The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1445

00:00:00.000 Good afternoon and welcome to the podcast Lotus Eaters episode 1445. I'm your host Harry joined

00:00:08.280 today by Stelios. Hello everyone. And special guest Raphael Paio. Hi. And welcome to the show

00:00:15.380 it's great to have you on here. You've done previously an interview with Stelios that's

00:00:20.220 correct. Exactly I've done an interview with Stelios because I happened to be friends with

00:00:26.500 Quentin de Ranck, who was murdered by the far left in February. So I talked about it,

00:00:35.500 I tried to show he wasn't the fascist some media tried to portray him, and to defend

00:00:42.940 his memory. And I happened to be in England for the week, so I dropped by and I'm pleased

00:00:51.760 to meet you.

00:00:52.760 Pleased to meet you too, I'm very sorry, I wasn't actually aware that that was the context

00:00:56.080 of your coming in the first time. I'm very sorry to hear that that happened back in February.

00:01:00.040 That's a tragedy. But you will be speaking to us later in the third segment about French

00:01:04.680 politics and the situation that's going on over in the continent. I'm going to be talking

00:01:09.300 about the resignation of Keir Starmer, which we know has happened this very morning. So

00:01:14.600 that is really quite breaking news. Stelios is going to be telling us about the rise of

00:01:18.940 the right in South America.

00:01:21.380 Yes.

00:01:21.580 and before we get into that just if you'd like to properly introduce yourself a bit more Raphael

00:01:27.660 and tell people where people can find you well you can find me on x i think you can show it on

00:01:34.620 the screen so rafpio you can also find me on my youtube channel so it's in french of course so

00:01:41.740 if you want to improve your french feel free to drop by and listen to us we do a long form long

00:01:49.180 long-form content, mostly interviews, and I have a wide array of guests and I try to really push forward

00:02:00.940 people who have interesting things to say but can't really easily access right-wing alternative French

00:02:10.220 media so i try to be this platform where the where leftover people can find a place or right

00:02:20.480 wingers who are uncooked yeah yeah exactly which sounds like a problem over in france from what

00:02:25.240 you were saying before we started yeah yeah yeah yes and uh for everybody watching you can find

00:02:30.780 his socials on twitter on screen at raf paio p-a-i-l-l-o-t and you can find the links to his

00:02:37.180 youtube channel and other things there one last thing before we get into the news which is there

00:02:42.540 is a live realpolitik with firaz later where he'll be talking about the lng wars and that is at three

00:02:49.000 o'clock that is for subscribed members of the website only so if you've not got a subscription

00:02:54.320 what are you doing subscribe now where you can access the absolute deluge of content that we

00:03:00.200 have available on there for you and with that let's get into the news so breaking news keir starmer is

00:03:06.400 gone Keir Starmer has resigned I don't want to believe it I I know right we're all recovering

00:03:12.920 right now we're all in a little bit of shock uh thankfully I managed to contain myself before we

00:03:18.260 got on here because I was frankly inconsolable um the tears were streaming but um yes Keir Starmer

00:03:25.260 has resigned he is not exactly gone just yet they're setting out timetables right now so that

00:03:30.420 they would be able to see about getting a leadership election the nominations for the

00:03:34.200 leadership election will be starting on the 9th of July until then Keir Starmer I assume will be

00:03:40.100 carrying on heading the ship but after that after the leadership election we'll see who it's going

00:03:47.880 to be it'll probably be Andy Burnham frankly the timetable right now appears to be nominations for

00:03:52.740 Labour leader will open on the 9th of July and close on the 16th of July if Andy Burnham is

00:03:58.320 unopposed he'll become the Prime Minister by the 18th of July if he is opposed the contest will

00:04:03.080 be triggered and a new pm will be selected by the 1st of september now do you all remember

00:04:08.860 what it was that keir starmer and labor were campaigning on during 2024

00:04:15.820 there were a number there were a number they were in tories yes there were a number of things but

00:04:21.360 one of the main themes of that these nothing like that one of the main parts of their platform was

00:04:29.000 that they were going to be the adults in the room

00:04:31.200 and this was going to be the return of

00:04:32.960 sensible and stable government

00:04:34.900 to the UK

00:04:36.620 and less than two

00:04:38.920 years later we are

00:04:41.120 already having

00:04:42.480 an internal party coup

00:04:44.720 where the leader without any form of democratic

00:04:47.320 election open to the public

00:04:48.700 will be switching to somebody

00:04:51.400 who probably in all

00:04:53.160 likelihood it's going to be Andy Burnham

00:04:55.200 is just some guy who

00:04:57.080 was mayor of Manchester

00:04:58.340 who got elected to an MP on a by-election that was, again, an internal party coup

00:05:04.280 where the Makerfield MP of Josh Simon stepped down specifically to make way for Andy Burnham

00:05:09.820 so that Andy Burnham could depose Keir Starmer.

00:05:13.300 If you want to continue this kind of illusion that we are in a democratic system

00:05:18.040 where we get to choose who leads us, obviously Britain, it works very differently.

00:05:22.440 You elect the local MP that gets the party in and then the party leader is Prime Minister, etc.

00:05:27.020 but it is uh something that a lot of people have been perturbed by but also a lot of the labor

00:05:33.360 membership are very eager to see andy burnham as prime minister and he probably will be and we'll

00:05:40.000 see how that goes honestly if i to give my personal take on this i wasn't expecting starmer to step

00:05:45.780 down so easily same over this whole same and i have to give credit to dan because about a month

00:05:51.600 ago he was saying that he gives starmer about a month i mean he was spot on he was spot on in that

00:05:58.600 case but i was expecting to hear starmer given all of the challenges that he's headed off up until

00:06:03.760 this point you know southpaw mandelson winter fuel allowance um various tax cutbacks and like

00:06:11.100 the rachel reeves budgets and everything i was expecting him to come up to the podium give word

00:06:17.020 for word, the Wolf of Wall Street, I'm not effing leaving speech, and then leave beating his chest

00:06:22.440 saying that he was going to fight Andy Burnham to the death. But no, instead he just decided that

00:06:28.040 he was going to step down, which does seem to have come from an enormous amount of internal

00:06:33.860 pressure from the rest of the party. Let's get on with some of the rest of the information that

00:06:38.260 would have led to him making this decision. First of all, Keir Starmer, of course, was the most

00:06:43.360 unpopular politician in the country this was as of May last month net favorability towards Keir

00:06:49.920 Starmer was minus 46 which is worth mentioning was nowhere near as low as Rishi Sunak by the end

00:06:57.620 which was minus 53 I think Theresa May or Liz Truss one of the two female conservative PMs we've had

00:07:06.240 in the past 10 years was minus 70 by the time that she left so Starmer weirdly is not the most

00:07:12.520 unpopular politician of to be prime minister of the past 10 years but he is the most unpopular

00:07:17.040 politician in the country at the moment which was opposed to andy burnham who is the only popular

00:07:23.860 politician in the entire country with a net score of plus four which if he gets into it's not much

00:07:30.080 but it's something but i don't expect that to last if he actually becomes the prime minister

00:07:36.160 because all of the structural problems will remain he will still not be able to get any kind of

00:07:40.920 popular agenda three perhaps there'll be some subsidies to internal industry and some subsidies

00:07:46.560 for kind of larger infrastructure projects but the larger goal of what he is setting out for

00:07:52.360 hope and change and such the civil service the bond markets none of them will touch it

00:07:59.620 they'll just say if you do that the the government will collapse i don't i don't know how different

00:08:06.700 burnham will be if he ends up being the prime minister well that's the thing i don't think so

00:08:10.760 and i think in one respect i wanted starmer to do exactly what you said because we were because it

00:08:16.980 would have been funny it would have been funny but also starmer has burned his capital politically

00:08:22.240 speaking so now we are going to have a new show that's going to start a new person is going to

00:08:27.900 come in andy burnham probably and people the people now will think hey starmer was bad he's

00:08:34.780 he's going to be good now so tabula rasa let's start from the beginning yeah it'll be the great

00:08:39.560 reset yeah it'll be the great reset uh but Labour I think will regret getting rid of the totem

00:08:47.520 where all public negativity was directed to because instead of it just being Labour public

00:08:54.620 negativity was primarily directed at Keir Starmer and some of his underlings with Andy Burnham in

00:09:01.140 the place instead they'll probably go okay labor's finally fixed and then nothing will change or if

00:09:07.880 they do change they will change for the worse and then they won't have Keir Starmer to deflect it

00:09:12.460 onto anymore how does Starmer look like from from France you know well in my opinion Starmer did

00:09:21.520 the best he could have done in order to stay in power because if you remember after the local

00:09:28.960 election, the Labour MPs tried a very poor strategy which was treating about Starmer and expecting

00:09:38.400 him to resign. Of course, Starmer didn't do that. By pushing Burnham to a by-election, Burnham took

00:09:47.840 a risk and he could have lost. Of course, we know now with insights, he won easily, but he could

00:09:57.200 He could have, and Starmer would have been stronger if it happened this way.

00:10:03.600 So he takes his shot to the end, and he proved by doing that he is a fierce politician.

00:10:13.140 Because politics is not just about big ideas and good intentions and great speeches, it's

00:10:20.440 also about how do you get yourself in power, how do you push apart people who contest you,

00:10:28.340 and how do you stay in power.

00:10:30.580 And Starmer, for someone who is as uneventful as he is, did manage to be EPM for two years.

00:10:42.840 I mean, it's a great run for someone like him.

00:10:46.680 I agree with Harry because now that Starmer is gone, people will have some hope for a few weeks, the same when Starmer was elected.

00:10:57.880 They had some hope, then Southport happened, Starmer did not only nothing, he did the worst he can have done in this situation.

