TRIGGERnometry - Labour Conference, Diesel Shortage and Far Right Labradors - Off the Fence

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00:01:12.600 playbook and discover why spotify belongs in your media plan hello everybody and welcome to this

00:01:19.320 week's off the fence with me constantin kissin my trigonometry co-host francis foster winston

00:01:25.380 marshal of the winston marshall show and tom slater from spike gentlemen welcome back this

00:01:31.020 week's big four stories are andy burnham's first conference speech as prime minister in which he

00:01:36.920 announced the return of tax spend renationalization and a not so subtle hint that brexit is up for

00:01:42.960 renegotiation with a possible referendum being offered at the next election diesel has hit over

00:01:48.580 two pounds a liter and trump is threatening an export ban andrew neal who we had on the show

00:01:55.180 it's coming out tomorrow argue that this could mean a recession by christmas if that happens

00:02:00.780 five men were arrested outside outside raf fairfoot in a suspected terrorist incident

00:02:06.380 and now the government says iran may have been involved in fact was involved and finally the

00:02:11.720 green party has published a list of banned words including nutter and lunatic presumably so we

00:02:17.300 can't accurately describe their supporters with all that let's get into our first story which is

00:02:22.580 the labor conference as i mentioned uh tax and spend is back baby renationalization is back uh

00:02:29.940 the 40-year consensus i nearly said tony blair would be rolling in his grave he looks like he

00:02:35.060 isn't one he hasn't quite got there yet uh but this is this is a tear up not only of thatcherism

00:02:40.420 but also of blairism going back all the way to the 70s and the potential for a renegotiation

00:02:47.380 of brexit and a hell of a lot more in his speech which was lauded not only by the left actually

00:02:53.140 but i saw lots of right-wing commentators um applauding it as well tom what did you make of it

00:03:00.900 i've got to say i was taken aback by the gushing that was met this speech um on the one hand

00:03:07.620 because i think there's just an element of because of how awful the quality of political leaders has

00:03:13.940 has been in recent years.

00:03:14.840 Keir Starmer was like the complete nadir of that.

00:03:16.900 A lot of the commentary is very easily impressed,

00:03:19.060 both in terms of his presentation, 0.88

00:03:20.340 which again was a bit chummier than usual,

00:03:21.940 but nevertheless not exactly barnstorming

00:03:24.460 by historical standards.

00:03:25.840 And also the content.

00:03:26.920 I mean, what he was talking about in that speech

00:03:29.660 was it was as if he was living in a parallel universe.

00:03:32.140 I mean, this is the sort of speech

00:03:33.060 a Labour Party leader would give

00:03:34.500 in economic good times

00:03:36.460 where there might be money to splurge

00:03:38.120 on the Labour Party's kind of pet projects and ideologies.

00:03:41.280 It's the sort of speech that you would give

00:03:42.620 if you had a very solid majority of the country behind you,

00:03:46.300 despite the fact that he's just kind of inherited

00:03:47.800 what was already a pretty weak kind of sandcastle majority

00:03:51.860 from Keir Starmer.

00:03:52.660 And since then, the Labour Party's fortunes have plunged.

00:03:55.560 And the things that he was talking about

00:03:57.120 and the things that came out over the course

00:03:58.500 of Labour Party conference,

00:03:59.500 I feel like I am loath to make predictions these days,

00:04:02.740 but this could be the point

00:04:03.680 in which Labour really scuppered it for themselves,

00:04:06.360 both in terms of going towards Brexit again,

00:04:10.120 but in terms of the softening up of the position

00:04:12.580 on migration let alone what sounds like if he ever actually pulls it off a much more radical

00:04:17.840 change to the economy which in the context of incredibly jittery bond market seems like

00:04:22.380 something which he couldn't do even if he wanted to so yeah i mean that all party conferences are

00:04:28.640 a bit like staring into a kind of parallel universe i suppose they're exclusively talking

00:04:33.160 to the faithful of that particular party they're saying things which play to their preferences and

00:04:38.800 to their pet projects and whatever but given the state that the country and the world is in at the

00:04:44.160 moment this felt like hubris doesn't even cover it felt delusional as much as anything else

00:04:48.920 i'm gonna offer a contrarian opinion here which is going to upset people particularly winnie

00:04:56.840 so straight you can absolutely go at me with vengeance and hell and fury look i'm i'm gonna

00:05:06.820 be honest with you, I think the Labour Party have played an absolute blinder by getting

00:05:12.200 Burnham in charge. Starmer was a sinking ship. The Greens were coming and taking all of the

00:05:18.900 left-wing lunatics away from the party. That was really damaging them. Then they had the 0.96

00:05:24.300 right of the party who were casually flirting with the Lib Dems. Burnham has come in and

00:05:29.980 shored things up. Now, you can say, oh, right, look, come on, right, but this isn't going to

00:05:34.320 happen you know this isn't a permanent thing and maybe it isn't and maybe it's like the proverbial

00:05:41.560 drink before you have to face the harsh realities of the morning and it's only a short-term solution

00:05:47.100 but you know what boys as short-term solutions go this is a pretty good one

00:05:52.400 yeah and you also can make the argument that in lifetime we get the politicians that we deserve

00:05:59.980 and he's what we deserve what we want is someone to come up there not to say the hard things

00:06:07.040 not to be like oh actually we're going to need to make drastic cuts this ship is sinking we need to

00:06:13.820 be prudent we need to be fine that we need to actually think about finances and economics

00:06:20.020 no we want someone to be our mate look at our ever-expanding terrible habits gambling expanding

00:06:28.840 gut and going you know what baby you're beautiful as you are that's what burnham is and he's i

00:06:35.640 couldn't help noticing man i couldn't really concentrate on what you were saying there

00:06:38.920 because i was just watching winston's face now he went through a range of emotions there

00:06:43.480 most worrying most worryingly he was making notes now that's when you know things are serious

00:06:48.920 believe it or not i take a different view

00:06:55.080 actually uh i i have a higher sense of self-worth so i i don't feel like this is the prime minister

00:07:03.260 i deserve but francis maybe the prime minister i i was pacing the room in anger listening to this

00:07:13.320 speech and also up again when i heard all the reactions which tom alluded to earlier and the

