Josh and Jono are back talking about the doomsday budget, which is worse than you may have imagined at first blush. They also discuss the idea of a second Christmas, and whether or not they like it.
00:00:00.000Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 27th of November, 2025.
00:00:05.700I'm John Badan and Josh, and today we're going to be talking about the doomsday budget that is way worse than you may have imagined at first blush.
00:00:13.940America is finding out that actually maybe, just maybe, bringing in all of these Afghans as consequences.
00:00:20.960And then we're going to be talking about the motability aristocracy that you're paying for.
00:00:24.200They just love being a serf. I love being a serf. It's so fucking great.
00:00:27.180Anyway, before we begin, tomorrow, Friday at 3 o'clock, we have the gold Zoom call for our gold-tier subscribers.
00:00:35.780So if you're a gold-tier subscriber, I will see you then. But until then, let's begin.
00:00:40.400I think they've also got the Americans got their warm-up Christmas today, the Thanksgiving thing.
00:03:36.060Well, we'll only have to wait a few minutes for the full details of the budget.
00:03:41.240Just as Keir Starmer was saying, you're going to have to wait for the full details of the budget.
00:03:45.820There she is discovering that the full details of the budget have already been announced much, much earlier.
00:03:51.780Which made it considerably easier for Kemi, because, of course, she could stand up and her team had a couple of hours to actually go through all the detail.
00:10:35.940So if she's like, oh, there are going to be exit taxes and doesn't do it, then everyone's like, oh, actually, it's a lot better than we thought it was going to be.
00:10:42.760Well, that's a really bad strategy because wealthy people don't wait for the exit taxes to be put in place.
00:10:49.000There was one billionaire who dodged the other day.
00:12:16.160So he's actually the kind of immigrant that you can tolerate because even on a quiet year, he is doing the job of about 600 to 700 average taxpayers.
00:13:18.460So she managed to cause capital flight without actually doing anything, without actually doing anything, to cause hiring freezing, cancelled investment.
00:13:28.840I mean, I could go through, I mean, I won't, but I could go through a whole list of businesses that said, oh, yeah, we were going to invest this money in the UK and expand this, do this.
00:13:37.220So she managed to cause capital flight, hiring freezes, cancelled investments, and it was based purely on rumour, and she didn't actually even do them in the end.
00:13:46.340I mean, to my mind, this is a rare talent.
00:13:49.340And her defence was, you're mansplaining at me.
00:13:52.140Like, just, there are any, I saw literally, the New Statesman podcast, I'm like, going, well, I mean, there was a lot of misogyny directed towards her.
00:14:02.360Yeah, yeah, like, sorry, if you think this woke nonsense is going to be a sufficient defence for what she's doing, you are having another thing coming.
00:14:12.820I'll quickly run through the list of who she punished and who she rewards.
00:14:16.560You have to watch my Brokernomics, which I'm filming this afternoon, which will be out on Tuesday, if you want to go into more detail, because I just haven't got time in a segment like this.
00:17:19.660She also assumes that nobody is going to refuse overtime or promotion.
00:17:24.480Why wouldn't I just work harder, for longer, for less money, to watch it going in the pockets of foreigners and bureaucrats?
00:17:31.460I guarantee that most people watching this have considered refusing overtime or promotion or whatever it is, in order to avoid higher tax.
00:17:39.960What a wild position we've ended up in.
00:17:44.600Yeah, I'm thinking about signing on, quitting my work and just living off of the state, finally get my tax rebate.
00:17:51.880I'm coming to that bit, and you might actually want to go for it.
00:17:55.020I mean, legitimately, you might want to actually go for it.
00:17:57.780And also, I mean, it's not in the budget, but she also assumes that Labour's right to work reforms that they're bringing in won't impact hiring.
00:18:06.240So they're getting rid of things like the probationary period.
00:21:16.500So everybody will be paying this mansion tax and your kids, give it another 14 years of that,
00:21:22.200your kids will be paying a mansion tax on their starter flat.
00:21:25.020So on a long enough timeline, we all become Zimbabwean millionaires.
00:21:28.040Well, it's basically the story of higher rate tax all over again.
00:21:32.300So higher rate tax was introduced in 1988.
00:21:34.800And at the time, it only hit about two or three percent of earners.