00:11:08.000 Well, Burnham will be in, in a few weeks after his intronisation as Prime Minister,

00:11:15.000 there will be another crisis.

00:11:18.000 The prediction is easy because a crisis happens every two weeks or four weeks,

00:11:23.000 pretty regularly in Britain now, as in France.

00:11:27.000 And what will he be able to do? Nothing.

00:11:33.000 Well, from the internal direction of travel within the government,

00:11:36.000 From a managerial perspective, when we look back and see how Keir Starmer reacted to Southport, unless you were just going to hand over all political capital to your political enemies immediately, he had to react the way that he did.

00:11:52.960 And this is a fault within the system itself. This is how the system is set up. And therefore, you are right. The next time a crisis comes about, Andy Burnham, unless he wants to hand over or completely change the system from the inside, which he won't be able to, is going to have to react in the same or very similar manner to Keir Starmer.

00:12:13.400 Because Keir Starmer burned his capital, but Labour did so to push forward Burnham.

00:12:20.320 They had to trigger by election, to mobilize all their party, to get a big organization in order to have one candidate, only one, on which they all agree.

00:12:34.800 And also, just really briefly, I think we are entering an era where things are becoming a bit more radical.

00:12:40.520 and starmer seems to me to be the weak man who is creating even harder times and doesn't understand

00:12:46.980 that he should he can't govern as a weak man anymore also again like one of the things about

00:12:53.680 starmer he was very memeable because almost everything that he did seemed to be the worst

00:12:59.240 call possible like the uh the mask the potential mass calling of the dartmoor ponies that was

00:13:05.060 announced recently at which people were memeing with the ever classic chad starmer where they

00:13:10.560 were just saying um oh what's your approval rating right now minus 43 how could it get any lower i

00:13:15.720 know kill the ponies that was that is the public perception of starmer at this point as as pretty

00:13:21.740 as um as shown by memes it's that starmer personally was trying his best to do the worst

00:13:28.760 thing possible and yes this is a meme but also to take here get starmer out that was the rallying

00:13:36.700 cry basically not only of reform during the makerfield by-election but of the labor party

00:13:42.980 itself keir starmer personally is doing everything that he can to ruin labor and destroy the country

00:13:50.460 the system isn't broken the direction of travel isn't the exact opposite way to how most of the

00:13:58.020 public would like it to be it's that Keir Starmer personally is stopping you from having honey and

00:14:04.540 rainbows every single day and so without Keir Starmer in place and the honey and rainbows not

00:14:11.300 coming about still they're not going to have someone to deflect on again unless it is just

00:14:15.980 directly deflecting back onto Andy Burnham and saying now it's Andy Burnham personally

00:14:20.900 killing the ponies again yeah but if they do so who will be the next and the next and the next

00:14:27.620 that's the same people that's the thing david cameron was the last prime minister to remain

00:14:32.900 in power for the entire parliament he was elected to lead between 10 2010 and 2015 and then following

00:14:39.000 2015 he got he quit after brexit anyway this is the uh runnings that we have right now for prime

00:14:46.000 ministers following 2015 david cameron quit after 429 days theresa may um was she out i forget was

00:14:54.220 she ousted or did she quit to make room for boris johnson she quit yeah she she quit to make room

00:14:59.280 for boris johnson boris johnson internal party coup liz truss the bond markets and the economy

00:15:05.300 said no and she was out within 49 days rishi sunak elected out after a snap election keir starmer

00:15:12.680 ousted by an internal party coup we haven't had a single prime minister run out his uh the full

00:15:20.480 length of his elected term since that initial run of david cameron in the coalition government

00:15:26.300 it's coming across like a very unstable government that any prime minister is going to be put in

00:15:32.340 charge of and the likelihood is burnham will not run until 2029 as well if i may be facetious

00:15:38.260 the longer standing prime minister on this list is also the one with the worst migrant crisis

00:15:46.280 in recent history so maybe you want shorter term for prime ministers um all i'm saying is that it's

00:15:55.000 not it doesn't look bad ones it it doesn't look good internally or externally when we can't seem

00:16:01.640 to have a stable government for a single election period it's a quite ridiculous uh starmer internal

00:16:09.000 sources over the weekend because let's see how this happened basically obviously we had the

00:16:13.080 the Makerfield by-election. Andy Burnham, the prospective King of the North, as he had been

00:16:17.980 crowned, I think back in COVID, seemed to be the challenger. Everybody was saying Starmer needs to

00:16:23.400 get out. Keir Starmer, who cleared out Corbyn and tried to kind of re-professionalise the party

00:16:29.860 after it began to be seen as the party of student loonies, which now the Green Party seemed to have

00:16:35.600 taken that mantle, says he feels betrayed. Sources were saying that he gave everything to Labour,

00:16:41.760 including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to make the party electable,

00:16:45.940 he feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him.

00:16:49.240 Because you not only had members of his cabinet stepping down,

00:16:52.820 you had people in his cabinet remaining in place, like Shabana Mahmood,

00:16:56.240 but then telling him that he needs to go anyway.

00:16:58.920 So all of the people around him were suddenly telling him,

00:17:02.020 you cannot run this country anymore, you cannot lead us, we need you to leave.

00:17:05.580 So he had that pressure.

00:17:07.060 He had all of the media controversy regarding his U-turns,

00:17:10.860 controversies within his own cabinet, like

00:17:13.180 Mandelson. He had

00:17:15.220 Angela Rayner 1.00

00:17:16.200 and her tax issues, leading her to 0.99

00:17:19.220 be stepped down as a 0.99

00:17:21.180 deputy prime minister. Obviously he had

00:17:23.000 Southport and the reputation as two-tier

00:17:24.980 Keir. He had the big thing about winter

00:17:27.060 fuel allowances, Rachel Reeves' multiple budgets 0.99

00:17:29.260 that have been disasters.

00:17:31.080 Everything that could go wrong from a

00:17:33.140 perception management perspective

00:17:34.620 did go wrong, at all

00:17:37.080 times. And that is not

00:17:39.020 to defend Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer, as I have covered before, is not a great man. He is not a

00:17:44.880 good man. Prior to being a Labour Party politician and Prime Minister, he was of course head of CPS

00:17:50.780 and there were a number of issues regarding his handling of things like grooming gangs when he

00:17:56.140 was just a human rights lawyer. There were a number of issues regarding him becoming the go-to

00:18:00.980 guy for people involved with terrorism to go to because they knew that he was the guy who would

00:18:07.500 be able to get you the best deal possible so Keir Starmer is not a good person but the system is set

00:18:14.000 up as such that the guy coming in next Andy Burnham may not be on a personal level evil but he will

00:18:20.660 not be able to right the ship as I see it he was saying just over the weekend that he was going to

00:18:26.100 stand in any leadership contest against Burnham which did not seem to be true in the final analysis

00:18:35.820 In this article, it was noted that Louise Hay-Hugh, I don't know how to pronounce her surname, sorry,

00:18:42.040 the former transport secretary who helped lead Burnham's campaign,

00:18:45.320 called for Starmer to avoid what would be a brutal and unpleasant leadership contest

00:18:48.760 and set out a timetable for his exit.

00:18:51.160 Speaking after Burnham's victory rally, she said there was a plan ready to go

00:18:55.200 if Starmer refused in the coming days to step down, 0.92

00:18:58.060 which has led to some other Labour Party sources saying that Andy Burnham was a sniveling little rat,

00:19:05.320 saying he would rather bring down the government than launch a challenge. 0.96

00:19:08.480 Sniveling little rat always has been.

00:19:10.400 It's why he's lost two leadership elections. 0.87

00:19:12.740 I don't understand one thing.

00:19:14.820 What did he do in order to sort of have his friends on side?

00:19:21.320 He just alienated everyone.

00:19:23.300 What, Keir Starmer?

00:19:24.040 Yeah.

00:19:24.500 Oh yeah, of course he alienated everybody.

00:19:26.640 And I think to some extent the myth of Starmer as a great politician

00:19:30.840 and as far as pure power relations is concerned it's a bit it's a it's a bit false because i mean

00:19:37.800 he just he could have stayed way longer he alienated almost everyone i think he remained

00:19:43.060 in power because for a long time there were even there is a complete dearth and lack of

00:19:50.160 anyone who would replace him and people don't want him to be replaced so people don't want

00:19:55.840 did such a bad job that even lots of people in labor think that it's not salvageable well people

00:20:01.580 don't want ed milliband they didn't want westry thing all of these other potential rivals were

00:20:06.760 not did not have the political capital to mount a proper attack on starmer burnham does because

00:20:12.240 he's so popular through his public media percept through through the media perception of him as

00:20:17.160 like the king of the north leader of manchester uh this this great down-to-earth kind of guy

00:20:22.680 um which is what's which is why starmer tried to keep him out of an mp position to mount a

00:20:28.620 challenge for so long which has just fallen apart and then start like kind of leading into the whole

00:20:34.900 like sniveling little rat thing that the um source was saying uh burnham said burnham had an ultimatum

00:20:41.120 to starmer saying that uh the well for one the prime minister spent the weekend at checkers

00:20:45.880 taking soundings from cabinet ministers uh those familiar with discussions say these were insiders

00:20:51.360 say the Prime Minister had until Tuesday to come to a decision before being issued with

00:20:55.520 an ultimatum. Should he fail to set out a timetable, he was expected to be presented

00:21:00.180 with a list of names of the ministers prepared to resign, along with a second list of those

00:21:04.720 who would follow in a second wave. So this was just a complete collapse of confidence

00:21:08.800 underneath him, like they point out. Very, very similar to what happened to Boris Johnson

00:21:13.960 in 2022. He just had no faction behind him at this point. He had no allies within the

00:21:20.240 government save for maybe one or two people and do you think burnham really has allies because

00:21:26.780 from the outside it seems to me burnham is everyone is projecting his fantasy on him

00:21:34.720 everyone wishes burnham to be something i don't think he is i don't think it doesn't seem to me

00:21:41.840 to have any real conviction leadership quality any real leadership quality any plan any project

00:21:49.020 but everyone is hoping that yeah he will bring us back together well he does seem to have had

00:21:56.540 a plan and a project but that seems to shift depending on what kind of audience that he

00:22:01.740 needs to play to at any one time as I mentioned in the segments that I did last week he was in

00:22:07.060 favor of things like changing the indefinite leave to remain requirements so that they were

00:22:13.200 even weaker than they were and he opposed Shabana Mahmood and now he supports Shabana Mahmood

00:22:18.820 He's made a number of kind of U-turns on subjects like that.

