with a hanging let alone you know what i used to think

00:02:47.240 anyway even i watched that and i thought god he's coming across well he's doing it and and all the

00:02:53.920 labor people who watched it were like oh my god why couldn't we have had that why couldn't we

00:02:58.420 have had that now that's going to happen to starmer now he he's going to do all these interviews and

00:03:04.340 he's going to be far more relaxed and funny speaking off the cuff personable addressing

00:03:07.940 issues all that kind of stuff and and people are going to think wow he wasn't so bad but there's

00:03:12.880 a reason for that right because if you're in the position of government and you make a quip that

00:03:19.860 could be a diplomatic incident oh yes if you try and think through solving a problem that could

00:03:25.800 become treasury policy by default so you i mean andy burnham's had the example of this so we

00:03:31.540 shouldn't be so in hock to the bond markets yes suddenly the bond market's crashing there is no

00:03:36.000 way you can get away with that as a prime minister so all jokes are gonna have to be pre-scripted

00:03:40.660 he can't address hypotheticals he can't talk about i mean so i mean classically in his case

00:03:46.760 he's always saying oh the north doesn't get enough resources you could easily do that when

00:03:51.040 you're mayor manchester as soon as you're prime minister and you say that well that means you've

00:03:55.840 just pissed off scotland wales and southern england yes because okay if they're getting more

00:04:00.120 we're getting less yes so so what's going to happen is starmer is going to get this massive

00:04:05.540 boost of popularity because suddenly he becomes more personable and can and just talk like a

00:04:11.540 human being and but burnham's going to get the exact opposite and it's going to be so stark for

00:04:17.000 burnham because he's not even a westminster politician or at least he wasn't when his rise

00:04:22.060 of popularity was happening so he could speak freely and he he's going to suddenly go into it

00:04:27.080 But the interesting thing is, right, and as you pointed out,

00:04:30.020 which is what got me thinking about this,

00:04:32.640 is Starmer was an obvious machine cog.

00:04:37.680 He was a barrister.

00:04:40.240 He spoke in these sort of legal terms.

00:04:41.860 He addressed the preservation of the system itself,

00:04:46.700 whereas Burnham has built himself up to be the complete opposite of that.

00:04:50.500 So you're kind of replacing the soulless bureaucrat

00:04:53.860 bureaucrats with what is supposed to be the people's tribune and then all of a sudden people

00:04:59.180 are going to realize hang on we're not getting any of it none of it is happening i mean the closest

00:05:03.320 historical example that i can think of is he's going from um czar nicholas the second to the

00:05:08.680 early communist regime where the people like yay it's it's happened yeah and then they continued

00:05:14.680 most of czar nicholas's the second's policies but also millions of people died well and also that

00:05:20.260 yes uh i'm sure that millions of people won't die under andy burnham no um but what will happen is

00:05:26.280 the system i mean you put things right i say that you actually can't rule it out because if a series

00:05:31.400 of actually like mission critical systems begin to fail because burnham has made them fail then

00:05:38.180 actually there is the potential for millions of people to die like you know people in the nhs

00:05:42.340 the pensioners whoever else right i mean if the bond markets cut us off then we can't run the

00:05:46.680 hospitals so well exactly so i i'm sure that's not going to happen but as as i mean interesting

00:05:53.900 you are completely right about this we are going to see starmer looking more personable and we

00:05:59.020 already saw this in his last pmqs yes oh yeah it was notably better performance he seemed happier

00:06:04.020 yeah yes um but the but really it's about the the things that starmer didn't do that burnham will do

00:06:11.220 For example, Shabana Mahmood and her immigration reforms

00:06:14.800 tangibly did reduce immigration.

00:06:17.340 Now, it reduced immigration from a raging flood

00:06:21.780 to merely a river of immigration,

00:06:24.780 but that is a reduction, right?

00:06:26.660 And that is something they can tangibly say,

00:06:29.100 no, no, no, we got it down to 850,000 a year

00:06:32.440 from one and a half million a year.

00:06:33.840 I mean, to be fair, the Tories were peak performance athletes 0.53

00:06:36.540 at cramming as much immigration through. 0.93

00:06:38.860 Yeah, so it's not exactly hard to do.

00:06:40.960 yes but it is true that they did it and so like starmer had this natural kind of conservatism in

00:06:45.980 him so well this is bad for the system therefore i'm going to reduce this this is bad for the

00:06:50.420 system therefore i'm going to stop that uh burnham doesn't really care about the system as he as his

00:06:55.080 bond market quip the other day uh made out like you you can tell but burnham doesn't he's not

00:06:59.920 really the a man who thinks like the system he's thinking in the ideals of the system and so he's

00:07:07.400 the outputs yeah exactly he's thinking the outputs so he's going to try and apply his

00:07:11.180 manchesterism uh to the entire country not realizing that one that was just government

00:07:16.020 bailouts basically yes and two the entire country is not manchester and doesn't want to be manchester

00:07:22.020 and actually the key thing about that is he could he could promise more money without having to find

00:07:25.920 it well yeah i suppose now he has to find it yeah and where are you going to get that from and at

00:07:30.020 the end of the day if he was ever denied you can be like look at those evil people in central

00:07:33.820 government not give me the money i promise to you okay but that's not how it works now but

00:07:37.660 anyway the point being i actually think that rory has done it again and presaged the actual issue

00:07:46.740 here i don't know whether you can see this but this is big ben and the house of parliament

00:07:50.840 uh the the hands of big ben are at five minutes to midnight because i think that's a nice detail

00:07:56.620 it is a very nice detail it's a lot easier to see when you actually have a copy in hand

00:08:00.320 um which i do yeah but um because i think this is the the five minutes to midnight position of

00:08:06.940 the blairite system and no no but i i really mean it and it was it became really obvious during the

00:08:12.760 pmqs uh this issue of islander is about what shall be done or what must be done um and it's

00:08:19.980 full of excellent essays especially by myself but also by lots of other people who are really

00:08:24.260 really um nailing down the problems without casting a veil of sentimentality across it

00:08:31.420 um there are some there are some real structural issues that we face i mean one of my favorite

00:08:36.400 ones is actually by a guy called um reactionary reading law we're saying look um don't become an

00:08:42.020 influencer actually uh go and become a man of the system which is the opposite of what you've done

00:08:46.580 instantly uh yes but the but he he is right though actually we have enough influencers

00:08:51.700 what we don't have is enough people on the inside actually pulling levers actually being the cogs in

00:08:56.860 the system to make this happen uh it's actually not hard to find influencers influencers are

00:09:01.720 ten a penny having good well-trained people who are on the inside actually doing things

00:09:06.820 well that's what the blair eyes did that's they didn't rely on influencers well and also you have

00:09:11.700 more credibility if you do that for years and then and then become an influence it doesn't rule it

00:09:15.660 out entirely absolutely yes it's not that you can't become an influencer yes but um but this is

00:09:19.740 this is what the blairites did uh but anyway so leave the link in the description shop.loses.com

00:09:24.560 go and get that so i was watching starmer's last pmqs and it really honestly right it really felt

00:09:33.580 like the cover here right the the entire country is not westminster right and this it very much

00:09:41.240 felt like it was an island unto itself that didn't realize how late the hour was they're very chummy

00:09:48.240 in this they're all incredibly chummy with starmer it's like but he he is being kicked out because

00:09:54.480 everyone hates him or very tangible failures just yes it's it's kind of difficult to put into words

00:10:03.600 just how loathed starmer is people thought that jeremy corbyn was hated there's nothing compared

00:10:08.880 to starmer starmer backstabbed corbyn and kicked him out of the party yes i mean i i would go a bit

00:10:14.100 further than say the the entire chamber the entire house of commons is is loathed oh absolutely and

00:10:20.200 and as you point out they're very chummy it's like look the system goes on for another day

00:10:25.240 it's had it's had its renewal cycle new leaves of of you know shooted um you know we're all okay in

00:10:32.460 here that was that was the sentiment i was getting from it oh it's mad even richard tice stood up and

00:10:38.160 said oh if england win can we have a bank holiday richard one one of your one of your party members 0.71

00:10:44.580 an ex-mp has just been murdered yes by what appears to be a leftist nigel farage came out

00:10:50.000 and said that keir starmer told him that it was a burglary gone wrong why would he say that why

00:10:55.900 would why would starmer lie to farage over who murdered anne widdicombe like sorry there's

00:11:02.300 literally blood in our political system right now yeah one of the the the right-wing party

00:11:08.900 that is currently at probably about 23 percent of the polls now it's not been doing great

00:11:13.140 but has been leading in the polls for the last year and a half has just had one of their spokespeople

00:11:19.840 murdered in her house and the counter-terrorism police are now investigating it because it was 0.78

00:11:24.800 a targeted murder and obvious obviously political and they're acting like chums in the houses of

00:11:29.980 parliament after starmer spent his entire two years calling nigel farage and reform basically 0.61

00:11:36.360 nazis who were evil and outside of the law and someone's been murdered like sorry do you do you

00:11:42.380 think that the charisma of the bully pulpit that the prime minister has has no influence on this

