The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Scramble for Narrative

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

00:00:04.600 going to be talking about the scramble for narrative, because last week we did an episode

00:00:10.220 of this, where we talked about how reform has gone down in the polls, and here is the

00:00:13.940 political poll of polls, which undeniably shows that, and literally the next day, everyone

00:00:20.640 was suddenly going on about, oh, reform's going down the polls, and that caused Nigel

00:00:26.400 farage to get angry you gov because you gov uh one of the pollsters who uh pitching reform quite

00:00:37.040 low i've got a very similar story to that because because you and luke are always so well turned out

00:00:42.140 i thought i'm gonna break out the suit with the waistcoat so i got the suit with the waistcoat

00:00:46.400 out of the cupboard and i had to get angry with it because it got smaller in the in the 10 years

00:00:51.900 since i'd last worn it but i mean quite many such cases quite quite realistically

00:00:59.920 i'm probably picking the wrong target there

00:01:03.440 hey man if you can get that suit to change that's exactly maybe if i just verbally berated it enough

00:01:13.100 it would get bigger or no or whatever that is that is yeah that is exactly the theme of today's

00:01:18.900 episode uh so as you can see it's not just uh you gov obviously here's one from techni which

00:01:26.520 i'm not even familiar with to be honest here's one from more common minus two minus three

00:01:29.940 and so you've got this general um trend of well actually things are kind of going a bit south

00:01:36.780 your first one was polar poles wasn't it so it was yeah so it covers them all because i remember

00:01:41.380 we discussed this last week and it was kind of at that sort of inflection week a week back

00:01:46.160 and well it's no no it's been fairly consistent where did we talk about it last week where were

00:01:51.040 it was literally only about here i think oh okay so it's it's i mean you know ups and downs but

00:01:56.260 it's been pretty low oh the trend the trend is in yeah that that is looking like a red ski route

00:02:01.260 yeah it's and don't get me wrong like we keep talking about it's not good news for anyone else

00:02:05.460 no labor conservative and greens on about 18 16 percent and of course lib dems are in their

00:02:10.560 perennial 12 percent bracket well the british public doesn't know who to vote for they just

00:02:14.720 know that all their options are bad yes that's basically and you've got like that core of the

00:02:19.380 population which probably boomers who like nigel farage because he reminds him of their childhood 0.99

00:02:24.760 going on holiday to butlands anyway so we've as i said we've got the polls which are all i mean

00:02:30.160 all of these polls are actually really quite consistent like reform on 27 conservatives 18

00:02:35.080 labor 17 green 17 lib dem 14 like if you compare that to the average of the polls yeah that's

00:02:40.760 pretty much within a margin of error that's within a point or two of all of them so that seems to be

00:02:46.920 a fairly reliable thing our political system is just not built for this this this is this is a

00:02:52.280 proper mess for the british system agreed and it's again the same and this this one's uh i mean maybe

00:02:57.120 this one's overestimating the greens but the greens are on 16 on average you know having the

00:03:01.140 greens only on 13 is actually quite low for more in common so who knows right who knows so anyway

00:03:08.540 like i said nigel farage decided he was going to have a war with you gov because they were 0.84

00:03:12.680 consistently polling polling him around 22 23 percent and that was uh damaging to his ego i

00:03:22.000 suppose because he says here i'm pleased that you go have backed down and will follow british

00:03:26.120 polling council rules we can now see the full extent of how they manipulate their data to

00:03:30.860 suppress reform so what does it mean by back down i mean what well we'll get into that in a second

00:03:36.140 deck okay let's let's first talk about them manipulating their data to suppress reform okay

00:03:42.000 so this is from this times article right and basically all this comes down to is a leading

00:03:47.920 pollsters agreed to publish more data behind its results after nigel farage accused of accused it

00:03:53.160 of underplaying the popularity of reform you gov whose voter intention surveys are published in

00:03:58.080 the times has consistently placed the party of northern river pollsters and this is because it

00:04:02.340 questions people on how they are likely to vote in their own constituency rather than which party

00:04:07.760 they favor in general and you gov have a good reason to do this hang on but that has an but

00:04:14.820 that genuinely has an enormous impact on the results and it also more accurately models what

00:04:20.500 will happen at a general election i mean i can i can give a brilliant example of this gorton and

00:04:26.540 denton right okay if reform are polling at 50 percent in gorton that means they are going to

00:04:33.460 win every seat in the country if they're polling at 50 in denton maybe they scrape through maybe

00:04:40.680 they get hung parliament you know what's interesting we've got those numbers in oh you do

00:04:44.240 yeah okay are they in this stack well they are in this stack okay and it's it's weird how prescient

00:04:49.880 how that example actually is yes because because one is an islamic haven yep and the other one is 0.85

00:04:57.540 the ethnic british yep and and if you don't take into account whether you're getting your 50 percent

00:05:02.760 in gorton or denton it it tells you nothing about the the uk as a whole we'll come to that but that's

00:05:09.620 exactly but that's it no no it's exactly you're you're exactly on point in fact this uh guido

00:05:14.920 folks have for some reason decided to turn into a reform uh campaign arm he's always a bit behind

00:05:20.480 the curve is guido yeah i'm not even sure i'd want them as my campaigners but anyway uh the

00:05:25.700 point is they've got this article well i mean generously call it an article uh where you can

00:05:30.160 see they're like well hang on a second if we have yougov essentially uh redo their methodology

00:05:38.000 then as you can see until we win and and that's literally what's happening yes right then the

00:05:45.680 the established way that you go works has cost reform 2.4 points the greens 2.1 points and the

00:05:51.320 lib dems gain go up by 2.7 and the conservatives up by 2.1 if you just if you if you go for their

00:05:56.560 what i suppose they would accuse of being massage data if you look at the raw data actually reform

00:06:02.260 are slightly up and the conservatives and lib dams are slightly down so so nigel just basically wants

00:06:07.960 to go on the raw data because he looks better on the raw data correct that's literally what this

00:06:12.980 is i mean in addition to my point about it matters enormously who's answering and where they're

00:06:18.320 answering the other factor is is that if you're a reform voter i mean reform is basically the tv

00:06:24.240 party yeah everything they do is how can i appeal to tv watchers uh is that yeah boomers and and

00:06:31.740 so those are the people who are far more likely to actually respond to polls and do things i've

00:06:38.400 never been the people who vote for green yeah the people who vote for greens they're all um in a

00:06:43.460 city they either don't speak english or they're students and and they're doing something else

00:06:48.160 other than than responding to to polls but but also they the reason the greens are an islamo 1.00

00:06:54.160 communist alliance is because it represents the people who live in the dense urban areas

00:06:58.960 the the islamic types are like okay we just want gibbs and the the well the communists are just 1.00

00:07:04.720 sort of we want gibbs as well because the communists are complaining about their rent and

00:07:07.540 how they'll never buy a house and so they want communism to essentially give them a house and

00:07:11.440 well if you're just looking for handouts from the state well yeah you you join the greens too

00:07:17.180 yeah yeah yeah communists so you can see how actually there is a kind of economic sense

00:07:23.900 behind the green party it's just parasitic well yeah i mean i like them in one respect that they

00:07:30.060 are identifiably a anti-establishment party you can't accuse them of being establishment

00:07:37.180 yeah yeah that's that's true they've gone way further to the left than the establishment ever

00:07:41.940 would dare yeah which is useful actually because what it shows you the great thing about watching

00:07:47.480 the greens and labor argue is that it's always about ideological purity right the labor party

00:07:53.720 will say we want what the greens want we just can't get there because that will break the entire

00:07:57.740 system and the greens therefore say oh you don't really want what we want then because we're trying

00:08:02.640 to break the entire system and the labor party being currently the party of government are like

00:08:06.760 no no we have to take things very seriously yeah and the green party never having been a party of

00:08:12.100 government with people like carla denya mothinalli and zach polanski are a student politics government

00:08:18.600 of fantasy communism it's sitting at home playing i wish and actually i mean all of labor's problems

