The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Uniparty Strikes Back!

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

00:00:04.120 going to be talking about how the radical moment looks like it might be over. Looks

00:00:08.640 like the Uniparty is striking back. And this is a concern.

00:00:13.800 It sounds very concerning to me.

00:00:15.200 Yeah, exactly. This is terrifying.

00:00:16.480 The thing I enjoyed about politics over the last 18 months was that it was...

00:00:20.120 It looked like it was changing.

00:00:21.420 So it used to be, with politics, that whoever got a polling number beginning with a 4, as

00:00:27.900 and forty percent something was going to win the election i mean very occasionally in the past you

00:00:33.320 might even have two parties that got a bit close to the to a number beginning before and the liberal

00:00:37.940 democrats and the rest of them would take the rest but but these days what has changed is it

00:00:43.520 used to be political you voted for the political party that you because you feared the other one

00:00:49.060 more and and now people are voting for the political party that they dislike the least

00:00:54.200 that they've reordered their their prioritization yeah so let's let's talk about the arc that has

00:01:02.900 happened so on the uh 3rd of june 2024 nigel farage became the leader of reform yeah so here

00:01:13.320 just it was picking up and he obviously did help catapult it to its record levels were about 31

00:01:22.940 percent there we go there's about 39 right now something similar happened with zach polanski

00:01:27.580 and the greens so zach polanski became the leader of the greens on the 2nd of september 2025 wherever

00:01:33.820 i find that around here and you can see the greens had a very similar arc going up and now that has

00:01:45.900 also petered down to basically where they were before on about 9 or 10 percent so the the radical

00:01:53.820 moment seems to be over farage's is taking longer but the same arc seems to be in progress i can see

00:02:01.900 the sense for the greens because the greens were a party that in in old world politics you just

00:02:07.020 forgot about they i mean they used to be about saving the pandas or whatever whatever the hell 0.97

00:02:11.420 it was that they were about and sort of middle class women who like to make jam at the weekend 0.83

00:02:15.900 could could vote for it safe in the knowledge that no one would look down on doing so and 0.99

00:02:20.300 you get a new leader because they had that was it carol denvers maybe or am i am i getting those

00:02:25.500 mixed up um yeah some woman yeah i call her bob yes and she reminds me of bob from blackadder yes

00:02:32.700 um but you get a new leader and it gives all the all the media a reason to talk about you and a

00:02:39.100 a reason to get you on and then zane polenski was very good yes at getting attention um the the the

00:02:46.280 issue uh is that um i think i i've got a funny feeling uh just before we go on actually so this

00:02:55.840 hasn't been updated for more than two weeks now so this is the same graph that we had last week

00:02:59.920 um so we'll go through a few um more immediate polls that have come out although i can't show

00:03:05.920 the average of polls uh but some of the polls are indicative of things so we'll look i mean

00:03:12.220 i've got to say though there's a part of me that thinks these polls are you know classically

00:03:17.120 designed to lead the electorate rather than measure the electorate well you can tell because

00:03:23.260 every time the polling is about something that they really care about although it's brexit i

00:03:28.200 mean or or trump yeah and anything like that the polls suddenly uh convey exactly the message that

00:03:34.500 powers to be once yeah we we can very much see that um i can't remember what i was saying there

00:03:41.140 so let's just let's just carry on right so this is the latest yougov poll and oh what an awful poll

00:03:47.880 labor in front conservatives in second reform in third now just to be clear there's not much in it

00:03:54.580 right there's a point or two in it between all three that's very very disappointing so this this

00:04:01.020 comes hot on the heels of the conservative party conference about conference season has just passed

00:04:04.580 uh and kemi badenok um essentially declared herself against the right yeah i mean every

00:04:11.460 everybody is is like they are like could we have a political force in this country that is against

00:04:16.040 the left it's like no everybody is just lined up to attack the person on their right yes that is

00:04:20.720 that is literally the all of british politics the only people who don't punch right as is restore

00:04:26.940 that's because there is nobody on their right that's correct so yeah um so not great right

00:04:33.120 but one thing you notice is the uniparty is only 47 percent even with this chemi bounce right so

00:04:40.440 chemi bay not for anyone who wasn't paying attention said i will never do a deal with

00:04:43.740 reform they are debating whether my scottish nigerian children are even english i'm going to

00:04:51.620 i'm going to completely commit to the left-wing view of the country in the world i mean i often

00:04:58.580 find myself with fewer taxes yeah i often find myself asking are my children peruvian well do

00:05:04.140 they have any peruvian heritage no sweller braveman is even debating whether my children are french

00:05:10.020 they're not from france they've never been to france they've got no friends nobody in the family

00:05:14.260 line is from france yeah nobody yeah but you know we've got to ask the question exactly uh anyway

00:05:19.140 so can we be not and that was the one thing that came out of can we be not big speech because the

00:05:22.620 rest of it was just stock conservatism how oh we wish margaret thatch was still here blah blah blah

00:05:27.440 right so boring um completely uninteresting andy burnham has brought the labor party into the lead

00:05:33.380 but not by much and this probably will change come the budget so yeah oh yeah that'll be fun

00:05:39.780 is it later this month or beginning of next month we get the budget um they've already said well

00:05:44.480 we think we've got a 35 billion pound black hole which is a lot bigger than rachel reeves is 22

00:05:50.500 billion and also they've raised quite a few billions of tax they raised 44 yeah so somehow

00:05:56.080 this hole keeps getting bigger the more time they're in you see the weirdly the description

00:06:01.540 of it being a black hole is surprisingly accurate well yes it can't be filled right you pour things

00:06:07.500 into it and they disappear forever oh look the black hole is getting bigger okay you don't fill

00:06:14.060 upper black hole yes so yeah now it's not 22 billion it's 35 billion but in fact it's actually

00:06:20.000 170 billion because we're 135 billion in the hole anyway at the moment for borrowing every year and

00:06:25.800 they're like okay we need an extra 35 billion so okay so we're coming on 200 million we're gonna

00:06:30.140 have to borrow a billion sorry 200 billion we're gonna have to borrow i watched a video of yours

00:06:34.400 the other day i i didn't realize you could get a free car for having dyslexia and tennis elbow

00:06:39.640 an adhd why can't i have a free car then you you didn't apply that's literally all that's stopping

00:06:44.520 it i'm maybe i need to do that after this episode maybe you do because it's literally what the

00:06:50.620 government is offering yeah if you've got tennis elbow or adhd or a dyslexia or something silly

00:06:56.660 like that like something something very minor that is uh an inconvenience you know it's it's

00:07:03.260 not what i would classify as a disability no you can still get a free car um i just always assumed

00:07:08.160 i just had to work a little bit harder and use the spell check well that yeah that's it didn't

00:07:12.940 occur to me that the correct solution was getting a free car that somebody else paid for

00:07:17.140 god i hate the welfare state so much anyway so um as you can see the the the sort of the mainstream

00:07:27.440 blairite position is about 47 of the country uh the lib dems are a bit of a special carve-off and

00:07:33.960 the greens are really far to the left so that the greens probably are the sort of hardcore lefties

00:07:41.620 in the country that 11 percent interesting that you've chosen not to include the lib dems

00:07:46.520 in the uni party yeah so i was i was watching a video uh yesterday um at from the lib dem

00:07:55.220 conference uh we'll get into the lib dems a bit more right where the it was a counselor from

00:08:01.000 Liverpool a Lib Dem councillor from Liverpool called Carl something Carl Cashman I think his

00:08:05.760 name was and he's saying yeah the Lib Dems are a really schizophrenic party they don't people

00:08:09.720 don't realize how big a tent it is we've got people who are very on the left and then we've

00:08:13.640 got people who are very on the right it's like yes and you're both united in your desire to

00:08:18.860 preserve your large houses in ethnically English England right we know right we know you're not

00:08:24.660 like you can't just say the Lib Dems are a left-wing party it's not that they're just a

00:08:28.760 left-wing party no i mean ed davie's latest pledge was cut taxes it's like the same as thatcher the

00:08:35.560 same as nigel farage yeah but i i think i think of the absolute peak of the uniparty being and

00:08:41.080 younger viewers might not remember but i'm sure all older viewers will there was a before an

00:08:47.140 election maybe 2010 you had on stage gordon brown you had david cameron and nick clegg yeah and the

00:08:53.520 whole debate because we for whatever reason we decided to start doing american style political

00:08:58.340 debates the whole debate was basically gordon brown and david cameron saying i agree with nick

00:09:02.640 yes and and all politics since then has been trying desperately to get back to that moment

00:09:08.760 where you've got three people on stage who just agree on absolutely everything and then you're

00:09:14.420 invited to pick which party you want to vote for what color do you prefer yes that's what it comes

00:09:19.420 down to but i mean you you could you could include the lib dems and the union party putting them up

00:09:24.660 to 59 percent which is bad but pressing uh yeah i i don't really feel the lib dems are like um

00:09:32.260 a strongly principled party uh or a party of power because i don't even i mean obviously

00:09:39.140 just to be clear right on the on the on the radio this morning nick ferrari was asking his audience

00:09:44.300 what what is the point of the lib dems why do they exist i could have rung in and given him

00:09:48.580 a good explanation but he was just i just don't know and people ring up saying we don't know but

00:09:52.740 sorry um god knows okay well it'll come to me in a minute yeah uh so the the state of play is that

00:10:01.400 the the the empire is striking back the labor and the conservative party have somehow regained

00:10:07.960 some momentum now just to be clear there's not a lot of momentum right and this is just one poll

00:10:13.820 although you gov are among the better pollsters so give them their credit um not great for reform

00:10:20.400 And obviously not great for a store either.

00:10:21.740 We're down to 2% there, apparently.

00:10:23.180 But again, 1% or 2%.

00:10:24.600 Oh, I know what I was going to say.

00:10:25.820 I was going to say, because I know people who vote green are a bit weird.