00:11:48.260 at all of course it does oh yeah i mean anna wittigum was stochastic how do you say it's

00:11:52.300 stochastic terrorist yeah victim of stochastic terror i mean i i mean the the murder of an

00:11:57.300 was obviously despicable and terrible and all that things but you know she still was in her

00:12:02.080 late 60s and 70s we're at the point where we get 78 okay 78 yeah i mean we're at the point where

00:12:07.340 we're getting little girls hacked to death in dance studios i mean the the level of failure

00:12:13.100 in this country is is epic it's at every single level and no one is protected from it that's the

00:12:18.500 thing that is important to remember right so david armis joe cox and witticum like you can be a high

00:12:24.540 ranking politician in this country an elected house member of the house of commons or a venerable

00:12:29.940 grandee of british politics and you can still just be murdered yep there have been six mps murdered

00:12:36.060 since the second world war four of them conservatives one ulster unionist and one

00:12:41.080 labor yeah they always focus on the labor one obviously they do yeah and i mean like with the

00:12:45.900 the am and widdicombe thing i saw lefties being like what or like you know blairite types being

00:12:50.200 like oh ann widdekombe's family wouldn't want us to politicize this like i think we know what 1.00

00:12:55.120 ann widdekombe would have said about this like she yeah she was political her entire life and

00:13:00.680 she was an outspoken supporter of nigel farage i think he's got her endorsement to politicize this

00:13:05.560 actually um but anyway but the point is again it felt like this this very remote island that's

00:13:11.940 completely detached from the rest of the country that's at five minutes to midnight it's the the

00:13:17.220 it's very Versailles isn't it very much yeah very much as in they don't seem to realize that the

00:13:22.880 revolution is coming right they're they are literally being murdered I mean at one point in

00:13:27.600 in this Anne Woodcombe comes up and he's and uh Keir Starmer says well I think we should have

00:13:31.900 they have a shield for the murdered MPs right a decorative shield and he proposed the decorative

00:13:37.040 shield for Anne Woodcombe now Anne Woodcombe was an MP until 2010 I think it was so but she was an

00:13:41.960 MP for like 17 years or something like that so that's yeah that's totally appropriate but why 0.60

00:13:46.460 do mps keep getting murdered in this country but this i i and little girls at dance studios and

00:13:53.320 people just walking down the street sure yeah and you know we we we see the you know the murders

00:13:58.340 that the regular people have to suffer but they're not exempt from this as is recognized in this and 0.96

00:14:03.560 yet they're all just acting chummy relaxing as if they're on the ship of fools at the end of history

00:14:08.600 and there is nothing actually to worry about and it was it was just so maddening to watch it and 0.76

00:14:15.200 the fact that they're all in it together became so profoundly obvious, right? I mean, here's Ed

00:14:20.620 Davey calling Keir Starmer a true patriot. Watch this. So shall I say to the Prime Minister that

00:14:27.700 although we've not always agreed, I always admired the way he has led his party. I've always admired

00:14:35.600 the way he's been a true patriot. And I always admire the way he's worked with so many people

00:14:41.400 across this house to do the best for the national interest and we thank him for his public service

00:14:47.480 yeah i can't even imagine like an opposition leader genuinely having that opinion in like

00:14:57.880 in what way is kistama a true patriot like he's a true patriot for the liberal order yes he's a

00:15:06.600 true patriot for the system but not in any way for the people of the country i mean he literally

00:15:13.560 called muslims the the face of modern britain and has pledged in 250 million to defend mosques and

00:15:20.600 and uh synagogues and whatnot and that for a davies oh you're a true patriot so right okay 0.99

00:15:26.860 okay that's that's interesting i mean they are very chummy within the house of commons i mean

00:15:32.240 the pmqs is a bit of a performance thing but i mean i used to spend a lot of time in the

00:15:36.520 commons and say take take the strangers bar overlooking which has got a nice little balcony

00:15:40.940 thing yes it's generally true that you'll get say clusters of conservatives and clusters of labor

00:15:47.800 sitting together but when they're up at the bar they're all they're all very paddy they all know

00:15:51.740 each other they're all exchanging jokes you know genuinely happy to see each other i mean it is it

00:15:56.740 is a it is a cabal of people who are pushing as you say liberalism yes they're all on the same

00:16:03.120 side for this blairite liberal order and of course uh kia starmer decided to back count binface

00:16:10.740 uh thinking he was being very clever again just mr speaker they're intending to spend the summer

00:16:17.040 arguing with the bin my advice to everyone is put your vote in the bin well everyone was like all

00:16:21.100 right so you're backing count binface then absolutely the wrong thing if you want if you

00:16:24.400 want cat if you want binface to win you don't say anything at all you don't you don't identify him

00:16:29.940 with the left no he's identified him with the system yes because otherwise people like us

00:16:35.160 if it was just a neutral knocked forage you know a lot of people could sit on their hands

00:16:40.800 but as soon as you start doing this we're going to be like okay we'll vote for kai stevenson's

00:16:44.540 then you know what's so funny as well is that count binface today has had an article published

00:16:50.020 in the spectator defending the odyssey film so what a weird i mean it's literally under the name

00:16:56.900 count binface and he's going through the odyssey about how great the odyssey film is and why

00:17:02.580 nolan's interpretation is avant-garde he's seen it i assume he must have done um but the point is

00:17:09.480 like okay that's really interesting isn't it because it starts stitching all of these things

00:17:13.540 together yeah right there's there's a direct through line from keir starmer to count binface

00:17:18.080 to the odyssey in what they all feel is part of their own magisterium their own little imperial

00:17:24.560 dominion their own fief right it's the things that they bring together to themselves and for

00:17:30.800 example like for us i have seen this a lot with i'll cover this in another video at some point

00:17:35.620 i've seen this a lot with like the the the lefties the blairite types the leftists not

00:17:41.600 specifically the sort of like marxist types but the sort of libtard types you thinking the odyssey 0.69

00:17:47.960 is owning the chuds and it's like right that's really interesting how bound up in christopher 1.00

00:17:55.060 nolan's decisions about his casting choices and the kind of story that he's telling the odyssey

00:18:01.340 is the liberal order and the liberal morality and the liberal ideology yes that they view as

00:18:08.880 an attack on the chuds attack on the reactionaries attack on the right wing and bin face is like yeah 0.80

00:18:14.420 no i support this odyssey and sam's like yeah no i support bimface and by extension anything bimface

00:18:19.780 supports and so you can see the whole thing taking on this its own sort of discrete layer away from

00:18:25.420 the rest of society and again this is why this cover is just so bang on the money as usual it's

00:18:31.480 like yeah no they are totally detached from the rest of us um anyway so yeah like i'll cover all

00:18:37.260 this another time but it was just something i saw just before we started recording and it was just

00:18:40.900 like that's so strange but i can't get it out of my head like the thing is revealing itself

00:18:45.900 to be so separate from the rest i'm still kind of confused how peter lenongo as as helena troy and

00:18:55.100 ellen page as the greatest warrior that achilles has ever known is is somehow how am i supposed to 0.75

00:19:03.680 stop and rethink my life as a result i don't you have been owned because you're a chud right but 0.76

00:19:09.620 the point is okay they're all in it together yes they know they're all in it but even kemi 0.88

00:19:14.600 badenok came out to endorse count binface it's like right that's very interesting isn't it

00:19:19.980 because if it wasn't for blairism kemi badenok would not have been picked as the diversity

00:19:23.720 hired to leave the conservative party so this is revelation that she knows she's also in it 0.99

00:19:29.100 together and man was she chummy with kia starmer the whole you know they normally normally she 0.99

00:19:34.720 can be a bit inappropriately bitchy actually and go a bit inappropriately hard but she was actually 1.00

00:19:39.980 very nice to him throughout this uh and of course she wants a televised debate between count binface 0.89

00:19:45.840 and nigel farage and she backs binface it's like such a weird hill for you all to die on

00:19:53.720 you know it's a weird way of you all like drawing ranks they can't do it they can't do it can they 0.91

00:19:59.320 to disarm

00:20:01.700 Farage's move

00:20:03.900 the right thing to do was to not stand

00:20:05.560 that disarms it

00:20:06.520 but they can't help themselves from then

00:20:09.300 making Bin face

00:20:10.840 the establishment

00:20:12.980 candidates

00:20:14.080 so you successfully robbed

00:20:17.320 Farage of the it's me versus the

00:20:19.360 establishment and then you immediately

00:20:21.420 gave it back to him because you just can't help

00:20:23.460 yourself. They literally could not

00:20:25.340 help themselves. So endorsed by the conservative

00:20:27.540 leader the labor leader he's already been endorsed by andy burnham yeah he he is i'm afraid to say 0.98

00:20:33.620 what they are prepared to stand as a candidate against nigel farage yeah a clown candidate who

00:20:39.740 dresses like a bin oh and and a follow-on from from our last week's chat i mean first of all uh

00:20:45.160 the the comments drew my attention to that posh george was was not quite as hard done by as i