00:07:21.780 sort of fawning and hagiographies from the media so guy the new statesman said he was crying

00:07:27.640 listening to it beth rigby at sky news saying it was sort of you could see her sort of teary and

00:07:33.540 kind of emotional about it everyone thinking this is some sort of amazing moment i'll cut to the

00:07:40.040 chase the most important part of this in my humble opinion is the allusions to proportional

00:07:47.260 representation he calls it electoral reform now for our american audience people don't understand

00:07:54.920 this at the moment in britain we have first past the post which means that whoever gets the most

00:08:01.180 votes whether in a constituency and then in parliament the most seats so we have 650 seats

00:08:07.460 and so whoever gets 326 which is half plus one they can form a majority and they can form a party

00:08:14.360 if you bring in proportional representation which Andy Burnham has been saying throughout his

00:08:19.780 political career we will never be able to vote out of our problems again because as we examined

00:08:28.920 last week the split of the nation not just now that we've got like six parties or several more

00:08:34.480 actually but the right and left are pretty much split 48 48 so you would never get to a situation

00:08:41.240 where you you could form a coalition of parties to get over that 326 seats which means we'd be

00:08:48.920 stuck here and if we're stuck here there will be other consequences this it i really don't think

00:08:58.220 people appreciate how damaging it is best case scenario look at the continent look at these

00:09:01.980 other countries like Italy who are just perpetually changing leaders we'd be stuck and and for that

00:09:08.220 I don't need to go into all the problems we've got but that is really the number one problem

00:09:13.080 there's some other things though he's talking about expropriation they're saying they're going

00:09:19.360 to confiscate homes and properties in towns and expropriate them and give them to people who need

00:09:26.860 Times. This is literally Leninist. We're past socialism here. They're taking property. I don't

00:09:33.900 know how... I'm not sure they used the word expropriate. They used the word seize. These

00:09:39.480 guys make Mamdani look like van Mises. It's mental. It's literally mental. And people 0.50

00:09:45.400 are still fawning over this. Sorry, I could rant at length and I don't want to sort of

00:09:49.560 hog the airtime. So if anyone wants to push back on any of those things, please do. But

00:09:54.920 before i sort of i want to push back on all of you by biding my time

00:09:58.040 well i'll just say a couple other things this idea that brexit and i think we'll probably talk

00:10:07.460 are we going to talk about brexit separately should i save my brexit point yeah yeah save

00:10:11.000 your brexit stuff i think we'll talk about that i'll say one more thing about thatcherism

00:10:15.440 this whole thing was anchored his whole sort of worldview is this idea that sort of

00:10:20.500 after the war the beverage report which he cited and then you have this kind of

00:10:26.260 high time in sort of english prosperity and british prosperity and we sort of build the

00:10:31.620 country up i'm sorry and then thatcher of course destroys and ruins everything

00:10:37.220 firstly in the 60s it was 95 tax on on top marginal rates that's a it would be a disaster

00:10:46.740 if we went back to that not only that in the 70s we didn't just have piles of rubbish in the streets

00:10:52.180 we had dead bodies piled in the streets we had three-day working weeks we had blackouts we had 0.70

00:10:57.220 inflation going through the roof we had to be bailed out by the imf and this is that's supposed

00:11:02.420 to be the high time and these guys worldview oh bring back the 70s but i i can someone explain

00:11:08.820 can someone one of you guys explain why they're so obsessed with the 70s and and this period which

00:11:14.420 was clearly like a low point in our in our history what what's going on well we had uh two interviews

00:11:22.260 this week one of them i mentioned already with andrew neil the other one was with owen jones

00:11:26.740 who literally made the very argument that you are now saying that the 70s was the best time

00:11:31.620 and then neoliberalism came along and ruined it so i hope people go and watch that uh dean let's

00:11:37.940 show people what andrew neil had to say about burnham and the policies before i get to my

00:11:42.420 controversial take it's the people who blame uh it's british attitudes to blame because

00:11:52.020 the british people think they can have scandinavian levels of cradle to the grave welfare

00:12:00.980 on kind of mid-atlantic taxes and here's the thing you can't although if people vote in a

00:12:07.220 in a way that results in a right of center government

00:12:11.100 that might not deliver on all these things.

00:12:14.060 If the country does vote for the Andy Burnham prospectus,

00:12:17.540 that's it.

00:12:18.820 We are a socialist tax and spend future.

00:12:24.540 There's no going back from that.

00:12:26.100 He believes that a bigger state means more growth.

00:12:29.820 I hope he is. 1.00

00:12:30.980 He's away with the fairies, but that's his belief. 1.00

00:12:34.220 Why don't you think it's gonna work? 1.00

00:12:35.860 because I don't see anywhere in the world where it ever has.

00:12:40.420 So a crisis in the bond markets could force this government

00:12:43.860 into doing things it doesn't want to do.

00:12:46.300 I think we are heading for some really tough times.

00:12:57.140 So that will be out tomorrow.

00:12:58.740 And I wrote an article yesterday

00:13:01.580 in which I only, with a very little small portion

00:13:04.220 my tongue and my cheek argue that andy burnham will save britain there is a bit of a caveat which

00:13:10.220 is that if there's a fiscal crisis very soon then that might not happen but if he is allowed to do

00:13:17.100 this it will destroy the economy so much that that is in my opinion the only way the british

00:13:23.420 public will actually reset their attitudes to all of these things because one of the things i talk

00:13:28.060 about in the article is the british public have a schizophrenic attitude to tax and spend if you ask

00:13:36.060 people about tax and spend it's actually very unpopular only 36 percent of people in this

00:13:41.180 country say that they're in favor of tax and spend uh in the in the general sweep of things but then

00:13:47.900 when you ask them about individual policies if you ask them about a wealth tax if you ask them about

00:13:53.020 a mansion tax if you ask them about taxing the top one percent more taxing the top 10

00:13:58.060 more re-nationalizing the water companies re-nationalizing railways re-nationalizing

00:14:04.380 your grandma they're massively massively massively in favor of it and my argument is the british

00:14:10.460 public will remain in favor of all of these things until this world view is utterly discredited by

00:14:15.580 reality which i would argue is what happened in the 70s which is why you then had a period of time

00:14:21.900 when you were able as a country to pursue a different set of policies that actually created

00:14:27.260 the the modern economy as we have it i am with all respect to our fellow citizens convinced that

00:14:33.580 until that reality manifests itself in disaster we will not quite there is no argument to be won

00:14:39.980 anymore people are people believe that prosperity is generated by taking more from other people

00:14:46.460 That is the British attitude to these things, as Andrew Neill said.