00:10:31.000 And they obviously don't shower that much and all that kind of stuff.

00:10:33.800 But I don't inherently object to people doing that.

00:10:37.520 Because doing the same thing over and over and wondering why the country is going down the drain,

00:10:42.640 I mean, that's what you're getting with the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems.

00:10:45.440 Yes.

00:10:46.200 So even though I think they're deeply wrong, at least they're trying something.

00:10:50.000 I mean, this T-1000 element that the Uniparty have,

00:10:56.320 just no matter how many times you shatter it,

00:10:57.920 it just reforms and comes after you again.

00:11:00.280 So I have a theory about this.

00:11:02.140 I think people were very frustrated with how things were in 2024

00:11:07.860 when Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, right?

00:11:10.080 Because Keir Starmer obviously didn't care about anything other than the system.

00:11:14.440 his clique of london lawyers uh were not charming personal or competent actually for his personality

00:11:22.800 black hole is a good analogy yes um and i think that people wanted radical alternatives just

00:11:30.460 because it seemed like there was no end in sight keir starmer didn't look like he was going anywhere

00:11:34.640 i think that keir starmer was the greatest recruiter for reform and uh the greens that

00:11:41.000 could have been and it seems that the rise of andy burnham also coincides with the drop of the

00:11:46.780 radicals he's going to do all the same things as starmer but he's going to pretend to be apologetic

00:11:50.340 about it exactly where starmer was like i enjoy doing this to you yes yeah i i said this in a

00:11:56.180 video the day i actually kind of missed starmer because at least he was prepared to be the villain

00:12:00.120 andy burnham is going to have to do as you say all the same things but he doesn't want to be the

00:12:05.460 he might play the guitar on a couple of clips exactly he might he might eat some crisps uh and

00:12:10.400 have a pie or something um the point being i think i think the public is actually looking for a bit

00:12:16.020 of stability and i think they're looking for a bit of certainty now that stability and certainty

00:12:20.620 will be more of the same and if you weren't happy with what more of the same brought us to

00:12:26.320 not sure voting labor and conservative is going to fix any of the problems so on the plus side

00:12:33.820 there is an there is a silver lining to this which is everything will carry on getting worse

00:12:39.920 in exactly the same way it already has.

00:12:41.680 In a predictable way, and people like that.

00:12:43.700 Exactly.

00:12:45.060 So this is what it looks like modelled out.

00:12:47.720 Reform down to 83 seats.

00:12:49.300 Conservatives on 190 seats.

00:12:50.840 Labour on 237 seats, which of course is not a majority.

00:12:54.300 Even if Labour, Lib Dems, and the Greens get together,

00:12:57.800 that is not a government.

00:12:59.460 So you have to basically collate every left-wing vote.

00:13:04.160 But, and this is the thing nobody really wants to talk about,

00:13:07.500 there's very little light between Labour and the Conservatives.

00:13:09.920 this point yeah i mean one wants lower i mean there is the tax thing yeah one says that they

00:13:18.320 want lower taxes one says that they want higher taxes although the one that says that they want

00:13:23.120 higher taxes i i'm sure the treasury is sitting them down regularly and saying if you raise taxes

00:13:27.600 any higher you're going to collect less revenues because people just yeah it's just not working

00:13:31.360 and and tories of course they don't actually deliver higher lower taxes whatever they want

00:13:36.240 Yeah. I mean, my whole life, the Tories have campaigned from the right, governed from the left.

00:13:40.900 Yes.

00:13:42.640 Highest tax burden since the war.

00:13:44.740 So apart from a little bit of rhetoric, yeah, what is the difference between the Labour and Conservatives?

00:13:51.520 Not a huge amount. I'm not suggesting they are going to go to a coalition with one another.

00:13:57.060 Those two would be the logical choice.

00:13:58.960 But it's not off the table, especially as a coalition can't be formed any other way.

00:14:03.560 And obviously the Conservatives and Reform

00:14:05.020 wouldn't have enough seats to form a government either.

00:14:07.420 If they did form a coalition,

00:14:09.600 the people on the left of the Conservative Party,

00:14:11.720 like the Alicia Keens and whatever,

00:14:13.860 they would not be...

00:14:15.720 If they merged as a party,

00:14:17.160 they wouldn't be the most right-wing person on the Labour side.

00:14:20.560 They would still be to the left of people in Labour.

00:14:24.080 Correct.

00:14:25.920 And it would be a really nice way of demonstrating,

00:14:28.820 see, it is a uni party.

00:14:30.620 But like I said, I'm not saying that's going to happen.

00:14:32.380 I don't think that will happen.

00:14:33.760 Who knows, basically, is the answer.

00:14:36.240 Because, again, we're in quite fractious times

00:14:38.360 and it's difficult to try and make any kind of solid predictions.

00:14:41.920 There's no point.

00:14:42.860 The Lib Dems would keep their 72 seats, which is surprising.

00:14:46.080 The SMP would get 34 seats, which, again, is surprising.

00:14:50.340 The Greens, seven seats.

00:14:52.220 Plague Cymru, seven seats.

00:14:54.100 Other, the Gaza MPs, two seats. 0.58

00:14:55.940 And we'd get Great Yarmouth. 0.94

00:14:57.560 Actually, I do think that's really impressive for the Lib Dems.

00:15:00.660 i mean i know davy is coming under a lot of criticism he but but it's it's like it's like

00:15:06.460 the end of act two of a disaster movie where i don't know the storm is coming and everybody's

00:15:12.040 being thrown off their feet they got gashes and cuts all over him and he's just strolling around

00:15:16.360 with the hot dog it's like all of this political turmoil has not affected him in the slightest and

00:15:22.340 yes he hasn't grown but he hasn't lost he hasn't lost i mean that is remarkable if if if this was

00:15:28.360 a fund manager during a recession he would be heralded as some sort of genius so i don't know

00:15:33.840 why people give him so much stick yet you're asked to the water park pronto kemi anyway there's

00:15:41.120 another one that uh shows labor six points ahead of reform uh but the conservatives slightly behind

00:15:47.340 but there is a slight bounce to it so there is something to kemi's speech there is something to

00:15:52.460 to the uh the big propaganda push because i mean you've seen it all across the front pages of

00:15:58.220 the telegraph the times the daily mail uh you know oh chemi the chemi's back and the conservatives

00:16:04.460 are back and i guess two percent of the public bought it it's wonderful that we live in a country

00:16:09.280 where a substantial number of people can have their minds changed they can just instantly forget

00:16:13.840 the last 30 40 years because somebody stood up and said some words that was written for them and

00:16:18.720 then displayed on a teleprompter i mean even before this 18 of people still stuck with the

00:16:22.640 conservatives no no idea why uh anyway let's talk about the whole one and some pancreas

00:16:28.020 because these came in and of course we got um abdi wali sagal abdi wali a literal somalian

00:16:38.140 immigrant who did a little tuba walk into parliament um and uh became swore on a quran

00:16:44.760 that was held in a box because kafir are not supposed to touch it and ironically right so

00:16:51.080 she had it in a box she brought it out and she swore on it as in the the kefir didn't touch the

00:16:56.660 box uh she won by 12 292 votes zach polanski who is of course the other major challenger for

00:17:04.360 holborn and st pancras lost with 8 928 votes uh the conservative party got 1 900 uh reform

00:17:13.340 I've got 1,600.

00:17:16.120 Restore, where are we?

00:17:18.280 We're in here somewhere.

00:17:19.320 Up under the work.

00:17:20.600 Oh, yeah, there we go.

00:17:21.440 692 votes, which is what we were expecting.

00:17:24.720 There was no path to victory, basically, for the right in this constituency.

00:17:29.640 Just didn't exist.

00:17:30.760 No point even talking about vote splitting on this one.

00:17:33.360 No, no, no.

00:17:33.940 In fact, with all of them so far, all of the big by-elections lately,

00:17:37.620 the vote splitting is not in it, despite how much it gets talked about.

00:17:40.800 There have been a couple, but we'll go into those in a minute, right?

00:17:43.020 So the interesting thing here is that Zach Polanski didn't overturn the Labour Party.

00:17:46.860 And as I was saying, why vote for the guy who's ideologically pro-immigrant 0.54

00:17:51.080 when you can just vote for the immigrant themselves? 0.84

00:17:53.260 So it's immigrants voting for immigrants to give them money from the British Six-Jekker. 0.84

00:17:58.600 That's what's going to happen.

00:18:00.180 But a lot of people have been saying, right, okay, well, this has been catastrophic for Zach Polanski.

00:18:04.640 It's like, not really.

00:18:06.420 This is three times what the Greens got in the last election, in 2024.