00:20:50.480 thought there is actually some dodgy stuff in there was a bit of entertainment but it was a bit dodgy

00:20:54.580 with it with it with his money laundering um and and the second thing is you know i i said that i

00:21:00.060 liked count bin face at 11 to 1 um as soon as the the ann widdicombe thing happened again massive

00:21:08.520 just to call back to that previous episode what we were saying is is what he did wrong was not

00:21:13.560 disclosing it and we should live in a world where politicians it let's say a labor politician who's

00:21:19.080 about to become private andy burnham had taken five million from a trans rights charity or

00:21:23.700 children's mutilation charity i would want to know that and therefore it's important but they

00:21:29.240 didn't make it about that they made it about the money themselves itself and he always maintained

00:21:33.600 it was about security so as soon as ann widdekin happened i think he's just a lock i mean even

00:21:39.400 even 11 to 1 i don't like being faced now well i wasn't going to include it in this but incidentally

00:21:45.100 uh shabana mahoud said that she was indeed going to meet with nigel farage and provide him security

00:21:49.600 because i mean one of his leading politicians has just been murdered in cold blood his argument

00:21:55.180 about security is actually a sound one because you guys have been terrorizing him by telling

00:22:00.180 everyone that he is evil and without outside of the law and outside of moral consideration

00:22:04.600 oh my whole my whole life living in this country just in case there's any americans or anything

00:22:08.780 watching and it's probably the same for you guys actually as well is my whole life i've been taught

00:22:13.380 one thing above all others is that nazis are evil and you must do whatever in fact you are 0.99

00:22:19.160 encouraged to to fantasize about going back in history and murdering baby hitler as there are 0.99

00:22:25.080 movies about this kind of thing oh exactly and then they build up their their their political

00:22:30.240 um adversaries and paint them basically as nazis yeah i mean the language that the establishment

00:22:36.020 always uses is far right which is which is basically to say look you know like the

00:22:41.080 conservatives or whoever the conservative proxy is at the time only more so and they're also about

00:22:46.060 that close to invading poland yeah so i mean they've they've done they were literally calling

00:22:51.000 farage a teenage nazi the other day so yes he was like a college stuff yes exactly that he was a

00:22:55.920 little hitler when he was in college it's like he was 15 calm down you know like yeah but the point

00:23:02.020 being is that they know what they're doing right they they have weirdly enough they all take into

00:23:08.280 themselves this cultural attitude they've they've they all they've all they're standing on top of

00:23:14.160 hill they're forming their ranks with one another yeah and so they're treating starmer like a martyr

00:23:20.080 yes quick quickly on the security point i mean i think i think the reason why mahmud is now

00:23:25.140 offering him security is because they understand they can only push that so far i mean let's say

00:23:29.920 how many of them have to be murdered before it's evident well i mean let me put it this way i

00:23:34.920 obviously i hope this doesn't happen i don't want a hair on his head harm but if nigel farage 0.84

00:23:39.380 was assassinated a political assassination even me somebody bloody restore britain yeah i would

00:23:46.460 come out for nigel farage i would i would i could well end up voting reform if nigel farage is 0.95

00:23:51.940 assassinated because i just want to say screw you to the people who think that that's okay

00:23:56.140 an okay way of doing politics yeah so i mean the last thing they need is him actually assassinated 0.97

00:24:01.700 they just need him terrified and unable to focus well i mean every time nigel farage has been

00:24:05.280 assaulted i've come out in support of yes even if i don't even if i'm not going to vote for him 0.63

00:24:09.700 like i it's unacceptable that he's treated the way he's treated i mean it's unacceptable that

00:24:14.400 any of us are but especially him because he is whether you like it or not kind of like um you

00:24:19.680 know the uh personification of right-wing politics he's the lightning rod at the moment he is the

00:24:24.340 lightning rod yeah uh so the way that they treat him is the way they can treat any of us and Nigel

00:24:30.020 Farage has got a lot more gravitas than most right-wing politicians in this country whether

00:24:34.000 you like him or not he's he's he's played the game he's been through the ringer and he knows

00:24:38.780 how these things work so at the end of the day when they when they're being so cavalier about

00:24:43.340 all of this and again they they close ranks even kemi badenock has closed ranks against him on this 0.97

00:24:48.700 she sided with starmer on this it's like that is pathetic that is genuinely pathetic but that's 0.98

00:24:55.720 what the establishment is they the conservatives want the late party like pete higgin said that 0.97

00:25:00.340 the zombie parties propping each other up they can't let the other fall so she comes to his

00:25:05.040 defense rather than going to nigel farage's i've heard rumors that the the people who can think

00:25:10.380 in labor and there's not many of them um are mcsweeney yes are desperate to see the conservatives

00:25:16.260 revived as as the main opposition yes definitely definitely um anyway so this this is starmer's

00:25:22.660 goodbye uh speech which it's about two minutes long but we'll watch it because it's worth it

00:25:28.140 Mr Speaker, this will be my last answer from this dispatch box.

00:25:32.640 Every Prime Minister knows when they take up the torch

00:25:35.160 that the day will come when they have to pass it on.

00:25:39.300 That day has come for me.

00:25:42.320 This is the end of my political journey.

00:25:46.460 In six years, went from historic defeat in 2019

00:25:49.760 to historic victory in 2024.

00:25:54.000 And in two years in government,

00:25:55.420 I leave the country in better shape than I found it.

00:25:59.740 I am proud of everything that we have achieved.

00:26:04.100 Mr Speaker, can I just take time to say to you, Mr Speaker,

00:26:08.080 and all those who work for the House and our constituency offices,

00:26:12.240 thank you for all your hard work.

00:26:15.460 To our civil service, thank you also for all your hard work.

00:26:21.000 To my political team, many of them here today,

00:26:24.540 who came on this journey with me, thank you so much for everything you have done and being

00:26:31.460 prepared to walk through fire for me. To my colleagues on these benches, I am proud of

00:26:38.680 all we have achieved together and proud of each and every one of you. To my successor

00:26:43.800 and each of you, I will give my full support. To all colleagues across the House, can I

00:26:52.920 wish you good health and happiness. To all those in the gallery whose lives have been

00:26:59.880 changed or improved by this Labour government and all across the country who struggle to

00:27:06.100 be seen or heard, you're the reason I came into politics. To my wife and children, I

00:27:13.900 love you. Goodbye.

00:27:22.920 there well but first he's not being put to death tomorrow right like that was going to be one of

00:27:30.480 my observations in his head he is arnold schwarzenegger at the end of terminator

00:27:35.860 lowered into it i must be sacrificed to protect blairism yeah that's exactly what's happening

00:27:42.780 yes he's being treated like a martyr like uh until last week everyone was like we hate keir

00:27:49.020 starmer and we're terrified of him and then andy burnham manages to win and he gets 330 mps backing

00:27:54.460 him so nearly three quarters of the mps are like oh yeah we definitely want andy burnham total

00:27:59.220 betrayal of starmer complete backstab yet here they are every single one of them applauding him

00:28:03.540 like he was the martyr for blairism like the martyr of the party 100 100 by christmas we'd 0.93

00:28:10.100 be getting articles saying oh starmer wasn't so bad maybe we should suck with him i'm already 0.55

00:28:14.860 saying it yes even if it even if it's as late as christmas yeah but it's just it's so wild because

00:28:20.880 he's like i'm i'm proud to have everything we've achieved and we're leaving the country better

00:28:24.980 than we found it so why are you being backstabbed by your own party like it's not an act of god

00:28:29.020 that is causing this you know you're not a meteor isn't incoming and you're the guy who has to stand

00:28:34.520 there and absorb it or something right you're being backstabbed by your own party so they can

00:28:38.660 replace you with andy burnham and they're all cheering you and everyone's acting like this is

00:28:42.620 being done outside of your control yes because all of those people behind you right they don't

00:28:48.500 understand why you weren't spending more money yeah and they yes and they they again like starmer's

00:28:54.400 acting like his political career is a sacrifice to save the labor party right and yeah and save

00:29:00.940 the blairite system to save everything that they're doing and it's like okay in his head it's

00:29:06.960 so noble what he's doing yeah in their heads that's why they're applauding him that's why

00:29:11.260 they're all like oh yeah and no no it's the the politics of recognition oh for those people who

00:29:15.240 didn't feel seen that's why i came into politics i'm sorry we're the people who don't feel seen

00:29:20.240 because we have one mp representing us in parliament rupert low yes the rest of you

00:29:26.000 you've got 649 blairites all represent you feel very seen in any of your you know you

00:29:32.500 you definitely have representation in the house we have one guy you know it is something in the

00:29:38.320 liberal mindset that no matter how much they win they always think of themselves as the victim in

00:29:44.100 the underdog the underdog yeah yeah it's very interesting yeah they've got a very interesting

00:29:48.840 way of uh mythologizing their own past as well um if you you go back and you view any any like

00:29:56.160 major incident in liberal philosophy and politic political history and they're always the overdog

00:30:01.700 and they're always doing the wrong thing and they mythologize i mean like for example kiss