00:08:24.580 so far have come from the fact that in their first year i mean when they weren't screwing up

00:08:29.660 on the southport response and stuff like that they were actually trying to do one or two sensible

00:08:33.700 things in the background and every time they're all their own backbenchers basically kicked up

00:08:38.560 enormous fuss about it and they and they had to retreat on it well i mean the this is especially

00:08:44.020 prescient and prevalent in what shibana mahmoud is trying to do yes shibana mahmoud is actually

00:08:49.320 trying to do something sensible oh she's well to the right of the last 14 years of conservative

00:08:52.940 home secretary absolutely and it's it's what's causing i think a massive spike in the green

00:08:58.600 party membership shibana mahmoud is saying look we we want rules-based immigration yeah well why

00:09:05.700 would you want any rules about immigration i mean yeah if if you were part of the islamic

00:09:10.160 coalition in the green party that's not desirable in any way yep so anyway as you can see the um

00:09:16.820 what they want is essentially a low resolution view of the data that you gov have okay so this

00:09:24.660 this is like the sort of thing they'll end up publishing as well reformer on 29 and again it's

00:09:30.300 roughly in line with the polling but it shows reform a bit higher than normal now you gov have

00:09:36.080 said no we're not doing any of that actually a headline in this morning's times is inaccurate

00:09:40.560 and they have issued this correction you gov is not making changes to its methodology or to its

00:09:44.920 previously published results we are happy to make this clear we are not changing our methodology

00:09:48.900 or results which accurately predicted the reform vote at the 2024 general election that's pretty

00:09:55.360 solid as an explanation what is the point of polling is the question that is being attacked

00:10:01.620 here right what do you want from the polling do you want an accurate view of what the country

00:10:07.020 thinks and what it is or do you think that polling uh leads opinion and therefore having high polling

00:10:15.000 means that essentially it's a big ego boost for your party when you're swaggering around so so

00:10:20.000 the last election i will admit a number of the pollsters came reasonably close but we had had

00:10:23.860 a period before that of a good 10 years where the polls were just all over the place and they didn't

00:10:28.240 They didn't really tell you much.

00:10:29.380 And the conversation was starting to be had,

00:10:32.000 why do we bother with opinion polls?

00:10:34.420 And a lot of people were saying,

00:10:35.940 well, actually, they're there to lead opinion.

00:10:38.660 And this is, I mean, this is an old...

00:10:40.520 There's definitely conventional wisdom in that.

00:10:42.460 The establishment thinks that actually, yeah.

00:10:44.880 And Farage is basically taking the mask off

00:10:47.680 and admitting to this by attacking YouGov.

00:10:50.180 He's saying, no, the poll is here to lead opinion.

00:10:52.280 What are you doing?

00:10:53.220 I'm ahead in 200 plus polls, blah, blah, blah.

00:10:55.220 Sorry, Karen.

00:10:55.620 there's there's an old george sauce um when he was because i know he's evil now but he used to

00:11:01.020 be really good at finance oh yeah and and he developed this whole model called reflexivity

00:11:05.280 which is he's not evil then oh yeah no you can be good at finance and evil i imagine it's quite

00:11:10.840 often they go together yeah complementary skills i'll give you that but his reflexivity model was

00:11:15.740 it's not reality you then get perception what it is is um your perception changes your actions

00:11:24.100 which then changes reality, and it just feeds back in on itself.

00:11:28.620 And clearly what Farage wants is because he has lost his organic momentum,

00:11:34.180 he wants to inorganically appear like he's still got momentum.

00:11:39.940 I think that's a really great way of putting it.

00:11:42.160 Because it seems that Farage is essentially capped out on his personal and reforms appeal.

00:11:50.120 About 33%.

00:11:51.880 i think that was the high point and i think the highest it got wasn't it yeah i think so like

00:11:56.360 if we go back to the polls it's like somewhere in the i remember seeing a 33 at some point but

00:12:04.100 but i mean there are polls that are above but on average sort of like 31 and that that roughly

00:12:08.520 tracks with public approval of farage his personal doesn't it yeah yeah it's about personal approval

00:12:13.840 personal approval is about third personal disapproval is about two-thirds and there's

00:12:17.920 a very thin slither of people in the middle who don't know so farage doesn't really have much more

00:12:22.980 ground to be able to capture because everyone knows who he is and you either like him or you

00:12:27.560 hate him he's like marmite to a lot of people i mean in normal times that wouldn't be enough to

00:12:32.180 win but when you've got another five parties and they're all splitting the vote all over the place

00:12:36.940 he could actually get in with that oh absolutely i mean he's like i said he's still more popular

00:12:41.080 than keir starmer right so uh so anyway right so going going back to uh this uh you go have said

00:12:48.140 no no we're not changing our methodology we're not backing down on our data um and even if they

00:12:53.520 say well look uh we are going to publish more data as in we will so what what they've done

00:12:59.420 here is just published the previous unprocessed raw data right say okay well you can see the raw

00:13:06.200 data if you want there's nothing yeah exciting or exceptional about it we don't stand by that

00:13:10.700 because it's not because it doesn't actually tell you the reality of what's actually in the

00:13:15.340 country uh and so and you know patrick english here says look we don't obviously make tactical

00:13:20.800 adjustments or anything and maybe they do maybe they don't i've got no particular reason to trust

00:13:24.600 you gov other than their record right so let's talk about um what the uh actual bonus was when

00:13:32.880 they uh ended up redoing their polls well reform got a plus two bump in the polls which puts them

00:13:38.140 in line with their polling average so all of this hassle just for you gov themselves to be like

00:13:43.840 yeah you're on 25 okay nigel is that sufficient that's not a that's not a general election win 0.92

00:13:50.020 we talked about this last week you can't win a general election on 25 no so what good did this

00:13:55.360 to you no you you're just the first person who gets a chance to form a coalition with the

00:13:59.720 conservatives yeah uh anyway so what i thought we'd do is talk about mrp polling right so this

00:14:05.460 is electoral calculus who are going to tell us because this is the method the statistical method

00:14:09.800 how which not just you gov many of them actually use mrp polling because it is an advanced

00:14:15.680 statistical method don't shoot me if i get any of this wrong by the way i'm not a statistician

00:14:20.240 i'm reading what they're telling me uh of getting more granular information out of the data right

00:14:26.880 uh so as a as electoral calculus tell us mrp stands for multi-level regression and post

00:14:33.620 stratification which is a relatively new polling technique and has outperformed conventional

00:14:38.240 polling methods in recent elections conventional polling methods often apply a uniform national

00:14:43.400 swing some are abbreviated as a uns um approach to predict how many seats a party will win in an

00:14:50.780 election the uns approach assumes assumes there will be the same change in vote share for a given

00:14:57.940 party evenly throughout the country and you can already see why this would give inaccurate results

00:15:03.920 given if if we had a more homogenous country maybe this would make sense so that that process

00:15:11.140 sounds absolutely brilliant when every election is between the labor tories maybe the lib dems

00:15:17.360 because you know what you're getting year after year after year right i used to watch um

00:15:21.800 on the parliament uh channel when i still watch tv they do reruns on every bank holiday of past

00:15:27.840 elections and you could watch them back and you year after year it was the same script it was the

00:15:33.380 same process but now we've got at least was it three or four new parties oh yeah loads yeah

00:15:41.040 significant and the landscape is just fractured so but moreover like if if you've i mean if you

00:15:46.900 go back to say an election in 1992 what does the country actually look like

00:15:53.060 country well basically looks the same as it did in 1870 yeah demographically the country hasn't

00:16:00.380 changed the locations of industry are still broadly the same whether they're up or down

00:16:05.300 you know okay industry suffering but it's it's still located in the same places well where's

00:16:11.420 the agriculture going on well the agriculture is going on in the same places okay where's the

00:16:15.440 commerce going on well it's the same place as it was a hundred years ago yeah and so if you've got

00:16:20.160 demographically the same people and logistically the same country yeah you can just use the old

00:16:26.900 fashion polling methods that will give you a broad but assumingly it but what assumes a