00:22:22.540 So he seems to be a political creature.

00:22:24.660 As a prime minister, he will be heavily scrutinized.

00:22:28.780 So far, he can get away by saying one thing and the contrary.

00:22:35.300 But as a prime minister, everyone will follow him closely.

00:22:40.260 Everyone will remember what he said last week.

00:22:43.280 And it will be way harder to pull that out.

00:22:45.840 does he has does he have a really a concrete plan to to bring a new set of politics i think

00:22:56.280 there are several assumptions here first of all if he's in charge or if you know there's immense

00:23:03.200 pressure there could be potential let's let's not discount the idea that there could be a leadership

00:23:08.080 election i i think because already andy burnham's tried to come across as very um magnanimous with

00:23:15.320 this and kia gave a huge service to our country and his decision was a mark of a transition and

00:23:20.940 you know i want to thank him for his leadership blah blah blah blah blah um really sleazy kind

00:23:27.100 of statement i know he has to make this kind of statement but like dude your whole campaign was

00:23:31.560 basically get starmer out and then you were organizing behind the scenes to try and coup him 0.96

00:23:36.920 if he didn't voluntarily resign so i just look at this and go like you cheeky bastard andy and i'm 0.96

00:23:44.600 allowed to say that that's how we talk up north right i'm from around manchester i can say this 0.97

00:23:51.300 to our andy right andy right this sort of behavior right not on not on check yourself

00:23:58.060 wind your neck in andy all right but you know he made that statement he's trying to come across

00:24:02.780 magnanimous wes streeting has already backed andy burnham to become prime minister given the with

00:24:08.700 the nominations you have to have 81 mps backing you wes streeting in the run-up to this was already

00:24:13.780 saying that he had 81 MPs backing him. There is a significant support base now. If Wes Streeting

00:24:20.380 is saying that I'm going to stand down from any potential contest, support Andy Burnham instead,

00:24:25.240 that gives Burnham a huge head start. But you know, other people might step and throw their hat in the

00:24:31.240 ring, like Al Cairns might step in as well. He has a bit of a problem though, which is that outside

00:24:37.340 of people following the media closely nobody really knows who he is and there are a few others

00:24:44.000 as well apparently Yvette Cooper might consider it but I doubt she's going to have anywhere near

00:24:48.020 the kind of popularity and groundswell of support that Andy Burnham has so really if the party wants

00:24:54.820 to come across as unified and stable and not come across like they're just falling to the same kind

00:25:01.840 of in-party, in factional fighting that brought the Tories down, they might actually, from

00:25:07.220 a political point of view, just want to step aside for Burnham, for the time being.

00:25:11.920 Starmer gave them the opportunity for a smooth transition, because he didn't go all the way

00:25:19.820 down to a contest.

00:25:20.820 So if everyone stepped down to let Burnham in, it will be a painless transition.

00:25:30.740 The worst for Labour would have been Starmer clinging to his prime minister's seat, Burnham

00:25:39.060 contesting him, West Streeting or other people joining in the contest, and the summer with

00:25:46.340 an internal election with five, six candidates, it would have been the worst.

00:25:51.600 And Starmer did offer them the opportunity to preserve what could be preserved, that,

00:25:59.260 my opinion the best he could have done for the party and also the worst he could he could have

00:26:05.580 done for britain because uh um labor right now is the main lock for in a british politic yeah

00:26:17.100 i mean the funniest result of course would be if keir starmer himself decides to step in

00:26:21.900 to the leadership contest anyway after just resigning except wearing a little fake mustache

00:26:26.540 and wins i am guy incognito uh labor labor mp for such and such i would like to step in and wins

00:26:34.640 wins and just goes back all the way to 2029 uh that would be hilarious but on this again when

00:26:41.400 i'm being very very critical of andy burnham's chances of remaining a popular figure within

00:26:46.800 british politics but there is a lot of reason to think so because as mentioned earlier on in this

00:26:53.820 segment, there was a time when Keir Starmer was the most popular politician in the country. So

00:27:01.120 here we have March of 2024. Keir Starmer, prior to the general election of 2024, when he was still

00:27:10.260 in opposition, continues to be the UK's most popular politician. And here you can see these

00:27:17.660 figures here after he was elected prior to southport in that very short period of time

00:27:23.720 we were getting articles from the times like this quite literally gushing over him

00:27:29.700 keir starmer has turbocharged my arousal levels i feel fruity says caitlin moran on tuesday the

00:27:37.420 9th of july 2024 i wonder how long that lasted yeah southport really showed how much of an

00:27:45.680 ideologue he was because if he were a typical politician he would say right it's my golden

00:27:52.480 opportunity to mediate between these two communities and i'll try to act you know as the

00:27:57.720 peacemaker he took completely the side of one community against the english of course but i

00:28:02.460 i think again from the managerial perspective given the way that the government in this country

00:28:07.960 is oriented if he had tried to mediate it would have given i mean it would have been the right

00:28:14.460 thing to do morally speaking and what's best for the country it would have been the right thing to

00:28:19.840 do but from a political perspective it would have just been giving all of the ground over to reform

00:28:25.140 and giving them well basic basically giving credit and credence to their argument this was one of the

00:28:30.900 things that led him to lead to no i'm not i'm not saying it was the right decision in the long run

00:28:36.600 but in the short term which is all party politics and his best interest to become right wing

00:28:44.460 It's good for him.

00:28:45.200 Isn't it everybody's?

00:28:46.320 Yes.

00:28:46.680 Yes, it's...

00:28:47.460 Including his.

00:28:48.440 It certainly is.

00:28:49.100 And it's including his because if he had,

00:28:51.380 perhaps he wouldn't have faced one of the most catastrophic falls.

00:28:56.500 From non-grace.

00:28:58.020 Yeah, falls from non-grace.

00:28:59.420 No, you see here, following the Gushing Times article,

00:29:03.580 it seemed that the media was making headway with Keir Starmer's popularity

00:29:07.800 now that the public were aware that Keir Starmer could make middle-aged women flush.

00:29:14.460 And you see here, we have a meeting point of his favourability

00:29:17.980 where it gets to about zero on the 18th of July.

00:29:23.040 And oh, oh dear, that didn't last very long.

00:29:26.560 That really didn't last very long at all because of Southport.

00:29:30.100 You are right, Stelios.

00:29:31.060 Had he decided to become just incredibly right wing in that moment,

00:29:36.160 perhaps he would have been able to save face on this.

00:29:38.900 But ever since then, he's just been on falling fortunes.

00:29:41.740 Imagine he had done so.

00:29:43.260 he would have lost the left wing of the Labour Party yeah but that would be their problem not

00:29:49.080 ours well he'd already he'd already purged the Corbynite left wing of the party this would have

00:29:54.360 also presumably lost the entirety of the soft left within the party which would only leave

00:30:00.320 some technocratic Blairite types in his corner and he he was trying to be kind of like the unifying

00:30:08.120 figure of the whole party without being as factional except for kicking out the

00:30:12.760 Corbynite types or marginalizing them. In my opinion Starmer has the same

00:30:18.020 problem as the French center-left. It tries to be center-left but the center 0.67

00:30:24.720 is falling at each election and the core of the left is more and more on the

00:30:31.940 far left, and he tries to find this middle position, but this middle position is done.

00:30:41.300 It was possible 10 years, 20 years ago, but nowadays, it's just you are on the right

00:30:48.780 or you are on the left of the left, there's no enlightened center anymore.

00:30:55.640 And he tried to, as Macron in France, he tried to continue this fantasy of an enlightened

00:31:03.400 centrism.

00:31:04.400 It's over.

00:31:05.400 It's done.

00:31:06.400 And Burnham will have to make a choice, the same choice Starmer didn't make, between this

00:31:13.300 center technocratic left or the far left leaning part of the Labour Party.

00:31:19.340 And he'll have to do that against a very oppositional state, because even Keir Starmer

00:31:23.700 back in december was complaining that as it says here every time i go to pull a lever there are a

00:31:29.120 whole bunch of regulations consultations arms lengths bodies that mean the action from pulling

00:31:33.500 the lever to delivery is longer than i think it ought to be they're just obstructive they are

00:31:38.620 going to try and prevent any kind of change in the direction of travel that burnham would want

00:31:44.560 to do even if it would be beneficial for burnham's natural constituents that being the north especially

00:31:49.120 when you consider and i couldn't believe this when i saw this so there was a new statesman article

00:31:53.260 talking about a woman called Miata Van Bulla,

00:31:58.000 supposedly the brains behind Burnham.

00:32:00.400 She's a Liberian-born Labour politician 0.93

00:32:03.140 that lays out some of her economic policies,

00:32:07.920 because Liberia is very famous for its economic success.