00:30:07.540 time i mythologized in this so i was i came in and won this landslide labor victory well did you

00:30:13.780 though because actually jeremy corbyn got more votes than you did what happened is you just

00:30:18.680 happened to be the guy running against nigel farage when he was running against the conservatives

00:30:23.320 and split their vote by third so you got 418 seats that you shouldn't have got and you could

00:30:30.300 never get again yes nigel farage stood down and yet here you are acting as if this was your

00:30:36.040 brilliant politicking that got you to this point no it wasn't it was just a twist of fate this is

00:30:42.480 the time Nigel Farage could have done that in 2019 but he didn't the conservatives backstabbed us

00:30:47.000 and so Farage was like right okay I'm gonna go for it this time and you were the result it wasn't

00:30:51.460 your brilliant manifesto it wasn't your charisma you didn't win the country over it was it was the

00:30:56.980 beta cuck orbiter who just happened to be there uh when she got drunk enough and was on as much

00:31:02.380 of a rebound to finally get their moment that's all it was very much and so anyway starmer

00:31:08.140 sacrifices himself for the greater good of the system and they all recognize him as a martyr now

00:31:14.260 it's the end of his political career and so i mean he'll fail upwards he'll get

00:31:18.260 gigs and who knows what else he get but he'll fail upwards like they always do

00:31:23.420 and so then we go on to andy burnham well um

00:31:27.340 the uh interesting thing is the omens aren't great right oh did we lose last night apparently

00:31:34.940 i don't watch football not do i apparently we lost 2-1 to argentina right the argentinian team

00:31:41.120 entirely white okay now i'm conflicted uh anyway kirstalmer gutted wasn't the result we were asking

00:31:50.800 for because uh of course um you know everyone's like well you know in fact that was the the point

00:31:56.340 here um kemi badenock here says well uh like harold mcmillan you could be a labor prime minister

00:32:01.360 who's in office when england win the world cup which they didn't they got knocked out and so he

00:32:06.900 won't be that's some good political trivia knowing who the prime minister was in 1966 well you know

00:32:12.920 she'd obviously look it up the only thing i know about football is that england have never won a

00:32:17.060 world cup without a wolverhampton player on the squad and yet they consistently don't learn from

00:32:22.160 that i'm sure there's something to it um but uh but anyway there are other things that uh

00:32:28.500 are being done like for example like star was leaving a bunch of poison pills

00:32:32.520 uh extending the national insurance exemption for indian workers to five years

00:32:37.300 because obviously we need to make it more attractive for indians to come here yeah

00:32:41.660 yeah especially for poor sods like me who spend a lot of time driving on the motorway every morning

00:32:46.960 and evening the app we absolutely need more indian truck drivers yeah but there are a bunch of me he's

00:32:53.000 going to one of his last acts was to make it illegal for 16 and 17 year olds to use social

00:32:59.320 media after midnight which is okay that's great that's not exactly the it's not getting to the

00:33:04.140 heart of any of the real issues of the country but okay thank you here so you can join the military

00:33:08.540 at that age yeah you can get married you can have kids yeah but you can't check your dms at one past

00:33:14.980 midnight right fair enough here starmer has forbidden it even though he's just been kicked

00:33:20.120 out by his own party for being historically unpopular anyway um the uk economy is doing

00:33:25.100 great did brilliantly under starmer i love that meme down there toe for profit two pounds

00:33:31.720 his uk economy grew 0.1 percent margin of error 0.8 percent yeah yeah yeah and and these things

00:33:41.260 are actually normally revised down afterwards as well yes they are yes they are which is why

00:33:45.400 we're outrageous anyway so we've got andy burnham he begins on monday yeah he is going to be the

00:33:50.500 new prime minister the descent begins yeah um honestly i think people aren't going to realize

00:33:55.960 just how bad it's going to get how quickly uh because he is just going to be part of the soft

00:33:59.540 left that thinks well government spending results in extra money being in the well that that's why

00:34:04.280 i kind of set this up right at the beginning with the people's tribune which is which is the image

00:34:08.820 that he's supposed to be in and people will feel far more betrayed by when the people's tribune

00:34:15.560 betrays them when the cold-hearted bureaucrat because at least the cold-hearted bureaucrat

00:34:20.700 you're just like okay well what i expected he doesn't get it he doesn't get it he he thinks

00:34:25.720 in too narrow terms and so i'm upset by him but this guy his whole stick is i get you i understand

00:34:32.400 i connect with you i'm with you and when he starts doing it is it's either going to be

00:34:37.660 or wait you are lying the whole way along or you're just bloody evil because you do know what

00:34:43.260 matters to us you do know why we're suffering so he's going to come in and he's going to do all

00:34:46.860 this oh cost of living initiatives that will be the next thing it'll be a whole bunch of initiatives

00:34:51.240 and then we get to october for the budget and if and maybe if he's lucky his honeymoon will last

00:34:57.580 because because what happened in the early days is because he's actually being quite vague about

00:35:02.460 of stuff yes every part of the labor coalition gets to project onto him what they want what they

00:35:09.320 want and and they're imagining he's going to do what i want yeah but that budget is going to come

00:35:14.740 in october and actually he can't do anything because unless he breaks all the fiscal rules or

00:35:20.660 you know completely you know gets the gets the bond market to cut us off he hasn't got any more

00:35:26.160 options than starmer had so then so he's gonna he's gonna make all of these you know good sounding

00:35:30.960 promises and deliver on none of it and then all of that labor coalition who are projecting their

00:35:35.840 hopes onto him they're going to be like he's not doing any of it where's the money you promised

00:35:39.760 for x and z and he'll be like well there isn't any because we tried to tax people and the tax

00:35:44.920 take went down because we're overtaxing people already yeah well in fact let's so i mean he's

00:35:50.120 going to announce his cabinet on monday right which shows you how much this has all been well

00:35:54.520 prepared we should know all of this shouldn't we but anyway yeah suspected that shabana mahoud

00:36:00.320 becomes the chancellor of the exchequer ed miliband maybe the foreign secretary i kind of

00:36:05.640 like shabana mahmoud for chancellor because this is my analogy of two people trying to land a plane

00:36:12.240 you want the person who knows that they don't know anything as opposed to the person who doesn't know

00:36:17.360 that they don't know anything because the person who knows that they don't know anything will be

00:36:21.160 talking to air traffic control yeah and taking the advice so she'd be taking the advice of of

00:36:27.040 the treasury who you know at least within their narrow field are quite good at what they do i

00:36:32.180 mean her expertise is a lawyer yes or she's a barrister yeah yeah but i suppose at least as

00:36:36.600 barrister she's been self-employed so she might she might guess she might have done her taxes

00:36:41.520 once rachel reeves worked as a helpline assistant at nat west or whatever it is so you know she

00:36:46.200 she thinks that she knows i know i know so that's my problem so i i mean she doesn't know anything

00:36:52.640 He doesn't know anything about this.

00:36:53.960 What are we doing?

00:36:54.440 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:55.160 And I'm not judging her against everybody in the country

00:36:59.240 who could be Chancellor.

00:37:00.440 I'm judging her against people in the Labour Party

00:37:03.640 who could be Chancellor.

00:37:04.940 So she's probably the best choice to make there.

00:37:07.500 Well, it could have been Ed Miliband, couldn't it?

00:37:09.320 And I like Ed Miliband for Foreign Secretary

00:37:11.800 because he does have a following in the Labour Party,

00:37:13.980 and if you stick him in the Foreign Office,

00:37:15.980 he probably can't do any harm. 0.63

00:37:17.980 I mean, he might start World War III with Russia, 0.99

00:37:20.200 but hopefully apart from yeah he might be able to do no yeah well i'm a bit worried about that

00:37:26.660 because i think that i think it'll probably cause diplomatic issues with his uh lack of tact

00:37:34.140 against because i mean like ed milliband seems like a nice enough guy but again he he's obviously

00:37:39.280 a kind of believer in this whole project which i mean and there's another thing as well notice how

00:37:44.500 it's just dragging out the old blairite types so okay no we're gonna have to go back 20 years

00:37:50.980 who's still around who was involved with blairism back when it was shiny and new all right it's

00:37:56.220 burnham and milliband yeah it's burnham ed milliband david milliband yeah just just drag

00:38:00.140 more like the well and the other one was ed balls and his wife is now is she home secretary or no

00:38:06.020 no she's um oh wherever hell she is is she the foreign secretary yeah she might actually i think 0.94

00:38:10.520 she's actually the foreign secretary be gone but this this is the problem with blairism is 0.99

00:38:17.000 completely failed to create a new and competent um generation to take the reins right it can't

00:38:25.080 pass the torch yes because there's no one to pass the torch on to because everyone they would try

00:38:29.020 and pass the torch to yes is ridiculous you know what this is this this is this is hollywood and

00:38:35.160 they're terrified of trying something new yes so they're just going to make fast and furious 37

00:38:40.180 and you know remake moana but this time we're going to use real people for a bit and it's it's

00:38:45.860 the odyssey with a an african woman as helen of troy yes it's it's we we cannot tell a new story