00:16:33.660 homogenous country to make uh to bring in that data yes and all of those assumptions that you

00:16:39.440 just made have been unwound for various reasons mass immigration work from home i mean a whole

00:16:44.100 bunch of things there's so much you think about like i mean industry i mean does anyone talk about

00:16:48.320 british industry anymore what industry do we even have left right i presume we've got some

00:16:52.560 well i know there is actually some in london and manchester but it's it's not nearly like it was

00:16:57.620 uh we don't have you know the steelworks we have coal mining we don't have uh the demographic

00:17:03.420 homogeneity that we used to have i mean if you look at just i didn't get it up for this but if

00:17:08.660 you look at just the map of the ethnicities and concentrations of ethnicities in this country

00:17:13.860 they're wildly different then you've got different uh economic outcomes for example uh a lot of the

00:17:21.080 southeast is now a lot richer than they would have been 50 or 70 years ago right post thatcher

00:17:25.820 so you've got all of these sorts of changes where actually you don't have the reliable country you

00:17:31.860 thought you had before no and so you don't have the country we wish we had absolutely i mean i

00:17:37.540 would love to have that old reliable country where the politics was boring and stale and

00:17:41.620 only actually talked about incredibly dim issues i remember 30 years ago the things that used to be

00:17:47.420 considered newsworthy i want that world back i know now every day it's oh another another child

00:17:54.300 has been senselessly assaulted and it's murder or something terrible like that yeah um but no you

00:18:00.660 are absolutely right i want that world back as well but um but the point being right is that the

00:18:06.360 uniform national swing no longer has the kind of predictive power that it had right because as they

00:18:13.420 say it assumes that the same change in vote share will be uniform across the country for each party

00:18:19.380 but this doesn't happen in practice and they give us some examples of why that doesn't happen

00:18:23.840 and they point out that these differences are not captured by UNS therefore the the model can

00:18:29.220 overestimate the performance of parties in some areas and underestimate it in others so the MRP

00:18:34.700 method the multi regression post stratification method tries to solve this by working out the

00:18:40.500 relationship between people's voting intention and their individual demographic characteristics

00:18:45.340 like age income educational background obviously ethnicity is going to be in there river they got

00:18:50.140 off the boat two weeks ago and a variety of other data sources including past voting behavior then

00:18:56.320 you can count how many of these different types of voters are in each each constituency to make

00:19:00.980 a prediction of how the parties will perform on a seat-by-seat basis which is just saying we're

00:19:06.600 using the data that we have which is more voluminous than just what do you think that

00:19:12.800 can actually be mapped to previous data that we have and can be granularly applied to the

00:19:17.600 constituency based on the demographic profile of each constituency which is relevant now or a lot

00:19:24.180 more relevant than it used to be because as we we've covered this before if you go through the

00:19:28.980 2021 census map and you just search for ethnicity and you flip through the different ethnicities

00:19:35.660 you'll notice that there's pakistanis here indians here africans here caribbeans here

00:19:40.080 like oh yeah it's not it's a strong clustering effect exactly it's very different in each place

00:19:47.180 and so it's necessary to have some more advanced statistical rendering of what's actually

00:19:54.580 happening or else you don't know yeah i mean what they described um i mean i had some idea it was

00:20:00.320 basically that but i can't see how well she would do it until ai's just take over and do it for us

00:20:05.040 and why wouldn't you if you have the ability to have more advanced statistical analysis of the

00:20:11.700 country that is actually more maps more accurately than merely the sort of you know again it's like a

00:20:17.740 low resolution well britain entirely thinks this it's like okay but that's not we don't vote for

00:20:24.000 presidents right yes that's and that's that that again it seems to be the yankification of reform

00:20:28.980 where it's just like yeah but if i'm in the polls i'm gonna win it's like no this all just comes

00:20:33.140 back to my view that the reform is mentally stuck in 1995 they want to watch their tvs 0.60

00:20:39.540 stay in 1995 do their bingo butlin style presentations and just assume that nothing's

00:20:46.160 changed but don't get me wrong my soul is there too but but unfortunately really we are not there

00:20:54.520 and so the the question is well is is this a good model does it work and the answer is well what do

00:21:00.240 you want what do you mean by good i hate to get old jordan peterson about this or does it have

00:21:04.080 predictive power well that and that's what you want oh is that what nigel farage wants right

00:21:08.720 and the answer is it appears not right there appears to be a divergence of opinion here

00:21:13.200 angel farage wants a number that shows him to be high in the polls so he can swagger

00:21:17.060 and say leading all the polls bro but if you do want predictive power which is what you go

00:21:22.300 brag their model does uh then this is what you would want you would want the more granular

00:21:28.300 post mrp process yeah makes sense rather than the low resolution number now i mean like look at some

00:21:36.420 the things that you go point out from the 2024 election so this has only been two years right

00:21:41.000 So this is going to be the best possible proof of whether this works.

00:21:46.520 And you've got to point out that they were actually the most accurate in terms of seats

00:21:49.540 and the second most accurate for overall vote share.

00:21:53.180 They say, our larger MRP model performed strongly at the election.

00:21:56.900 It was the most accurate MRP model in terms of seats,

00:22:00.020 calling 92% of constituencies correctly.

00:22:04.060 That's pretty good.

00:22:06.040 None of the others got that good.

00:22:07.980 Yeah, well, yeah.

00:22:08.920 I mean, it speaks for itself, doesn't it?

00:22:10.240 exactly 92 like sorry if you're actually looking for accurate data this is the thing you want

00:22:20.080 if you're looking to have a headline of ego boost and so you can um bluff your way through to the

00:22:28.100 next election well then you want the unprocessed data well six months ago nigel roger didn't need

00:22:33.660 to get his headlines via this method we'll come to that in a minute as well so they say this was

00:22:40.960 better than all of the other mrp models and marginally better than the famously accurate

00:22:44.900 bbc itv sky exit poll oh well that is a higher standard because yeah yeah because the exit polls

00:22:50.820 are pretty good actually yeah the exit polls are genuinely one of the most useful things we know

00:22:55.000 because we keep covering elections live as they happen the exit polls are very important uh quite

00:23:00.160 looking forward to the next one of those we do actually because they're always fun anyway i

00:23:03.780 wonder how long that yeah yeah well yeah absolutely uh in terms of national vote shares our mip model

00:23:09.100 was the second most accurate out of the final polls and mips the average error on party shares

00:23:14.060 was 1.4 percent i wish i could make investments with a 1.4 percent error rate that's right i mean

00:23:21.700 like i wish i did anything that had a 1.4 percent error rate yeah um so yeah so they they they talk

00:23:29.560 about some of you know some of their failings so they they they will explain that well we

00:23:34.060 overestimated how many people would um swing they could prove there was a swing from labor

00:23:40.400 to conservatives but they overestimated certain things and they underestimated certain things

00:23:43.700 because frankly you don't know until after the thing has been done but generally and that they

00:23:49.380 underestimated conservative loyalists as well because remember rishi sunak got 126 seats something

00:23:54.980 like that but the polling and it wasn't just yougov it was everywhere the polling was like

00:23:59.300 oh god the conservative is going to get like 40 30 seats which is why we ran the zero seat stream

00:24:03.120 right now it's probably because a bunch of boomers just didn't show up in polling and they just go

00:24:10.420 out and vote conservative every single time and so it's it's not that this is perfect but it is

00:24:16.320 the gold standard of polling in britain i mean what what you're saying is okay show me something

00:24:21.680 better and you can't exactly there just isn't something better other than the election itself

00:24:26.940 it's even better than the exit polling which is usually brilliant um so anyway

00:24:33.520 this would have been good to know as you were saying at the gordon and dented by-election

00:24:38.500 so as you can see 69 of the ethnic minorities voted for the greens 24 percent of them voted

00:24:47.880 for labor now they would have previously voted overwhelmingly for labor but they the labor party

00:24:53.720 completely lost them only five percent of them voted for reform this is quite important isn't it

00:25:00.080 that is like the first thing that jumps out at me is notice how the ethnic minorities are not 1.00

