00:00:00.000Hi folks, welcome to this slightly delayed podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Wednesday the 27th of May
00:00:04.8802026. I'm joined by Connor and Harry. Apparently there was a Windows update that happened this
00:00:09.080morning and it broke a few things on the back end but hopefully we are here with you now and
00:00:13.640we're going to be talking about basically just the meltdown that is happening about Restore Britain
00:00:18.160at the moment which is just incredible frankly. Dan Hodges did call it, he was like look you're
00:00:23.820feeling squeezed by them, you're going to get on them and you're going to attack them and it's
00:00:26.580going to increase their salience, and when people are like, oh right, so I can have Restore Britain
00:00:30.220rather than Nigel Farage's wishy-washy reform, Restore Britain are going to start gaining. So
00:00:36.460we're going to explore it. Why is this happening? What has their response been? And what does it
00:00:42.080reveal to us? Which I think is also more surprising than people might believe. Anyway, right, so let's
00:00:49.720just get straight into it. Why are they currently having a meltdown over Restore Britain? Well,
00:00:53.600it's because of polls they think polls are um well i mean is it chiseled in stone yeah destiny
00:01:01.100yeah uh they they seem to think that the electorate is already carved up and now it's just about
00:01:07.720settling the scores but i don't think that's the case i think that people actually change their
00:01:11.440minds which is why reform are on parity with labor on this poll i mean that wouldn't have
00:01:16.520happened six years ago so things must change and i think they're genuinely worried that things will
00:01:21.640continue to change. Because of course, this came out from a very, very tiny sample of people in
00:01:26.540Makerfield. 369 people is not a big sample. But even then, getting the 7% restore on there was
00:01:33.720quite a shock for them. Because of course, you remember Nigel Farage said, well, they won't get
00:01:37.1801% anywhere, even in Great Yarmouth. And that was one of the worst political predictions anyone's
00:01:42.260ever made. It aged like milk. At least, I think this might be discounting the local level support
00:01:47.040for restore according to the canvassing returns, not only the restore. Well, we'll get into that.
00:01:51.320I will say at the very least, Restore have achieved parity in the local constituency as what they've been reliably getting on the national polling when prompted.
00:02:03.300And this was a phone survey of 509 people, and they left out those people who thought they were not likely to vote.
00:02:10.860Well, weirdly, that's actually a huge constituency for Restore.
00:02:13.780that's actually how they got such overwhelming victories in great yarmouth is bringing out those
00:02:19.600people who are not people who are particularly invested in politics because they don't really
00:02:23.400feel represented also how make a feel voted for brexit it is uh and then you got this from charlie
00:02:29.400simpson now charlie simpson is a young journalist and uh apparently has some interesting insider
00:02:34.200info from the reform party now take this with a grain of salt but they say that their own
00:02:39.820reform's own canvassing results show restoring 18%. We're on about 34% and Labour 42%.
00:02:46.040So of course, this leads into the splitting the vote narrative, as you can imagine.
00:02:50.920I have, I received communications also from Milbank Tower trying to canter signal this
00:02:55.580morning, insisting that only three people have control of the internal polling and canvassing
00:03:00.160returns. And they were very eager to say, no, don't worry. Internally, reform has restored
00:03:04.740a lot lower than seven. And I don't really believe that.
00:03:07.500Yeah, I don't really believe it either, because, I mean, Restore's own canvassing data has been 24% for Restore, 31% definitely against, and then 44% either considering or undecided, which sounds pretty realistic, to be honest.
00:03:22.560Well, I think this is quite high, and it may be a slight optimistic bias.
00:03:28.140However, in this instance, if people think about it,
00:03:30.840that makes Restore the single largest group,
00:03:34.720because definitely against would be split between reform and labour.
00:03:38.940I don't think you can go quite that far.
00:03:45.380But undecided and considering, that's probably a lot of labour and reform.
00:03:48.840Yes, but as in those of those who are already committed and aren't up for being won, it would
00:03:54.860mean that Restore has the earliest eager base locked in, because I think what they've done is
00:04:00.920they've made a... They're voting on the basis of a character judgment, and they find Nigel Farage's
00:04:04.480character wanting, despite promising the same policies, and they're certainly not going to
00:04:07.640vote for Andy Burnham. So they're the earliest adopters of Restore in the constituency, whereas
00:04:12.760the largest vote block overall are people that don't have firm loyalties yet.
00:04:17.220Yeah. So anyway, like I said, we don't know. These are actually polls that are almost a week old now. So who knows what the situation is on the ground? We're actually going to be sending a team up next week. So, you know, we'll do some, Harry and Luke will do some on the ground reporting and we'll find out what's what.