00:14:50.420 And until we have an economic reality that really hurts people, which is something I really, really don't want, it will be absolutely terrible.

00:15:00.500 All four of us are going to be more or less insulated or cushioned from it, certainly more than the ordinary person.

00:15:05.660 And it's because of that that I've spent my entire public life arguing against this worldview.

00:15:10.920 but i i i am i feel entirely powerless and i feel that better people than all of us have made better

00:15:19.640 arguments than all of us about this and i don't think the british public care i think they want

00:15:25.140 to have a go at socialism and i think the elation that you saw not only in the room at the labor

00:15:31.440 party conference but across the media across social media from across the political spectrum

00:15:36.700 actually is not because andy burnham talked about his dad movingly although a lot of people are

00:15:42.120 seduced by the sort of personal narrative i think the reason this stuff got the reaction that it got

00:15:47.920 is that he's offering a lot of people what they want well of course the difficulty here is that

00:15:54.200 how you poll particular questions will produce particular outcomes um because as you say even

00:15:59.060 though you could look on net what the british republic seem to believe about economic policy

00:16:05.200 more broadly you break it up you get different responses i suppose one thing maybe this is a

00:16:08.780 note of optimism is that i think the british public where economic matters are concerned

00:16:12.380 are actually more persuadable than it often seems like even the kind of quote-unquote austerity is

00:16:17.300 we can argue about whether or not that was meaningfully austerity that was very popular

00:16:21.660 i mean that was a program for the country which the public felt that was necessary that needed

00:16:26.760 to be implemented to write the public finances of course it didn't actually put us in better

00:16:30.800 stead economically in the end but nevertheless that was something that the public were open

00:16:35.080 towards the thing about Andy Burnham and his economic outlook I think he's going to be

00:16:39.220 disastrous for the economy for the country but maybe not in the way that you think Constantine

00:16:43.440 just in the sense that I think he represents the continuation of what Keir Starmer was doing of

00:16:48.460 what the last conservative government was doing rather than any particular acceleration of it

00:16:53.080 the weddedness to net zero for instance which I'm sure will come on to in relation to the diesel

00:16:58.060 crisis, the weddedness to the just kind of trundling along rather than engaging in the

00:17:03.760 kind of spending cuts, restructuring of the economy that is necessary. If you listen to

00:17:08.740 that speech quite closely, it's also, I might be proven wrong by future events. There's an

00:17:14.340 element where I think he's just going to go down as a kind of a bit of a left-wing prick

00:17:18.200 tease to a certain extent. He will say things like, in that speech, we're going to lift

00:17:22.260 the Thatcher era ban on nationalisation. Then when it comes to him saying what it is that

00:17:26.260 he actually intends to do it's more public control which could be everything from having some kind of

00:17:32.160 poncy community representative on the board of an energy company just or to having the mayor being

00:17:37.920 able to call in bosses of energy companies it can be something a lot lower than that i think he is

00:17:41.940 kind of aware of the fact that even when he wasn't leader of the labor party him even just sounding

00:17:46.500 off about the bond markets moved the bond markets i think he knows he's actually quite hemmed in i

00:17:51.600 I think he is going to be disastrous for the country, for the economy.

00:17:54.680 I think it could well accelerate the decline

00:17:57.220 in the way that you're slightly tongue-in-cheek hoping for Konstantin,

00:18:00.380 but because he's more of the same

00:18:02.520 rather than it being any kind of radical break with the past.

00:18:07.000 But again, I might be eating these words in six months, Simon.

00:18:10.760 Do you know where I am with this?

00:18:12.600 And it's slightly with Konstantin, but it's just...

00:18:14.920 I remember when I was doing stand-up and I were regularly

00:18:18.340 and I was saying to the stand-up comedians,

00:18:20.600 as Constantine was, this free speech thing, it's a big thing. Cancel culture is real. It's going to

00:18:28.240 affect you. It's going to affect all of us. It's going to constrain it. You know, they called us

00:18:33.860 far right, Nazi, whatever else. And then they went on. Anyway, the other week I was in a comedy club

00:18:41.600 in the green room and there was a group of comedians in a corner and they were talking

00:18:46.760 about how worried they were about cancel culture. They couldn't say this. They couldn't say that.

00:18:51.740 Someone got banned from playing this club for saying this. What happens if you don't fully

00:18:56.360 go on with the pro-pally thing? And I looked over there and I was like, welcome to the club, boys.

00:19:02.720 You finally got it, didn't you? And that's how I see this. You can only keep repeating the same

00:19:08.900 thing again and again to people. You can only do it so many times. Eventually, it's like when you're,

00:19:14.600 My only other reference, being a teacher, you can only say to the kids,

00:19:18.940 you know what, do your revision.

00:19:20.820 And if they don't want to do it, you go, well, you're going to fail your exams

00:19:24.160 and I'm going to be on my summer holidays.

00:19:27.040 What do you want?

00:19:28.520 That's where we are.

00:19:29.460 If the British probably want socialism,

00:19:33.440 Viva la Revolución!