00:18:10.920 like zach polanski massively increased their vote share sure he didn't topple the labor party in a

00:18:16.900 constituency that has only ever voted labor and that is full of migrants who are used to getting

00:18:23.220 largesse from labor sure he didn't do that but that's not a bad result by any stretch

00:18:27.260 it's not at all and i'm not sure what he could have done but i mean i suppose he could have run

00:18:30.520 somebody who isn't even an immigrant yet they're still fighting the civil war in sudan

00:18:35.640 and they just got on a zoom call and did their nomination papers that way by fax or something

00:18:42.500 but apart from that i mean i'm not sure what more he could have been expected to done yeah but the

00:18:46.360 but the mainstream discussion around this has been oh it's over for you now zach it's over for

00:18:51.640 you don't you realize it's over for you because of course they hate zach polanski um he there's

00:18:57.920 abdi wally going into parliament by the way just so brilliant if only gladstone

00:19:05.500 could see it Palmerston Richmond Wellington if only they could see this

00:19:13.500 and you're not Powell could see there you go see it's in a box you don't get

00:19:19.680 to touch it because because we are because we the rest of us the native

00:19:26.060 which is considered too dirty to touch her book fine yeah okay you you get to be an mp yeah why

00:19:32.940 not anyway zach polanski yeah you got you got absolutely grilled where is it oh okay it's not

00:19:38.740 there um he got he got absolutely grilled but it doesn't really matter because at the end of the

00:19:43.480 day they were just saying well look your green party when you were campaigning were voting to

00:19:48.160 that zionism is racism which again from the left's position is the correct answer and actually zach

00:19:56.720 polanski he kind of he said well i i wouldn't have voted for it because of the amendments to 1.00

00:20:00.720 it it's like okay but if it wasn't for the amendments you would have voted for we we know

00:20:03.760 what these people really think about that subject because we every so often we see their leaked

00:20:07.600 whatsapp yes and and and and saying that zionism is racism is an absurdly mild version of their

00:20:14.720 views yes which is why it was the public vote yes and not the extreme views that they have

00:20:20.500 but from their own perspective yes that's true but obviously what that does is invalidates every

00:20:25.840 single country on earth but then they're communist internationalists they don't believe any country

00:20:30.400 on earth is valid so you know i don't know why everyone's so shocked about it where is she from

00:20:35.260 somalia i bet if it comes to the crunch and there's a vote about is somalia a country

00:20:40.660 she will change her mind on that i imagine she would yes i imagine she would uh anyway um people

00:20:48.220 were like well hang on a second why have we got literal somalian immigrants in our parliament and

00:20:53.300 you know left-wing commentators being like what are you saying the same logic should apply to

00:20:57.400 nadim zahawi an iraqi immigrant yes obviously you got us there buddy you know anyway um so there's

00:21:05.460 Some thinking about what actually happened in Holborn and St Pancras.

00:21:09.100 Well, Salvation did a bit of polling and investigation on this.

00:21:12.520 They found that housing was a top issue for voters,

00:21:14.680 followed by cost of living, then crime and safety.

00:21:16.720 Really, crime and safety is bad in Holborn and St Pancras.

00:21:19.900 And that is a very well-policed area as well.

00:21:22.320 I bet it bloody is.

00:21:24.260 But, yeah, so these are just some of the top issues for the voters,

00:21:28.040 although other is 26%.

00:21:30.600 I mean, what's included in that? 0.79

00:21:33.500 Probably Gaza.

00:21:34.120 zach polanski himself was not unpopular in the seat but burnham was more popular by quite a long

00:21:40.420 way more than twice as much this guy wants to give me a lot of stuff this is this guy's giving

00:21:44.500 me a decent amount of stuff right now and i also kind of like andy burnham they he they

00:21:49.340 andy burnham popularity personability is a strong part of being a politician and i've said it over

00:21:56.840 and over likability is a huge factor in politics if you're likable and people will vote for you

00:22:01.940 if you're not likable they won't care miss those days yeah yeah me too um they they also think

00:22:09.860 burnham's doing a better job than starmer is and that's purely down to communication he is doing

00:22:15.420 absolutely nothing differently at all exactly not even a little bit different but burnham has been

00:22:20.760 putting out his tiktok videos well there you go look guys i'm going around here i'm doing this

00:22:25.920 nothing different yeah but he's just communicating it better it's hanging the cds in the chicken

00:22:31.920 coop so they they wobble slightly and they make a pleasing little sort of shimmer and the and the

00:22:37.160 chickens are mesmerized before before they get their head cut off and i've never heard of that

00:22:40.980 but uh yes they hang cds and chicken farms so that it just glitters slightly and that's that's

00:22:46.860 enough for them to be like oh this is good i had then they get their heads dropped off but

00:22:51.640 the problem that we have is that the electorate is based entirely on vibes

00:22:57.400 nobody knows anything about the details nobody because as you say nothing has changed

00:23:06.220 andy burnham is still following the labor manifesto yes and he has said very publicly

00:23:10.380 i'm going to follow the labor manifesto to the letter and he's obviously doing it to avoid

00:23:14.460 having to call a general election because he doesn't think he can win a general election

00:23:18.220 because it's quite clear that he can't win a general election i mean he might come out as

00:23:22.760 the largest party he might still be prime minister but it would be fractional hell yeah oh yeah oh

00:23:28.360 yeah it would and it wouldn't just be labor's factions that oh yeah you know he has to deal

00:23:33.920 with it'd be other people's factions i mean at least with the labor party you can threaten to

00:23:37.160 take away the whip what's he going to do if the green party or you know a couple of the snp just

00:23:42.400 says yeah we're not doing it unless you give us this yeah you could just kind of give them that

00:23:46.280 exactly it's just going to be a nightmare so uh andy burnham you can see is avoiding the general 0.97

00:23:51.140 election because it's just a bit of pain in his ass uh and he's carrying on to do all the things 0.93

00:23:55.400 that keir starmer said they would do in the green man in the in the labor manifesto um so uh yeah 0.99

00:24:01.040 so but but but because andy burnham's nicer and he's a better communicator people think he's doing

00:24:06.360 a good job it's okay great great um yeah everyone also expected labor to win so polanski was pushing

00:24:13.200 up hill here and of course if you think someone's going to win you're probably more likely to vote

00:24:16.500 for them just because what's the point uh and then you know they conducted a poll of uh 500 people

00:24:21.800 in the uh constituency dale vince paid for it but uh anyway so well why can't we have something like

00:24:28.300 a driving test for voting yeah that's a great question why can't we yeah we'd really it should

00:24:34.620 be something more like a pilot's test it should be that sort of level if you're going to get to

00:24:38.580 steer this country you should show competence but no no it's just like i mean they're so knock on

00:24:44.740 the door hello how long have you been here oh we got off the boat thursday okay well let's register

00:24:48.880 you to vote then off you go anyway so zach polanski now is the least favorite at least

00:24:55.800 approved of uh political leader in the country with the resignation of keir starmer that uh

00:25:03.480 pleasure goes to him because as i said right at the beginning when he had quite a positive

00:25:07.420 or a neutral reputation it's because people don't know him when they are exposed to zach polanski

00:25:14.200 and the kind of he's got a kind of like uh he's got this kind of patter where he he gives the

00:25:20.740 spiel but he avoids all of the points he avoids the difficult questions and he tries to reframe

00:25:26.700 everything into actually so everything i say is brilliant and everything you say is irrelevant

00:25:30.780 really um and what he's selling is awful what what the what zach polanski is offering the public

00:25:38.660 is genuinely abhorrent and they can tell that he's presenting them as something vaguely demonic

00:25:44.940 frankly yes and so all i i said this ages ago all that is needed with zach polanski is just

00:25:50.600 exposure to the public when they learn who he is and what he stands for they're going to be like

00:25:55.300 no and that's not even people outside the green party so so half his coalition of course islamists 0.93

00:26:01.000 you think that all his queer dancing on stage in chaps is is demonic they think that so yeah but

00:26:07.580 they they are also smart enough to be like well we just have to tolerate this yeah but my my point 0.79

00:26:12.060 is is is you're so right about what he what he's selling is demonic that even half of his own party

00:26:18.140 thinks the same yeah they're just biting their lip yeah um so anyway not great for zach polanski

00:26:24.780 to be actually kemi's doing great isn't she yeah but kemi bade knocks personal approval rating

00:26:30.700 has always outstripped the people who are prepared to vote for the conservatives but essentially

00:26:35.820 it's the same deal as this i've forgotten her name now say whatever the the one who's just

00:26:40.940 elected and hold this is it's the same deal except instead of being from somalia she's

00:26:44.620 she's from nigeria and got here a little bit earlier well i mean kenny baynock has a more 0.95

00:26:49.180 right wing aesthetic than the somalian woman well she would she likes to be compared to margaret 1.00

00:26:55.660 thatcher as opposed to i don't know some mythical version of a female car marks but but yeah

00:27:01.900 anyway so the point is for zach polanski this isn't great and you're getting uh oh here we go

00:27:08.820 he was you know he gets um interrogated uh on tv um radio four sorry um and complains no he's not

00:27:18.740 complaining but this is this is an example of his style i didn't win because i heard on so many

00:27:23.280 doorsteps that people were excited about what i was offering be it rent controls water nationalization

00:27:28.740 strong reaction on the climate crisis.

00:27:30.540 People said, we agree with you, we agree with all of these things,

00:27:33.440 but we want to give Andy Burnham a chance.

00:27:36.100 Well, Andy Burnham's got a chance. Let's see what he does with it.

00:27:38.560 Now, I pointed out in the introduction that your poll ratings have gone down

00:27:42.660 and your personal ratings have gone down substantially.

00:27:44.980 You're less popular than even Nigel Farage.

00:27:48.240 No one can deny how you've transformed the Greens.

00:27:50.480 I explained that in the introduction to this interview.

00:27:54.080 What is your reflection on what's going wrong now?

00:27:57.540 Well, my reflection is if things are going wrong by the fact that we just tripled our

00:28:01.980 vote share and had our second best by-election result in Green Party history, you know what,

00:28:07.000 I'll take that.

00:28:08.000 Now I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm not disappointed.

00:28:10.560 No politician runs in a by-election and doesn't want to win.

00:28:14.300 But at the same time to see the growth in what was supposedly a safe Labour seat since

00:28:18.580 1983 is now a marginal Labour seat.

00:28:22.580 That's clearly growth and next time we can get it over the line.

00:28:25.360 That's a neat swerve from the question.

00:28:27.540 and that's a lot of what his rhetoric is like so i don't think it's that bad an answer to be honest

00:28:31.840 it's not a terrible answer but there's something kind of uh slimy about his presentation

00:28:37.340 something kind of unlikable about his presentation inauthentic i mean he's an inherently slimy person

00:28:42.740 so i suppose it's difficult to extract from that particular answer but he's clearly giving me a

00:28:47.640 pre-prepared spiel oh yeah that's the thing yeah he's not he's not really you know he's obviously

00:28:52.960 got the talking points and he's just good at parroting them out and it's like okay that's

00:28:56.980 great but that's not really what i want you know anyway so there are there are a lot of commentaries

00:29:02.460 like this from the observer uh the greens face an existential threat as membership plummets now

00:29:06.840 just to be clear they are massively overstating the case here right massively so in there have

00:29:14.160 been like a two or three percent point drop in membership in certain local parties and so the

00:29:21.080 observer has extrapolated this quote if this were replicated across the country it would mean

00:29:26.720 4,400 people have

00:29:29.220 resigned. Okay, but that's out of

00:29:30.980 210,000.