00:32:12.260 Burnham's economic architect, Miata Van Bulla,

00:32:15.480 recommends, among other things,

00:32:17.880 a wealth tax, more windfall taxes on oil and gas,

00:32:21.400 mass nationalization of land, transport, and energy,

00:32:24.960 extending national income to investment income,

00:32:28.540 a cap on interest rates and charge on every form of consumer credit,

00:32:32.220 hiking capital gains tax to income tax levels,

00:32:35.260 hiking divided tax to income tax levels,

00:32:38.040 abolition of the upper earnings limit for national insurance,

00:32:41.100 so presumably that means that you can just carry on paying

00:32:43.900 more and more and more and more forever,

00:32:46.200 huge expansion of the benefit system,

00:32:47.860 including a minimum income guarantee paid to everyone apart from the rich nationalization of

00:32:53.860 banks and creation of new green banks with taxpayer funds block on private banks lending to anyone

00:32:59.180 with a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions so i just assume everyone and penalization of

00:33:06.380 banks that provide too many carbon intensive loans again probably everyone forced sale of

00:33:12.520 existing businesses to employees so what would that just be like immediate syndicalization

00:33:16.860 of all businesses that's maybe that that could be that would be i think she forgot to include

00:33:23.600 like sanctuism that was that that was so surely a typical part of a program like this now i'm not

00:33:30.640 any kind of like libertarian ideologue so i don't necessarily think that everything on here would be

00:33:37.660 an immediate disaster but all all put together this would presumably just collapse the economy

00:33:44.440 i mean this is like i i don't see how a program like this would really be that different from

00:33:52.440 zach polanski getting into government quick question that's the question i have um and i

00:33:58.100 would really appreciate a very pithy answer harry how on earth is he supposed to be different from

00:34:04.420 starmer well he said in his tweet uh he wants economic growth okay he said it he said it yeah

00:34:13.120 he wants economic growth and everybody knows that Keir Starmer never said anything of the sort and

00:34:18.160 he said that he wants hope and we all know that Keir Starmer was purposefully campaigning on a

00:34:23.540 campaign of despair and Keir Starmer never sang oasis for the lads at home and so yeah I don't

00:34:31.740 see Burnham as being any different uh when he inevitably gets in at this point um and

00:34:37.340 i kind of expect a year from now people will wistfully look back and reminisce with rose

00:34:45.000 tinted glasses about the good old days of starmer do you remember how good we had it

00:34:50.100 under starmer he was a he was a pillar of stability in this country after andy burnham's

00:34:56.960 fate has taken quite the similar turn to keir starmer's did mate prove me wrong andy prove

00:35:02.680 me wrong turn this country around i just don't see it happening all right i'll read through some

00:35:08.080 of the rumble rants we've got here paladin is rafael a fan of the legitimists bonapartists or

00:35:13.960 the orleanists well it's not about british politics but i can answer i see the way the

00:35:23.480 french philosophical politic political philosophy sorry legitimist bonapartist orleanist i think

00:35:32.060 the legitimists are a little too too obsessed by the past and they lack pragmatism and realism in

00:35:40.940 politics. The Bonapartists are they are politically realists. Well it depends if it's about Napoleon

00:35:49.980 first or the Napoleon third. But anyway they are more realists but they lean more left and the

00:35:57.980 The Orleanist is the one I like the less in that list.

00:36:09.620 Thank you very much.

00:36:10.620 I hope you appreciate the answer there, Paladin.

00:36:13.380 One tall order.

00:36:14.380 The Candyman has been spotted nearby number 10 with a picture of Starmer circled in red

00:36:17.680 marker screaming about him and Hassan Piker.

00:36:20.860 He's coming for you.

00:36:22.300 Sigil Stone.

00:36:23.300 I'm sad to see the Starminator go, but like all AIs, the longer he ran, the worse his

00:36:27.260 output became uh heretic glad to see that starmer has made friends along the way well the thing is

00:36:33.540 that people have kind of developed an ironic like for starmer which as we get further and further

00:36:39.680 away from starmer's time as prime minister will stop being ironic and people will actually think

00:36:45.100 that they liked him the whole time i think that's a very online thing is every figure we hate

00:36:49.700 is a hate love relationship eventually turns back around because someone will post a giga chat meme 0.87

00:36:55.700 of him and now go like oh my god i had a gong the whole time uh heretic and successive traitorous 0.55

00:37:01.540 governments have given us two options remigration now or inevitably a war later the english people 0.67

00:37:05.580 would rather go through the ballot box but will defend themselves if necessary and fictagious if

00:37:11.100 starma was doing a good job and made the uk better why is he resigning why do labor want a new leader

00:37:15.780 why were the media fully behind all of his decisions who resigns over so much success

00:37:19.420 that was the funny thing about his little resignation speech where he's like i've done

00:37:22.980 nothing wrong everything i've done has been brilliant i quit makes perfect sense to me

00:37:29.780 all right stelios let's move on half a second yep i am gonna bring you some very good news

00:37:36.280 this is gonna be a happy segment right south america is turning towards the right ever since

00:37:43.700 USAID has ended the continent has completely shifted so we have this picture these two pictures

00:37:53.640 here this is South America in June 2023 the only right-wing countries were Ecuador Paraguay and

00:38:02.580 Uruguay now in June 2026 we have Colombia Ecuador Peru Bolivia Paraguay Argentina so the map is

00:38:12.880 changing visibly so and there is uh plenty of discourse with respect to why this happened

00:38:20.240 some people say it's the um see it's the stop of the usaid funding i think it's definitely part of

00:38:27.680 it others say it's the melee effect others are saying it's the bukele effect but why not everything

00:38:33.920 in a sort of mix it could be a mix with the usaid the interesting thing that we've got here is that

00:38:40.480 the USAID did not necessarily stop. It's now instead, I believe, handled entirely by the

00:38:46.580 State Department under Marco Rubio. So we know that they didn't cut off all USAID. It could be

00:38:53.000 that USAID is just going to causes that are more aligned with Trump. Well, to cut the long story

00:38:59.840 short, I will give you some examples. You are towards the end. But one example I'll give you

00:39:04.600 now because it's spicy and i want you to be intrigued is that part of usaid was in order to

00:39:11.060 it was to give funding in order to reduce cocaine production and in colombia that we are going to

00:39:17.360 talk about right now um after the the the usaid fund cocaine production got increased was increased

00:39:27.520 by roughly 53 percent according to the un this was after usaid was cut no no no this was with us

00:39:35.940 with usaid cocaine stocks were through the roof yes oh my god so these are some of the recent wins

00:39:42.600 in argentina us okay us not south america um yeah you see that the right is winning in north and

00:39:50.560 south america right so there are several victories there achieved and i think that there's a kind of

00:39:57.020 energy there that we do need in europe because i don't like the sense of politics as being the

00:40:03.560 micromanagement of decline and this is european politics in a nutshell but i hope this changes

00:40:09.020 well how much more could the south american continent decline so there's only the only way

00:40:13.300 for some of those places is up right well yeah but the problem is you know what happens every

00:40:19.220 time you say you think you've reached the bottom of the barrel yeah so we have here

00:40:24.300 and woken us saying seven latin american elections since usa was defunded chile olivia

00:40:31.200 peru ecuador honduras colombia costa rica so this isn't just about south america it's also

00:40:37.560 about it's both about south and north america one interesting thing now about the recent elections

00:40:42.760 in colombia is that they were surprisingly efficient at counting votes you know that this

00:40:49.180 isn't the california state's strongest card it takes them a bit to count maybe they counted by

00:40:56.620 hand or i don't know what's funny is the more the election is not favorable to the democrat

00:41:03.260 the longer it takes to make sure everything has been counted yeah because they're constantly

00:41:08.380 making it about process and process and process and process it's endless you know regress with

00:41:13.500 respect to asking for process was it a fair procedure harry what counting it by hand you're

00:41:19.420 counting it in under three hours i mean it depends entirely on how many counters they had i suppose

00:41:25.900 right so the colombians are celebrating because the the the right-wing candidate won and the

00:41:33.980 right-wing candidate here is a really interesting candidate i will show you some stuff about the

00:41:38.380 election but also he is as you would expect closer to trump and he had a very um tough rhetoric with

00:41:47.660 respect to the cartels and the terror and narco terrorists so he's definitely one of the people

00:41:53.340 who are saying we need to have both the trump millay and bukela mix into the picture he wants

00:42:01.180 to slash taxes across the board he wants to build mega prisons like bukela and he wants to be closer

00:42:07.900 aligned to trump well and i'm sure that he doesn't miss usa no i mean after uh after venezuela it's

00:42:14.420 become very clear that america um is well trump's regime in america is very invested in getting the

00:42:20.780 south american countries on side with usa in general but trump in particular yeah right so

00:42:27.820 here we have eric doherty says trump endorsed right-wing colombian presidential candidate

00:42:33.100 abelardo de la espriella stands the world and wins the presidential election he plans to go

00:42:39.220 full bukela mode locking up criminals unmasked destroying the cartels and cooperating with with

00:42:45.220 trump significantly better than the current leader right so trump here i mean if he if he wants to

00:42:50.900 build huge prisons to put all of the cartel in that's just that's just a win yeah that is

00:42:56.660 definitely a win because that's the issue that we are going to touch upon with this segment is that

00:43:02.280 there are so many crimes happening under the name of human rights and under the name of

00:43:08.480 humanitarianism. And we have this in Europe. They had this and they still have it in South America

00:43:16.260 and Latin America. Human rights and humanitarianism is more often than not the facade that is being

00:43:24.940 used in order to um allow criminals to to operate and in order to foster impunity for criminals

00:43:34.180 because just think of it is they the left is opera and the progressives they're operating in a

00:43:40.100 completely utopian setting where they think that the only thing that matters is that action there

00:43:46.620 they don't care about the consequences in the wider picture does this action respect the human

00:43:51.720 rights of the criminal or not and they don't care if the consequences are or involve the

00:43:58.040 less safety and less security for for the general population in my opinion political

00:44:04.920 analysis are very fine but sometimes politics is really easy you probably know this meme about

00:44:12.040 the fix everything button yes that like that we have cartels well if we put criminals in prisons 0.93

00:44:19.640 situation will be better it's that easy but the left internationally got so retarded that it 0.93

00:44:29.140 considered it can make a criminal become a cute puppy it doesn't work like that it never worked 0.87

00:44:39.280 like that it never works like this but what i want to say is that it seems to me that it isn't

00:44:44.000 just the left that went this way it's the vast majority of people who are going to swing either

00:44:51.680 way who are going to swing both sides depending on who is the loudest and this is the you know

00:44:57.760 70 80 percent of people who are going to support the left right under the current paradigm here in

00:45:03.760 europe for instance but then they could easily switch well because they weren't pro-left they

00:45:08.960 They weren't pro-progressive.