00:19:40.720 KK, in a way, I sort of hope you're right. 0.53

00:19:43.840 and you giving the example of thatcher coming after the 70s is is a positive example i'd say

00:19:50.680 it's not the only way it goes no i agree so you know we've got the example of the 70s that that

00:20:00.340 that pre-80s period we've got all the examples of socialism everywhere in the world which continue

00:20:08.480 to this day and communism. We've got the Soviet Union example. We've just got every kind of

00:20:14.360 example. We've got a lot of lies about the examples of what's going on with social democracy

00:20:19.740 on the continent. My worry is it could also go the example of, let's say, Mitterrand in France

00:20:28.400 in the 80s, where he comes in hard left. It doesn't go well. After a couple of years, he yanks,

00:20:34.900 he goes to the right to save the economy which means that you kind of carry either carry on with

00:20:41.280 the socialists or and this is what happened to starmer you get a faction on who go you're not

00:20:46.960 going left enough and so then they form their green party basically the problem they're ideologues

00:20:53.360 so they can't be wrong so they just they'll just i'm not sure that they'll ever unplug they'll just

00:21:00.180 go further left so oh yeah yeah but but that's where the market the bond markets create the

00:21:07.280 correction that's where the reality snaps back to amplify your pessimism further i think there's a

00:21:12.820 third way this could go which is of course a 1930s style situation and if you look at the cultural

00:21:17.940 issues that we've got a tanking economy plus all of that you could be looking at a far left far

00:21:23.500 right both rising rapidly at the same time in response to the deterioration of the economy i

00:21:28.740 want to make it super, super clear. I am not in favor of this. I just think it's the only way

00:21:35.840 things have a chance to get profoundly better in the next 10 years. Otherwise, we will likely get

00:21:42.400 what you're talking about, Winston, which is a continuing bumbling along the bottom,

00:21:47.280 continually sort of trying to, well, you know, look, look, we can borrow more money. We can,

00:21:53.300 we can find a way to, I read an argument, I think in the Telegraph the other day that,

00:21:57.460 uh you know what we really need to do is restructure the debt so we can borrow more and

00:22:01.620 then everything will be fine it's like i i and i think that is the temptation of every politician

00:22:08.820 actually is to find a way to pretend we don't have a problem because the moment you stop you

00:22:14.020 then have to fix it and fixing it is going to be bloody awful that there's a practical element to

00:22:22.740 this as well which is what is actually the situation in britain right now and if we get

00:22:28.260 to the next election in three years the right is still split labor win either majority or they win

00:22:36.100 in coalition they bring in proportional representation as i mentioned earlier so

00:22:42.100 your even your example as like the least bad scenario way to wake people up we might be on

00:22:47.380 a path where it's almost moot because we're just going to have so many hellish other problems with

00:22:53.860 a split country as i've argued before who don't seem to actually change from right to left

00:22:58.900 particularly overall but just change within right and within left so whilst i i hope people wake up

00:23:06.820 to the realities of of these policies i'm i i'm less hopeful about what's actually next

00:23:13.220 I was saying there is a scenario in which this provided the right gets its act together which

00:23:23.160 is a very big if at this point we've seen some council by elections overnight in which restore

00:23:28.520 stop reform from gaining a seat it's a pattern that we're seeing occurring across the country

00:23:32.820 but if the right got its act together I think this could be seen as the moment in which Andy

00:23:37.520 Burnham just completely scuppered Labour's chances at the next election because what are the two big

00:23:41.440 issues which are affecting society poll any any poll will show they're jostling for position on

00:23:46.040 one and position number two it's the cost of living and it's immigration on immigration at

00:23:49.740 this conference labor have softened up already an incredibly soft set of reforms they're going to

00:23:54.700 seemingly junk a lot what they were going to do around indefinite leave to remain essentially

00:23:58.400 allowing a large chunk of the boris wave to be able to access benefits be on a pathway to

00:24:02.380 citizenship they're opening up these quote-unquote safe and legal routes how safe they they'll be

00:24:07.480 legal but i dare say they won't be safe particularly in relation to afghanistan and 0.76

00:24:12.520 palestine they claim it's going to be capped but as we all saw from that one palestinian woman who 1.00

00:24:17.660 came over and then managed to bring 18 of her family members along effortlessly i don't think

00:24:22.380 that's going to move the dial at all people are already making jokes you know he says he wants 0.94

00:24:26.600 growth in every postcode the way things are going it's going to be a migrant rapist in every postcode

00:24:30.100 i mean all of these things are this is the issue of our era and he's on the wrong side of it then 0.95

00:24:35.920 you look at the economy even if he doesn't get to the point where he can engage in these grand

00:24:40.420 nostalgic spirit of 1945 kind of visions for what he wants to do to the economy even just carrying

00:24:46.820 on as we are is going to be disastrous we are facing another fuel crisis we it is going to look

00:24:53.780 like a particularly painful winter potentially and what are we talking about maybe just maybe

00:24:59.400 we'll speed up some of the north sea oil and gas licenses without you know even actually changing

00:25:05.820 the policy there tinkering is what is the kind of medium case scenario i think for what burnham is

00:25:11.480 actually going to do so give it a bit of time i think that it could be potentially disastrous

00:25:15.020 for him but as i say this is the the requirement in all of this would be that either the right

00:25:20.860 wing parties or right wing voters get their heads around this and start kind of sorting into the

00:25:26.720 party that's most likely to win in their constituency or the party that's most likely

00:25:29.400 to win in the country but looking at where things are at at the moment obviously that is such a

00:25:34.040 massive if it's probably not much to hang your hat on. Well, given the negative conversation

00:25:39.440 we've had, I do think it's important to eject a little bit of a note of optimism, say that

00:25:43.740 we could, in a few years, be facing another Brexit referendum, which obviously would be

00:25:49.320 wonderful and delightful for all of us. The first one went fantastically well,

00:25:54.140 really united the country. And that is one of the things that Labour under Burnham are considering.

00:25:59.540 from what i understand the entire front bench are basically uh died in the wool remainers uh and as

00:26:06.120 i think everyone watching this will know francis and i voted remain in the referendum but were

00:26:10.280 absolutely disgusted by the way the the remain side tried to earn overturn the democratic vote

00:26:17.280 uh but that is effectively what burnham is proposing to put uh in the election manifesto

00:26:22.800 at the next election which would give us another 10 years uh of the wonderful shenanigans that we

00:26:29.240 had before what do we make of this well you know what i think it's a great idea because i don't

00:26:35.240 think we're divided enough oh for goodness sake what you you're just trying to wind me up

00:26:40.520 it's not that hard these days mate

00:26:43.420 i don't think we're dividing in it we were divided enough i don't think the left's divided

00:26:50.280 enough i don't think the right's divided enough whether it's the right to all the right wing

00:26:55.560 I think we need more division.

00:26:57.480 Let's have more to argue about. 0.91

00:26:59.640 Let's break up more families, more relationships, 1.00

00:27:03.480 more inter-familial relationships. 1.00

00:27:06.240 Let's get everybody at each other's throats. 1.00

00:27:09.080 Let's bring back the big dogs. 1.00

00:27:10.600 Let's get it in the room. 0.71

00:27:11.860 Why not?