00:38:52.100 it has to be that old story that we were doing in the 90s but we're just going to rehash it forever

00:38:56.940 this is exactly the point is that this is basically the next version of the boomers

00:39:02.960 these people are never replacing boomers with blair rights yes oh i want the boomers to live

00:39:09.760 forever now right these these people are never going to see power right they're going to get 0.51

00:39:14.180 older and older and older and yet it will be literally like every every one of the last like

00:39:18.980 five prime minister presidents in america was born in 1947 you know what i mean it's going to be just

00:39:24.340 like that but with blair rights well actually um joe biden wasn't a boomer he was he was a silent

00:39:29.940 generation but yeah you know what you can go older you just can't go younger yeah yeah but the the

00:39:35.340 point is the blairites are never going to see power they're always they're going to just keep 0.95

00:39:38.820 recycling older and older people as far into the future as they can because they just do not trust

00:39:45.080 any of the younger generation to take over and they don't have any other manpower that they can

00:39:50.620 rely on so it is genuinely like hollywood it's turning into um there are various rumors of who's

00:39:57.520 getting what and but you know what okay but they're all just rumors i don't know you know

00:40:02.220 like it could be anything but you know west streeting and all the all the usual suspects

00:40:06.500 what's streeting supposed to get um not clear frankly oh and angela rayner yeah yeah not clear

00:40:13.360 but that they've got a a set clique and that's it forever so mind you i mean i don't think either

00:40:21.420 of us are that au fait on what the labor backbenchers look like and it's entirely possible

00:40:26.380 there's not some enormous swathe of talent just waiting to be mined you can expect a bunch of

00:40:31.800 the northerners to be pulled in um like um lisa nandy jess phillips like people like that yeah

00:40:38.620 but again there are people who just gone round around around it's it's it's not like they haven't

00:40:43.060 got any bright young stars yes no no one like i mean kemi baynock whether you like her or not

00:40:49.000 she is at least a bright young star for the conservative point right she is at least someone

00:40:53.760 who wasn't like um i mean she's she's a beneficiary of the cameron policies yes but she is at least

00:41:00.940 like fairly new and doesn't come with a huge amount but i had no idea who she was 10 years

00:41:04.940 ago exactly whereas all of these people it's like yeah in fact i knew more about them 10 years ago

00:41:09.880 because there were more in the headlines back then right so anyway andy burnham uh did an ask

00:41:14.480 me anything on reddit so uh this was fairly interesting because at least he he gave some

00:41:20.880 answers about some things um but like with everything with burden he's not actually very

00:41:25.800 ideological in the fact that he hasn't got like hard um uh sort of propositional framework that

00:41:33.240 he's working within he's just trying to get to can i just give everyone people everyone's money

00:41:38.240 right and actually this ama speaks exactly to my point at the beginning when when he's not prime

00:41:43.940 minister he can do stuff like this he can engage with hypotheticals and trade-offs and all of that

00:41:48.220 kind of stuff all of that is going to stop them well it's going to stop right now because he

00:41:53.200 cannot engage in yeah i'd like to be able to do this for these people because it immediately

00:41:58.040 implies trade-offs or government or treasury policy yeah so um you know he says well look i i've i've

00:42:04.020 been scrutinized by 74 000 members of the public in makefield he got 25 000 i'm voting for him

00:42:09.400 25 000 people in makefield are now determining the course of this country uh anyway so he

00:42:14.960 commits to keeping the triple lock which is brilliant so business as usual um he has

00:42:22.520 determined to fill the five billion gap in the defense investment plan so he's going to

00:42:27.240 try and increase defense spending but with what money coming from where yeah great question is it

00:42:34.480 these fabled tax rises that i'm not taking it from the bloody triple lock i tell you that

00:42:38.360 and did not hear that the the age of the the pension age is going up yeah to 68 68 from 65

00:42:45.880 this is the thing when that's been brought forward seven years early as well yes we're going to raise

00:42:50.820 it to 68 in seven years time right but they can't afford to do that so they have to bring that

00:42:55.260 forward this is the thing we're making something like the triple rock which was only supposed to

00:42:59.600 be i think it was like a two or three year temporary measure just a bit of a catch-up

00:43:03.740 that's a problem with making something like that the holy grail yeah because then the system has

00:43:10.080 to bend somewhere and so the people are thinking yeah i've got my triple lock is yeah oh but now

00:43:14.900 i'm gonna have to wait extra years to get there and it will go up again it will go to 70 i mean

00:43:19.180 by the time in 20 years time when we're well actually in 20 years time we don't qualify for

00:43:25.000 the pension now right actually now we have literally been so in 25 years time when

00:43:31.160 hypothetically we qualify for the pension do we think they haven't pushed that age back further

00:43:35.540 i i haven't i mean even in my 20s i did not expect to get a pension you know i i guess when i was

00:43:40.880 younger i thought i assumed that i would just because i don't know i didn't know anything

00:43:44.000 about the world you know really in my 20s but like looking at it now yeah do i think they're

00:43:49.260 going to have kept it at 68 so in 25 years i'll finally get a pension be like the smoking ban it

00:43:53.660 will go up and it will all catch 22 the number of missions you need to fly you always go up

00:43:59.020 yeah absolutely um he's going to try and find the money to bring all the utilities back into public

00:44:05.000 control now i actually agree with public control of a bunch of utilities because i'm a xenophobe 0.76

00:44:11.180 and i don't want them owned by foreigners right so i've approached this from the right whereas

00:44:15.080 burnham has approached this from the left but we've arrived at the same place but he actually 0.52

00:44:18.740 explains what he means by public ownership and actually uh sorry public control of utilities

00:44:23.280 and they're publicly controlled well you're regulated up the zoo obviously like the so

00:44:28.680 essentially what he's saying here is well i may have made you think here we go that's what this

00:44:35.100 is what i was describing it is exactly what you were describing like you may have got the impression

00:44:41.560 that i thought the government was going to own these things well actually what i meant was we

00:44:46.820 were going to regulate these things all right so business as usual then yes so sorry just just be

00:44:50.940 absolutely clear what i'm going to do is everything that we already have been doing

00:44:54.820 i'm just going to put a slightly different spin over the top and justify my earlier comments yes

00:44:59.420 i'm going to make you think that's not what we've been doing yes um so yeah he he says obviously um

00:45:04.180 that we're um we're taking a new approach to putting essential services back under stronger

00:45:08.600 public control so that we can make them more affordable to people and lower the cost of

00:45:12.860 living this is what we've done in buses and greater manchester be a new regulator then or watchdog

00:45:17.180 it's just a regulator they're already as you say they're already regulated up the wazoo there are

00:45:21.540 a billion quangos regulating everything in this country we create a new office of water czar or

00:45:28.880 whatever the bloody hell as if we don't have that yes like so it's just you know oh and then we take

00:45:33.620 the head of the current regulator and just give him a different title yeah yeah so yeah so burnham's

00:45:38.960 already walking these things back yeah uh he thinks he's gonna negotiate a return agreement

00:45:44.080 with countries like afghanistan which honestly is more practical i mean tom harwood here is

00:45:48.720 oh that's negotiating with the taliban so yeah i don't care actually that's that's better than

00:45:53.460 so he says he he is prepared to negotiate what's sending sending afghani criminals back to

00:45:59.840 afghanistan um good if he sticks to it sure but i mean it might be with pakistan at the moment

00:46:07.380 with the grooming gang member yes he just got out of jail and pakistan's like no yeah but but but

00:46:12.240 in order to do that you're going to need to pass primary legislation which does a whole bunch of

00:46:18.460 things include repeal large chunks of the human rights corpus right and and you're going to get

00:46:25.620 labor backbenchers to vote for that without pissing away all their support which will be

00:46:30.200 going anyway in october when you do the budget and not bloody likely is the answer it's like yeah

00:46:35.920 i don't think so i would like to negotiate with afghanistan okay but the lefty human rights

00:46:40.600 lawyers are going to tie you up in the courts costing us millions of pounds yes for decades

00:46:45.500 until you're just no longer the prime it can't be done without primary legislation and massive

00:46:49.880 appeals but he just doesn't and labor backbench is not going to vote for it so he knows he's not

00:46:54.380 going to win a general election so does he actually use the term that you would like to or he just

00:46:57.560 says yes he just says yes right yeah i'm gonna negotiate return agreements with afghanistan for

00:47:02.380 refugees who have had their asylum claims rejected yeah but then i'm going to take them back and

00:47:05.780 you're not going to be here when like the bill comes due on that so who cares that's going to

00:47:10.200 be saying to ed milliband okay now you're foreign secretary go and have a word with pakistan and

00:47:13.900 ask them for this they'll tell you no but i can say that you've asked heck yes i'm tough enough

00:47:19.080 yes i can't wait till ed milliband's uh negotiating with the russians uh anyway

00:47:25.600 uh burnham uh says that the problem with hs2 is a remote bureaucracy that always wanted to cut

00:47:31.520 costs and wasn't listening to the people whose areas it would affect was that the problem with