00:25:07.480 confused about who's going to butter their bread for them absolutely not i mean some of them are

00:25:12.800 still in the labor mindset and they and they will get benefits from the labor from labor but they're

00:25:18.460 clearly going to get more and 69 of them have received the memo and i'm pretty sure the other

00:25:23.860 24 if if they if they properly understood that they would get more gibbs from the greens all of

00:25:30.300 that but but they're just quick thing on that i i watched videos from gorton denton in uh in the

00:25:36.660 gorton side um of muslims saying yeah i just i'm just going to stick with they but i don't think 1.00

00:25:41.440 greens are going to get it so it wasn't that they didn't think okay get the gibbs they were just 0.99

00:25:45.480 purely tactical who do you think is going to give you the gibbs but i mean that that community is

00:25:51.920 just straight up this is this is resource extraction this is the way to get it done

00:25:57.160 they're not confused they're not that their thinking is obviously not muddled by sentiments

00:26:03.240 and notions look at the whites though well and before we go on to the whites how much does

00:26:09.580 nigel farage genuflected towards ethnic minorities oh god yeah that's a good point all of that 1.00

00:26:16.880 pandering that he's been doing for the last five the pandering that has caused him to exorcise from

00:26:24.220 the movement the entire online right you know um an enormous amount of his own activists even some

00:26:32.040 of his own mps certainly people that he's worked with he's done all that purging all that going on

00:26:38.040 steve edgington and saying no it's impossible to do anything about immigration he went through all

00:26:42.660 of that for five percent i wouldn't lift a finger for five percent of a vote if i were him i'd be

00:26:49.860 like well okay where's our constituency so well you're gonna get you know 46 of one you get five

00:26:55.820 percent the other i'm like okay well let's just work on the one we've got strength in what you

00:26:59.400 know that this that that i mean the fact they've got five percent is come on man that's and what

00:27:04.900 are we at this point we're like a 76 white country something in that region probably less

00:27:09.160 probably about 70 okay so let's say we're 70 white country he has done everything that he's done

00:27:16.120 he's alienated the vast swathes of the right for five percent of thirty percent yes whatever that

00:27:22.900 is that is you're the mathematician not me well it's a it's it's not a big number very big number

00:27:29.420 at all no like but two percent or something my gut feeling is don't bother mate right like this

00:27:36.220 is this was not something that actually and and as you say watering down his message making it

00:27:41.980 non-nativist has really hurt him bringing in a bunch of tories who are pro who were the immigration

00:27:47.800 tories who were in government literally doing the immigration at the time and then putting

00:27:52.720 muslims in positions of uh as the sort of face of the party to say look i'm not a racist we're

00:28:00.620 going to bring all these muslims minorities want them to vote for us too didn't work right none of 1.00

00:28:05.260 it worked i mean i admit occasionally he manages to take a photo with some sikhs or something 0.67

00:28:09.420 yeah okay fine i mean that probably is that five percent yes because remember we went through the

00:28:14.260 gorton and denton numbers and there were like 400 sikhs in that seat okay well there we go he got 0.98

00:28:19.260 them then yeah okay great well done obviously the sikhs didn't work with the muslims but like maybe

00:28:23.020 you could not alienate your own base the entire online right and then just you know be nice to

00:28:29.580 the sikhs and maybe you get you the same outcome except you wouldn't have pissed away your own 0.98

00:28:34.640 support base you would have alienated the natives well exactly and like the sikhs would have come 1.00

00:28:40.520 with you anyway yes yeah they would have done yeah because because the sikhs are under no illusions 1.00

00:28:44.920 what it means for them if the muslims take over exactly they're not they're not stupid and they 0.98

00:28:50.160 they've like and this is why i get frustrated with the online right being like ah he's got 0.98

00:28:54.440 a sikh there's like yep the sikhs are pretty good conservative people morally upstanding

00:28:58.800 by and large obviously they have problems and everyone has problems but like they're not an 0.91

00:29:03.180 intrinsically hostile group right so okay what's the problem you know who cares but anyway um but

00:29:08.960 yeah let's get let's then go over to the white side yes so nigel farage has got 46 percent there 0.96

00:29:13.960 now that's quite a lot that's not quite half but like you were guessing you know if you're half

00:29:18.160 this no you didn't get half of that but that's that's pretty good but it's not enough and you

00:29:23.900 like you that they would have all basically been ex-labor voters because remember the conservatives

00:29:28.080 only ever had like seven percent in this seat anyway right so what did you do you sent a tory

00:29:33.520 coded southwest southeast academic to go be the candidate yes it's like the doing his best alan

00:29:41.180 partridge impression the entire way yeah and you know like i don't hate goodwin or anything you

00:29:44.780 know but like he just wasn't the guy matt goodwin should have been campaigning in surrey or sussex

00:29:49.720 or something like that right not in gorton and denton and also why did you fill your party with

00:29:56.120 tories do you think they're natural tory voters my concern with the outcome of gorton and denton

00:30:01.320 is that nigel forage's key takeaway is that he should have run a pakistani or an urdu guy 0.81

00:30:06.880 i mean that might well be that might well be his key takeaway actually and and and the other thing

00:30:13.620 is if you look if you add up okay yeah they've got 40 percent six percent which is fine yeah if

00:30:18.420 you add up the white population who are like no please tax me into oblivion and send all my 0.99

00:30:23.840 resources to the invaders group that's actually 48 percent yeah it's actually more of them so so 0.93

00:30:29.240 the what the white population have not kind of understood what time it is yes and moreover you

00:30:36.180 failed to convert them right you failed to say like i've got your guy right here yeah right i've

00:30:41.740 got your guy so that 46 is probably lower than it would have been i don't think matt goodwin did run

00:30:46.880 a very good campaign i think he himself is just the wrong kind of person to run in that seat well

00:30:52.760 again i'm gonna watch what he was doing he was either blasting at people through a megaphone or

00:30:56.980 attacking the online right it's like what can you just get off the but it was also very negative

00:31:01.980 right he was not like here's what we're going to do for the country yeah here's what they are going

00:31:06.480 to do to the country and it's like well i mean yes they live in a constituency that's 30 plus

00:31:11.080 percent muslim they know what they're going to do to the country how did you not persuade them 1.00

00:31:15.000 that you were for them i mean that 46 okay you've got a good solid protest right there about half

00:31:20.460 of them in a protest vote but how is it you failed to convert any of the rest of them and hannah

00:31:24.580 spencer did have a positive message she wasn't spending a lot of time talking about reform i 0.60

00:31:29.000 can't remember seeing any clips where she talked about reforms i'm sure she did it but i didn't

00:31:32.140 see them she was all about this is what we're going to do for you this is how we're going to

00:31:36.860 make your life better now all of it is fantasy marxist economics complete fantasy but it was a 0.96

00:31:44.780 positive message it's a message and and you're exactly right and also she's a local ass right 1.00

00:31:51.140 you know she's she's from the area she had a message and she trounced you with it 0.93

00:31:56.320 5 000 votes higher than you oh yeah it was these absolute numbers wasn't close no no that was 10

00:32:02.120 000 for matt goodwin and 15 000 for hannah so the the white labor and green vote that's i mean

00:32:10.320 that's probably about 10 000 in fact we know that's about that's probably 11 000 actually

00:32:15.840 so that's 48 percent matt goodwin got 10 000 like we know we know that basically didn't he

00:32:23.140 barely got half the constituency i mean we keep talking about the white british about what what's

00:32:28.080 going to happen when we get to you know um majority minority well we're cooked yeah we're 0.98

00:32:34.940 cooked yeah because like there are there are lots of the white british who are just not paying

00:32:41.060 attention to the issue yeah and and the other side will just be full extraction yeah i mean one of

00:32:46.780 the one of the only upsides to this is that mps don't actually have any power well yeah this is

00:32:53.080 this is literally the only the only thing they can do is essentially advocate in parliament and

00:32:58.120 uh it's like you said it's the power of patronage yeah rather than actual i mean i mean the home