00:45:11.180 Well, another funny thing about this is, as far as I'm aware,

00:45:14.040 the left complains about South America.

00:45:17.540 And as far as I'm aware, I've not read too deeply into this.

00:45:20.840 They have a point here when they point out that the CIA has basically used

00:45:25.100 South American countries and governments as their personal play area

00:45:29.460 since maybe the 1950s when you have, you know, the Banana Republics pop up. 0.93

00:45:34.580 but then when they criticize the cia for setting up all of these incredibly corrupt governments

00:45:40.600 who exist to facilitate cartels criminal action and drug running through the border into the into

00:45:47.020 the u.s they then go oh well you can't do anything about it now that the cartels are there that would

00:45:53.360 be damaging their human rights so you accept that these people were put in place for malign

00:45:58.160 political reasons but now they're there you just got to deal with it yeah you just can't do anything

00:46:03.480 about it anymore i guess it's just part of the scenery now right and maybe they will do a sort of

00:46:10.820 tv show on netflix romanticizing the curtails and the favelas oh yeah maybe you know turning

00:46:16.580 them into romantic figures like you know fast and furious or something maybe he they weren't

00:46:21.040 uh junk i don't remember just don't don't take don't read too much into what i say here right

00:46:26.140 so here he's giving his victory speech the weird thing is that he's and not weird

00:46:30.460 so but he is within a cage here and also dressed in football i was gonna say why is he wearing a

00:46:37.900 football shirt this is south america you need to be in a cape full regalia with a cape feather

00:46:45.340 plumed hat please so he's in a cage here obviously in order to prevent himself from getting smoked

00:46:51.920 yeah um even looks a bit like bukele with the whole like close crop beard and hair and everything

00:46:57.240 Yes. So he says here that he comes to announce the most important news of his life and that he has been entrusted with a supreme honor of serving the Colombians as their president and he's thanking them.

00:47:08.660 And he also said that it's a victory of everyone.

00:47:11.540 And I think that this is important to say that he doesn't position himself as a vindictive sort of, you know, 50 percent voted for me.

00:47:21.040 He's not being passed.

00:47:21.780 The other 49 percent who voted for the other.

00:47:24.360 You're not you're not my.

00:47:26.100 you're getting in the gallows you're sending him straight to prison no no he wasn't like that

00:47:30.340 and he says essentially that he is going to be the president of all colombians and

00:47:34.240 he's wearing the football shirt here probably in order to show this now the the guardian is

00:47:40.960 lamenting so i think this is a further occasion for happiness here say far-right millionaire

00:47:46.820 wins colombia's razor-tight presidential election left-wing opponent alleges vote count irregularities

00:47:53.400 after Trump and Dura's lawyer secures a narrow majority.

00:47:57.340 So again, now they are talking about voter fraud.

00:48:02.240 Right, but let's see what happened.

00:48:04.140 In the previous elections, let me show you here

00:48:07.320 these data from Congress.

00:48:10.140 In the previous elections, early May 31,

00:48:16.720 De La Espriella won around 43.7%.

00:48:20.140 47 percent ivan sepeda who was the other candidate won roughly 40 41 percent and then they went to

00:48:28.260 the second round and he and abelardo de la esprea won so and that's why the guardian is lamenting

00:48:36.220 here and they're talking about the far right again interesting thing though you mentioned

00:48:40.800 colombians before and how they talk about the cia and how all the latin america general like

00:48:48.580 chomsky types yeah your favorite um jeffrey epstein's best friend yes pal right so one thing

00:48:57.180 to remember is that yeah there was such a thing as the cold war and uh there were both sides that

00:49:05.160 did try to establish governments within their own spheres of influence that are going to be

00:49:10.660 favorable to them this is a fact it would be it would be completely uh dishonest of me to say

00:49:16.440 other it would also be shocking to like africa acted that way the middle east acted that way

00:49:21.960 you were stuck between everyone was stuck between two two superpowers so that's exactly what's going

00:49:25.920 to happen exactly but the people who are um the immigrants from colombia into the u.s who went

00:49:35.280 back to vote they voted overwhelmingly pro the pro pro the right-wing candidate 81 of them voted

00:49:45.000 for the last pre-year well there is selection bias there well yeah but wait would you say the

00:49:52.540 same would happen for instance for from the mexicans would you expect this from the mexicans

00:49:57.400 given what it could be the case but given what we see for instance in california with the guys

00:50:03.060 burning all the things and waving mexican flags from what i know mexicans move to america for

00:50:08.560 different reasons than colombians move to america for a lot of mexico is powered by resentment for

00:50:18.520 the fact that they see a lot of the western seaboard of america as having been taken off of

00:50:23.140 them colombians move for different reasons but you are right if the mexicans moving back to

00:50:27.440 mexico would probably vote heavily left-wing i would expect probably yeah so marco rubio here is

00:50:35.660 saying that he is recognizing the victor this happened also because after the victory the

00:50:44.460 colombian the current colombian president gustavo petro says that he does not recognize the

00:50:49.660 presidential election results but ivan cepeda who was the the leftist candidate said that he does

00:50:56.420 concede defeat and then trump and rubio announced that basically they they are recognizing him as

00:51:03.300 a victor right so um yeah let's move on i'm cautious a bit for time now there is interesting

00:51:10.680 discourse about us aid and lots of people are noticing that ever since us aid has been scrapped

00:51:18.540 into latin america lots of right-wing candidates are winning so it's almost like if you leave them

00:51:26.140 by themselves in a sense if you leave the people to to vote they're going to choose candidates who

00:51:32.520 are going to prioritize their own countries and candidates who will shockingly want security and

00:51:38.840 won't want the cartels to roam free that said it's also the case that we will have to see what

00:51:47.200 is going to happen because he does have several challenges he won the presidency but his own

00:51:53.260 party has only three four seats out of the 103 seats in the senate and he will have to form a

00:52:03.120 coalition with other right-wing and centrist parties in the senate so it's not that he it's

00:52:11.800 not exactly that he's going to have an easy time but it's definitely a push towards the right

00:52:17.420 direction so it's not that it's going to be a bed of roses it's not going to be a bed of roses

00:52:22.480 and obviously when people are promising to create security and bring security to their own countries

00:52:30.240 it's one thing for them to promise it and it's a good thing it's much better than saying well

00:52:35.540 i can't do anything about it give me your money in order to to end votes in order for me to tell

00:52:41.420 you how doing anything about security is going to violate the human rights of of people but still

00:52:47.940 So results are important and results are what we're going to judge him with.

00:52:54.260 Especially in South America, because there the results needed are real results.

00:53:00.780 If he was in a cage for his victory speech, it's because there the probability to be shot as a right wing president is way, way higher than what we have in Europe or other parts of the world.

00:53:17.100 but the other thing is that and they've taken a few shots at trump yeah yeah but they didn't

00:53:22.640 succeed and even trump in the recent american history is an exception in the long american

00:53:29.540 history killing president has already happened a lot of time but in recent history it's been

00:53:36.380 since uh since kennedy uh since reagan was shot as well oh yeah yes reagan an attempt

00:53:42.720 it's over 30 years

00:53:45.320 yes but one thing is that

00:53:48.880 I can't

00:53:50.620 see why the politicians in Europe

00:53:53.300 don't see this is that if we

00:53:55.080 continue down this trajectory

00:53:56.740 where we are going to have essentially

00:53:58.940 the balkanization of European

00:54:00.880 countries

00:54:01.460 this is going to be much more frequent

00:54:04.980 for them I don't want this

00:54:07.140 to be the case well it's also

00:54:08.920 the case that

00:54:09.820 I don't know how it is on the continent

00:54:12.460 i mean we do have a number of high profile political murders in britain as well going

00:54:19.240 back to joe cox 10 years ago and then david amos um yes back in 2021 um yeah we don't have as many

00:54:28.060 guns over here they're all in the countryside but ultimately our politicians are very very

00:54:34.160 lax with their own personal security for the most part you can run into your local mp just working

00:54:39.540 in their office or walking down the street which is how they got joe cox going to going to a public

00:54:44.620 function in your local constituency that's how they got david amos and we may not have guns but

00:54:49.760 there are to a certain to a certain extent if you get shot depending on where you're shot like

00:54:56.280 donald trump or like ronald reagan back in the day you can there are ways to recover from that

00:55:00.540 if some madman in the street just comes up to you with a knife and stabs you a bunch of times you're

00:55:05.040 but you're basically gone.

00:55:06.780 So there is still a huge amount of danger

00:55:08.800 that I don't think a lot of people...

00:55:10.200 And you're gone and your problems are also gone.

00:55:13.700 And in the eyes of the system,

00:55:15.660 it's all about the human rights

00:55:17.480 of the person who stabbed you.

00:55:20.260 Right, here we have...

00:55:21.040 Of course, that's not to advocate for anything.

00:55:23.500 That's just the reality of the situation.

00:55:25.000 No, no, we are saying the exact opposite.

00:55:27.440 We're criticizing it.

