00:04:48.740Every time the real public get a chance to have a vote on something, suggests that it's miles out.
00:04:53.240And I was thinking, one, I think it's because of Me Too, where that was one of the few times where it was a genuinely impactful movement that was started simply on Twitter.
00:05:02.300But that is very much the exception that proves the rule, isn't it?
00:05:05.160I think people have gone, wow, this is what could always happen through Twitter.
00:05:08.600Whereas actually what happened there was quite a useful way of women that had, you know, like sexual harassment or attacks or experiences to come together.
00:05:16.440It made sense that that happened in Twitter, whereas all this other stuff, it just pisses away on the wind.
00:05:21.580You think every day there's things that don't happen on Twitter where people are trying to generate a movement or a meme.
00:05:28.240And, you know, the last election result was a great example.
00:05:30.820We all sat there as, on the day, the usual thing that was happening among the left.
00:05:34.900They were going, you know, I think it could happen, man.
00:05:37.700I've seen reports of like seven people outside a polling station in Shoreditch, I think.
00:05:45.180They're all baking their own rye bread.
00:09:28.840I mean, if you look at the Brexit vote,
00:09:31.200I mean, they're like the, what is it, the CD2E demographic, which effectively covers the working class, was swinging towards the Tories from 2015 onwards.
00:09:41.380And I think it's one of those things that people have tried to put sticking plasters over and now have realised that this is a fundamental and more longstanding migration.
00:09:49.380What you had in this last election was perhaps some of the last bastions of people that you would have thought would have never done that, you know.
00:09:55.020Because bear in mind, you already had ex-mining villages and towns going conservative in 2015 and 17.
00:10:01.440Ashby, Ben Bradley, who's an MP for Mansfield, you know, that was an ex-mining town.
00:10:07.480So some people were just crossing the Rubicon because they just don't feel that the Labour Party in its current guise really represents them.
00:10:16.780And I know that like, you know, a lot of Labour politicians were saying, well, you know, our policies were very popular, you know.
00:10:22.640But I think they were saying individually each policy was popular economically, right?
00:10:29.200But did they ever do a survey of, do you want all these done right now, like in one parliament?
00:10:34.960Because I think that's a separate thing, isn't it?
00:10:36.500A manifesto is saying this is what we're going to do in the next five years.
00:10:39.380But what they were polling was, would you like some of the water facilities to be made public again?
00:10:44.320You know, would you like, you know, a rising corporation tax for the top earners?
00:10:49.100What they never said was, do you think we should do this straight away?
00:10:51.740because it's like moving house, isn't it?
00:10:53.600If you was moving house with your missus or mister, right?
00:11:50.380And you go, that almost sounds like if you had like, if you were to back a socialist into a corner and just like almost make them do word association until they come up with the most stupid thing, that would be it.
00:19:51.220Especially after the 2015 election, we had this thing of shy Tories, right?
00:19:55.440And I thought it's so ridiculous when you've got these two, like, obviously two sort of sides of a different coin of how you manage the world and the economy and stuff.
00:20:03.960And the idea that one of them is inherently good and one is bad, it was just fatuous to me.
00:21:57.200One of the biggest actually was Jacob Rees-Mogg's insensitive comments about Grenfell.
00:22:00.940And then after that, virtually nothing.
00:22:02.700So, you know, they probably banked on the fact that guys like us and, you know, us chattering glasses, commentary, whatever you want to call us, we're obsessing about this day in, day out.
00:22:13.100The rest of the British public aren't giving a toss.
00:22:15.340And there is something good about the degree to which the British public care
00:22:18.880is that they're able to zero in on what really matters, right?
00:22:21.920They're not getting confused by day in, day out, PR clusterfucks, right?
00:22:28.380And if you read the Lord Ashcroft report, which I obviously haven't,
00:22:31.320I've seen a tweet and I've absorbed a very small bit of it
00:22:35.060and thought I'll chat about that when I'm next talking about stuff.
00:22:38.100But it's really interesting the way that it characterises
00:22:40.680how working class people saw the Labour Party
00:22:42.840Because they're right. There's a really smart deduction of like, well, you know, intention's good. They've overcommitted. They don't really have the competence to deliver it. They're distracted by social justice issues and niche concerns, obsessed with Palestine. You know, like the public were right. And sometimes there's a real virtue in just because politics is so big and so complicated. There's a real merit into getting it right down. Right. What are the main issues at heart here?