00:27:12.620 Why not? 1.00

00:27:13.300 Everything else is going to shit. 1.00

00:27:15.280 Why not throw a lynx can on the bonfire? 1.00

00:27:19.440 You know what, actually? 0.99

00:27:20.680 You make a good point because Burnham started his speech

00:27:24.120 saying enough of the division of the last 10 years of politics yeah before going into an unbelievably

00:27:31.760 divisive speech what could be more divisive than brexit everyone's finished with just no one wants

00:27:37.840 to revisit that i mean i know they do all those remain of front measures i i would say i by the

00:27:42.600 way this is going to sound very wet but i actually sport my ballot for brexit although i'm now very

00:27:47.100 very hard brexit and i don't think we need to go much further um i certainly don't want to go and

00:27:52.120 And the reason because I think that is because all the remain lie, all the remain arguments proved to be lies.

00:27:58.800 But that's a conversation for another day.

00:28:00.100 But there is something on this Brexit thing I need to pick up because it's a crazy lie that Labour keeps keeps selling.

00:28:08.020 They keep saying that immigration was illegal immigration was easier to deal with when we were within the EU.

00:28:15.720 And the argument is, because of the Dublin Protocol, the Dublin Agreement, we could send back illegal entrants to wherever they first came from.

00:28:27.180 Sorry, wherever they first entered in the EU.

00:28:30.540 I've got a question for you guys. 0.85

00:28:31.940 it's a pop quiz of the 30,000 requests from the UK to return illegal immigrants from between

00:28:46.220 2015 and 2020 to other nations in the EU how many were successful what do you think

00:28:56.240 50. I'm not sure about that time frame but I remember it was something like 500 a year or

00:29:02.480 something in that ballpark. Yeah basically 1800 in that total time and not only that

00:29:09.740 we had to take in more from EU countries wanting to send them back to us

00:29:15.020 so this idea that it was somehow easier to deal with illegal immigration is a total lie 0.95

00:29:22.420 it's it's like they think we're stupid especially to try and sustain that now is fascinating because 0.94

00:29:30.240 as you said that stuff about the doubling accord is just complete bollocks and anyone who looks 0.53

00:29:33.320 into it for five seconds will realize that also the fact that we've had all this non-eu

00:29:37.480 migration since brexit first of all we know why because boris johnson decided to loosen up the

00:29:42.860 visa rules but also you saw that in various other european countries they were all desperately

00:29:47.000 trying to plug these gaps in the labor market after covid and the lockdowns and everything

00:29:50.880 um and then also if you think about the eu we would be rejoining an eu in which this lunatic 0.52

00:29:57.180 pedro sanchez has just granted an asylum to an amnesty rather to a million illegal migrants who

00:30:03.960 as soon as they get spanish citizenship could be on their way to britain yeah or 60 000 people

00:30:10.000 crossing the border in two hours or two days or whatever it was in fuetta exactly well pronounced

00:30:16.340 there which um france has been giving you lessons i've been working on that for a while

00:30:19.140 exactly those that invasion is what the the future of the eu looks like they've always

00:30:26.960 struggled to control their own external border we'd be lumping ourselves back into it again

00:30:31.000 and um it's like going back to this point about how labor live in fantasy land the remainers

00:30:37.000 within labor and the rest of politics are completely in fantasy land they're the most

00:30:40.880 low information people when it comes to the issue of the european union and migration the only way

00:30:46.320 the rejoin case can be sustained as if you do not pay attention at all to what is going on

00:30:50.900 within the European Union. They act like it's a land of economic milk and honey. Meanwhile,

00:30:56.220 France is teetering on the edge of a sovereign debt crisis, and Germany, the former industrial

00:31:00.580 powerhouse, is de-industrialising at a rate of knots. They talk about it as if it's this kind

00:31:05.660 of haven of political centre-left centrist stability. Meanwhile, again, in France and

00:31:12.360 germany they're spoiling to elect parties that make reform look like the lib dems like it doesn't

00:31:16.680 make any sense if you actually it makes sense in one way tom it makes sense in one way i think which

00:31:22.660 and i think this is the reason that they think this might be a time to do this because if you

00:31:27.960 poll the british public at a very superficial level there are a lot of people who quote unquote

00:31:32.720 regret brexit and i think that what's happening there is my theory i may be wrong about this is

00:31:37.880 people don't think about the causal relationship very carefully so they say well we had brexit in

00:31:44.280 2016 then we had five years of dicking around about brexit which was as francis alludes to

00:31:50.060 quite divisive then we got whatever brexit got we didn't get a reduction in immigration but what

00:31:55.840 we've also got is is falling living standards and people go well we got brexit then we got

00:31:59.960 falling living standards therefore brexit caused living standards because they don't know that the

00:32:05.300 european union is actually growing far slower than the uk even though our growth is anemic

00:32:10.000 theirs is even more and i don't know what the right adjective would be for

00:32:13.940 worse than anemic like leave the dead i guess is right they're not growing at all basically

00:32:20.180 um they've got like sickle cell or something you know yeah sickle cell yeah exactly the economies

00:32:25.060 are sickle cell levels so so what we've got was two months after sorry yeah yeah uh so i think i

00:32:33.680 think what's happening is British people go, we had Brexit, it's that prop, whatever, I can't

00:32:41.140 remember the Latin expression, but something happened, therefore the thing that followed

00:32:44.240 it happened because of it. And that's what we've got with this, where people go, Brexit happened,

00:32:49.200 things have not got better, therefore Brexit was bad. And they're not looking at the facts that

00:32:54.320 you're talking about, which is on the two major issues in this country, which is the economy and

00:32:59.680 immigration the european union and its key countries germany italy and france are actually

00:33:06.400 and spain are actually doing even worse than we are and so to go back into that at great cost and

00:33:12.880 great turmoil to the country uh even as someone who who thought you know the remain argument uh

00:33:19.120 not the ones that were lies but the other remain arguments were strong um i just this doesn't make

00:33:24.240 any sense to me whatsoever and by the way we put we talked about uh this with andrew neil and his

00:33:29.200 argument was that actually labor haven't thought this through because that's superficial brexit

00:33:35.520 regret when it becomes converted into actual campaigning and when people start to become