00:47:35.840 hs2 is that the reason that hinkley point c hasn't been made the remote bureaucracy wants to cut

00:47:41.880 costs but again a classic example of an answer that he can't give now because he's running the

00:47:48.560 remote bureaucracy it's not remote from him anymore he's literally sat in the center of it

00:47:53.880 he's got a flat above 10 downing street where he lives they they wanted to build a motorway

00:48:00.560 underneath stonehenge it's a great idea why not just have you know just dig a massive

00:48:05.700 loads of the work as well and then just scrap it no they didn't do loads of the work they did

00:48:09.920 loads of the consultancy oh that's how they spent the millions it cost 180 million and then they

00:48:15.500 scrapped on consultancy then they scrapped it hey just to hinky point c it's all the same thing

00:48:20.740 right there are so many regulatory hurdles that they have to get through they have to spend

00:48:25.700 literally millions and millions of pounds to get to a no you don't want to do this answer

00:48:30.520 right the the reason that hs2 and in point c haven't been done is bureaucracy it's not because

00:48:35.660 the bureaucracy is trying to cut costs it's because they need to put fish discos in to make

00:48:41.280 sure the fish don't get sucked into the water intake for and whatever it just is like it's not

00:48:47.000 that's not the problem it literally would have been faster people in the 19 say 1905 to build

00:48:54.640 a tunnel under stonehenge because even though they would have been using hand tools they would

00:49:00.800 have got it done they would have actually they would have actually moved dirt out the way yeah

00:49:04.740 absolutely uh and so like i he's not going to solve any of the problems nothing's getting built

00:49:10.700 oh yeah is that is the point nothing is going to happen nothing's going to get built apart from

00:49:14.820 disappointment yeah and he says well i'll launch the largest council house building project since

00:49:20.760 the post-war period because nothing else will fix the housing crisis so i did a brokonomics

00:49:28.080 with some some house developers and they talked through the range of absurdities that are in

00:49:34.520 their way trying to build houses and and and they were legion i mentioned regulation i mentioned

00:49:39.320 just one they had to shut down the site for several nights so that people could stand there

00:49:44.000 with a clicker counting the number of bats that flew over and that and that was literally just

00:49:50.000 one of a whole

00:49:51.100 swath of examples

00:49:54.740 of everything that

00:49:56.060 is stopping housing

00:49:58.080 developers from

00:49:58.740 actually building any

00:49:59.960 bloody houses. 0.84

00:50:00.960 Yeah.

00:50:02.580 Is he going to

00:50:03.880 introduce another

00:50:05.040 set of primary

00:50:05.660 legislation that

00:50:06.500 repeals all of

00:50:07.660 these regulations or

00:50:09.160 takes powers away

00:50:10.060 from councils?

00:50:11.000 No, he's not going

00:50:12.040 to do any of that.

00:50:12.640 No, because he was

00:50:13.240 a member of the

00:50:13.740 Blairite government

00:50:14.340 that brought all of

00:50:15.080 these things in.

00:50:15.780 He brought them all

00:50:16.420 in, yes.

00:50:16.820 He was literally in

00:50:17.740 the government at the

00:50:18.520 time.

00:50:18.840 Then he leaves and

00:50:19.440 becomes mayor of

00:50:19.960 manchester now he's come back to save the blairite system and notice that everything he says is

00:50:25.120 completely within the blair system i mean like say launching the biggest council housing building

00:50:29.580 program what do you what do you think labor governments have been saying for years they

00:50:33.520 want to build houses for foreigners they don't want to reduce the number of foreigners like

00:50:38.280 nothing else will fix it it's like well actually deporting millions of people would solve our

00:50:42.640 housing prices i love how their line is deporting millions won't make any difference it's mental

00:50:47.400 it's obviously where it's coming from you're making the argument that the the last hope of

00:50:52.700 the blairite system is not going to undo blairism no he's not going to undo blairism i'm sure and

00:51:00.600 of course he's not going to call election because uh he's going to work within the 2024 manifesto

00:51:05.400 but the thing is i mean haven't we just given up on the 2024 manifesto where in the 20th star

00:51:10.700 isn't following the exactly his time was like yeah yeah so in the 2024 manifesto it wasn't

00:51:15.820 abolish jury trials it wasn't banning social media it wasn't this it wasn't that so okay

00:51:20.200 like who who in the labor party is paying attention to the 2024 manifesto nobody but of course he's

00:51:27.220 not going to call a general election because the burn and bounce lose yeah the burn and bounce was

00:51:32.320 about four points yeah and labor and it will last four to four four weeks to four months at least

00:51:39.060 and labor were on about 17 in the polls so they're still like dramatically below reform

00:51:44.660 like the burnham bounce has been very minimal they still can't win a general election yeah and

00:51:50.120 well they haven't they haven't solved the underlying problem which is they're losing

00:51:52.460 something like 17 of their vote to the left to the greens well actually burnham has brought back

00:51:57.240 about four or five percent of the okay right so that's he has brought some of those back okay but

00:52:01.680 it's not enough well and and 19 to the right with reform and restore so he's bleeding in both

00:52:08.120 directions and he and he hasn't decided what strategy he's going to use are you just going

00:52:13.220 to sit in the middle getting picked apart like a like a whale carcass floating on the sea being

00:52:18.520 picked apart from both sides by sharks or are you going to move in in one direction or the other you

00:52:23.300 can't move right because the labor back benches will rebel you can't move left without basically

00:52:28.980 just absolutely securing the the victory of the right yeah so you're just going to get picked

00:52:35.200 apart by sharks so he's picked whale carcass yes um and uh yeah so he's he's not going to call the

00:52:40.400 general election because of course that would be suicide uh and is he going to try and bring us

00:52:45.000 back into the eu yes i'm i'm going to uh build a closer relationship with the eu uh and i think

00:52:51.560 it's good the government because of course he wants to get back into the eu because of course

00:52:54.680 he's a blairite and has no original thoughts of his own uh he intends to continue the chagos

00:52:58.660 betrayal for some reason um which is really weird i don't know he must have got the briefing

00:53:03.620 explaining what it's really all about what is it all about i'm looking forward to in in

00:53:10.340 30 or 40 years time reading some political memoir and finding out finally why why we are so obsessed

00:53:16.540 with giving this away why we're spending 35 billion there must be some underlying reason

00:53:22.460 honestly it's completely opaque the the i've looked into it and the closest i can track it to

00:53:27.520 is that there was a piece of legal advice given at some international court that actually maybe

00:53:35.140 the chagos island should belong to mauritius but that sounds like bullshit i mean well yeah but

00:53:39.940 But that seems to be the only thing that Keir Starmer is running on with the Chagos.

00:53:44.740 And apparently Burnham's like, yeah, I guess that's... 1.00

00:53:46.620 There must be a real reason.

00:53:48.100 Well, I mean, I would think so, but...

00:53:49.560 Whatever it is.

00:53:51.520 You'd expect that some insider would just come and tweet it out or something, right?

00:53:56.400 So people at least know, oh yeah, okay, what I've heard is this really about this.

00:54:01.100 The best I can possibly guess with this is some broader deal with some other power,

00:54:06.760 like a china or india where it's like okay well we're going to step away from this now and because 0.54

00:54:11.400 you're a civilization that thinks in terms of decades it then opens centuries yeah so it then

00:54:17.780 opens it up for you to take it at some future point and you're willing with that trade and in

00:54:22.400 exchange for that you're going to give us something that we need that we can't talk about now i mean

00:54:26.960 it's the best i can do but god knows what it actually is i like if there might be but there's

00:54:32.660 just no evidence for it no it seems to just be this work the labor government hates that we own

00:54:38.060 the chagos islands and want us to not hate it and not want us to not own it why don't they give away

00:54:43.560 the falklands i mean maybe because it's too emotionally charged yeah i think because people

00:54:47.300 know what the falklands are right we know what the chagos islands are but did the general public

00:54:51.300 know what the chagos islands were before kirsten tried to give them away no they'd never put be

00:54:55.860 able to nail them down on the map whereas people would be like all right south the falklands near

00:55:00.020 south america you know they probably find oh it's the one big island mass near south america right

00:55:03.600 is that right because of the 82 invasion no one knows anything about the chagos islands right and

00:55:09.580 but you are right they probably would give away the falklands if they could um anyway what's what

00:55:14.200 have we got next right so he's gonna he's gonna means test the pensions which honestly is not a

00:55:19.140 bad idea because obviously what's the point in having multi-millionaire wealthy retirees

00:55:23.980 who've got private pensions or assets that give them money and whatnot from claiming

00:55:28.500 state pension i mean that's actually sensible so okay um then you've got uh the wealth tax

00:55:35.980 so he was on a podcast with gary lineker the other day it was exactly as insufferable as you

00:55:42.340 can imagine it to be and uh andy burnham said well at some point we might have to ask for a

00:55:46.480 little more but you know those decisions are not for now they're for another day so uh millions

00:55:50.920 must go is our slogan but millionaires must go is their slogan the brokonomics i'm recording later

00:55:58.060 today um which will come out several days after this it comes out on tuesdays it's going to be