00:23:10.820And that's why something like Brexit, get Brexit done, was such a successful slogan, because I think Labour's was, what was it?
00:23:19.440Oh, it said, it's time for real change.
00:23:23.580I mean, that's very, that sounds like a sort of like, if you're a pensioner that goes on a river cruise or something like that, change your river cruise.
00:23:32.280But all the good slogans for a while now have been ones that are dynamic.
00:23:36.840So whether you agree with it or not, make America great again is a dynamic, positive sentiment.
00:23:41.600Take back control is a positive sentiment.
00:34:27.780he'll dilute the agenda over a couple of years.
00:34:30.540There'll be a lot of Labour members that will want something else.
00:34:33.360They want something a bit spicier, a bit more hard left because they've finally got their chance to have that and they won't want to see it go away so easily.
00:34:42.720When it was taken from them in sort of late 80s, they didn't have the size of membership.
00:36:05.300I'm totally self-absorbed, is the truth.
00:36:07.140I get up, check Twitter, check all my stuff, like tour sales and all that.
00:36:10.520So it's not really a cool kind of like, no, man, I've tapped out of MSM.
00:36:15.320It's just I've tapped into my own shit probably too hard.
00:36:18.840So in terms of the Tories, though, I mean, Boris Johnson, you know,
00:36:22.140for all the people saying, you know, we've got a hard right government,
00:36:25.300you know, he is a liberal Tory, right?
00:36:27.480Right. So do you think that he's going to be able to hold the Tory coalition together as more and more people who may be kind of economically harder, right, than he is or culturally hard?
00:36:39.860I mean, like, look at the immigration point system that they've introduced.
00:36:43.140In my opinion, it's actually going to create more immigration, not less.
00:36:46.100Right. So do you think that he's going to be able to hold the Tory coalition together effectively as a lot of the people who were delighted that he had a clear message on Brexit start to realize that,
00:36:56.340actually he's quite a lot softer than many of them are well that was odd you know watching the
00:37:01.600election campaign and the way that he was represented and obviously there were those
00:37:04.860those two articles several articles things that he said but there were at the very least you know
00:37:09.580unwise i mean certainly in the case of the the watermelon smiles and the piccaninnies like when
00:37:14.420you read i i think it's totally legitimate for anybody to read the article and come to the
00:37:18.720conclusion that that he's a racist but i do get the impression that a lot of people haven't read
00:37:22.680the article so that's what i'd say to anyone watching this it's really interesting to read
00:37:26.880the article because obviously it was a it was interestingly quite an anti-imperial it was a
00:37:32.180themed piece i don't think he was being racist oh well but you know what i think he really he does
00:37:36.780right it's because he's smart i think he sort of takes a stance where he knows he's on the moral
00:37:41.100high ground and then he uses that high ground to get in a few cheeky words that's my honest
00:37:45.320taking it so i think he deploys that kind of language for comedic effect or to push the
00:37:50.020boundary because he's taken that stunt so i don't think it's actually as clear-cut as any of the
00:37:54.200sides of the argument what i did find was interesting it just shows how something can
00:37:57.400stick politically is that when i every time i ask people um if they'd read the article um they hadn't
00:38:03.060read the article the one about um muslim women looking like letterboxes which was done when he
00:38:07.760was foreign secretary i think you know it's even harder that's harder to defend because it's just
00:38:11.940like why are you getting involved in this sort of nonsense do you know what i mean like it's just i
00:38:16.200I just quite like serious politicians, you know, like, you know,
00:38:20.320an article written a long time ago as a columnist,
00:38:22.700I think is quite different than something written when you were holding one of
00:38:37.900You should just be getting on with being the foreign secretary.
00:38:39.960Like he shouldn't be allowed to say it,
00:38:41.360but you don't want the foreign secretary to be doing that.
00:38:43.280Yeah, just get, just, you know, just toe the line, mate, a little bit.
00:38:45.720And he, but he, you know, that article, again, he was talking about, he was talking about defending the right of women to wear burqa and niqab and hijabs in public spaces, right?
00:38:57.580He's sort of taken the morally liberal view, but, and I don't know if it's him throwing red meat to a certain side of what he believes to be his supporter base.