00:29:33.080 That's a really marginal drop.

00:29:35.600 You can't just take

00:29:37.100 whatever trend happened recently and

00:29:38.980 one of my

00:29:41.140 daughters grew two inches last year,

00:29:43.040 therefore in 100 years she's

00:29:44.580 90 foot tall. 0.99

00:29:45.560 No, you

00:29:46.440 can't.

00:29:48.820 That's not how it works.

00:29:51.480 Insiders suggest thousands of members have quit.

00:29:53.460 Okay, if 4,000 people have quit

00:29:55.380 over the zionism is racism vote then they're on 206 000 but that's not membership plummeting

00:30:04.020 by the way the conservatives apparently uh went down below 100 000 members in the conservative

00:30:09.260 party recently which is interesting um but the this this is the point they're trying to they're

00:30:15.040 trying to gin up the narrative that the greens are collapsing and i mean you know they've gone

00:30:20.200 back to where they were the polanski bubble has burst but it's not over for the greens at all 0.51

00:30:26.720 they're still in the same not in six-party politics is not absolutely not no they're still

00:30:31.100 in the same position they are and but the thing is there is internal confusion and turmoil within

00:30:37.400 the greens so allegedly activists are plotting to oust caroline lucas because she wasn't in favor

00:30:44.860 of the motion and so now you've got okay you've got the green party bifurcated between those uh

00:30:51.700 really far right communist types and uh the far right far left communist types and the slightly

00:31:00.340 less far left communist types and that was the inflection point well because she's old school

00:31:06.520 politics as in i think she was the leader before last or maybe the one before before last whatever 1.00

00:31:12.200 whatever it is but she used to be leader and and politics over any given time span over a long

00:31:18.440 enough time span becomes making yourself legible to the existing system yes so that you can join

00:31:23.900 it and and this is a big part of the problem with with raj of course he he's always trying to make

00:31:28.760 himself legible to the union party yeah so that he can fit in with and actually i think he's

00:31:33.580 temperamentally inclined to do so so i mean and and so she was on the other side of she was from

00:31:39.200 an era where it you just didn't criticize israel ever no it was just off the table and the thing

00:31:45.680 is well it's it's important to remember like caroline lucas is being criticized for being like

00:31:49.480 the the word they use is mango so green on the outside but orange on the inside lib dem on the

00:31:55.600 inside um but caroline lucas isn't that right she she's written she used to write for like morning 1.00

00:32:01.400 star magazine uh the newspaper you know a radical socialist communist newspaper right she used to

00:32:07.320 she's argued for all of the things that zach polanski has argued for it's not that she's some

00:32:12.600 like splitter or reactionary or something like that it's just that the green party under zach

00:32:19.500 polanski has been taken so far to the left that they're now arriving in places that even people

00:32:26.800 like caroline lucas can't get to yeah and this sort of thing has happened before like the ousting

00:32:32.300 of previous, or the attempted ousting of previous leaders, because they've failed in by-elections.

00:32:39.420 But the thing is, the Green Party actually tends not to do this. They tend to let their leaders

00:32:43.580 serve out their term. So again, this is actually, as the New Statesman reports here, in 2015,

00:32:50.220 there was a green surge. Natalie Bennett came third in a safe Labour seat. She lost to Prime

00:32:55.740 Minister Keir Starmer, a future Prime Minister, came in behind the Conservatives. And of course,

00:32:59.660 This defeat sparked questions over her position,

00:33:02.180 but she held until the end of her term in 2016.

00:33:05.340 As one insider recently used,

00:33:07.260 the Green Party doesn't get rid of its leaders.

00:33:08.920 It's very much like Labour.

00:33:10.280 Labour are very reluctant to get rid of an elected prime minister.

00:33:13.860 And it was only because Keir Starmer was literally

00:33:15.620 taking him on the path to destruction

00:33:17.500 that Andy Burnham conducted his jihad against him.

00:33:22.280 So I think Zach Polanski will stay.

00:33:24.260 I don't think it's over for him,

00:33:25.400 although I think he'll arrive in the kind of Nigel Farage territory

00:33:28.520 where everyone knows who he is probably about a third of the electorate most have made up their

00:33:32.900 mind yeah they'll have made up their mind a third of the electorate like him two-thirds of the

00:33:36.520 electorate will hate him and he'll have a cap of about 20 percent probably maximum yeah but i mean

00:33:43.760 ultimately as we keep saying the the british political system is is a two-party system it's

00:33:49.880 it's like those those videos you see of of sheep herders trying to get sheep into into the washing

00:33:56.160 machine and there's only two lanes and they all bundle in at the beginning we're in that bundling

00:34:00.680 process but ultimately two sheeps are going to come in coming out the other side yeah it's just

00:34:06.240 designed that way so i mean what what we're seeing here is is the jockeying and the positioning and

00:34:10.920 more and more people saying look ultimately it does have we do have to come down on a left wing

00:34:16.100 option what's it going to be and so the the forces that built him up because they thought that keir

00:34:20.680 starmer couldn't deliver them their left wing um utopia and now are now trying to tear them down

00:34:25.340 Well, the sort of air that was pumped into the Green Party has been drained back into the Labour Party by Andy Burnham.

00:34:33.820 And so now this is causing a crisis of conscience in the Green Party.

00:34:38.240 So you've got allegations of people plotting against Caroline Lucas.

00:34:42.820 You've got allegations of Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsey plotting against Zach Polanski.

00:34:47.080 and so the the energy having gone out has left this now sort of reduced green party

00:34:54.760 to fight amongst themselves because there's a clear schism in the party and it's over the

00:35:00.080 israel palestine issue and now they're going to have a scrap within themselves but that's

00:35:05.580 the left flank neutralized yes right that's the important interest what do you think do you think

00:35:10.460 it's going to be that the islamists are going to win and then they're just going to i don't know

00:35:15.400 maybe change the name to the you know islamic party of britain and then you know remember green

00:35:20.640 is an islamic color right you know the libyan flag and yeah all that you know they they they

00:35:26.460 have green on a lot of their flags right so it's it kind of fits but i don't think they'll change

00:35:31.960 it um i don't know who's going to win as well i i assume the um i mean the the vote on the

00:35:40.640 whether zionism is racism was a thousand votes to 800 votes so i'm guessing that's roughly

00:35:46.200 proportional to the radical radical left and just the radical left in the green party so the radical

00:35:53.000 left are probably not powerful enough to just overthrow the radical radical left um but the

00:35:59.020 point is this is the green party neutralized as a radical force right the the labor party is now

00:36:05.240 surged to occupy the left-wing ground as kirsten armor had left this open zach polanski had moved

00:36:12.040 into it to take it and andy andy burnham has scooted them back out and that's what kemi is

00:36:17.100 trying to do to the right well and it makes sense for andy burnham to do that because looking

00:36:22.100 looking to the blairite position i mean you've got conservatives lib dems reform increasingly

00:36:29.420 are trying to occupy that same position as well well we'll get very contested we'll get to that

00:36:33.920 in a minute because actually reform i think are kind of making a blunder in the opposite direction

00:36:38.380 instantly uh so this uh is interesting let's move on to the lib dems briefly right because

00:36:45.700 yesterday the lib dems had a big series of meetings about whether they're going to oust

00:36:50.560 ed davey because of course the lib dems if we can go back to our poll uh have been on a slow

00:36:58.400 downward trajectory themselves lib dem's getting like nine or ten percent when they normally get

00:37:03.940 everybody else is getting limbs blown off i know and he's just dancing across the trenches doing

00:37:10.000 nothing of any particular note but the problem that they have is is this the moment for that

00:37:15.060 right is this the time there's never a moment for the lib dems that's correct there is no path to a

00:37:22.740 the lib dems is is the eternal bridesmaid it's like if you want political power why you why did

00:37:30.080 you join the lib dems great question which is literally what was all over the radio this morning

00:37:36.600 but the lib dems have a fancy in the head that one day they might form a government

00:37:42.800 of their own yeah but they've been thinking that since the 80s yes they have and the closest they

00:37:48.960 got was ruining themselves in coalition with the conservatives yes which tells you everything you

00:37:52.980 need to know about the conservatives if you can go into a coalition with the lib dems um

00:37:57.800 but this uh this this amounted to nothing right they were because there are a lot of people

00:38:03.500 in the lib dems who are saying things like look we are running the risk of becoming irrelevant

00:38:07.720 yeah since 1983 or whatever you were formed yes you were as we've spoken about before you are just

00:38:15.960 a kind of

00:38:16.680 pacifier for the

00:38:20.060 South West. You're kind of like a dummy for a 0.99

00:38:22.020 child. It's like 1.00

00:38:23.600 you exist to make the

00:38:25.920 people who are doing

00:38:28.020 quite well out of life feel

00:38:29.900 like they're okay and they're stable.

00:38:32.460 I did something I voted.

00:38:34.220 Who did you vote for?

00:38:35.580 Exactly. It's a non-vote, right?

00:38:38.760 Anyway.

00:38:39.520 It's the British version of abstaining.

00:38:41.360 Essentially, yeah.

00:38:42.820 Anyway, they had a showdown, blah, blah, blah.

00:38:45.960 Um, and you have, you do have, again, factions in the liberal Democrats, um, that are worried

00:38:52.800 about falling into irrelevance from their perspective.