00:56:02.820 about wealth taxes yeah and just just dismantling why they don't work and there are loads of

00:56:08.280 examples of it oh yeah every country that does them undoes them a few years later because the

00:56:13.800 millionaires in france did this few years ago didn't it yeah well yeah and and and um was it

00:56:18.420 norway or some of these nordic countries they they've all done it as well and a whole bunch

00:56:24.340 of south american countries but they always undo it because it always blows up in their face

00:56:28.260 but the point is there are a set of rails they all know look the only way we can make this work

00:56:34.620 is by stealing money from people who have money because otherwise we just don't get the money

00:56:39.340 yeah and i hope that people with money don't react in any way whatsoever yeah they're just

00:56:44.200 like oh yes please take my hard-earned money and this is why tony blair came out and was like listen

00:56:48.620 you need to rein your neck in mate you need to wind it in uh blairism cannot be saved by leftism

00:56:56.860 is basically what he said here right um he's warned annie burnham against the capital gains

00:57:01.700 tax increase saying we cannot tax our way to prosperity because uh burnham is thinking about

00:57:06.640 a capital gains tax in line with income tax uh despite warnings that this could lead to tax

00:57:11.880 receipts falling well uh the tony blair institute for global change uh issued this stark warning

00:57:17.860 Said such a move would send

00:57:19.780 Precisely the wrong message at precisely the wrong time

00:57:22.560 And

00:57:24.200 Writing for the Telegraph

00:57:25.820 A senior analyst at the Institute has said

00:57:27.940 Taxing away to prosperity is both bad policy

00:57:30.460 And bad politics

00:57:31.280 In a world of rapid technological change

00:57:33.020 Britain's prosperity is now guaranteed

00:57:34.840 Do you feel like we're in a prosperous country at this point?

00:57:39.220 We have to optimise for it

00:57:40.620 Britain's next leader has the potential

00:57:41.980 To set out a new stall for growth and security

00:57:43.680 And they must not squander it

00:57:44.920 He argued that Britain sorely needs long-term investment

00:57:47.440 and the willingness to back new businesses,

00:57:49.200 technologies, and ideas.

00:57:50.960 We must be a place where entrepreneurs feel

00:57:52.840 they can take risks, build companies,

00:57:54.340 and be rewarded for it,

00:57:55.640 all the while contributing to jobs and growth.

00:57:57.700 So you can see how far that Blairism

00:58:00.740 has drifted from Blair, right?

00:58:02.600 Because there was a point where Karl Marx

00:58:04.720 came out and said, well, I'm not a Marxist,

00:58:06.720 judging by what the Marxists are saying

00:58:08.760 and what they think we should do.

00:58:10.320 And Blair's getting to that point.

00:58:11.880 It's like, well, I'm not a Blairite,

00:58:13.400 says Tony Blair.

00:58:14.600 Funnily enough, this has already happened

00:58:15.620 with economic policy,

00:58:16.620 because John Maynard Keynes would not recognize modern Keynesianism.

00:58:23.720 He was all about you run massive surpluses whenever you can

00:58:28.840 so that you then run a deficit when it goes bad,

00:58:31.760 and we just run a deficit the entire time.

00:58:34.480 But the bastardization of the misunderstood version of Keynesianism

00:58:40.340 is the religion in every central bank, every treasury around the world.

00:58:45.040 and it's quite worrying is if if blairism does the same journey where the bad misunderstood

00:58:52.740 but unimplementable version of blairism becomes baked in on the political side going forward

00:58:59.740 which i mean yeah the the thing is you're appealing to a system and philosophy that has

00:59:10.040 people within it that actually understand it right that would be able to say first generation always

00:59:14.220 do yeah this is why tony blair is coming out and saying don't do this what you need and you know

00:59:20.960 for you i've got many complaints with blair but one thing he did deliver was economic growth

00:59:26.720 and if you watch up until about 2007 actually britain is growing quite quickly because blair

00:59:32.920 actually cared about making sure that there were companies in this country that had money

00:59:36.920 that they could spend i mean it helped a lot that he was running the the tory fiscal playbook until

00:59:42.440 2004 so that that helped him a lot yeah absolutely right but the but the point is he understood the

00:59:47.520 importance of this and this is what he's coming out and saying to him now oh yeah he didn't

00:59:51.520 instinctively hate millionaires just because they existed no and i mean they said increasing capital

00:59:56.600 gains tax to the level of income tax would undermine those incentives and send entirely

00:59:59.800 the wrong signal as in yeah what you're doing actually is penalizing people for being successful

01:00:03.960 how dare you make some money in this country hand it over it's the meme of the government

01:00:08.840 being like where's my money because leftists think that there's a fixed pot of wealth and

01:00:13.240 if somebody is wealthy it must be because they stole it from somebody else that's how they think

01:00:17.180 but they also they also think wealth is inevitable right they think a priori wealth exists

01:00:21.920 and it's just distributed somehow yes and therefore why is it being distributed in an

01:00:27.940 unequal way yes whereas in fact wealth doesn't exist in the abstract and it has to be physically

01:00:33.280 created by labor and people want to be rewarded for their labor and if they're not then of course

01:00:38.640 they just don't bother creating that wealth the state of nature is us wandering naked through

01:00:43.040 the forests picking berries and picking through carcasses and freezing to death yeah and dying

01:00:48.200 at 24 that's that's the state of nature that's that's what it looks like when we're all equal

01:00:52.620 yes and none of the people in labor are bright enough to understand this at this point right

01:00:58.160 this is why tony blair from the outside has to be like listen guys you're gonna ruin everything

01:01:03.180 and this is why i've been saying look i think this basically accelerationism um anyway the

01:01:07.620 the next big thing that andy burnham is going to do is proportional representation uh he has been

01:01:12.040 committed to this hang on about three or four tabs ago it was he was going to stick within the

01:01:18.120 labor party manifesto and and this is this is the hugest constitutional change yeah of my lifetime

01:01:26.260 much more so than you yeah what's the mandate for this seven 25 000 people in makerfield

01:01:33.540 i don't think so well and they weren't asked to vote on this either they were not

01:01:37.860 but he definitely wants purporting representation he's been committed to this for many years

01:01:42.760 and he uh vows to overhaul of the electoral system and transform british democracy if he

01:01:49.400 gets into number 10 so i mean this is a real problem for labor because there's a constitutional

01:01:54.840 precedent that you take this to a referendum which we had in 2011 or whatever it was they lost yeah

01:02:01.160 so i'm gonna have like i mean but the thing is nowadays labor just changing the voting age and

01:02:06.280 scrapping jury trial without even bothering to do you know do anything really they don't have

01:02:11.560 any mandate at this point yeah they don't even they don't even have the level of um consultation

01:02:16.100 if you're trying to dig a bloody hole under stone hinge they just do it so are they just going to do

01:02:21.100 this i mean they kind of have to if they want to remain a political force in this country if they

01:02:26.020 want to continue existing as a political party yes sure um but yeah no i i think i think that

01:02:31.160 they will right he's been saying this for a long time like this is from back in may but he's he's

01:02:36.100 been saying this for a long time um and he he says this i'm committed to proportional representation

01:02:40.500 i think it would change the political culture i don't see how first past the post and the

01:02:45.340 point scoring inherent within it lifts britain out of the doom loop it is in but is it first

01:02:50.840 past the post that's put us in a doom loop we've had that for over 100 years it's interesting that

01:02:55.380 I don't remember Annie Burnham saying this

01:02:57.480 all the time Labour could win a majority.

01:03:01.360 He probably did, actually.

01:03:03.140 Because, well, yeah, proportional representation

01:03:04.820 is a philosophical canard

01:03:07.980 that the continental Europeans have had,

01:03:10.700 well, since basically the French Revolution, right?

01:03:13.360 Because what they're trying to do

01:03:15.360 is make the Parliament accurately represent the country.

01:03:18.920 Literally like a map represents a continent.

01:03:21.660 Oh, so we're going to get the death penalty?

01:03:23.720 No.

01:03:24.300 Right.