00:39:04.960So he's sort of, that's what I find a bit duplicitous.
00:39:07.920He sometimes plays both of the angles.
00:39:09.720You know what I think with Corona, he might make it mandatory for women to wear the hijab.
00:39:13.140Yeah, that would be a protective measure.
00:39:15.720But come back to my point, which is, can he hold the Tory coalition together as a liberal Tory, given that, you know, many of the concerns about Brexit?
00:39:28.020I mean, there's a significant number of people who are seriously concerned about the level of immigration that we've had.
00:39:34.060And I'm not sure that he's necessarily going to be the person who is going to, you know, crack down.
00:39:38.680No, I don't. I don't think he will be.
00:39:40.140I think, you know, certainly for me as a Brexit voter, my desire for the take back control of borders wasn't to suddenly end immigration.
00:39:48.100It was just I always found that having unlimited immigration in perpetuity was a bizarre sort of absolutism.
00:40:38.780You know, without sort of causing the downfall of the government.
00:40:43.360But what about, sorry, Francis, I just want to get this point home.
00:40:45.820What about the people who are working class northern voters, perhaps, whose concerns about immigration were harder lined than yours, right, in terms of the Brexit vote and the 2019 election?
00:40:59.280Do you think there's a risk that he might alienate them by not having a kind of more hard line position?
00:41:06.280Possibly, but even more so than before,
00:41:08.300there's nowhere else to go, if you know what I mean.
00:41:10.200So if he alienates them and we have, you know,
00:41:12.840so we've left the EU and the Labour Party are still, as I think,
00:41:16.560what might happen to the Labour Party is after three years
00:41:18.820of being behind in the polls, they might change leader again
00:45:52.920So the record number of people in employment, as much as the left try and poo-poo it, you know, and say, well, this is because of zero-hours contracts, one, it was at the beginning of the jobs revival.
00:46:02.180But after that, for a long time, it's been full-time jobs that have been leading the way, right?
00:46:08.860Waging wage settlements started to outstrip inflation.
00:46:12.960The irony is, is the Tories, for the first time in a long time, they were doing what they're supposed to do, right?
00:46:18.160The Tory brand is run the economy well, get people working, people feeling like they've got a few quid.
00:46:24.400But actually, that's been the thing that's been discussed least about them the last few years.
00:46:28.600And what will be sort of ironic for them is if coronavirus and stuff derails the economy and they seem to have handled it badly, the jobs market is at a record peak.
00:46:38.100There's only one way it could go, right?
00:46:39.760So, you know, it could lose loads of jobs.
00:46:41.400We'd still be in relatively historically good position, but it would look like things were catastrophic.
00:46:46.160catastrophic. And they'll probably regret, I think, not making more of that in the good times.
00:46:51.280Because weirdly, the Tory spend a lot of time trying to deal with the ways that they're perceived
00:46:55.280negatively and turn it around. But actually, there's things they do positively. They almost
00:46:58.240got this weird public school thing of not being able to pat themselves on the back. You know,
00:47:01.420they don't seem to know how to shine a good enough light on the buoyancy of the jobs market. So that,
00:47:06.720in answer to your question, that is the biggest single reason, I think, that one of the two
00:47:11.700biggest single reasons that the last election result happened. Because when Labour were talking
00:47:15.240about this broken Britain and no one's got jobs
00:47:40.680And do you think as well, the left, and again,
00:47:43.440I'm part of the left, the deeply patronising attitude to ethnic minorities will go, well, they're all going to vote Labour because they're all liberal.
00:48:56.300There were times I got frustrated with the Conservative campaign,
00:48:59.720but I was like, well, I'm not going to vote for Lib Dems.
00:49:01.580It's just the arrogance of the way that they thought that they could revoke a vote.
00:49:06.140And it gives me great heart that the public were broadly in line with rejecting that sort of extremist stance.
00:49:12.340And the Labour Party, I mean, just a million miles away from a party I could vote for.
00:49:16.060So, yeah, it would have been just to not vote at all.
00:49:19.440And do you think that we're seeing a sort of new humility amongst our MPs?
00:49:24.920Because they've sort of realised that the game has changed.
00:49:27.940There's no such thing anymore, really, with certain exceptions, as a safe seat.