00:33:03.440 office has a massive islamic network so oh absolutely doubtless uh hannah the plumber 0.99

00:33:08.660 there were multiple fronts we get to lose on yes but but when it comes to like direct executive

00:33:14.560 authority mps don't have any no that's true that that that is at least you know something positive

00:33:19.980 that's come out of this gotten dentin i mean that's actually the one thing i would say for

00:33:23.380 restore is um if you can't find 650 top flight candidates don't worry about it just just find

00:33:29.680 650 candidates and then appoint every minister you need through the lords which you can do

00:33:33.700 assuming kirstama leaves anything of the lords standing by the time yeah the next election

00:33:38.380 back if you need to but yeah yeah but anyway so the the point is that when you're attacking the

00:33:45.960 pollsters no that's a bad sign right it's all a bit it's all a bit joffrey isn't it yeah yeah i

00:33:52.680 was reading uh this sub stack about this and there's a good point in this uh where a labor

00:33:58.500 mp and former opinion pollster chris curtis uh said to politico in my decade in polling i could

00:34:04.560 always tell when a party was on the ropes because they start lashing out with the pollsters rather

00:34:08.260 than speaking to the voters niger farage is just the latest to look at a bad poll inside the fault

00:34:13.040 lies with the tape measure and not the waistline as you put yeah i can't yeah i kind of got there

00:34:17.900 early but you did but that's exactly exactly uh and and that's precisely the point um where's the

00:34:25.000 red meat nigel right that's right it's explicitly off the table and it's explicitly off the table

00:34:30.620 for five percent yeah like no we won't have any red meat because i'm like five percent of seeks

00:34:35.220 who probably would have voted for him anyway exactly and who probably would have appreciated

00:34:38.280 the red meat too yeah yes yeah like because again this is the thing like the shock horror people

00:34:44.680 tend to vote in their interest unless they're white yeah and for for many of the non-muslim 0.69

00:34:50.980 minorities not having a muslim majority is definitely in their interest they definitely

00:34:56.680 feel this way and i you know i've spoken to plenty of them they are happy that you know

00:35:01.800 that's what they expected when they came here um yes but the the point being and i think this is

00:35:07.860 the real the really important point is what do you think this victory has achieved nigel right 0.97

00:35:15.600 because okay let's say so what victory well the victory over you gov right ah making you go of

00:35:22.480 roll back to the low resolution data what yes what did that achieve well what that's done

00:35:28.220 is clouded your own vision right you now have a less accurate map of the world in your mind

00:35:35.360 and how your party is doing and how they are likely to do because i mean complaining oh well

00:35:42.080 if you actually break it down and granular it to constituency level well reform goes down and

00:35:48.080 the lib dems go up yeah everyone on everyone in british politics is aware of this because the

00:35:55.480 lib dems are famous for their ground game and their ground game specifically targets those

00:36:01.720 majority white majority english middle class well-to-do areas because they know that's who

00:36:06.740 they're appealing to they know their constituency and that's why the southwest is very heavily

00:36:11.840 lib dem and they've got like what is it 60 mps or 80 mps at the moment on the so they know they

00:36:18.080 no no no we're not going to go canvas in the northeast of england yes right we're not going

00:36:23.300 to canvas in bradford right we're not going to canvas because people there don't have big gardens

00:36:28.060 so what's the point exactly exactly we know who our constituents even 20 years ago simply taking

00:36:35.680 the raw data from the national averages and working out the lib dem support would have been

00:36:39.400 a nonsense because they have always been a localized party yes and so you know all the

00:36:43.900 lib dems are on 12 yes i'm sure in north wales the lib dems are only getting or probably not even

00:36:50.480 getting 12 but that's why you don't want to just apply the national statistic yes to the entire

00:36:57.360 country and go well i guess you know the lip dems aren't getting any seats now then no they're

00:37:01.420 going to get about 80 seats but this is all so utterly elementary there's no way that somebody

00:37:08.000 like nigel fraud can spend a lifetime in politics and not know everything that we're saying you 0.99

00:37:12.740 would think yeah well i'm sure he does i think he i think he understands it i just think he's

00:37:17.380 scrambling for narrative i think that's exactly the problem and so but the but the problem as

00:37:23.840 chris curtis pointed out is that look if you're scrambling for narrative you're supposed to be

00:37:28.700 setting that as the party leader not and this is why we're sick of the tories and their red meat

00:37:35.360 you you can accuse nigel farage of many things but being a leader is most certainly not one of

00:37:41.200 being ahead of the curve is not it that's correct yeah normally he spends all day long trying to

00:37:45.760 find people to fire because they're one inch to the right of him because they were a day ahead

00:37:50.120 of him until he eventually ends up adopting that position or the store take it first and then he

00:37:55.620 has to steal it yeah guy's not a leader which is exactly his problem and that's exactly why he's

00:38:02.020 lashing out now because i mean really nigel farah should be just coming out with some hardline 0.93

00:38:06.820 right-wing policies that's what you should be coming out look you know who your constituency

00:38:10.240 is your constituency is the white working class who feel insecure because of immigration right 0.99

00:38:16.780 so you should be coming up with hard anti-immigration statements if you want to go up in those polls 0.98

00:38:20.900 that's what you need to do you also need to make sure you don't look like a goddamn tory now that's 0.97

00:38:25.520 going to be really difficult it's gonna be really really difficult now you've crammed your party 0.92

00:38:30.040 literally as we went through the wikipedia page the other day yes with like a hundred tories that's

00:38:34.660 gonna be really tough a really tough sell now you've made your choice you may have locked yourself

00:38:38.880 on rails that are going forward you've got to think about that right you've got to think about

00:38:43.200 And as we talked about before, there is a gulf between what reform voters think that reform we're offering and what Nigel Farage is actually offering.

00:38:54.020 If he wants to work out what to do, what he should do is get some focus group of reform voters and say to them, what do you think reform are going to do?

00:39:01.380 imagine the whole schism with the online right yeah is that we do actually pay attention to

00:39:10.680 what he says he's going to do and we can see the gap and we pay attention to what he doesn't

00:39:14.800 actually do when he stands up and says i'm going to conduct a private rape gang inquiry and doesn't

00:39:19.140 do it and then rupert lowe does it whereas the reason why he's still on whatever it is 25

00:39:23.920 is because most guys who are planning to vote for reform they get up early in the morning they go

00:39:30.360 to work they work hard they come home they've got a few hours sit with a wife watch the tv have

00:39:34.760 dinner and then they go to bed they don't they're not like us they don't have time to watch this

00:39:39.800 stuff so they don't realize that there's this massive gap between expectations and the actual

00:39:45.020 reform that's why the online riot have split from him because we're just seeing it yes everyone

00:39:50.880 thinks reform is going to be a nativist party yeah it's not a nativist party and so what now

00:39:56.440 Nigel Farage needs to think about what his voters are abandoning him from.

00:40:02.080 I mean, there's real danger that he's going to go into the next election.

00:40:04.640 I know he said that at the next election,

00:40:07.840 Robert Jenrick is going to be to the right of me.

00:40:09.760 There's real danger that Shabana Mahmood is going to be to the right of him

00:40:12.640 at the next election.

00:40:14.780 I mean, she seems more hardline.

00:40:16.920 Yes.

00:40:17.460 Her rhetoric on immigration has been harder than his.

00:40:21.160 Yeah.

00:40:21.720 So, and I believe it as well.