01:03:24.480 right yeah no absolutely not um because even though they wanted to represent uh the the land

01:03:34.000 mass the people um they also have a normative teleological goal which means they have to abolish

01:03:40.620 oppression suffering death penalty you know they have to provide everyone with a certain standard

01:03:45.280 of living and things like this so there's the i mean this is an inherent contradiction in the

01:03:49.080 liberal philosophy anyway but the the point is andy burnham probably is going to push this through

01:03:54.060 and if he doesn't it will be in the face of what he genuinely wants to do which is push it through

01:04:00.240 so the question is what would it look like in britain so we do have proportional representation

01:04:04.720 in some voting systems in this country right yeah so we've got and just a very quick note

01:04:10.200 proportional representation could mean one of dozens of different systems it depends which

01:04:14.280 one you pick and what formula you pick and all the rest of it yeah as you can see here here's a

01:04:18.280 here's a list right so in the house of commons we are first past the post which to be honest with

01:04:23.020 you the more i've looked into proportional representation the more i've decided yeah

01:04:27.340 no it should be winner take all actually um because this this proportional representation

01:04:31.860 is kind of like um voting for losers so if you can't win then i don't want you in parliament

01:04:38.180 like if you can't just win outright i don't i don't think you should be there right but the

01:04:42.060 scotch parliament has the additional member system the welsh uh senate has the closed list

01:04:47.340 proportional system and the northern ireland assembly has the single transferable vote

01:04:51.020 so i if if i'm right the additional member system is where it's mostly first past the post but then

01:04:58.220 there's a whole bunch of there's a bucket for for pr that gets added on yeah so well what what

01:05:03.480 happens with the additional member system is each voters in scotland have two votes all right the

01:05:09.780 first vote is the vote for a constituency member and the second is for a party and this is done

01:05:14.860 on a regional basis so the votes for the constituency member are counted using first

01:05:19.180 past the post as the same as um the uk parliament um uh the candidate with the most votes wins

01:05:24.700 constituency seat and 73 of the 129 members are elected in this way the second vote acts as a

01:05:31.240 top-up vote again this just seems like cope doesn't it so this is it's like welfare for voting

01:05:37.340 yeah right uh bear in mind we restore the sport are saying this yeah for for the early days of

01:05:43.560 restore this would help us massively yeah absolutely well i'm way more than one mp yeah if

01:05:48.520 if it changed the first part of the post but we will never get anywhere because no one will ever

01:05:53.880 form a majority yeah because because it will it will be leftist coalitions yeah and and probably

01:05:59.200 including the tory party in that yeah forever which is which is why even if they sacrifice

01:06:04.820 the labor party on the altar of multiculturalism and blairism yeah they know that forever they'll

01:06:10.040 still get the agenda put into action yeah right yeah they just do it with the greens lib dems and

01:06:15.800 the toys absolutely absolutely they're more than happy to so the second vote acts as the top-up

01:06:20.200 vote providing 56 additional members to the parliament these members are elected to represent

01:06:24.300 eight parliamentary regions with seven different available seats voters cast their vote for the

01:06:28.440 party or independent in their region any parties contesting a region publish a fixed list of

01:06:32.760 candidates this has changed slightly in wales with the uh the closed list proportional system

01:06:39.800 which means that voters cast one vote for a political party rather than individual

01:06:44.760 with the exception of independent candidates who are on ballots as individuals rather than parties

01:06:49.720 but surely that makes independent candidates far less viable as rather you'd have to remember an

01:06:54.920 independent candidate for every vote you have to have rather than just the party that you wanted

01:06:58.540 political parties can list up eight candidates for each constituency the seats are allocated

01:07:03.320 based on the share of votes each party gets using the dehont formula which and the fact that they

01:07:10.440 have to reference all of these foreign formulas shows that this is not an indigenous way of doing

01:07:15.220 politics in this country um when i first started voting you they didn't even mention the party

01:07:21.760 yeah why would you then they started then they started mentioning the party then they started

01:07:26.160 putting logos on it they're basically they're taking you as far away as possible from a individual

01:07:32.560 to a collective yeah because an individual who is like mapped in the constituency is someone you

01:07:40.300 will personally know i mean this this is actually the the reverse is how andy burnham won makerfield

01:07:45.060 notice he didn't put labor on any of his messaging he said for us vote andy his picture no labor

01:07:51.640 symbol no no no i i appreciate that the the abstraction of party politics has gotten away

01:07:57.760 from everyone and i'm going to go under that and go to the personal popularity and uh relationships

01:08:03.980 you have with me now that i'm leading the labor party i want everyone else to be voted on solely

01:08:08.720 because they're labor exactly so anyway northern ireland has the single transferable vote voters

01:08:14.660 are presented with a list of candidates and rank their preferred candidates in order of preference

01:08:18.440 to gain a seat a candidate needs to receive a certain number of votes which is a quota and

01:08:22.800 that varies across the constituencies um the droop quota is calculated by dividing the total votes

01:08:29.300 cast by one more than the number of available seats then adding one so that previous one i mean

01:08:34.760 that's awful because we would get precisely you know we would get our ballot paper let's say we

01:08:39.420 let's say we were doing on a national level i mean i know it doesn't exactly well like this

01:08:42.780 but we put rupert lowell restore as first yeah and then we'd be like well we don't want anyone else

01:08:47.620 whereas if you're on the left you can put the greens first as your first preference then labor

01:08:52.900 then the conservatives and then reform and that's precisely the point of it um is it's to avoid the

01:09:00.120 idea of splitting the vote so you can just oh well you know if i'm because theoretically they're

01:09:06.220 thinking right okay you'd vote reform they restore then reform then the conservatives so you haven't

01:09:11.660 actually split your vote because someone on the right is going to get it but again i don't want

01:09:16.940 that because nobody else is going to do deportations well exactly but also it's kind of the

01:09:21.920 same it's kind of like the jacob reese mogg socialism but for votes right there's a fixed

01:09:27.060 number of votes there are a fixed number of parties and the system will divvy up into the

01:09:31.980 various parties the votes that you have because it is captured this thing no it is this for the

01:09:38.500 right it is this for the left and never will you have something outside of this and that's very

01:09:44.120 good for liberalism because let's say you because if you go in there and you just put one vote you're

01:09:49.180 going to feel a bit silly so you end up most people there's no no nothing lost by just taking

01:09:53.700 lunch so yeah but that means whoever wins you're vested in it yes you can't say i reject this

01:10:00.780 system this liberal system because oh actually no my fourth choice did get in so i did vote for

01:10:06.340 them in a way and therefore i'm vested in the system but also it prevents an outside insurgency

01:10:10.380 from coming in and overthrowing the system right so okay uh you know a a quarter of the people

01:10:17.440 might have number one vote for radical outsider but then if they vote two three and four for

01:10:23.440 the right wing of the insiders or on the left on the greens on the you know on the left you've got

01:10:28.580 you know okay i really want the radical greens but other the lib dems and labor well the more

01:10:33.260 poignant example there'll be radical islam one greens two labor three yeah right yeah yeah so

01:10:38.320 no matter what happens like that that radical party will get a slice of the vote but the that

01:10:45.640 because they don't win it'll be the other votes that are transferred or that counts so the system

01:10:51.520 itself is is protected from these outsiders and then you're vested in it through your

01:10:56.200 and your vote your energy has gone into the vote anyway that will never get you the thing that you

01:11:02.040 want um anyway yeah so this the same thing there um so the these are the likely options that we'll

01:11:11.480 have none of them good i think just first pass the put i want raw darwinism right winner takes

01:11:17.660 all first pass the post yeah it's given us keir starmer but i mean at least keir starmer has done

01:11:21.600 things right what what they're promising is a system that will get nothing done and we can see

01:11:26.180 this from european politics everything everything in british politics is about preserving the status

01:11:31.360 quo everything which which i guess you know no wonder they're going to adopt european politics

01:11:37.100 the next thing is the supplementary vote they have in manchester this is how the manchester

01:11:41.120 mayoral elections are called and so instead of voting for just one candidate voters can mark a

01:11:47.120 first choice and a second choice if the candidate is the first choice of more than half the voters

01:11:51.120 then that candidate wins immediately but it's very unlikely you're going to get that you redistribute

01:11:55.820 the second yeah if nobody wins more than half they only the top two candidates stay in the contest

01:12:00.260 and then they make everyone come back to pick between them and the ballots are checked again

01:12:04.220 so the first choice is if your first choice is one of the final two your vote stays with them

01:12:08.600 if your first choice was knocked out but your second choice was on the final two

01:12:11.660 your vote is added to their total instead and so this is again designed to stop vote splitting so

01:12:17.820 you can you know vote greens and then labor if you want right but because a smaller number will

01:12:23.620 always vote greens that green guy gets knocked out so you got the greens and the tories uh the

01:12:28.240 sorry labor and the tories well the greens can get you know however many votes but if labor get

01:12:33.480 more secondary votes which they probably will you end up with labor even if you're really voting

01:12:38.860 for greens so if we had to have a pr system i'd probably hate this one less yeah i want it it's

01:12:46.280 probably the least contemptible of the pr systems but the point is we're still getting it right

01:12:51.400 we're probably still going to get something like this and these are just the pr systems that we

01:12:56.220 use in this country so i assume it when when burnham does do this they can probably find a

01:13:01.060 more french one oh yeah i mean maybe you can but he'll he'll probably adopt one of these systems

01:13:06.480 so the point being he's got no mandate for any of this and he's desperately like like though all of

01:13:13.260 them they they feel like they're at the end of the tether right yep you can tell they feel at the end

01:13:18.900 of the tether so this is again why rory's cover here just really yes really smashes at home like

01:13:24.720 They're right at the five minutes to midnight end of being at the top of the country's concerns.

01:13:31.000 And you can feel the detachment.

01:13:33.140 You can feel them drifting away from what people are actually asking for.

01:13:36.940 And yet they don't know why and they can't solve it.

01:13:40.060 Anyway, link to Islander in the description.

01:13:42.440 We'll see you next time, folks.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 17, 2026

The Last Blairite

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