00:49:32.500And we've seen it with the way Labour got decimated.
00:49:35.260So there's a lot of people looking at their seats thinking to themselves,
00:49:38.420well, there's a chance I could lose this.
00:49:40.220I really need to up my game and connect with the voter.
00:49:42.880Well, I mean, it's no surprise that a lot of the Labour MPs
00:49:46.020that were most sympathetic to the idea of honouring Brexit
00:49:48.240were the ones that had to face constituencies that had voted for Brexit.
00:49:52.760But, you know, they were roundly, not ignored, but, I mean,
00:49:55.800how Labour changed policy on Brexit, given the numbers
00:49:58.260and where all their marginals were in Labour heartlands.
00:50:01.440I mean, this is the thing, they keep making out Keir Starmer
00:50:02.980as the grown-up in the room, you know.
00:50:04.660Centrists love this idea, you know, he's the adult in the room because he seems clever and he is like intellectually clever.
00:50:10.100But he was one of the architects of Labour's change in policy on Brexit, you know, and he led the way on that.
00:50:16.900And, you know, there are arguments that Labour were snookered at that election to a point.
00:50:21.780But when you know, when it's touch and go, you look at the marginals and all the marginals will leave constituencies.
00:50:28.140I just think in that election, because of the change in the party membership that you've talked about, I don't think there was a way out for them.
00:50:36.260They had to chop off this arm or that arm and they would have ended with no arm, whatever they did.
00:50:41.460So being Labour, they chopped off their penis. And that's not a trans reference. I was just going for another part of the body.
00:50:49.260You can never join the Labour Party again, Jeff. Yeah, I'm sure you're disappointed.
00:50:53.800We've got a few minutes left. You mentioned Corona and the potential impact. I mean, one of the things obviously will affect the economy. But the question is, you know, how much of a discount does the government get for the fact that it was I mean, look, they can do stuff about it. But ultimately, it's, you know, it's an act of God kind of thing.
00:51:11.440Yeah. Well, it will be how it plays out, right? If eventually it peaks in Britain in the same way that it has been doing in Italy, and if the NHS is unable to cope, and if the narrative sticks, the reason is because of cuts and stuff like that.
00:51:27.880Even though there was a stat recently that showed that the number of hospital beds had been going down throughout the Blair years as well.
00:51:33.740But again, it's whether the narrative sticks, right? So they may be held accountable for that.
00:51:37.980I mean, bear in mind, if you want to like a historical parallel, is that, you know, John Major, 1992, surprise victory, right?
00:51:46.260You know, he got a huge unexpected share of the vote immediately afterwards, Black Wednesday, right?
00:51:51.880Britain pulls out the ERM, the economy's taken, everything seems to be in free fall.
00:51:56.240So this idea that like it's just a guaranteed five years of Boris, there's a degree of economic clusterfuck that could pull any government down, right?
00:53:07.440stop listening to the chief medical officer.
00:53:10.060Listen to this guy on this radio show.
00:53:13.120It's time we started listening to the broadcasters.
00:53:16.080Because these are really tricky decisions.
00:53:18.280And also there's a decision about how, you know,
00:53:21.360how you manage the degree of economic contraction.
00:53:24.040What about the effect that that has on people in the long run?
00:53:27.280You know, so this isn't an aggregate of things.
00:53:30.980This isn't a, oh, you know, would, well, if shutting down schools and offices and public gatherings right now, would it slow down the spread of the virus?
00:53:40.080Yeah. You know, but if you haven't shut again for two weeks and then reopened before the virus has peaked, it's still knocking about.
00:53:46.300So I've been surprised that the alarmism, and it's not to say there's nothing to be alarmed about,
00:53:52.600but it's the scale at which the people expect the government
00:56:13.640But, like, it would have been a case at school
00:56:15.840where you can look in kids' lunchboxes now.
00:56:17.740Really? Yeah. Yeah. They can inspect. Some schools do that. So these are this encroachment of the state. So, you know, whether the Tories claim that they've reduced the size of the state or not, in so many other areas, there are an increasing body of people that feel at liberty to tell you how you should be living, saying where you should be driving, whether you should be flying, what your kids should be eating at lunch.
00:56:38.140And this is all happening in the background.
00:56:40.880And it's sort of, it's above left or right politics.