00:40:24.160 i believe shabana mamut because we'll get we'll get into that in a bit because we've got some more

00:40:28.960 because we'll talk about labor for a little bit as well just because we haven't mentioned labor

00:40:32.500 in a while and they are the government so it's probably worth bringing we forget but yes yeah

00:40:37.200 um anyway so the the point being nigel farage is failing to actually engage with the voters 0.95

00:40:42.600 by attacking the pollsters he is essentially saying someone pull wool over my eyes i don't

00:40:50.420 want to be properly informed or i don't want the public to be properly informed about what the

00:40:54.280 state of play actually is yes okay nice you need that so you can turn the ship around saying no

00:41:00.680 i'm sick of this spyglass that's showing me an iceberg in the distance is not sufficient but

00:41:05.980 then you know i guess this would be advice if i wanted him to win uh which i don't particularly

00:41:10.280 um anyway so this disconnect also exists in the labor party oh there was this as well i feel to

00:41:18.080 bring this up um this disconnect also exists in the labor party right so this is a pollster uh

00:41:24.940 called james i can't pronounce that um who has pointed out that actually um 50 of people are

00:41:31.200 changing their vote in every election now because we have had so many rapid elections in quick

00:41:36.860 succession in the last decade i think from like 2017 to now we've had like four elections it's a

00:41:43.560 lot right we've had a bunch of different prime ministers that we didn't necessarily elect

00:41:47.460 and so now the the system's up in the air and it's all changed and 50 percent of the public like

00:41:52.380 i don't know who i'm gonna well and also the i mean it's not just the elections that are coming

00:41:56.860 for us the betrayals are coming faster now as well because i mean the establishment has decided

00:42:02.220 yeah we're not even gonna we're not even gonna slow roll it anymore we are just gonna bundle as

00:42:06.880 many people in as we possibly can as fast as we can so there's there's not even the illusion

00:42:12.300 of oh oh how surprising all these people turned up it's just it's just a absolute gunning it

00:42:20.280 we'll get to that in a minute as well um so this this reinforces the it is not the country it used

00:42:26.920 to be right as in it used to be that you knew like we're getting with the the universal um polling

00:42:34.160 you knew a labor i mean there are constituencies in this country that have gone green and

00:42:39.720 conservative under boris and green and now i get a lot of them will go reform and that have always

00:42:46.120 been labor since the creation of the constituency this has always been gordon and denton was one

00:42:51.320 of them and now it's gone green so not only have the conservatives failed to make any gains there

00:42:55.700 the labor party have lost something that they never thought they'd lose i mean they call it

00:42:59.600 the red wall or whatever because they they thought it was essentially unbreakable and and and we're

00:43:04.300 not like america when you say since the constituency is formed a lot of them are formed in the 1870s

00:43:09.020 yeah i mean literally a hundred plus years yes so these like these like since the advent of

00:43:15.540 democracy in this country this constituency has voted for the labor party or something that you

00:43:22.100 know prior to that that was on the same page but now half the people in the country are just like

00:43:27.160 i might vote for this so everything's to play for actually if you're a new party everything's to

00:43:31.680 play for and that's why honestly you can't like you know obviously i don't agree with greens on

00:43:35.780 anything but you can't fault the energy with which they're campaigning right what is working

00:43:41.340 exactly it's working for them and they're not they're they're one of the least clownish parties

00:43:47.880 in politics actually right you've got hannah the plumber and the muslims she does dress like a 1.00

00:43:52.920 child she does dress like a child's entertainer she is dancing around at the by-election 0.99

00:43:56.920 okay but you know they're all clowns is it ed davy is it you know nigel frange he is more clownish 0.98

00:44:04.880 i'll give you that carnival show you know like anyway you know in a in a sea of clowns you know 0.97

00:44:11.040 the greens zach polanski himself is one of the least clownish if you see zach polanski he's got 0.99

00:44:18.100 his rhetoric and you'd agree that or disagree with it but he's dressed like a normal person

00:44:22.520 and he's just sat there this is what the greens will do this is what the greens will do right 0.94

00:44:26.140 every time i watch anything from the greens i think two thoughts one that's ridiculous and

00:44:30.200 won't work yeah and two you've messaged that quite well exactly yeah right he he's he's good at his

00:44:36.720 we need the right needs an answer to the green approach because it works yeah and the right

00:44:42.680 well i think they have someone now who's got that sort of approach but yes anyway so the the labor

00:44:48.640 party are having a massive crisis at the moment where they scramble for narrative too uh this

00:44:55.120 happened today where angela rayner came out and was like yes by the way labor's immigration reforms 0.93

00:45:00.700 risk being un-british which is just a remarkable thought on the face of it so so letting in less

00:45:09.380 immigration is un-british would be un-british extending indefinite leave to remain is that 0.88

00:45:14.880 that's some mirror universe shit right there yeah but it shows you why so many people have defected 0.54

00:45:21.040 to the greens because they're the ones who all agree and angela rayner is in the sort of soft 0.96

00:45:25.560 left space that's kind of they can fill the tidal pull towards the greens because of these arguments

00:45:32.740 whereas shibana mahoud is actually on the sort of hard right of the labor party which is like no

00:45:37.840 we're going to have law and order we're going to have rules and again this is shibana mood is

00:45:43.080 pretty hard line on these things yeah and that's what this also the natural forage and every

00:45:47.620 conservative uh and the conservatives Nigel Frost took into his party um ministers want to double

00:45:53.760 the amount of time they take to migrant workers to qualify for permanent residence from five to

00:45:56.880 ten years which conservatives could have done well they just couldn't have brought them in

00:46:00.120 uh and in the case of refugees it could take 20 years and so Angela Rayner's like well that's 0.94

00:46:04.800 un-British is it you know anyway uh she also talks um about how the very survival of the

00:46:13.740 Labour Party is at stake saying that they're running out of time and this is the headline

00:46:18.160 the Telegraph went with which is not wrong I think they are running out of time actually

00:46:23.080 Andy Burnham came out to support us you can see the sort of uh the the coalition that Labour

00:46:28.260 patched together is now completely splitting apart so Angela Rayner represented well essentially

00:46:33.420 the northern working class right she's herself like a northerner Andy Burnham yes she's the

00:46:39.420 sort of person who should have been running in Gorton and Denton I mean not her personally but

00:46:42.860 like you know that kind of person you're not brilliantly educated comes authentically from

00:46:47.420 that community comes from the sort of blue labor tradition almost the sort of like you know we're

00:46:52.440 not radical screeching hysterical leftists right we're not going to sit in a lecture about trans

00:46:56.400 rights whatever we're going to agree to it all obviously yes that's not our primary concern

00:46:59.640 our primary concern is making sure that essentially capitalism doesn't gut our communities

00:47:03.420 right okay fine yeah you know that's you know we know the sort of they're the sort of people

00:47:07.700 are now switching to reform um starmer representing the managerial technocracy and the the continuation

00:47:15.620 of tony blair's labor which is wearing the labor party's a skin suit yes he has she is now in

00:47:22.900 direct challenge to him but remember that starmer blocked andy burnham so angela rayner sort of

00:47:27.540 and saved his career in the process and saved his career in the process we'll talk about starmer's

00:47:31.920 wins in a minute actually uh i mean bear in mind we had this whole conversation about labor sorry

00:47:37.040 um the greens versus reform in gorton and denton i i paid no attention that labor did not feature

00:47:44.460 and the whole conversation where andy burnham was going through is that he could win it they they

00:47:49.220 weren't what were they third or something yeah they were third and they andy burnham might well

00:47:54.380 have been able to win he's popular in manchester he's from the area yeah like he would have been

00:47:58.760 the best possible candidate but keir starmer saw him rightly as a threat because of course

00:48:03.920 Andy Burnham has been like look you're going to ruin our party and now Angela Rayner has come out

00:48:07.980 like no no you are going to ruin our party and Keir Starmer the managerial technocrat so I don't

00:48:13.520 care well yeah I mean we're three years away from the extinction of the Labour Party I mean I'm glad

00:48:19.100 his threat radar is he's fully turned on here yeah absolutely he's he's really defended himself well

00:48:24.240 and so now Angela Rayner has come out to uh attack him as well and so you've you've got the factions

00:48:29.320 breaking apart and revealing themselves as enemies and so it's like okay well what's what's and then

00:48:34.700 the question that the labour party needs to ask itself is what is this party for what the labour

00:48:40.680 party yeah what is the point of the labour party north london lawyers well no no no that's the

00:48:46.200 starmer faction right but that's not the andy burnham angela rainer faction well what do they

00:48:50.560 think then well they they're the ones who think that the you know the gordon and denton north