00:33:40.480 aware of the economic realities of the eu and other things that are going on this may prove

00:33:46.080 if they go for this may this may prove to be their downfall yeah i completely agree on that score

00:33:51.360 because also rejoining the eu the case for that is so much tougher than remaining within the eu

00:33:58.880 like remain we know what the status quo looks like you know that's something which is quite clear

00:34:03.520 but if as soon as that campaign gets underway talking about the euro talking about freedom

00:34:08.620 movement that rebate we're never getting back all of these arguments are ones that strengthen the

00:34:14.280 leave or the in this case the remain out if you like of course but i just don't see it again

00:34:19.940 immigration i think with a bit of it wouldn't take much explaining to say that again rejoining 0.80

00:34:26.000 the EU at this point is going to be a very very bad idea so um I think be careful what they wish

00:34:31.500 for really I mean I I again don't like to make predictions too much but I it seems like a slam

00:34:37.100 dunk if we ever got to another referendum but it's the sort of thing I don't think there is

00:34:40.920 much appetite for it in the country because you can superficially poll people and say do you reckon

00:34:45.060 we should rejoin the EU do you reckon you regret it but again as soon as you get a bit more granular

00:34:48.980 do you think we should be in the euro no do you think that we should have freedom of movement no

00:34:53.100 even if you ask people do you think we should have our own trade policy they're like of course we

00:34:56.920 should so again it won't take much i think for this fantasy to collide with reality and i am

00:35:03.060 amazed they're going back towards it i think it's just because it's like an identity question

00:35:06.160 for these politicians as much as it is anything else now they're like they were so wounded by

00:35:10.980 that vote going the wrong way 10 years ago even ones who were in the labor party or in politics

00:35:15.560 who weren't that bothered about the eu have suddenly it's become their entire personality

00:35:19.480 but it's definitely not going to survive contact with reality and also as well Andrew Andrew made

00:35:26.460 a very good point when Andrew knew in our interview when he said look there's also the

00:35:30.160 practical realities of as a politician you're a human being you've got limited bandwidth you've

00:35:35.900 got a limited amount of hours you've got a limited amount of energy you can only dedicate and devote

00:35:41.200 yourself to so many issues and causes and problems and whatever else you're going to add this to it

00:35:48.320 This is going to take up so many man-hours.

00:35:51.920 It's going to take up a huge amount of time, effort, and energy.

00:35:57.140 We've got huge problems elsewhere that I don't think it's hyperbolic to describe them as existential.

00:36:03.260 And this is what you want to do with?

00:36:05.700 Do you know what I mean?

00:36:06.900 We're like, you know, a guy who's basically his house is falling apart.

00:36:11.460 The wife's about to leave him.

00:36:12.680 The kids are hating him.

00:36:13.940 And he's like, you know what?

00:36:14.940 I think it's time to get the band back together, isn't it?

00:36:18.320 that's what we need to do and you're going no mate i think i think you need i think you need

00:36:23.300 to put the fire out that's where we are so realistically i don't can't see it happening

00:36:29.760 purely from just a logistical point of view on the labor side when final we actually have to

00:36:37.140 we have to do this it's the opposite of what we actually have to do which is we we have to leave

00:36:42.520 the european convention of human rights which we're bound to with the human rights act which

00:36:47.580 is what is stopping us from actually dealing with a lot of illegal immigration problems

00:36:52.540 he he is going in literally the wrong direction we need more brexit

00:36:57.080 there we go more brexit uh easy sell no doubt to the country uh now let's move on to another issue

00:37:06.560 which i actually think could be extraordinarily impactful on the country uh and it is of course

00:37:13.100 the potential diesel ban from the US. The US is currently providing about a third of the diesel

00:37:19.200 we have in this country. Francis, take it away. Okay, so Trump has threatened to ban diesel

00:37:26.080 exports from the US. And so just for a little bit of info for people who don't know what diesel is

00:37:32.800 used for, it's used for heavy transportation, industry, agriculture, but also this is important

00:37:38.020 for emergency backup systems for hospitals. This is very, very, very important stuff. He's worried

00:37:44.940 about the rising price of diesels with the midterms coming up, and he wants Europe to use

00:37:50.840 their diesel reserves to flood the market and therefore lower prices. And obviously, the rise

00:37:57.440 in diesel prices due to the war in Iran and a Russian ban on diesel exports because of the

00:38:03.480 Ukraine war and this is a lot of this pressure has been put on him by Republicans in agricultural

00:38:10.400 heartland are really worried about the backlash from the midterms. France, Italy and Germany have

00:38:20.460 about 900 days of diesel combined. We're in the UK because we're retarded. We have 42 because we're 0.98

00:38:30.100 idiots um now i've got a different stat to you kk because in the telegraph they said we import about 0.99

00:38:36.840 55 percent of our diesel from the u.s so i don't know who's right that's what the dino can you 0.99

00:38:41.600 look it up with venice ai what is the percentage of uh our diesel that comes from the u.s at the

00:38:46.560 moment uh but carry on francis we'll look it up and we'll get the stats up yeah and um and i've

00:38:52.680 got some other good news guys so our biggest refinery uh is set to shut down uh for 10 weeks

00:38:59.180 due to maintenance. So the biggest refinery that we have is about to close down because we need to

00:39:05.940 maintain it. So on top of that, that's an extra fuckery. But don't worry, the government came out 0.95

00:39:12.260 and said we have a diverse, they love that word, don't they? Doesn't matter what we are, we're

00:39:16.700 diverse and resilient supply. And as KK said, we're about to hit or we've just gone through the

00:39:23.860 two pound a litre threshold. And this is really, really, really worrying because if this happens,

00:39:32.200 this plunges an already fragile economy into a recession. We are not robust. We cannot withstand

00:39:41.300 this type of economic shock. It is a major concern, not only for Europe, but particularly

00:39:48.540 for us as we simply do not have the reserves to cope with this and I guess the question is

00:39:56.300 do we think this is going to happen this is simply Trump posturing will the Europeans

00:40:03.420 capitulate and does it matter that we're diverse well one of the things we should separate is 0.59

00:40:11.240 Europeans from us actually in many ways we just talked about the fact that 0.99