00:33:50.540we've seen Nick Robinson characterize them as all angry young men this morning
00:33:53.600on BBC Radio 4, but it's our audience.
00:33:55.880We have a lot of angry young men and women, but we also have a lot of middle-aged, middle-class people who are striving and who started with nothing, have worked their way up.
00:34:10.080Mums and dads who have actually worked really hard, got something for themselves, and are realising that we're going off a goddamn cliff and have to change.0.71
00:34:17.000There's a lot of us who are like that.
00:34:19.000And so it's just like, I don't envy reform at this point0.92
00:34:24.060because they have chosen the gay Tory spats.0.98
00:34:28.320And they've simultaneously tried to chase the Muslim vote0.99
00:34:31.000and those are the least likely group in the country0.80
01:01:03.700An ironic Starmerite at this point crushed them all
01:01:06.620Well, in comparison to the alternatives within the liberal party, I mean, you've kind of got to go with the least worst option.
01:01:13.820Anyway, so it's been referenced a few times so far, this podcast, but I think it's better taking a more in-depth look at the fact that in Western politics in general,
01:01:23.540there seems to be an umbrella that most politics has to operate under, which has become clearer and clearer over the past few years.
01:01:31.440and we're starting to set up alternatives so that we can have our own politics on our own terms and
01:01:37.240be able to represent ourselves unashamedly and one of the big examples of this and really what
01:01:43.140the establishment finds acceptable and what it doesn't find acceptable was in this article that
01:01:48.960we highlighted a few times now but we'll go over in a little bit more detail here which was Melanie
01:01:53.920Phillips article for the Times called Restores Extremism is a Problem for Nigel Farage. Now
01:02:00.800it was mentioned um in the last segment that most of this article is actually basically an
01:02:06.320endorsement for restore if you are somebody who cares about the british people policies that will
01:02:11.580benefit them and not benefit foreign interests whether that be islamic foreign interests or
01:02:17.640otherwise um it's a bit of a it's a bit of a ringing endorsement for them well just what i
01:02:23.840love about this is they're caught in a kind of double bind here as well accurately characterizing
01:02:28.620restores message is an endorsement of restore because it's a message that's so far out of the
01:02:33.140norm out of the mainstream that people oh yeah that sounds pretty good but then inaccurately
01:02:37.600and mischaracterizing it as in he's going to deport whole communities well that's also an
01:02:42.460endorsement like oh it really is going to get the entire community of child rapists out of the
01:02:47.280country is he and he asked well i never said everyone it's like well they're saying you're
01:02:52.240saying it so you know just saying um the point being it's also an endorsement and it also but
01:02:57.680But it's interesting that they see these things as an attack and then how they try to lump you
01:03:03.660in with different political factions as a sort of guilt by association. But also is interesting in
01:03:08.980this article is the way in which Melanie Phillips herself mischaracterizes these other political
01:03:14.840factions and seems to have no understanding of what she's talking about because she seems to
01:03:19.860have just lumped in everybody who she sees is not explicitly on her side together. Because Melanie
01:03:26.180Phillips has been an anti-radical Islam activist for a long while. She's been associated with the
01:03:32.920Conservative Party. She was former a leftist. She used to write The Guardian. Many are, many are,
01:03:38.020but I believe now she's quite well associated with people like Douglas Murray. So for a long time,
01:03:42.780as somebody on social media pointed out to me, she'd been banging the tub, she'd been banging
01:03:47.240the drum for Britain and for England, until all of a sudden you start to get this offshoot politics
01:03:54.620with restore who are more explicitly for britain and not for anybody else just for britain at which
01:04:01.400point she's got a big problem so let's examine that so first of all here's just the ringing
01:04:05.360endorsement that we find in here sorry just quickly i love that she characterizes what you've
01:04:09.580just said as a form of extremism oh absolutely having a politics for us is an extreme first and0.96
01:04:15.900foremost and i don't think that this is mischaracterizing her at all she is a rabid0.98
01:04:21.920ultra-nationalist for her own people. She's been explicit about this. She's been very very clear
01:04:27.740about this and she absolutely has the right to be. I think it's perfectly rational and normal for
01:04:33.120people to have a great and endearing love for their own people. It's the fact that when other
01:04:38.100people start to do that same thing it suddenly becomes a problem. You see the double standard
01:04:42.620and you see the umbrella that all of politics is having to operate under. So she says,
01:04:47.280So a wife, she carries on, who knew her husband had been involved but said nothing,