00:55:28.140 Are your politicians in France

00:55:30.180 and the rest of the continent,

00:55:31.200 they also just easily just out in the street sometimes well uh we we had the aggression

00:55:39.440 attack of politicians but no murders i can remember uh yeah i think britain is a little

00:55:50.080 bit forward in the rise of violence we can see it with regular white riots in in britain yeah

00:55:59.600 most recently Belfast most recently so it's a little bit early for continental Europe but

00:56:07.460 we will catch up sooner or later yeah right so hopefully we won't all right USAID is going away

00:56:16.860 here's what it's been doing in South America this is an article by the Associated Press

00:56:20.920 published last February not last February the February of 2025 and let me inform you Harry

00:56:28.940 I'm sure you're going to like it.

00:56:30.460 Rafael, you're going to like it as well.

00:56:32.540 The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development

00:56:35.660 will deliver a major blow to efforts,

00:56:37.680 including humanitarian assistance in Colombia,

00:56:40.600 conservation efforts in Brazil,

00:56:42.580 and coca eradication in Peru,

00:56:44.620 South American countries that have been a priority for the support.

00:56:48.580 Even if some foreign aid resumes after 90 days suspension

00:56:51.840 ordered by President Trump,

00:56:53.820 many USA-backed project folks on areas he has derided

00:56:56.840 as ideological climate change,

00:56:58.940 biodiversity and minority and women's rights so several recipients fear their projects are now

00:57:04.020 dead colombia has long been the largest recipient of u.s foreign assistance in south america and they

00:57:11.460 are the recent u.s aid money has supported emergency humanitarian aid to more than 2.8

00:57:18.120 million venezuelans who fled the economic crisis in 2024 alone the agency transferred some 45

00:57:25.440 million dollars to the un world food program mostly to assist them so it's a package that

00:57:31.360 goes there for all sorts of things so here we have this from the united nations which isn't

00:57:37.360 exactly my favorite organization and you would expect them to be aligned with the left here

00:57:43.520 they're saying colombia potential cocaine production increased by 53 percent in 2023

00:57:49.920 according to new un odc survey so i don't see how this is exactly helping well listen stelios

00:58:00.080 new york has to keep running somehow yeah okay and if the u.s taxpayer has to keep that thing

00:58:06.960 running then they're gonna they're gonna cough up yeah another article that was written 20 19 days

00:58:14.560 after the previous one back in 2025 four ways the us aid freeze is impacting in latin america

00:58:21.280 they're saying the executive upon right let me just put this here the aid freeze caused uproar

00:58:30.000 around the world resulting resulting in great uncertainty among international and civil society

00:58:35.360 organizations as well as contractors who receive funding from the agency oh they were really they

00:58:41.600 They were really annoyed.

00:58:44.720 Imagine the shock.

00:58:45.980 Imagine how bad,

00:58:47.080 what kind of tragedy this is for Latin America.

00:58:51.760 Reportedly, the U.S. government provided

00:58:53.740 more than 40% of all humanitarian aid

00:58:56.500 accounted for by the U.N. in 2024.

00:58:58.780 It spends about $72 billion on aid every year,

00:59:03.840 $40 billion on which is distributed through U.S. aid.

00:59:07.480 Now, one thing, Harry, let's take El Salvador.

00:59:11.600 As an example, if you have the country, the pre-Bukela, El Salvador, you would need people, presumably, who would need, you would have people who needed help. 0.56

00:59:23.540 I would expect so. 0.93

00:59:25.320 So, Bukela came here and basically said, I'm going to put the bad guys in prison, and the rest of you, you don't need help.

00:59:33.060 Which is better for the people?

00:59:34.780 it's it's a tough toss-up stelios but i i think that throwing murderers and rapists in prison

00:59:44.860 helps it's a controversial more than more than just like throwing money

00:59:51.160 into like people's pockets yeah but don't you consider that they have human rights no no okay

00:59:58.240 rafael well uh let's put them in prison and in the process you will have ordinary worker

01:00:08.020 we will have a job running the prison everyone is happy also lower unemployment i'm joking i'm

01:00:16.420 joking hey no that sounds like a great idea yeah that's that's the soviet way put everyone in a

01:00:21.160 gulag and then tell everyone how low unemployment was in the ssr it's full employment no but think

01:00:26.820 about it you're building the new prisons gigantic national infrastructure projects creating jobs

01:00:32.120 then you need people to staff those prisons new jobs then you need teams to go out and arrest all

01:00:37.140 the people to go in the prison you're facilitating learning of technical skills this is a jobs

01:00:42.440 creation program that we're discussing here right so all the all the worries about the slashing in

01:00:49.500 USAID fans have led into this so hopefully South America is gonna turn blue hopefully Colombia can

01:00:59.940 solve all the rest of its problems hopefully the rest of the cartels can just be absolutely smashed 0.96

01:01:04.440 that'd be good right uh Logan 17 Pine Harry those three type of Mexicans let me the northern type

01:01:12.400 are deeply conservative the central type are more leftist and the southern type are more centrist

01:01:17.560 i thought there was two types of mexicans which are uh spaniards and aztecs or am i am i

01:01:25.580 diminishing maybe i i think there there are two types but it's those who like

01:01:29.960 those who like uh chili con carne and those who don't uh that's a random name tell rafael to read

01:01:36.460 my first super chat in france for him please all right i saw it when i saw it when it first popped

01:01:42.460 up it's it's this one here read it first before you read it out loud to make sure maybe make sure

01:01:48.880 it ain't a fed post ah wait okay um he wants me to remind you you are uh ginger oh thank you very

01:01:58.600 much would you like to say that in french for uh yeah thank you merci the good thing is he

01:02:06.140 he hasn't converted yet yet okay yet you'll start the you know all praise be which way is east

01:02:13.860 today 40 and barber brother stelios the right will win across this continent too eventually

01:02:20.160 hopefully and another one uh brothers have already cracked the champagne tomorrow's problem will be

01:02:26.060 tomorrow's problem small victories and all that i like this way you you will live to miss the

01:02:32.320 starminator gone but not forgotten yeah right would you like to go into your segment

01:02:41.360 well i'm gonna talk about uh the mouse is down here right now if you just

01:02:45.520 scroll to the right yeah you'll find it again uh yeah okay so i'm gonna talk about french politics

01:02:52.400 and trying to explain it with parallels to british politics for the audience not familiar with

01:03:00.320 what happens in my wonderful country. So here is Paul Sybille, commentator of French politics,

01:03:09.520 who regularly does polls. And this one is the popularity of different parties in France. So

01:03:17.040 as you see, National Rally, 41% plus 2 points, way ahead of every party. LR, which is the

01:03:25.280 the equivalent of the Tories, the historical right in France, 26, ecologists, so the equivalent

01:03:33.020 of the Greens, 23, minus 2, UDR. UDR is very interesting. It's a branch of the LR, of the

01:03:40.740 historical right, who make a cessation and join the national rally in 2024, led by Eric

01:03:48.040 Ciotti. Actually, Eric Ciotti was memed a lot, like Starmer was memed recently in British

01:03:53.840 politics, and they are at 22% plus still. And it's pretty interesting because now the

01:04:02.440 national rally has a support from a former center-right leaning party, which is a good

01:04:11.120 thing for electors who don't want to vote national rally because it's the party of the

01:04:19.420 populists and they feel they are above the populists well no they are they can't follow

01:04:25.060 Eric's society and they have an easy way out so it's very nice for the French right socialist

01:04:32.860 party 21% reconquête which is Eric Zemmour's party I was going to ask I've not heard about

01:04:40.760 Eric Zemmour for a long while so I was wondering where he fits into politics these days in France

01:04:46.420 Ah, the French people listening to me will not be happy with that, but Eric Zemmour was a wonderful journalist, a very, very crappy politician.

01:04:59.800 Really? 0.55

01:05:00.260 He doesn't know what...

01:05:01.400 There was a lot of hype around him around 2021, 2022.

01:05:05.740 Exactly. It's kind of restore with the recent Makerfield election. 7% was a great score for restore. But some people were dreaming about 20%. Reconquête and Eric Zemmour did the same in 2022. And they did around 7% too, which was in the context of 2022 French presidential election, a very good score.

01:05:31.780 In 2022, the first was Macron over 25%, then Marine Le Pen a few pounds behind, then Jean-Luc Mélenchon far left a little above 20%, and everyone else was under 5%, except for Eric Zemmour.

01:05:49.180 So was it a problem of over-promising on the delivery that, realistically speaking, 7% in that election was a good result?

01:05:57.180 There was such a hype and everyone was expecting 2025 and then 7% came.

01:06:03.560 And what was a good result, they started seeing as a bad one.

01:06:06.880 Exactly. And back then, a lot of people left the party after the presidential election.

01:06:12.180 election and Reconquête could have decided we have a good basis to build a professional

01:06:20.700 political party instead they become an organization to gather online trolls and nowadays they are

01:06:29.040 deep into irrelevancy so that's at least that's my opinion and if I remember correctly they are

01:06:38.080 given around four percent for the 2027 presidential election it sounds like there's some lessons that

01:06:43.620 could be learned on our side oh yeah particularly when it comes to expectation management but but i

01:06:49.860 think restore is way more on track to become a professional party but the part about managing

01:06:57.500 expectation and the part about about telling some of your online trolls because they are

01:07:06.320 Restore online trolls, maybe turn down a little bit, because you are a political party, Restore claims to win, to win the 2029 general election, so they want to get into power and to act out their policies, so it's necessary for people to get right now for Restore, we aim at professionalizing the party, and Reconcred failed to do so.

01:07:33.380 Then Horizon, which is a party of former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, allied with Macron, 20%.

01:07:41.840 Renaissance, Macron party, 19%, LFI, 15%, so far left.