00:21:37.860I mean, even a lot of premiership football players didn't pay higher rate tax when it was introduced.
00:21:42.420I mean, that's partly a function of premiership football players earning less at the time.
00:21:46.040But still, it was a very select few group of people in 1988 paid higher rate tax.
00:21:50.880And now it's going to be, well, it's already over 15% and it should get to 25% before the end of the decade.
00:21:59.120So it's basically the standard rate is now the higher rate.
00:22:03.820So the mansion tax, it is going to be that all over again.
00:22:08.100Now, going back to my original point, you know, couldn't they save the money elsewhere?
00:22:12.220If you took the welfare bill, just the disability welfare bill, back to pre-COVID levels, she'd wipe out this black hole that she keeps talking about.
00:22:23.440Because it's gone from 15 billion to 50 billion.
00:22:26.000Well, a quarter of the country is apparently disabled now, which I don't see, you know, one in every four people going around in a wheelchair.
00:22:34.020So I presume that there's some fraud going on.
00:22:36.420Probably wasn't that bad off the Battle of the Somme.
00:23:03.960Five years welfare spending will go from 70 to 400.
00:23:07.400If any of you can't see that this is unsustainable, if any leftists have stumbled across this channel and you genuinely can't see that this is unaffordable, I don't know what to say to you.
00:35:41.660So anyway, like I said, two of them were shot and the first thing that happened was people went to Blue Sky to cheer about it.
00:35:48.100Now, apparently we can't get that up because, as you can see, due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age.
00:35:59.260But this is from Andy Ngo, this tweet.
00:36:01.720And the quote is, I can't show you, quote,
00:36:04.800Don't enforce fascism and you won't get shot.
00:36:06.920But it's, it's, the National Guard deserve it, say the very sane people on Blue Sky.
00:36:13.520This is a point I always have to make, that the American system is set up in such a way with the separation of powers that even if Donald Trump was this evil fascist that they claim him to be, he still wouldn't have as much power as your average British Prime Minister.
00:36:26.580And no one's saying the evil, well, actually some people are these days.
00:38:03.760They were shot on Wednesday near the White House, which is, you would think, a concerning thing.
00:38:09.500In what officials described as a targeted ambush, the suspect was in custody after suffering gunshot wounds during the attack.
00:38:16.720Guard soldiers were part of a high-visibility patrol around 2.15pm near the corner of 17th and 1st Streets, a few blocks from the White House.
00:38:23.880And when the suspect came around the corner, he ambushed them, says the Metropolitan Police Assistant Chief Jeff Carroll in a press briefing.
00:38:31.340The shooting unfolded near Farragut Square, a popular lunch spot for workers just a few blocks away from the White House.
00:38:37.840The park, where the light posts are wrapped in wreaths and bows for the holiday season, is flanked by fast, casual restaurants and a coffee shop, as well as two metro stops.
00:38:45.280After the exchange of gunfire, the other Guard members were able to subdue the suspect.
00:38:49.580Two wounded soldiers were in a critical condition at the hospital, say, FBI Director Kash Patel, which, as far as the best of my knowledge, is the current situation as we are broadcasting.
00:38:59.840The motive for the shooting was not immediately clear, but they believed the shooter acted alone.
00:39:04.260The identities of the suspect had not, when this was printed, made public.
00:39:08.180In a social media post, Trump called the suspected shooter an animal, who would pay a very steep price and praise the National Guard.
00:41:25.020Uh, I'm determined to ensure the animal perpetrator of the atrocity will pay the cheapest price.
00:41:29.600And what's really interesting is they spoke to his family members.
00:41:32.240It's like, yeah, he served in the Afghan army alongside US Special Forces troops for 10 years.
00:41:39.060And then when Biden's chaotic, catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, that for no reason, it's not like the Taliban, just for anyone who forgot, didn't have like five divisions marching on Kabul or something.
00:41:52.440The Americans were like, well, we're going to get overrun here, lads.
00:42:19.980Not killed by the Taliban, by the way.
00:42:21.440Um, this whole thing, he'd been serving with the Afghan army alongside the U.S. Special Forces 10 years, comes to the U.S. four years ago, given citizenship, and then, like, yeah, now he needs to shoot a couple of national...
00:42:35.140I mean, I think the point you're making is no matter what level of vetting...