00:48:55.480 uh white working class they're they're the people who were offering them patronage right historically 0.65

00:49:02.380 they were the patrons of the white working class in the north yes that's the side of the party they

00:49:07.340 come from so they should be looking out for their interests when it comes to whatever the central

00:49:12.140 government is doing if you're reliant on the support of the white working class probably

00:49:16.260 best not to spend 30 years trying to eradicate them off the map and replace them well that's 0.96

00:49:20.000 that's exactly the problem they have they they brought in a massive constituency of foreigners 1.00

00:49:26.840 who seem to hate the white working class who are replacing them and raping their wives and 0.99

00:49:30.800 daughters privileged them over the white working class and are now like why have you you know why 0.99

00:49:35.400 have you abandoned us why have you abandoned us to reform and now those foreigners because their 1.00

00:49:39.500 patronage is not basically enough they're like well we're going to abandon you for the greens

00:49:43.740 and so the question now if the white working class are fleeing to reform or at least you know half of

00:49:49.280 and the muslims are going to the greens well what's the point of the labor party like reina's 0.97

00:49:55.500 faction has basically been drained out and starmer doesn't have an organic constituency out of sw1

00:50:01.660 outside of that i'm very much assuming this is a rhetorical question you don't actually want an

00:50:06.160 answer from i don't know like what's the actual answer who is the labor party i'm not gonna give

00:50:10.740 you one because i can't i can't think of one well exactly and so they're like what say in the

00:50:14.220 comments if you can think of a reason labor should exist no no that's that's literally it

00:50:18.720 what's the narrative for the labor party and keir starmer's only narrative is i'm going to save

00:50:25.380 blairism is basically what he's arguing and so unsurprisingly it's looking like uh the labor

00:50:32.260 party going to be decimated in the may elections and i mean just brutal as you can see the white 0.97

00:50:38.560 working class going to reform there but the greens getting the migrant vote this is a prediction not

00:50:43.060 a statement of evidence yet but as you can see this is just brutal like the conservatives and

00:50:48.040 dems aren't changing that much yeah the conservatives are for retirees in the southwest

00:50:52.880 southeast the lib dems are for retirees and middle class people in the southwest

00:50:57.140 but the labor party are just for nobody so labor they're starting with whatever it was 2002

00:51:06.500 to 2,300 councils, and they're losing 1,700 of them.

00:51:12.660 Remember, last year they lost a bunch too.

00:51:15.940 So the elections are staggered across the country.

00:51:17.780 But the scale of that loss, you could fight a medieval battle

00:51:21.180 and have fewer losses, even if you lost.

00:51:24.000 Oh, you definitely would.

00:51:25.240 Yeah.

00:51:25.540 You definitely would.

00:51:26.280 You'd lose like 30 or 40% of your army if you lost a battle.

00:51:29.360 That is...

00:51:30.500 That's a crushing defeat.

00:51:32.120 The Romans lost something similar to that

00:51:34.760 when Hannibal defeated the McCanné.

00:51:36.500 right it was genuinely like they they fielded uh something like 90 000 men 86 000 men and

00:51:43.580 hannibal killed or captured somewhere in the region of 50 to 60 000 of them i mean that would

00:51:49.500 still be a good outcome for labor yeah that would be better than this out yes that's correct this is

00:51:54.120 this would be a worse defeat than the romans at cannae i mean it's it's a terrible shame this

00:51:59.320 has happened to labor i and the conservatives as well but it's i just kind of wish they didn't

00:52:04.500 need to destroy our country yeah in order to get the comeuppance so they deserve i've got no yeah

00:52:09.260 exactly i'm i'm terribly sympathetic frankly um so the the question is literally like i said who

00:52:15.760 is labor for and the answer seems to be the rich yes i we covered this i can absolutely believe

00:52:22.260 that well as you can see um for the comfortably well off and most voting for labor so it's the

00:52:30.520 rich people who are benefiting from the system the people who are getting like i mean one of the

00:52:35.080 complaints that's constantly being leveled is uh in fact was it natural for us who said this the

00:52:39.240 other day saying like well you've got in the quangos uh there are something like 2000 i was

00:52:45.200 jenric who said this in the press conference the other day there are more than 2000 people in

00:52:49.100 quangos earning more than 100 grand a year it's like yeah and they're voting labor they know how

00:52:54.660 their bread is buttered and so like they're just about coping look at the other side financially

00:53:00.040 precarious just about coping and financially stable instantly reform right i remember when

00:53:05.920 i was living in london um earlier on and this was i think this is when ukip was still a thing

00:53:11.180 i think it was ukip i was doing this for i was doing some door knocking in election time

00:53:15.020 and i was able to work out fairly quickly i could look at a house and see straight away who they're

00:53:20.840 going to voting for if it was a smaller house a bit run down ukip if it was a bigger house with

00:53:27.060 a bmw in the driveway every time i knew it was going to be labor and i'd knock on the door and

00:53:32.440 and i started getting so curious i would i would try and strike up a conversation with them

00:53:36.380 every single time it was it was a uh top end civil servant um you know nhs executive it was

00:53:44.320 stuff like that all the people who got money in this country who are not labor half of them have

00:53:50.860 already left the country they fled already so the comfortably well off in this country are

00:53:55.200 the senior party they're the apparatchiks yep they're the people who know the system is working

00:54:01.000 for me which is why i'm comfortably well off because if you didn't need the system to work

00:54:05.380 for you and made yourself comfortably well off why have you stayed yes and everyone else even

00:54:10.760 the financially stable like god i need the system to change because even the financially stable like

00:54:16.960 okay but look at my bills look at look at the immigration look at all of these things look at

00:54:21.280 the prices of houses my god something needs changing even though i might be doing well now

00:54:25.080 i can look down the line yep and be like oh god this is going to get worse and of course if you're

00:54:30.480 you know precarious you're like i just wish i had a country that worked for me that prioritized me

00:54:35.820 in some way right so this is who the labor party seems to be for uh and i thought we'd finish on

00:54:43.520 just something mildly humorous actually um which is weird that starman's been racking up a bunch

00:54:49.460 wins recently recently yes yes he he has it's funny i don't like talking about it because you

00:54:56.240 know obviously i want him to fail in every way that a man can fail obviously but yeah but he has

00:55:01.700 i mean the the iran stuff was the the most interesting thing because i honestly thought

00:55:07.580 he would just be a complete party man on this and and he looked at it straight in where he was like

00:55:12.240 well how are you possibly going to win this what's your object no yeah why would we get involved in

00:55:17.940 that and he he eventually has sent hms dragon oh it won't work it won't work it'll be one ship

00:55:23.700 probably probably sink by the time he gets there probably i mean we are just not in a position

00:55:28.340 to to fight a long-range war um and so this this no and this is one of those takes and one of those

00:55:36.120 decisions that's going to age better as time goes on yeah right almost certainly absolutely but the

00:55:42.380 next one is net migration actually um no the the labor left can stamp their feet all they want

00:55:48.560 but starmer has actually brought that down very significantly from the tories so he has a trump

00:55:56.220 card over not just the conservatives but the conservatives in nigel farage's party who are

00:56:02.240 part of the government that made the boris wave happen excellent point he has a trump card over

00:56:06.820 not saying you were there you were the administrator immigration minister thank goodness he is so

00:56:12.120 completely soulless and devoid of any sort of sense of human normality because if he had even

00:56:18.120 a glimmer of that what he could make of his successes yeah if he had the hint of personality

00:56:25.320 but no for him it is all process and the and the and the rules and following the procedures

00:56:31.820 so he doesn't get any benefit but yeah i mean he is outperforming most of nigel farage's shadow 0.79

00:56:38.460 cabinet yes i mean honestly if you were to choose between what jemrick did in his time and that was

00:56:45.680 about yes there that was a bit going up yeah that was a bit going up yeah and kia starmer is a bit

00:56:51.180 going down which is like literally this bit here well you'd have to choose kia starmer just on the

00:56:56.620 numbers now this isn't great either right just to be clear um net immigration going to 200,000