00:38:55.700 I know that's funny, but like from their perspective, I mean, they are, I think the

00:38:59.720 largest number of MPs they've ever had.

00:39:01.620 So Ed Davey has brought those same exact place with the greens.

00:39:04.520 They've never had a membership like this and they never, you know, they got to like, you

00:39:07.480 know, 18% of the polls at one point.

00:39:09.640 So, you know, you can say what you like, but Zach Polanski took the greens to a place they've

00:39:14.960 never been before.

00:39:15.620 Ed Davey has taken the Greens to a place they've never been before.

00:39:19.240 The problem is all of this hinged on Keir Starmer.

00:39:25.540 We didn't realise what a load-bearing structure Keir Starmer was.

00:39:29.440 He was. He really was.

00:39:31.980 He was the load-bearing structure of British politics

00:39:35.040 that allowed everyone else to rise.

00:39:37.460 Lib Dems get to 15%.

00:39:40.040 You know, the Greens get to, where is it, 18% here?

00:39:43.240 It turns out he may have been one of the most pivotal political figures

00:39:47.140 in post-war British history.

00:39:49.020 He was crucial to our plan of changing Britain.

00:39:54.260 And without Kirstarmer, it's just rubber banding back into place

00:39:57.820 where it always used to be. 1.00

00:39:59.440 I mean, it goes to show what a malign force the Uniparty is.

00:40:03.360 If we were to get either of the Uniparties to employ,

00:40:07.080 if you could press a button and just kaboom, either one of them.

00:40:10.660 the because Peter Hitchens before he started becoming so contradictory he decided to start

00:40:17.560 contradicting himself yeah Peter Hitchens used to describe these two parties as two zombies

00:40:22.400 leaning against each other propping each other up and as soon as you can blow up one of them the

00:40:27.040 other one falls over and it's like Keir Starner he's like he was our guy he yeah that zombie was

00:40:32.760 rotting so fast he was about to crumble and it's like no he's bitten another one a new zombie is 0.98

00:40:38.060 now propping up yeah andy burnham has come in to save the uniparty it's just need to get rid of 0.58

00:40:43.560 this uniparty nonsense i i just can't believe people like yeah i think i'll try the labor

00:40:49.440 party why why anyway maybe it'll be different this time to the last hundred years of history

00:40:55.760 ed davie survived the challenge actually no one came out actually against him

00:41:05.580 But the rumblings from within the party are, well, look, we've got a bunch of coalition councils with the Greens, and they're getting a bit extreme, and we want to make sure that we're pushing away from that.

00:41:15.980 We don't want to join the extremists.

00:41:18.380 We're retrenching in the center.

00:41:20.560 You know, the center is trying to...

00:41:22.420 Because the thing about Keir Starmer, what he did was destroy the center.

00:41:27.920 He made it seem possible that something outside of the center could be a viable alternative.

00:41:33.000 whether that's the greens the lib dems reform whatever it is right and andy burnham is saving

00:41:39.460 the center he's giving he's making people feel like politics can be predictable again i vaguely

00:41:45.960 recall that we named like the second or third episode of this series the center is collapsing

00:41:51.520 or something like that yeah and what is happening now is the center is reforming and trying to

00:41:56.860 retrench itself god um yeah so ed davie got out of that just fine and so let's talk about some of

00:42:04.520 the actual by-elections then uh here are uh council by-elections for kilburn denby holbrook and

00:42:12.160 horsley and gustin kingsdown and st margaret's cliff i don't really know anything about these

00:42:16.400 areas but what i find interesting is that restore came in with more than 10 of the vote in these

00:42:22.060 so it looks like the restore vote is actually holding up very well and gaining in these

00:42:28.920 locations where it's possible for us to win now you'll see that 10 plus 27 is more than 28 yes

00:42:37.800 10 plus 27 is more than 29 so we're splitting the vote oh no if if only one of them had reached out

00:42:47.620 to the other and said look is there a deal to be done if only if only that could have been done

00:42:54.540 yeah uh but yes so interestingly the conservative vote collapsed still even in the face of the

00:43:01.980 desperation to make kemi badenock palatable to the electorate so the right-wing vote essentially

00:43:08.220 seems to be being contested now primarily between reform and restore i mean let's just just to say

00:43:13.860 for a moment a deal was done between restore and reform where i don't know restore got you know

00:43:20.480 25 seats or something and then urged everybody else to vote reform in in all the other seats

00:43:26.660 yeah i mean i know a lot of people in reform think for that would be the end of it and then

00:43:33.580 it would be done but actually what would probably happen is exactly what's happened in germany with

00:43:37.320 the afd which is labor and conservatives would just effectively become the the distinction

00:43:43.620 between the distinction between the cdu and some of the other parts it's just it's just going to

00:43:47.320 they're just pulling out all the stops the center must be preserved at all cost even if it's a

00:43:52.240 informal coalition yeah and it is really frustrating um i had an interview with a new

00:43:58.400 statesman for an article that will come out soon um and the the lady interviewed me was asking me

00:44:03.600 would you want to see a reform restore pact and cooperation?

00:44:08.660 It's like, yeah.

00:44:10.320 I didn't want Rupert Lowe to get kicked out of reform.

00:44:13.780 Yes.

00:44:14.340 I wanted Nigel Farage to understand you can't eject your radicals.

00:44:20.500 And this is what Andy Burnham has learned that Keir Starmer did not learn.

00:44:24.880 Well, yeah, and we said at the time that they're both making the same mistake.

00:44:29.380 Like, Keir Starmer wanted to be the most left-wing person in the Labour Party

00:44:33.920 and ejected everybody to his left.

00:44:35.520 And Nigel Farage wants to be the most right-wing person in reform

00:44:37.920 and ejects everybody to his right.

00:44:39.720 It's like, no, that's not how politics works.

00:44:41.260 You build coalitions.

00:44:42.360 You don't throw Rupert Lowe out in the first place.

00:44:44.120 You don't come after the online right.

00:44:46.140 People like us all the time describing us as the enemies

00:44:49.340 because we're not.

00:44:50.200 We're people who live in this country, who pay taxes,

00:44:53.380 who want to be represented.

00:44:55.180 Please stop pissing on us all the time.

00:44:57.440 That's all we want.

00:44:58.160 Especially when you're occupying the right-wing space.

00:45:00.700 But you've come into our space and been like,

00:45:02.680 right, okay, get out of here.

00:45:04.480 Where do you think we're going to go?

00:45:05.820 What are we going to do?

00:45:06.400 Are we just going to say, oh, sorry?

00:45:07.860 Politics is over for us then.

00:45:09.520 Okay, we just...

00:45:10.780 And, you know, on some hands they complain,

00:45:13.120 oh, these people just want to play video games and make podcasts.

00:45:16.300 Actually, we would quite like to do that.

00:45:17.580 That would be fun, yeah.

00:45:18.280 But if you eject us from the political system, 0.98

00:45:21.100 we're just going to make another political system.

00:45:23.800 And there we are.

00:45:25.300 After eight months, we're on 10%.

00:45:28.080 in these local elections so it's like okay well do you you could really have used that 10 percent

00:45:34.400 yes so ultimately what we're showing here is we are a force in politics and you have to deal with 0.97

00:45:41.260 us right rupert lo will always be your right flank nigel you can't just get rid of him you can't just 0.83

00:45:46.580 politically assassinate him chuck him out and think like that job done don't have to worry about that 0.98

00:45:51.120 problem ever again no that's not how this works as you said you have to build coalitions and the 0.98

00:45:56.180 fact that you're not building coalitions is your fault it's your problem nigel right um and these 0.87

00:46:02.980 are these are pretty honestly pretty great i mean obviously holborn and st pancrasse 2.5 percent 0.70

00:46:08.180 you know nothing was very very little effort was put in in holborn and st pancrasse it was understood

00:46:13.560 that this wasn't going to happen but in makefield nearly seven percent norfolk 10.9 percent greater

00:46:18.500 manchester 8.6 percent penistone east 6.5 guson and kingsdown blah blah blah on average about

00:46:25.260 eight percent in eight months are we up on a year yet since no eight months right okay since the

00:46:30.300 beginning party right and if we're averaging about eight percent ten percent after less than a year

00:46:34.740 that is absurd growth yes and so i mean if back in my vc days if venture capital days if i'd seen

00:46:42.500 a company growing to ten percent market share in eight months i would be like i want to give you

00:46:48.520 all of the money that you what is this company doing right yes is the question right um and as

00:46:54.440 you can see i mean it's true that um for the first 11 by-elections of reform they didn't do

00:46:59.780 anywhere near as well um and also and also um they were the only right-wing game in town

00:47:08.600 right like they were they were the only thing exactly right um well but okay we say that but

00:47:16.960 like the the general public think the conservative reform and restore a right wing yes right so this

00:47:21.720 this is a heavily competitive market for what is perceived to be the right right so yeah this is

00:47:28.840 really strong and this is obviously having an effect so you've got the uh the daily low t

00:47:35.760 jacob reesmog uh was like restore have left the bounds of normal political debate to be fair i

00:47:43.380 mean yeah women do have some levels of testosterone in their system so so that must be what what the

00:47:49.380 the low t must be coming from camilla because it's definitely not coming from tim stanley

00:47:54.140 well i mean i think the the issue is really that men aren't supposed to have the same level of

00:47:58.920 testosterone as women unlike tim stanley i mean i would suspect that the women have a higher level

00:48:03.600 of testosterone than mog and stanley but the point is that's like well i mean they're outside

00:48:09.080 of the bounds of normal political debate well what does that mean right obviously we are good

00:48:13.300 get used to it says rupert low but what's that mean that means they're they're trying to put up

00:48:17.820 the firewall just like on the left they're trying to put up the afd style firewalls like no we can't

00:48:21.940 have that on the other side they're like no we can't have it that britain is for the british

00:48:26.460 that could never be allowed here's the firewall they're outside of non-political debate