00:46:58.500Whatever we're doing, just do the opposite if you want a good country, and you'll get it.
00:47:03.160Because, I mean, you may remember that based conservative Robert Jenrick, in 2023 under the Rishi Senate government, was like, yeah, no, we're going to sneak in tens of thousands of Afghans.
00:47:17.060It was a lot more than that, you covering the lying and hiding.
00:47:19.400I'm just going to summarise it for the sake of this segment.
00:47:22.740But, you know, something like 25,000 in total, they snuck in.
00:47:26.460And then they took out a court injunction to stop us knowing about it.
00:47:29.780They did, and that was overturned only very recently, so that's why we're allowed to talk about it.
00:47:35.280But they were also allowed to bring their dependents.
00:47:37.880Now, that could be, you know, who knows how many per one.
00:47:41.800I mean, this guy who was just, he was, that was six dependents for that guy, his wife and five children.
00:47:47.160So if we multiply that by a factor of six, we are talking about 200,000.
00:47:52.480They do have large families, don't they?
00:47:54.920So 200,000 Afghans were snuck into the country under the cover of night by the Conservatives on the premise that, in fact, we've got a statement from Robert Jenrick in this.
00:48:07.840The Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick, said two years ago, we undertook one of the largest evacuations in recent history, bringing 15,000 people and the rest, Robert, from Afghanistan, safety in the UK at short notice.
00:48:17.740Through the tireless work of our dedicated home office staff, we now have provided these Afghans with the home they need to begin the next chapter of their life.
00:48:46.160Well, since that statement's been made, I can think of several cases of Afghans brought over to this country where they've, you know, attacked people, sexually assaulted people.
00:48:56.000Well, there was one that raped a 12-year-old girl the other day.
00:49:19.680As the last U.S. military aircraft lifted off from the airport that had witnessed unimaginable tragedy and remarkable heroism, just an eight-hour flight away in my Nottingham constituency, I walked to a house in a peaceful corner of my local town to meet an Afghan family who were my newest constituents.
00:49:42.260Amadilla had served as a translator with British Special Forces in Helmand Province.
00:49:46.200He'd risked his life assisting our troops.
00:49:48.800He was fulsome in his pride and loyalty to the men and women he served with, with hopes to reconnect with them and perhaps even serve alongside them again, should the opportunity arise.
00:50:19.400And so, I mean, you know, there was another one more recently, the raping of a 12-year-old girl, but then you've got, it was Safi Dawood who broke into the country on a lorry in 2020.
00:50:31.380So this was even before the evacuation of Afghanistan.
00:50:34.500And these are also the ones that get media coverage because there's an inordinate number of these sorts of level of crimes.
00:50:40.020Maybe not a triple stabbing, but crimes of this sort of nature and severity that just don't get picked up by the media.
00:50:46.180Because there's so many now that they can only pick a selection.
00:50:49.060Oh, yeah, if your wife gets harassed and grabbed and all the rest of it on the way back from the shops, that's not ending up on Sky News.
00:50:53.440It's not even going to be on the local news, really.
00:51:07.560In 2022, Jenrick, Minister of State for Immigration, decided he was granted asylum and indefinite leave to remain.
00:51:14.520And then just three years later, he thanked Robert Jenrick for his service by murdering a guy who was walking his dog and then stabbing two other people.
01:04:38.740I can't use a bus because I fall asleep randomly.
01:04:42.200Therefore, I should be in charge of two tons of car.
01:04:45.160So, other than this being completely insane, it's worth mentioning that the data for people's sort of medical records and the reasons for getting it, technically this is a disability, yes.
01:05:29.180This is a bit like saying we've got to take somebody off their job because they've got Parkinson's and their handshake, so we're going to put them in charge of the nuclear button instead.
01:05:35.940How difficult is it to fake narcolepsy?
01:08:40.340To get a motability car for their parents to drive them around, but the parents can still apply for a taxi service on the council bill.
01:08:47.720And then use the state-given car not to drive their kids around, but get the state to ferry them around for them while they drive around the kid's car.
01:09:18.300Does Rachel Rees spend all her time trying to find somebody who's come to this country who hasn't got benefits, and then rectify the situation?
01:09:25.320I mean, Labour did canvas for people to bring here initially.
01:09:28.640So it's not beyond the realms of possibility that we find out they do do this.