01:07:46.140 And Modem, a little centrist party, 40%.

01:07:48.920 Question here, because I see from what you're showing us, the left doesn't have that strong favorability.

01:07:56.600 How is it that they have such a strong power within French politics?

01:07:59.680 Easy. LFI here, 15%.

01:08:02.740 People don't like them. They will vote for them anyway.

01:08:07.740 P.S. 21. They will vote for Mélenchon.

01:08:12.740 Mélenchon, in a speech a few weeks ago, before the French local election,

01:08:17.740 he said, word for word, he said, the socialists are...

01:08:22.740 I don't know how to say it in English, but they don't have any dignity.

01:08:27.740 they will call back to us

01:08:30.960 because they need us to win

01:08:32.700 Mélenchon said that publicly

01:08:35.000 a few days later

01:08:36.940 the socialists were there

01:08:38.860 negotiating with Mélenchon's party

01:08:41.280 for alliances

01:08:42.760 for the local election

01:08:43.900 so he was absolutely right

01:08:46.260 he was absolutely right

01:08:47.560 is this all about the cordon sanitaire 1.00

01:08:50.560 about just keeping the right out

01:08:52.320 and making sure that the left have

01:08:53.980 that barrier

01:08:55.720 Of course, when the right is about to take power, they know they don't like each other, but they like their enemy less.

01:09:09.160 Right. OK. So the question is here. Do you think that there is a substantial amount of right wing parties in France who think essentially that they have to be overly good towards the left?

01:09:21.260 and that's part of the french political culture and it's unilateral it's not the left plays alone

01:09:28.220 and lots of right-wingers want to placate the left if we take a comparison we can get here

01:09:35.440 should have been the equivalent of what we store is nowadays for british british politics it should

01:09:43.320 have been the party on the right who claim to be on the right and we don't believe the right

01:09:49.920 have to lean left in order to win but they fail to do so they didn't professionalize and eric zemmour

01:09:56.320 himself who was a highly sought after political commentator even nowadays when he make a video

01:10:04.960 an interview or something like that he's not as much listened or read than he was before so

01:10:12.400 So Reconquête is a failed restore, in my opinion.

01:10:16.400 RN would be the equivalent of reform, but a better reform. 0.97

01:10:21.400 So with less foreigners, a better professionalization of the party. 0.91

01:10:30.400 Also, the RN, we should remember, it is the first party in the French Parliament, with 120 MPs,

01:10:41.400 which is way way under the majority but the french parliament is a cut in three

01:10:49.640 apart and no one has the majority right question because we do see this in germany a lot in germany

01:10:55.880 there's this firewall notion where the cdou is doesn't want to team up with the afd in order to

01:11:06.040 pass legislation and they would rather team up with leftists like the social democrats and others

01:11:13.800 than actually promote right-wing legislation that is going to be backed by the afd do you think that

01:11:21.800 other right-wing parties in france are going to help the rn national rally or will they say

01:11:30.680 national rally is far right. We don't want to associate with the far right because the

01:11:36.180 left is going to call us far right as well. So we are going to team up with Melenchon,

01:11:43.000 who says that he doesn't care if the French became a minority in France, because they

01:11:48.620 don't want to team up with the national rally.

01:11:52.300 It's already happened because as I've said, LR, which was the former dominant right-wing

01:11:58.620 party from a kind of like the toys break apart and udr is the party from the former republicans

01:12:11.100 so they are aligned with the national rally if you look at polls in lr electorate they want an

01:12:18.860 alliance with the national rally of course the party leaders don't want to but it it means that in

01:12:27.420 In French, the elections are in two turns.

01:12:30.580 First turn, everyone can go, the first two get to the second round and the...

01:12:38.300 Right.

01:12:39.300 In that case, if Bardella goes against a left-wing candidate, will the other right-wing parties

01:12:45.660 urge their voters to support Bardella or to support the left-wing candidate?

01:12:50.580 Well, I don't have it here, but every projection for the 20-27 presidential election,

01:13:00.820 Bardella wins against all opposition in the second round.

01:13:05.160 The biggest win would be, according to the projection, against Mélenchon.

01:13:10.720 The shortest win will be against Edouard Philippe, who is former prime minister of Emmanuel Macron.

01:13:17.920 And Marine Le Pen is also a winner in all scenarios but with a little less of a margin than Bardella.

01:13:28.920 Actually, Marine Le Pen or Bardella, we don't know who will be the national rally candidate

01:13:35.920 because, as you probably know, French justice condemned Marine Le Pen to an illegibility

01:13:41.920 and she appealed the judgment. The decision will be made public of the appeal on the 7th of July.

01:13:51.920 So in a few weeks, we will know if Marine Le Pen can go at the presidential election, but if she can't, it will be Jordan Bardella.

01:14:04.920 So the alliance already started, the electorate is already okay to vote for the national rally.

01:14:15.920 But the problem being, politics is not just about election, it's also about culture.

01:14:24.920 culture. And how do you get your ideas to dominate in the opinion? And that's where

01:14:34.440 the national rally is really bad. I've taken some few examples, recent examples. So you

01:14:43.120 see this picture, this is a communist mayor.

01:14:47.920 I thought he was going to be a communist based on the expression and the face.

01:14:51.720 And he made this enraged face because a counselor in his locality recited a Hail Mary, a prayer, in response to the fact that a woman counselor came in a veil.

01:15:08.720 He asked the national rally elected, asked for the veil to be forbidden because it's a religious symbol.

01:15:17.520 And since the communist mayor allowed it, he made a prayer and he reacted like a demon, really like a demon. 0.51

01:15:26.720 So we see with that example, we have... Is there his name? I don't remember the name of the guy. 0.63

01:15:35.720 uh this is so memeable the more i love the face the funnier it gets that's yeah yeah oh he's

01:15:41.960 seeding we need to make a meme out of him he's sawing oh there's already meme about him yeah

01:15:47.240 oh i'm sure i'm sure in france yeah yeah and uh well anyway yeah that's an example of a

01:15:57.560 local concealer of the national rally being pretty based then we have that so i did the

01:16:04.440 the screenshot. This woman was elected as a mayor under the banner of the national rally.

01:16:12.560 And a few weeks after being elected, she made a picture. It's a kind of an informal tradition.

01:16:22.520 When you are a mayor, you marry people and you are the new mayor. You take a people

01:16:28.040 with the first couple who don't want to have a religious marriage. 0.82

01:16:31.560 Exactly. And you take a picture with the first couple you married.

01:16:35.200 She did that with an homosexual couple. 1.00

01:16:37.800 Well, it's the law. 1.00

01:16:39.920 So in her position, I would have done the same.

01:16:43.520 She has not been elected to vote the law, but to apply it.

01:16:48.520 So I didn't criticize her back then. 0.99

01:16:51.040 But I criticized her when she started to insult people criticizing her. 0.98

01:16:59.080 So I'm translating, besides being an homophobic, you are a racist. 0.88

01:17:07.100 She went straight to the buzzwords then. 0.99

01:17:09.240 Exactly.

01:17:09.560 Yes.

01:17:10.200 And this was a few weeks after the left murdered Cantandoronc in Lyon in the street

01:17:18.900 and tried to justify his murder by saying he was a racist too.

01:17:25.780 So we have...

01:17:26.740 was signaling to those who were saying who were trying to excuse but i don't think she was signaling

01:17:34.260 i think she really believes it i think she really believes it because in the national rally that's

01:17:39.700 why i took those two examples because you see you have a based catholic local councilor

01:17:48.180 encouraging a communist mayor and you have a mayor insulted people for being racist

01:17:56.900 and it's especially like like you say it's especially dangerous when she should know

01:18:00.740 that these kinds of words and insults are thrown out as justifications not just in france but in

01:18:08.980 england and in america like we saw with the assassination of charlie kirk these words are

01:18:14.340 used as one excuses for why people have been murdered and two excuses for why more people

01:18:21.840 need to be murdered in the future if you are racist you are fair game dehumanization you lose

01:18:27.240 all moral value well let's continue about dehumanization because here you have a video 0.98

01:18:35.280 maybe we can play it let's not play it for copyright reasons because it's the sound but

01:18:39.700 Anyway, it's a journalist being chased away from a leftist manifestation and the lyrics are a kick to the head what good flavor and it's a song who became very popular since the left killed Quentin Durang by kicking him in the head.

01:19:02.180 Is this an old song or a song they composed right now?

01:19:05.980 i i i don't know this i'm not interested in that kind of crappy music to be honest but it became

01:19:14.220 popular at that time so we see they are praising violence we see on the second picture a journalist

01:19:23.820 from the journal frontier who are beaten by leftists in an he was trying to cover an anti-racist

01:19:32.940 antifa yes again they same manifestation it was yesterday yeah it was yesterday what does the

01:19:39.740 establishment do about this nothing yeah what well i know i know i mean in french politics

01:19:47.900 you are leftists openly calling to sedition if the national rally uh wins in 2027 yeah nobody

01:19:56.940 tell them anything why would they stop they have killed a guy in the street rafael arnaud is the

01:20:05.660 leader of the militia who killed him he was elected under lfc banner as an mp as a french mp

01:20:13.340 he returned to the parliament without any opposition even from the national rally the

01:20:21.340 Marion Maréchal, who is Jean-Marie Le Pen's great daughter.

01:20:30.340 Anyway, Marine Le Pen's niece, she protested a little bit on the media, but it's not enough.

01:20:39.340 We would have needed Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella protesting.

01:20:44.340 He's even back on his Twitch channel, so you can hear his guy.

01:20:52.100 Three of his collaborators, so people paid by the French parliament, are involved in the murder.

01:21:00.700 So he's back in the parliament, nobody cares.

01:21:03.580 He does his Twitch channel, nobody cares.