00:48:30.960 we will never count but it's the same point i made a few minutes ago we don't cease to exist

00:48:36.440 yes if you say these guys are beyond we don't want to talk to you okay fine you don't want to

00:48:40.920 talk to us we're not going to talk to you then i mean i would happily have you know um jacob

00:48:45.520 re-smog on the show um well maybe not this show but i'd have him on my broken arm i'd quite happily

00:48:51.340 talk to all of these people but they don't want to do it they don't want to have anything to do

00:48:54.960 with us it's like okay well so what am i am i supposed to just sit there twiddling my thumbs

00:48:59.720 watching the country go down the drain i've got children who i want to leave this country i am

00:49:03.920 not prepared to do nothing if you cut me off i will do something else yes and then and then you're

00:49:09.200 getting upset because i'm doing something else because you've decided that a right-wing coalition

00:49:14.020 cannot include right-wing people and that's something else is clearly working which is why

00:49:18.000 they're talking about us in the first place right so i mean remember ukip if you have a few years

00:49:22.580 it's on like 14 15 as well but he's not talking about that now right because actually the right

00:49:27.480 wing energy has become more um concentrated and dare i say professionalized more serious

00:49:34.720 in restore there's a you know every everyone involved in restore is taking it very very

00:49:38.720 seriously whereas ukip was a lot less this is an existential threat yeah right it this is we want

00:49:44.560 to get out of the european union this is uh an overarching moral point mostly yes um but restore

00:49:50.280 is there is an existential threat to the country we need to be serious and and and okay so so

00:49:55.460 addressing this point of let's always try and keep half the right in the wilderness kind of thing

00:50:00.280 what would have happened if ukip had been brought into the fold if the conservatives of the time

00:50:06.200 and said, okay, well, we're going to do a deal with UKIP.

00:50:08.040 We're going to extend the coalition to include them.

00:50:11.260 We're going to give, because, well, depending on what time point,

00:50:14.340 but Gerard Batten or Nigel Farage or whoever was the leader at the time,

00:50:17.280 we're going to make the leader of UKIP...

00:50:19.480 Farage should have been a lord.

00:50:20.460 They should have made Farage a lord and neutralised it.

00:50:22.180 Well, yeah, or you, okay, so you could have made Farage a lord,

00:50:24.760 you could have made Gerald Batten foreign secretary,

00:50:27.160 you could have encompassed the whole thing.

00:50:29.500 Yes, the price of that is you would have had to have acceded to Brexit.

00:50:33.020 and then with that broader right-wing coalition the Boris wave never would have happened we would

00:50:38.680 never have got to this point probably whereas what happened is they resist they resist half of the

00:50:44.000 right all the time so then they got brexit anyway because we do live in a democracy and as soon as

00:50:48.900 people got a chance to vote in it and then the then the Boris wave happened because the political

00:50:53.220 center has been moved so far left because the right-wing option in this country is always

00:50:57.140 half of the right as opposed to the full right so you ended up getting things like the Boris wave

00:51:02.000 in the mass immigration and now the right-wing position is okay we want millions and millions

00:51:07.980 of deportations and and and they're doing the same thing that they always do now half the right

00:51:13.520 cannot be spoken to and so we just continue going down this track and and and the welfare bill will

00:51:19.560 get out of control it will be a free house and a free car if you if you felt sad on wednesday it

00:51:24.900 will be whatever the hell it is and and the right-wing position from their perspective will

00:51:29.280 keep getting more and more radical and we win eventually anyway it will just take an extra 20

00:51:36.200 or 30 years to win especially as kemi badenock said anything from reform rightwards is the problem

00:51:44.140 it's like okay that's about 35 to 40 percent of the country yeah just just unacceptable because

00:51:50.840 their political opinions include having a country to pass on to their children and a lot of them

00:51:56.440 currently think the conservatives occupy that same space right when they become when it becomes

00:52:01.500 apparent the conservatives do not occupy that space and have actually repudiated that space

00:52:05.500 i don't think the i don't think the chemi bounce is going to last i don't think it's going to last

00:52:09.460 forever there'll be another i suspect the tory vote is demographic it's it's it's people with

00:52:15.600 low uh age related neuroplasticity that have made up their mind 25 i think that 18 17 the

00:52:23.040 there's the core of it is yeah this kind of floating number i'm not sure it is um i think

00:52:28.480 something terrible will happen in the near future because it always does yeah and the conservatives

00:52:32.660 won't have a substantive answer for it and they'll have to look to reform and restore but anyway so

00:52:38.140 i mean let's let's say it's 30 percent right 22 percent like uh the the sort of like you know 22

00:52:44.100 or 20 reform 10 restore at max right actually i will i will maximum right wing i will give you

00:52:50.420 that because even though farage doesn't necessarily believe in the things that we do the people who

00:52:56.460 are voting reform think they think he does yeah they think he does um anyway so people are

00:53:01.540 complaining that we've been splitting the vote but of course reform haven't been doing especially

00:53:04.980 well where we're not standing uh reform haven't really won them won any of by elections significant

00:53:10.400 ones yeah uh and we're not welcome to be part of the tent so what the hell do you want us to do

00:53:15.600 And all of the split energy is frustrating

00:53:18.440 because Restore are able to sum up a lot of powerful energy

00:53:22.680 that is actually, you know, getting 10% after eight months

00:53:25.340 is really impressive.

00:53:26.780 It would be better if that was all combined in one big party, right?

00:53:31.200 So we could take whatever existing energy Nigel Farage...

00:53:33.760 It was one big party.

00:53:35.500 It was until Nigel Farage destroyed it, yes.

00:53:38.600 But the right would be winning a lot more

00:53:41.260 if Farage hadn't done this, right?

00:53:43.620 Let Rupert Lowe be a right-wing outrider,

00:53:45.600 gather up all the right-wing podcasters and whatnot because that's that's clearly quite

00:53:49.420 influential in some ways let him be like the vanguard and then nigel farage comes in moderates

00:53:55.960 and this is important to sell whatever is happening to the general electorate and for himself look

00:54:05.300 less like a um insurgent and more like a kind of reliable grandfatherly figure or somebody

00:54:15.380 who's speaking for a substantial and commanding proportion of the yes of the population which is

00:54:21.420 what a political system like ours is designed to do but the problem is nigel frage wanted to be the

00:54:26.180 insurgent right he wanted to play the insurgent it's like no you should be playing the returning

00:54:31.160 king in exile right your your outriders your your your vanguard should be out there clearing

00:54:36.460 across the water exactly you should be playing that role but instead you stepped into the role

00:54:41.580 of vanguard and nobody really wants that right so anyway they're churning through councillors

00:54:46.900 they're absolutely churning through councillors the reformers they've you know won loads of seats

00:54:52.100 but they've hardly defended any seats and everyone else is going up to labor and tories and so it's

00:54:56.880 like right here there's a substantial churn here this is not good um it's been difficult on the

00:55:02.900 inside so they've launched something called operation restoring justice because the the

00:55:08.320 small boats crossing the channel has been an issue i think that actually reform have kind of

00:55:12.800 messed up on this issue so they've they've launched their comprehensive policy document

00:55:16.960 outlining the uk's approach um it's not terribly dissimilar to restore to be honest

00:55:21.260 i mean reform very rarely put out policy documents so they do um it's six pages long

00:55:29.740 so it's not terribly you know it's not it's not like a restore policy document that's actually

00:55:33.820 thorough but it's it's pretty it's pretty basic they just they just want to leave the echr repeal

00:55:39.080 the human rights act replace with the british bill of rights and then pass the illegal migrations

00:55:43.280 mass deportations bill to basically make it so that legally they're able to stop people from

00:55:47.580 crossing the channel okay fine i mean everyone's everyone's on that point the conservatives are

00:55:51.880 on that point restore on that point like this is not really mass deportations because the boat

00:55:56.880 people are hundreds of thousands we were talking millions yes yeah um although they do mention

00:56:02.880 in the spiel of this saying well look the uh the illegals are certainly above a million which is

00:56:07.780 the common figure bandied around obviously it's way more than a million i mean i'll take a million

00:56:12.100 but i want 10 yeah in year one uh anyway the point being is they're getting more hardline about this

00:56:19.120 right and actually i think they're kind of overshooting the mark so for example

00:56:22.560 faraj is actually arguing reasonably well here that um this shabir ahmed who's the i think it's

00:56:28.940 a rochdale grooming gang leader just got out of prison uh for some reason pakistan like we're not

00:56:34.100 taking back why would you take back you don't have to take him to pakistan trump is showing this with

00:56:38.120 his deportation he just finds any country in africa and i think he's done a bunch in um yeah

00:56:44.760 places like that the central african one and and he just it doesn't matter where you're from

00:56:50.180 this place is not america and that's where we're deporting you to so it doesn't matter if that's

00:56:57.360 what the rwanda plan was meant to be yeah but you don't even need that just just find any african

00:57:02.220 country you can land a plane yeah i get out the plane i don't even care just gunship diplomacy

00:57:08.620 sail them around just make sure they land and then dump them but the point is he's he's getting

00:57:15.200 tough right on this he's like look i'll impose flight bans visa bans and freezing national

00:57:19.320 assets now that's for for somebody who supports restore as we do that's weak source because i

00:57:24.020 mean Rupert Lowe's like yeah we're just going to have a red list of basically every country in the

00:57:27.780 third world they just won't be allowed to come here ever which is obviously what we want to do

00:57:31.700 but the point is Farage is he's leaning more to the right and he's saying okay look we need to 0.99

00:57:35.240 get tough on this okay fair enough fair enough fair enough he even pledged to shut down the

00:57:39.580 UK asylum system for a parliamentary term which okay that's that's a lot stronger than we have

00:57:46.260 had previously but then it started going a bit further and it's like okay when you're in the

00:57:53.020 position reforms in right you aren't the radical right party right you are the center right party