00:40:15.320 would agree with you mate of course we need more brexit but the one area in which the europeans

00:40:21.480 have actually in this instant done much better is they have not pursued the net zero suicide

00:40:29.080 in this part of it with the same vigor that we have so they all have about a year's worth of

00:40:35.160 diesel supply we have a month's worth of diesel supply just over and so this puts us in a completely

00:40:42.040 different position andy burnham is going to have to get on all fours and and get very very grateful

00:40:48.540 with donald trump to get any concessions out of him uh maybe you know well you know it's an image

00:40:54.960 that we'd all enjoy um but so in that situation um that's we would have to uh basically go crawling

00:41:05.300 to the white house and no i don't know what trump would demand but he does not strike me

00:41:09.760 as someone who gives things away without asking for something in return and so if britain was to

00:41:14.940 find a way to secure uh an exemption from these uh from this export ban which may well happen

00:41:20.780 um then uh then we will have to give up something very valuable in exchange now let's be let's come

00:41:27.820 back to why this is all happening this is obviously all the consequences of the iran war

00:41:33.380 and what president trump is trying to do is to ameliorate some of the pain that that war is

00:41:40.480 causing domestically uh because you see that the you know with prices rising at the pump and don't

00:41:46.160 forget diesel is obviously what what fuels all agriculture effectively so a lot of the the

00:41:52.560 american uh agricultural states and a lot of the american ordinary consumers gas prices are one of

00:41:58.120 the key metrics for whether presidency is going well in the united states uh with the mid-term

00:42:03.180 looming this is not a good look when we interviewed senator ted cruz at the outset of this war he said

00:42:09.340 if this conflict is still ongoing at the time of the midterms we have failed i believe was his

00:42:14.220 exact language or something to that effect the reality is they have failed and what they're

00:42:19.980 trying to do now is to get europe to open up its reserves and take their reserves down to zero as

00:42:26.780 quickly as possible to suppress diesel prices in order to help the republicans win the midterms

00:42:33.020 And Britain is stuck in the middle because of net zero and the lunacy that we've had shutting down.

00:42:39.380 Francis says we've got our biggest refineries down for maintenance for 10 weeks.

00:42:43.960 But we've shut down a whole number of refineries.

00:42:47.580 And then, yes, it's also true, by the way, that the war in Ukraine, 0.86

00:42:51.660 ironically, it's actually Ukraine's recent successes that are making this problem worse 0.93

00:42:55.680 because one of the things the Ukrainians have been doing, and very successfully, 0.63

00:42:59.920 is targeting russia's refinery uh refining capacity with drones and missile strikes and

00:43:06.580 they've been so effective at it that russia a huge producer of oil and gas obviously which used to

00:43:13.480 refine a significant portion of it itself is now importing petroleum products from countries like

00:43:19.700 india because so much of its refining capacity has been damaged so it's a giant mess and president

00:43:27.120 trump will do whatever he believes is in the interests of the republican party i was going

00:43:32.160 to say the american people but in this instance i think it's fair to say it's the republican party

00:43:35.920 and the consequence for europe if he continues to press that will be absolutely disastrous

00:43:42.100 europe is more resilient we are absolutely screwed if this happens and and the consequences are not

00:43:48.980 just purely economic i mean when the fuel runs out that's when the unrest starts i mean this is

00:43:55.540 something and also when the just when the prices rocket is when the unrest starts i mean alistair

00:43:59.780 campbell said that actually the biggest crisis he ever had to deal with during the new labor years

00:44:04.460 was not the fallout for 9-11 it wasn't the iraq war which he of course played his role in lying

00:44:09.280 our way into it was the 2000s fuel price protest where you had a bunch of lorry drivers blockading

00:44:15.280 depots and basically bringing the country to a standstill the nhs came within a like a hair's

00:44:20.120 breadth of running out of fuel and this is something which can readily happen it's why

00:44:25.220 seeing countries across the world suddenly trying to placate their kind of restive populations and

00:44:30.180 that's something that you're not just going to see in the developing country you could easily see it

00:44:33.700 in this country and it's entirely if not entirely then largely self-inflicted obviously we did have

00:44:40.020 this sort of fantasy this end of history fancy that conflict was a thing of the past that war

00:44:45.540 was something that only really happened over there it didn't really have knock-on effects what happens

00:44:49.620 at home obviously the combination of ukraine winston's favorite war the war in iran and

00:44:54.580 all the other ones have you know brought that crashing down around us um but at the same time

00:44:59.300 you can make yourself more resilient against these kinds of things i mean there was a good piece in

00:45:02.900 sunday times about this um we're currently i think it's all of our of our road diesel accounts we're

00:45:08.180 reporting 55 of that some of that from america some from that from elsewhere um it was as low

00:45:12.340 as 14 in the early 2000s over that time i think we've gone from nine refineries to four last year

00:45:18.900 alone we closed two refineries which would account for 25 percent of our capacity to to refine uh

00:45:27.220 oil so this is something which has been actively pursued by successive governments and has left us

00:45:32.740 of course international crises happen we are dealing with global markets but you leave yourself

00:45:38.100 so much more exposed to this by the decisions that you make in this country it's the combination of

00:45:43.140 the sort of net zero ideology writ large as you've been saying constantine and also this sort of just

00:45:48.100 in time model of running your economy where you have very meager reserves because that's the way

00:45:53.680 to because it's cheaper to do so effectively and everything's running fine most of the time and

00:45:57.820 you know all it takes is a pandemic and a couple of wars to make you realize that that's probably

00:46:01.540 a bad way to plan going forward so again at the risk of just echoing everything you've said this

00:46:07.120 is a real recipe for disaster and it's one that will show up i think not just in terms of price

00:46:12.620 at the pump and things get very tough for people out there but potentially serious unrest as well

00:46:17.260 it's not a bottle on top of uh just to interject to this point venice ai says about 17 of the diesel

00:46:23.500 used in the uk comes from the us kk so it turns out neither of us is right anyway well i would

00:46:29.180 say i was directionally more accurate than you so look i don't i don't want to uh offend your

00:46:36.940 loyalties to the ayatollah so i'm just going to make it we had in the 80s 17 oil refineries sorry

00:46:45.820 18 oil refineries and now we have four this is this is about britain and it's okay everything