01:09:31.660So even former Met Police detectives say certain people have motorbility cars sitting on their driveway, and yet their disabled children still get transport to and from school.
01:09:41.520So apparently this definitely is happening, according to this man.
01:09:54.080So yeah, basically my ideology is raising taxes on people working here to pay for BMWs for people with anxiety, which is exactly what's going on.
01:10:04.940And people have observed that in dealerships, the Motability Scheme logo is actually larger than the BMW logo.
01:10:12.480There's a dealership near my house that we drive past regularly that has this giant Motability side outside of it, because they obviously know it's guaranteed money.
01:10:21.740Like if you, like, okay, I'm going to sell a car to a guy who's going to pay me £500 a month, well there's a chance that the average private citizen might not pay you that.
01:10:29.840You might have to then involve debt collectors, it'll be a long hoo-ha to get that money, but if it's coming straight from the government or the charity paid for by the government, that money is guaranteed.
01:10:41.360Not just license to print money, it is just incentivizing you to know I'd rather sell Motability cars, because I know I'm getting that money, rather than selling to the private.
01:10:56.600There is some good news, though, because the only good thing, really, to come from Rachel Reeves' budget was this, that the luxury cars are being removed.
01:11:07.180So, all of the most expensive ones, so the BMWs and, like, are being taken away, and all of these people flaunting their expensive cars that they got through the state are going to have to downgrade, which is, I suppose, something.
01:11:37.180But the point is, you could have spent all of that money on designing, essentially, like, you know, some sort of Soviet-style car that was, like, you know, small but designed for people who were disabled.
01:11:45.620Well, we used to have the three-wheelers that they gave to disabled people.
01:11:49.660I mean, you could build them a mech suit.
01:11:51.880I didn't realize they were for disabled people.
01:11:53.620But the point is, you could just, you know, design, okay, we need a modern car for disabled people, so, you know, have a particular kind of, you know, wide-opening thing, so they can get in and stuff like that.
01:12:03.620You could design it for far less than we're spending on this, and then just give them one cheaply.
01:12:29.420But yes, apparently, luxury cars from a whole host of manufacturers, including Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Alfa Romeo, and Lexus, are no longer going to be available on the motability scheme.
01:12:41.800And I was able to look up the numbers, and currently, 860,000 people get help with their whole lease, or at least in part.
01:12:51.880And apparently, the higher-end vehicles account for about 50,000 of the vehicles leased.
01:12:56.520So it is a minority, but it's still 50,000 that shouldn't have been handed out in the first place.
01:13:03.600Obviously, we're not going to be going after people like that estate agent with a 20 grand private number plate and saying, we want all of this benefit money back.
01:13:31.880It says, Matt Ryder, who used to work on motability policy for the Department for Work and Pension, said the problem with the scheme goes beyond offering premium brands.
01:13:40.800He said the scheme, which only leases brand-new cars, which are replaced every three years, could become more efficient by supplying nearly new cars instead.
01:13:47.640Yeah, why do they need brand-new cars?
01:13:50.160You know, that most people can't afford to buy themselves.
01:13:54.780But the thing is, this is kind of like trivial to point out because, I mean, of assets that depreciate in value.
01:14:18.740Like, anyone who is approaching this would like, okay, we've got a budget to fill and we need to keep it within these particular lines and we want to make sure that the people who are paying for this are being given value for their money.
01:14:29.880They would obviously be like, yeah, well, you're getting second-hand cars, right?
01:14:33.420These people would be getting old bangers off of, you know, car, second-hand car websites.
01:14:39.380So this isn't about, like, you know, goodwill that underpins it.
01:14:44.580This is about you being taken advantage of on purpose.
01:14:47.480Like, imagine the conversation that led to brand-new luxury cars being provided to people like that guy with the 20 grand license plate from your money.
01:14:58.720Like, that conversation must have involved a significant amount of malice towards you as the taxpayer.
01:19:07.440So a niche poster on Twitter saved the country 300 million pounds.
01:19:13.720Unfortunately, Rachel Reeves is going to completely obliterate that saving, but the principle of the thing.
01:19:20.300And the moral of the story is, if you point out fraudulent government schemes on the internet, actually it does seem to have some sort of effect.
01:19:35.080And you can, in theory at least, save the taxpayer 300 million for a start, but there's still an angle of attack here.