01:21:06.360 Three of his collaborators, nobody cares. 0.73

01:21:09.500 So this wasn't even a case of like an isolated political assassination where you get some madman with a gun.

01:21:16.480 This was a group of people involved with a very public political group, just murdering somebody in the street and getting away with it.

01:21:24.020 Exactly, exactly. At least in their reputation.

01:21:29.320 i i don't have it there either but since the murder there's a lot of support of the murderers

01:21:37.780 concerts um concerts for the murderer yeah yeah yeah concerts don't tell me it's rage against

01:21:45.340 the machine but to them yeah why not why not they have been allowed to do anything they want for

01:21:52.160 for so long, for so long. For them, it's normal. And I don't have it there, but Raphael Arnaud was acclaimed yesterday at the music festival organized by LFI.

01:22:08.160 So for them, it's totally okay to kill right-wingers. And the National Rally is not playing the fight, it's not fighting the cultural fight.

01:22:21.160 They are not trying to influence culture. They are believing if they lean left enough, they will win and after that we have to trust they have some kind of secret plan and there will be a very right wing once in power.

01:22:43.160 But why is it that every right-wing voter should compromise on what he believes, what he wants for his country and his convictions, while the left can openly call for murder and sedition and beat people in the street, sometimes murdering them, sometimes injuring them, as in the picture?

01:23:05.640 The question here would be that, for instance, in that case, would it be sensible to say, I will be more, I don't want violence to escalate, I do want to go down the political route, I do have the ability to win, and I will win, and to a very large extent, politics is a matter of political will, and then yes, of course, people will have to trust the plan, because that's the only thing that people can do in such cases.

01:23:35.640 and try to use the power of the state once they win the presidency in it in order to sort of

01:23:41.880 diffuse tensions because when you say that that would be sensible it would be if the national

01:23:49.000 rally was like a reform a party which is four years old i don't know exactly how old reform is

01:23:58.280 but it's a really recent party political party i think i think it changed its name from brexit

01:24:03.640 party to reform what in 2021 around that sort of time it's kind of a continuation of the old

01:24:07.880 practice yeah but 10 years top yeah yeah the national rally just under marine le pen it's 15

01:24:14.760 years yeah under jean-marie le pen you had i don't know exactly but 20 years easily

01:24:23.160 that that time frame allows you to do a lot about on metapolitics it allows you to to build

01:24:33.640 a culture, a right-wing culture, to build coalitions, to train your elected officials, and so on.

01:24:43.480 They didn't do it.

01:24:45.440 What's the point of having one of the oldest far-right political parties

01:24:50.860 if we are doing exactly the same kind of politics than Reform UK, 10 years old?

01:24:59.380 We're brushing up against time now, if you wouldn't mind, if we can carry on.

01:25:02.740 Well, we are over anyway. This is the clip about the song King King in the Head.

01:25:10.420 So you see, they try to represent Jordan Bardella and they're making fun of it.

01:25:14.420 And penalty with a football goal behind. And then the last link was the emission I did

01:25:22.720 with Stelios. If you want to find more on Cantin de Hong's murder and the aftermath

01:25:31.780 in the beginning thank you all right yeah thank you very much that was very very interesting and

01:25:36.660 we've got some rumble rants that have been sent through asking some questions um so sigil stone

01:25:42.260 i'm curious how a frenchman feels about western pennsylvania we have many french names for towns

01:25:47.560 but we pronounce them wrong on purpose like dubois is du bois and versailles is versailles even as an

01:25:54.840 englishman i find that offensive to be honest how does it feel for you well i don't think i don't

01:26:00.520 feel anything about that random name in that case asks uh what do you think about uh vincent lapierre

01:26:07.560 in many of his videos you see people calling him a fascio even though he's really mild how bad is

01:26:11.720 the anti-right stigmatization in france well vincent lapierre is pretty funny because he was

01:26:17.720 with alain soral who let's say a kind of french nick nick fuentes and he broke apart and started

01:26:26.760 to do documentary about the decay of French cities, I like him, it's informative, it's always the same thing

01:26:36.840 because once you have seen one city decaying, you have seen every other one, so I think he has a public,

01:26:46.120 some people like that, it's pretty good, but yeah, he's taking real risks for his documentaries,

01:26:53.640 and I think he sometimes more and more often he wear protection gear not now.

01:27:03.840 Now that he's built up some some notoriety. Yeah yeah yeah a lot of notoriety.

01:27:11.160 One tall order is sent to in saying tuning in late so I'm behind watching the stream but I'd

01:27:16.080 just like to thank Mr. Pio for coming on it's always nice to have new guests. Well thank you.

01:27:20.880 And also, could an intrepid member of the Lotus Eater's AI

01:27:25.080 remix the bunker scene from Downfall

01:27:27.340 and exchange the Austrian painter for the Starminator?

01:27:30.260 I'm sure somebody behind the scenes is already working on that. 0.61

01:27:33.020 Random name, Quebec is filling up with French leftists

01:27:35.860 who leave France because, in their words,

01:27:38.180 would you like to read that?

01:27:40.360 C'est de la merde, il y a plein de racistes, 1.00

01:27:42.100 so it's shit and full of racists. 1.00

01:27:44.600 Yeah, and then they vote for more leftism. 1.00

01:27:46.500 Take them back, Raphael, please.

01:27:48.240 Well, in your segment about South America, you talked about Colombia voting exceedingly on the right when they are abroad.

01:27:58.480 In France, suddenly, people leave the country because it's becoming shit, and then they vote for the left. 0.97

01:28:06.200 The same policies that turn it that way in the first place. 0.98

01:28:08.100 So what do you want to do? Maybe we could prevent them from voting, but it's difficult.

01:28:16.760 Does Canada need any more help bringing in foreigners? 1.00

01:28:20.320 I'm sure you guys don't need French leftists to help you keep bringing them in. 0.91

01:28:23.880 Well, yeah, Quebec leftists are really autonomous.

01:28:29.400 I don't think they need French leftists.

01:28:34.400 Sigil Stone, now to offend both the French and the English, after you both lost control

01:28:38.340 of Western Pennsylvania, we invented oil drilling and started the petrochemical industry.

01:28:43.520 interesting comment not for the comment itself but the context it's about of course

01:28:50.240 Pennsylvania and a large part of North America used to be French and it was

01:28:57.520 sold to the American because the France couldn't deal with it anymore yeah it's

01:29:04.640 historically interesting but nowadays I'm interested in the preservation of my

01:29:12.020 country. I don't care about oil drilling and a petrochemical industry and I don't

01:29:18.680 care about little ego wars, who is the best, who is the better.

01:29:24.320 I think he was just poking a little bit.

01:29:25.820 Yeah, yeah, I understand. That's why I said it's about the context.

01:29:29.780 Nowadays, the left is international. Why shouldn't the right be a two?

01:29:37.340 It's in our interest to find the best ideas, the best strategies, the best networks, everywhere we can, to fight leftism.

01:29:48.760 Because if we don't, in a few decades, our countries will not be the same.

01:29:56.000 Today, they are not the same already.

01:29:58.760 And some of the wounds might be definitive.

01:30:03.800 how long are we willing to continue to fight about a petty historical opposition

01:30:12.300 because on that matter France and England are maybe the country

01:30:18.020 who have done the most wars against each other across history

01:30:21.840 who cares, who cares

01:30:24.320 no absolutely and I've always said when people talk about ideas like re-migration

01:30:31.100 it wouldn't be enough for just one country within Europe to enact a plan of re-migration

01:30:35.280 because then you would just have them bouncing around the continent 0.99

01:30:39.320 still going from country to country

01:30:40.620 and they would probably find another way to sneak back in anyway

01:30:42.820 it would really need to be an international effort

01:30:45.820 and for obvious logistical reasons

01:30:49.020 the Mediterranean Sea

01:30:50.880 you can't have each country at its maritime border with its ships

01:30:57.220 no you need to coordinate every country from the south of europe otherwise you can't control your

01:31:06.020 frontier and this is something interesting i had in my interview recently with um uh with

01:31:11.860 martin selner is his his ideas and his organization where he's trying to organize a kind of a

01:31:18.100 international pan-european effort to promote these ideas and promote some kind of unity and

01:31:25.700 cooperation for basically saving all of our nations in the future. But I think that's quite

01:31:32.340 a positive note to end on, because we've run up to time there. Yeah, this is a team effort.

01:31:40.140 Whatever petty disputes and conflicts that our nations had in the past are well behind us at

01:31:45.500 this point, and these are existential issues that we're all facing, right? And we can pick up

01:31:51.080 whatever petty issues that we had with each other after the big one has been solved. 0.99

01:31:55.700 Let's impose re-migration across Europe and then we will happily fight each other in bloody wars. 0.98

01:32:02.520 Oh, exactly. 1.00

01:32:02.920 If we are willing to.

01:32:04.300 Exactly.

01:32:04.760 If we even want to anymore.

01:32:06.740 But with that, I think that's all we've got time for, folks.

01:32:10.060 Raphael, thank you for coming in and speaking to us.

01:32:12.320 You've been a very, very interesting guest.

01:32:14.360 Thank you very much for the invitation and the opportunity.

01:32:18.140 I'm very pleased because I've watched you for years.

01:32:21.040 I'm pretty interested by British politics.

01:32:22.860 so it's first being across the camera and meeting you in person it seems like the audience have

01:32:30.380 have appreciated your input as well so thank you very much thank you Stelios and thank you

01:32:35.260 to all of our viewers watching remember in about half an hour there is a Realpolitik with Firaz

01:32:40.380 where he's talking about the LNG wars going on at the moment so tune into that if you are

01:32:46.580 subscribed to the website until then we'll see you tomorrow take care

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 22, 2026

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1445

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