00:57:59.540 and you were supposed to let your radicals drag you in that direction and moderate to bring the

00:58:07.120 public with you right saying actually we're just going to shoot the boats i mean now yeah i know

00:58:14.600 think about the area you occupy dad think about the area youtube terms of service okay fine i

00:58:22.060 won't say anything the thing about the political space we occupy and think about the political

00:58:25.960 space that Nigel Farage is occupying yep saying you're going to use lethal force against the the

00:58:32.740 channel smugglers works with us but does it work with the general public I mean a decent amount

00:58:41.340 yeah some but I mean I mean you already have the problem of tactical voting it is Zaya doing this 0.99

00:58:48.340 and he's got the useful a couple of useful attributes one being a bit brown himself it's

00:58:53.760 slightly harder to call him racist i mean they're going to do it anyway and the other thing is

00:58:57.380 because he's not leader he he's kind of he's had to take the role of rupert lowe yes because they

00:59:03.440 created a rupert lowe sized hole in reform which was you know we're the energizing right wing flank

00:59:08.680 um but i'm but he's not leader so you can listen to him and think oh that sounds jolly good but

00:59:13.320 you understand he's not leader and everybody else understands that he's not leader and therefore

00:59:16.440 you can kind of make it well zai was just having to fill that role yes they already had filled yes

00:59:22.920 but the point the point i'm making though is that this is actually even far to the right of rupert

00:59:28.020 lowe right so remember he's not talking about setting up machine gun nests is he no rupert

00:59:32.740 lowe said yes we'll just put them on a scottish island uninhabited scottish island yes let the

00:59:37.420 midges do the work right so it's not use the military on civilians those civilians might

00:59:42.400 be as the government tells us entirely composed of rapists yes but they are still technically

00:59:48.320 well that's that's that's that's the perspective that the british public are getting from the bbc

00:59:55.620 or itv or channel 4 or sky news or whatever right so you you have to understand that whatever you

01:00:00.360 say is going to be filtered through this now suddenly rupert lowe looks positively moderate

01:00:04.240 just oh i'm just going to put them on a deserted island until we can process them and get rid of

01:00:09.480 them right so yeah okay no one's getting shot and so this this puts reform in a position that i think

01:00:17.040 they're not prepared for because they don't have the moral fortitude so yeah we're just going to

01:00:20.940 do that right they obviously they've started to like walk that back but also it allows

01:00:27.000 representatives of the military to come out and say look we're not going to shoot

01:00:30.220 unarmed civilians right we're not going to do that whether whether they're evil people or not

01:00:35.960 we're still not just going to shoot them and so it's put them on the horns of a dilemma where

01:00:39.720 they're they're trying to be right wing i mean i can imagine i can imagine some of the senior

01:00:44.740 officers coming out and saying sure i'm sure i'm sure if there was a show of hands amongst yeah

01:00:49.120 yeah yeah of the rank of file i don't yeah i don't doubt you could find volunteers to do it

01:00:53.440 walk into the nco's mess and just say look do any of you have a have a team that yeah i'm not saying

01:00:59.040 it couldn't be done what i'm saying is the top brass are saying we're not doing that we're not

01:01:04.420 going to command our men to do that right right and so now you're in an argument with the military

01:01:08.500 now you've got the the the media saying well look the top brass are saying they're not going to do

01:01:13.680 it how could it be done blah blah blah blah and also you are stepping quite far out of the bounds

01:01:20.300 of what a person who is not personally invested in politics will tolerate right because you are

01:01:25.980 saying we're going to kill civilians now like i said from our perspective this might be entirely

01:01:31.300 justifiable but from the perspective of a guy who's about to go into waitrose or m&m m&s or 0.94

01:01:38.300 whatever to get his weekly shop that seems ridiculous the people who don't really understand

01:01:45.940 it's a problem because it hasn't affected them personally yet the average lib dem voter so the

01:01:52.240 average lib dem voter who like you say it's going on low taxes going into waitrose doing their

01:01:57.300 shopping, driving their Jaguar

01:01:59.240 home, it's quite

01:02:01.360 a long drive because they need to get all the way up their

01:02:03.260 driveway. They've probably got some sort of hybrid car.

01:02:05.080 They're not quite that rich.

01:02:06.840 Those rich people don't know. I see what you're saying. They hear this and

01:02:09.220 they're like, yeah, that's a bit radical.

01:02:11.180 Now, two weeks later, his daughter at university 0.92

01:02:13.520 is savagely raped on a night 0.93

01:02:15.340 out, and all of a sudden 0.90

01:02:17.100 he's probably going to come to this view.

01:02:19.380 But he's not there yet.

01:02:20.740 But he's not there yet. Yes, I see.

01:02:22.620 And so, Rupert Lowe's

01:02:24.760 solution was actually...

01:02:27.300 actually very strong still but took a view of stewardship right it's like yeah okay these

01:02:33.600 people are broken into the country we're going to put them somewhere really awful we're going 1.00

01:02:36.780 to give them canned beans until we get them through the asylum process and get get them out 1.00

01:02:41.300 right so until we can deport them to wherever that six months ago a year ago was considered

01:02:47.820 oh my god rupert you radical how could you do that don't you think we should just let them into

01:02:53.720 the communities where the schools are and rupert was like no i don't actually um but that nobody

01:03:00.100 died right you can't you can't accuse them of being cruel or making a war crime or something

01:03:05.820 you can't you know accuse them of of hurting anyone he's very thoughtful whenever all their

01:03:10.980 policies are very thoughtful they sound radical but actually they're all could we actually live

01:03:16.640 with implementing could we manage it exactly could we live with it can we manage it this is not one

01:03:21.180 of those things this feels actually like reform have been listening to the online right a bit

01:03:25.760 and not thinking about their position on the chess board yes and it's like look guys you know

01:03:32.280 i'm personally not going to criticize zaya for this no it's but i see what you're saying yeah

01:03:39.900 right it's softly gently catchy monkey kind of exactly they're trying to form a party of

01:03:45.360 government and i actually don't think this was a wise move and especially as people generally are

01:03:50.080 not in favor of this right the polling has been done actually polling on it yeah the polling on

01:03:56.480 machine gun nests in dover how many said yes i mean well i mean 24 of people a quarter of people

01:04:06.880 are like we shouldn't let anyone in right and this isn't necessarily about machine gunning

01:04:11.020 migrants either oh okay this was just about accepting migrants uh the illegals the asylum 0.86

01:04:16.220 seekers um obviously i'm sure if you were to ask should we machine gun the boats which just to be

01:04:22.960 clear right back in 2016 was the position of the daily stormer right that was the official position

01:04:29.380 of the most neo-nazi website on the internet well and also the hard left because because originally

01:04:34.600 the the the most um strident anti-immigration people were the hard left because it competed

01:04:39.980 for wages sure maybe in like the 1970s yeah that was their position but that wasn't a problem they

01:04:44.320 had then right um but the the neo-nazi position is now coming out of zeer yusuf's mouth it's like

01:04:52.060 look okay i i i understand that you know in principle yes if if a bunch of men are invading

01:04:59.020 your country then you do have a moral legitimacy to shoot them but the circumstances are a bit 0.62

01:05:04.260 different so actually you've got to say no what we're going to do is catch them put them in a 0.89

01:05:08.640 holding cell put them in a jail you know put them on an island we do actually have lots of scottish

01:05:13.320 islands with nobody on exactly right build a holding facility build a holding facility on 0.99

01:05:18.700 one of these islands just whatever tents whatever you want to do and so like look you you dicks you 0.90

01:05:25.500 know you shouldn't have broken into our country right but most people are not actually we need 0.96

01:05:29.720 to close the border forever most people are actually well we should say some people fleeing

01:05:34.680 war-torn countries and persecution but only through capped controlled routes so most people

01:05:39.100 want it managed and you've got to make sure if you're trying to become a party of government

01:05:42.920 you capture the most people who could potentially vote for you and out of that 24 it's probably like

01:05:48.900 five or six percent that just machine gun them in the channel right like so just saying i think

01:05:55.280 there was a misstep here i mean even i'm in the middle on this i'm not against all immigration

01:05:59.960 i just think any immigrants should should be able to show that they can add real value and and

01:06:04.700 therefore it would be a vanishingly small number yeah i mean i'd probably accept seven maybe eight

01:06:09.600 immigrants a year even i wouldn't go that far under really special circumstances

01:06:17.280 like you know something like albert einstein's a year maybe you know yeah i mean i've got a

01:06:22.940 slightly different perspective because i worked in in finance for a long time and i all the time

01:06:27.040 i'd meet people who would come to the country and and were doing good stuff and there are a decent

01:06:31.360 number of people i mean i backed a company of a couple of um south african white south african

01:06:36.600 doctors who came over and started a medical company a whole bunch of you want to be highly

01:06:40.740 selective yeah to the point where if you got 10 000 highly selected people a year that would be

01:06:46.520 a lot you know like you to get 10 000 like genuine sort of you know real assets a year i i i would

01:06:54.000 say in the tens of thousands i mean i and and actually i don't think it'd be difficult to find

01:06:57.980 high quality people who who actually you wouldn't object to in the slightest yeah but um but also

01:07:04.300 I mean, on the plus side, we have like 600,000 leaving every year.

01:07:07.660 So that would be a net of...

01:07:09.120 But also, I'm not completely opposed to machine gun nests around Dover for the people who are, yeah.

01:07:15.740 Well, they probably aren't in the tens of thousands that you want to bring in.

01:07:18.400 But the point is, most of the public are not in the radical perspectives of letting anyone and machine gun them, don't let a single person in, right?

01:07:27.160 Most people actually want something more reasonable.

01:07:28.820 A bunch of centrists that we are.

01:07:30.720 Yeah.

01:07:31.660 Anyway, so let's move on to the money.