00:57:03.680 sounds good but only when you've been at 1.3 million exactly and especially as the the gross

00:57:11.000 immigration is 850,000 it's just you get about 400,000 uh foreigners leaving every year and

00:57:17.980 250,000 british people leaving so the churn is dreadful this you know this isn't immigration 1.00

00:57:25.760 has been solved or anything like that but what we're talking about is in the realm of arguing

00:57:30.180 in the commons well keir starmer has got a trump card that he can just slap down on the table

00:57:34.300 yeah doesn't use it though yeah well sometimes he does actually he can be quite aggressive in

00:57:38.160 the comments actually um so sometimes he does and he'll say i'm not gonna listen to you shut up 0.67

00:57:42.280 uh to jenric or whoever challenged him right he can just slap them with these things and he does

00:57:47.800 so this is another starmer win unfortunately you know i'm not unfortunately obviously i'm glad that

00:57:53.020 fewer people are coming in but i'll give you that let's keep it quiet though

00:57:55.640 yeah don't tell anyone the next one is uh mauritius weirdly enough and the chagos islands deals now

00:58:01.740 how is that a win yeah that's a great question how is that a win right now i i don't think that

00:58:06.760 star was playing 40 chess right and if he was playing 40 chess why did he choose mauritius

00:58:11.820 as the enemy right because there's there's a really great question of why are you just paying

00:58:17.620 them to take the chagos islands like what was all this well you know in 2014 there was uh an opinion

00:58:23.900 given in some international court

00:58:26.140 that it would be nice

00:58:26.940 if Mauritius had the Chagos. 0.91

00:58:28.200 I found a rule.

00:58:29.580 Yeah, it wasn't even rules.

00:58:31.460 It was an advisory judgment

00:58:32.800 or something like that, right?

00:58:34.560 And so he's just dived in with both feet.

00:58:37.320 Okay.

00:58:37.780 But the thing is,

00:58:38.500 he seems to have destroyed

00:58:39.660 the Mauritian government

00:58:40.600 because they expected...

00:58:45.060 Oh, this is in this Bloomberg article, right?

00:58:46.720 They expected 10 billion rupees

00:58:49.920 of extra spending.

00:58:51.440 And they went out and spent it

00:58:52.480 before they got it.

00:58:53.440 It's in the budget.

00:58:54.880 And then Trump was like, no, no, no, we're not doing that.

00:58:56.960 Oh, brilliant.

00:58:57.860 And so, without doing anything,

00:59:00.920 Keir Starmer has sunk the government of Mauritius.

00:59:03.540 Now, I don't know why.

00:59:05.380 That is brilliant.

00:59:06.440 Are we playing some devilish 4D chess grandmaster game

00:59:11.280 against Mauritius?

00:59:12.060 Probably not.

00:59:13.360 I mean, I suppose there's the pure joy of messing with the Mauritians, 1.00

00:59:16.820 but there probably wasn't that.

00:59:18.900 If they were the French, then fair enough. 0.99

00:59:21.260 but uh we so so we we came along and said look we are definitely definitely going to give you

00:59:26.740 10 billion gibs yes and they were like brilliant let's spend it yes and now trump comes along and

00:59:34.320 says no you're not giving them gibs and their their government is collapsing because they 1.00

00:59:40.780 haven't got the gibs i mean there's a lesson here isn't there there is a lesson here with our own

00:59:46.980 internal gibbs community but we might want to learn at some point there is uh anyway just you

00:59:54.500 know small thing and that's and these these little wins are not including him basically

00:59:59.100 keeping control of his own party like he's got an iron fist over his party oh yes he's got control

01:00:03.800 of the internals he managed to kill he's about as close to starlin as you're allowed to be in 2026

01:00:08.560 yeah yeah like again you know like him or lump him he's managed to do these things uh and so the uh

01:00:16.000 The next thing is his approval rating, which is, of course, as bad as you know, but it's actually slightly up.

01:00:20.960 It was 15% recently, and it's gone to 18% with his disapproval at 73%.

01:00:27.020 So, I mean, you know, like you say, he's not good at messaging, really.

01:00:31.520 But another strange win is that people actually view him as the most capable person in the country to be the prime minister.

01:00:38.180 Now, it's not by much.

01:00:39.360 when you when you phrase it like that and and the alternative is kemi badenock and rindrell farage

01:00:48.300 i can see how they've got to that conclusion and also just think about like kemi badenock does

01:00:55.060 the same sort of political stunts like so the way the way things work you've got the green party who 0.96

01:01:00.020 do their stupid political stunts but they let the activists do that right you know hannah from 0.99

01:01:04.340 gorton and denton although they they're the clowns but zach polanski presents himself 1.00

01:01:08.340 as if he's living in the 1970s but that's fine right and then you've got the uh reform party 0.99

01:01:14.840 which is the butland's holiday party doing these stupid big stunts and then you have kimmy badenox 1.00

01:01:20.620 conservatives who follow everyone else's stupid stunt with a crappier stunt of their own and then 0.99

01:01:27.780 you've got Keir Starmer who's the only person not doing stunts he's the only person in the circus 0.98

01:01:35.680 who isn't dressed like a clown i mean if if you're not prompting for Nigel Farad uh sorry

01:01:40.880 for Rupert Lowe yeah i can understand how they got to this i mean Rupert Lowe's only been in the

01:01:48.960 game of party leadership for a month so let's give him a break on that yeah but Keir Starmer

01:01:53.500 he's not he's the only one not doing stunts he's the only one not messing around what odds would

01:01:58.480 you have to see to put a tenner on nigel uh on keir starmer winning the next election 0.88

01:02:03.460 i i don't know but i think his coalition is too broken yeah i don't think he pulled together a

01:02:11.400 coalition i think i think it is i've been saying i think this is the last labor government um

01:02:15.240 ever right but um and so i think the coalition's gone i think the minority still what you what

01:02:19.960 what you're painting a picture here clearly is we've got every party is a

01:02:26.620 uncoherent mess british politics is just a shambles absolutely so there is all to play for

01:02:35.760 right and if keir starmer is thought of by the public as the best man the most capable prime

01:02:40.980 minister yeah well i mean i guess it's a good thing he's in charge then isn't it you know but

01:02:45.600 But it goes to show you that the kind of spectacle politics

01:02:49.960 that everyone else is engaging in isn't cutting through.

01:02:53.200 It's not cutting through.

01:02:54.860 People are not after spectacle politics.

01:02:56.940 Otherwise, I mean, how Nigel Farage is below Keir Starmer.

01:02:59.760 It's always easier to be in opposition.

01:03:01.640 If Nigel Farage was just coming out sort of grim face saying,

01:03:04.160 listen, folks, this is what's happened.

01:03:06.180 I'm not happy about it.

01:03:07.000 This is what we're going to do to fix it.

01:03:08.420 Just wait until the next election.

01:03:09.600 Trust me on this.

01:03:10.360 We're going to get this done.

01:03:11.820 Why would he not be ahead of Keir Starmer,

01:03:13.620 the most hated man in the world?

01:03:15.600 yeah just literally everyone hates keir starmer and yet still they're like yeah he'd probably be

01:03:20.800 more confident i mean at some point nigel frog is going to have to do substance but he's just

01:03:25.660 allergic to it i don't know why i i just think he's made his bed now and he's gonna lie in it

01:03:29.920 but um but anyway so yeah basically everyone is scrambling for a narrative as you said earlier

01:03:35.320 all right there are no good narratives for any of the parties that are currently occupying the

01:03:40.720 middle the like the main area in politics um nigel farage doesn't know who he's trying to serve and 0.60

01:03:47.660 failed on that in the gordon and dent and the labor party has had an internal collapse and

01:03:51.780 isn't really a coalition party for anyone and the wins that it does have it doesn't like to talk

01:03:55.980 about exactly it's ashamed of talking about actually uh and so the ground is as fertile

01:04:02.060 as it's ever been and uh as you said rupert lowe is um on the up so

01:04:07.480 Thank you.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - March 18, 2026

The Scramble for Narrative

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