01:07:33.700 what are reform doing with their money just to finish off well they've got lots of it now haven't

01:07:37.760 they they've got loads of it yes loads more more than any political party has ever had probably

01:07:42.620 72 million was it the 74 million yeah 74 million i mean at least in this country i mean an american

01:07:49.460 dog catcher race probably yeah it's not very much for american money but it's a lot so for any

01:07:55.300 americans watching it's about 100 million dollars which is a lot for british politics um so they're

01:08:01.460 building a newsroom i don't actually think but they got one it's called gb news exactly

01:08:06.600 nigel farage is on all the mainstream media all the time in fact he's a presenter on gb news yes

01:08:13.040 he is the gb news line is reform what what are you going to do with the other one i don't know

01:08:19.880 it's really bizarre so apparently they're building a national publishing operation with a digital

01:08:24.820 newsroom and expanded video content uh nigel farage is they're trying to make they're trying

01:08:30.280 to make a reformed

01:08:31.420 version of this place

01:08:32.200 reform TV yeah

01:08:33.300 yeah a reformed

01:08:34.420 version of the

01:08:34.780 Lotus Eaters 1.00

01:08:35.260 we were here

01:08:36.960 but two years ago

01:08:37.920 they had us

01:08:38.440 yeah

01:08:38.960 it's the same

01:08:40.840 it's the same issue

01:08:41.580 as we were talking

01:08:42.100 about like 15 minutes

01:08:43.460 ago they had all

01:08:45.040 of this

01:08:45.420 yes

01:08:45.780 and they decided

01:08:47.260 that they had to

01:08:47.820 purge it

01:08:48.440 well now

01:08:49.940 now we have to

01:08:51.140 reconstruct

01:08:51.440 now we've got

01:08:51.700 Zaya Yusuf saying

01:08:52.620 we're going to 0.97

01:08:52.940 machine gun them 0.93

01:08:53.460 in the channel

01:08:54.000 and we've got them

01:08:55.120 setting up a new

01:08:55.760 Lotus Eaters

01:08:56.220 why didn't you

01:08:57.140 just not do all 1.00

01:08:57.880 the stupid shit 1.00

01:08:58.500 that you did 1.00

01:08:58.980 uh yeah for god's sakes as you say you know farad is already a presenter on gb news gb news

01:09:06.540 is generally very pro reform overall yeah so okay they're gonna launch reform tv on youtube

01:09:12.480 so right so you're setting up a youtube channel that's like us it's like okay well i'm not worried

01:09:17.660 about it you i'm not concerned i mean no like i'm not worried about it but it's like right so you

01:09:22.660 want to preach the choir okay is that really the best use of your money apparently they're

01:09:28.960 going to recruit 25 staff for this 12 broadcast and digital roles yes that's about what we are

01:09:36.820 isn't it 25 ish something around probably a little bit more than us i think we're probably about 17

01:09:40.800 something like that oh yeah but still it's just is is this the best use of your money

01:09:46.140 setting up a youtube channel and and also it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is that

01:09:53.460 we do and people often think that who criticize they say okay well you you've got this thing

01:09:58.120 and therefore people are listening to you

01:10:01.580 and they switch us on

01:10:03.380 and they've got a completely empty head

01:10:05.020 and they don't know what to think

01:10:07.400 and they listen to us and they're like,

01:10:09.380 it's why we're here.

01:10:10.240 Well, that's what I think now.

01:10:11.720 That is not what I've spoken to so many fans over the years

01:10:15.560 and they always say some variation of

01:10:18.380 you're saying the things that I was thinking

01:10:21.100 but I'm busy doing something else most of the time

01:10:24.220 and you think it through

01:10:26.660 and articulate it in such a way as it connects dots for me and it's like okay yeah i was thinking

01:10:31.960 that but you just you just said it a little bit better because you can spend the time to think

01:10:35.400 about it but what farage thinks and the problem that he has with youtube in particular is that

01:10:40.580 it's self-selecting right as you say it's people who are in this direction yeah and want to click

01:10:46.700 on the thing like he's not going to persuade liberal democrat voters to click on his videos

01:10:51.020 right yeah the reform tv they're gonna like no i already hate nigel frosh i'm not watching that

01:10:56.820 they're gonna do live streams and get like 25 people watching yeah i doubt the number and

01:11:01.740 actually it could be the 25 that work there it could well be right so i i'm curious about how

01:11:07.880 well this is gonna do i don't really see that this is something they should be wasting their

01:11:11.440 money on i'd be putting up just billboard adverts like actual billboard adverts just go go straight

01:11:16.860 two people set up like i mean in fact they are right so i hope they open this in swindon so that

01:11:22.480 when they so that when they so that when they when they scrap it we can just get all their

01:11:28.220 technical staff it's like oh okay you've got like six six editors we have them yeah yeah well yeah

01:11:33.640 i mean that would be useful but they are also um uh i'm gonna have to have a look at this

01:11:40.920 afterwards yeah so um this should apply for fun uh i think they probably know who you are

01:11:47.180 right but um but this is very interesting right so you've got uh network coordinators which of

01:11:51.500 course is what you need uh you've got broadcast and digital publishing which is loads of what

01:11:56.360 they plan to do don't they already have a team doing this don't they already like they already

01:12:01.760 produce content don't they have a team already doing this but also you know is this what you

01:12:06.740 actually need to be spending a load of money on they're gonna be doing it in westminster that's

01:12:10.160 going to be a bit pricey yes it is uh then they've got you know campaign managers all across the

01:12:16.060 country okay that's that's where you want to be spending the money right yeah that that bit

01:12:19.240 the nuts and bolts of because like people always wonder why do people knock on my door

01:12:25.940 at election time and ask me which way i'm going to vote the the classical version of that is if

01:12:30.960 you've got an effective operating machine you don't actually care you're not trying to persuade

01:12:35.560 them on the doorstep you're just trying to identify your voters you build a map of where

01:12:40.140 all your voters are and if you've got if you've got a political machine then you remind you've

01:12:45.100 identified your voters well in advance on the day of the election or the day before you go out and

01:12:49.680 remind everybody if you've got a really big operation you then have tellers at the at the

01:12:54.220 station the the polling booth ticking off the voters so that you know which of your voters

01:12:58.660 haven't voted come five o'clock in the evening and then you go and knock them up and say can i give

01:13:03.280 you a lift to the polling station that that's what the operation is supposed to do but i mean

01:13:08.960 that that could materially move the dial and get that could get them lib dem levels of voter

01:13:13.920 efficiency because the lib dems do that brilliantly and the conservatives do it brilliantly in a

01:13:18.060 handful of seats and in labor are fairly good at a handful of seats as well yeah what they don't run

01:13:23.800 are their own you know labor tv conservative tv lib dem tv no they just they just they just use

01:13:31.360 what's already built

01:13:32.380 and is there for them.

01:13:33.780 Labour uses,

01:13:34.640 well, I suppose the Greens,

01:13:35.900 something like Novara Media.

01:13:37.400 I mean, they've been...

01:13:38.320 The Greens are on Novara Media

01:13:39.920 all the time.

01:13:40.480 Yeah.

01:13:40.880 Labour as well.

01:13:41.920 The left of Labour

01:13:42.880 go on Novara Media all the time.

01:13:44.460 But Farage,

01:13:45.660 no, can't have any of it.

01:13:47.120 Can't have any.

01:13:47.780 I've got to build it anew

01:13:49.600 out of nothing.

01:13:51.100 And again, I mean...

01:13:52.540 So he's now having to

01:13:53.940 reconstitute his own rights.

01:13:55.340 If I wanted to come up

01:13:56.140 for economics,

01:13:56.660 I'd have him on, no problem.

01:13:57.560 Of course.

01:13:58.760 Of course.

01:13:59.240 And it's just crazy

01:14:00.320 that they don't.

01:14:01.360 But these are the rods that Farage has made for his own bank.

01:14:05.080 I now have to occupy the radical right space

01:14:07.180 and try and occupy the moderate space.

01:14:10.040 It's like, okay, but you and Zia Yusuf are like this.

01:14:11.900 He's pictured with you everywhere.

01:14:13.440 So when Zia Yusuf starts saying it,

01:14:14.920 people think that definitely is your opinion as well.

01:14:17.300 If it was Rupert Lowe and you were like,

01:14:19.460 well, that's what Rupert says, isn't it?

01:14:21.040 But no, that's not the party position.

01:14:23.160 He's entitled to his opinion, blah, blah, blah.

01:14:25.540 Nigel Farage comes out, moderates it, sweeps the ground

01:14:28.120 and makes it palatable for the average person

01:14:30.960 and people like kf fair enough because i mean the labor party's full of these people the labor party

01:14:35.000 is full it used to have like um zara sultana and you know clive owen and all this or tony blair

01:14:41.340 had jeremy corbyn yeah exactly jeremy corbyn right and once once a cup every couple of months

01:14:45.980 they would sit down because he did this with all of mps he would sit down they'd have a cup of tea

01:14:49.200 and a chat yes he was part of the coalition this what you're describing is absolute nuts and bolts

01:14:55.840 political coalition building and now because of rod cannot do it because of his own ego

01:15:01.160 because of the sensitivity of his own ego he has to rebuild the alternative media ecosphere

01:15:06.520 he has to put zir yusuf in the radical position and try and actually build a party of the right

01:15:12.480 which i don't think he's going to do i think all that energy it's gonna it's gonna flop yeah i

01:15:17.360 don't think it's gonna do brilliantly um but anyway so the point is the the center is trying

01:15:22.800 to re-establish itself and condemn the radicals and in a small measure this has had some effect

01:15:29.720 but how long can it last how much how you know what what are the actual foundations it's built

01:15:35.240 on and the foundations it seems to be built on are would you just like a bit more of the same

01:15:39.400 and i don't

01:15:40.600 you know

01:15:41.960 Thank you.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 15, 2026

The Uniparty Strikes Back!

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