00:46:53.740 you said about net zero folly the fact that we're not still properly not properly doing

00:47:00.300 oil expeditions into the into the north sea and and still importing oil from the norwegians from

00:47:06.540 the same bloody fields that we own that are ours and this is sort of across the field there's some

00:47:13.820 sort of various net zero follies that we should we should do a long conversation about uh one day

00:47:19.100 but until we have energy security we're going to be a a failing country in this new world order 0.88

00:47:28.300 yeah well look you make a good point and uh without standing up for the great ayatollah i

00:47:33.020 think it's fair to say that uh the uk has pursued suicidal policy that we've all spoken about

00:47:39.180 in this area uh not least because we do have access to our own oil and gas which we should

00:47:44.880 be producing as quickly as we can in addition to we should be fracking fracking is still legal

00:47:50.460 and and what we should also have been have been doing there is of course that famous clip of nick

00:47:55.880 clegg saying about 15 years ago that we shouldn't build nuclear reactors because it would take 15

00:48:00.320 years here we are nuclear reactors right um all of those things should have been done that does

00:48:08.300 not take away from the fact that this global crisis is a result of the war in iran and president

00:48:15.700 trump's ban or potential ban that is being mooted and his attempts to get europeans to run down

00:48:21.720 their reserves uh to lower diesel and gas prices for american consumers effectively is his way of

00:48:29.520 trying to mitigate the consequences of this conflict now tom and you are absolutely right i 0.99

00:48:35.400 mean how these morons did not learn the lessons of the pandemic to me the biggest lesson of the 0.96

00:48:41.140 pandemic yeah sure they covered up the fact that the virus was originated in a lab in china almost 0.99

00:48:46.080 certainly uh through gain of function research almost certainly sponsored by western uh western 0.63

00:48:52.340 institutions fine okay you cover that up and chinese yeah and chinese okay fine but to me

00:48:58.760 you know you don't necessarily control that exactly what we did control is the sudden

00:49:04.600 realization which these people you know just randomly had in this moment that when push comes

00:49:10.200 to shove surprise surprise countries are going to try and do what's in their national interest

00:49:15.000 now you can blame president trump or you can blame the chinese or whatever the reality is

00:49:20.200 if you don't produce your own steel if you don't produce your own medication if you don't produce

00:49:23.960 your own oil and gas if you don't produce your own energy if you don't grow your own food

00:49:27.800 you are going to be vulnerable and i think in the last yeah i don't know five or six years

00:49:33.960 we could all see that the world has changed right i mean look at the the number of wars that are

00:49:39.400 going on that are affecting all food fertilizer agriculture oil gas all of these things how

00:49:46.360 the decision has not been made to do a complete handbrake turn and go oh my god we have been so

00:49:52.760 foolish fine okay we've made mistakes let's ramp up our production capacity let's ramp up our

00:49:57.480 refining capacity by the way these things create jobs you know these things create economic growth 0.94

00:50:02.120 something we seem to be short on at the moment um if we were actually doing all of that we'd be

00:50:08.200 ticking a lot of the boxes that our country needs but instead you just have ed militwa just pursuing

00:50:15.960 all of this stuff first as energy secretary now as foreign secretary and we've got this

00:50:20.040 continuous ideology that has absolutely no relation to reality and there doesn't seem to

00:50:26.040 be any change but you know that image of andy burnham on all fours in the oval office will

00:50:31.560 give me the moral satisfaction that trumps all of that but again you use the word ideology and this

00:50:38.120 is what it comes back to it is an ideology because you look at what is the inevitable outcome of the

00:50:46.920 set of beliefs and it's disastrous if you look at the bottom line and go is it going to make the

00:50:54.840 lives of people better once you get down to it it just simply isn't it's going to make us weaker 0.96

00:51:02.080 it's going to make us more vulnerable it's going to mean that other countries are going to be able

00:51:06.860 to bully us far more effectively which is what the americans and donald trump is doing they're

00:51:12.620 bullying us and we simply can't stand up to them because we've got basically over a month of of

00:51:19.620 diesel in in how can i put it in the back pocket so what what can we do apart from

00:51:27.920 go over there you know get on all fours and go give it to me daddy which is the position we're

00:51:34.440 in i think if if anyone should do that job andy burnham is incredibly well placed to do it i hope

00:51:40.800 i thought you were gonna say me mate so thanks for that no no i i think andy burnham should do

00:51:46.720 it i'm up for it uh he he's he's got the soft touch to handle it uh with with all of that said

00:51:53.340 uh speaking of the great ayatollah winston it turns out he's been up to a few a few things in

00:51:58.700 our backyard tell us about that yes this it's a bit of a tragic comedy this and we have the film

00:52:06.600 four lions play out in real life rubber dingy rapids and all so this is last weekend i mean

00:52:14.860 it's it's it's absolutely you're going to hear it and you can't satirize this it's it's it's

00:52:21.260 it starts with one of a bunch of guys going in white vans to RAF Fairford which has been used

00:52:31.480 during the Iran war for American um uh air forces uh to bomb Iran and these men five of whom have

00:52:40.660 now been arrested but there have been reports of up to eight or ten by a local witness here you can

00:52:45.980 see this in this asset you can see i think it's three or four of the lads who have been arrested

00:52:51.300 one of them called the police on themselves about midnight last saturday before like an hour later

00:53:02.060 a local female farmer also reported she saw these white vans with these lads then scurrying off into

00:53:11.620 the into the forest to hide the police don't clear the area until eight in the morning

00:53:19.400 the the thing slowly escalates and escalates it turns out that these are four guys from

00:53:24.940 london they've been they get arrested trump comes out and as well as rubio saying it's iran backed

00:53:34.480 burnham also says it seems to be iran backed this is terrible it seems to be a terror plot

00:53:40.720 to to do something at raf fairford later in the week there is actually an iranian brit who is

00:53:48.240 arrested on links to this this thing and it turns out that before the plot netanyahu benjamin

00:53:57.800 netanyahu had just given warning that this was going to happen before he and israel were then

00:54:05.060 sanctioned by ed miliband so this is kind of this tiny thing which is kind of a joke in our country

00:54:11.000 has become a sort of geopolitical joke and it's a joke because these guys have all been given

00:54:16.260 bail so we have these terrorists who the president of the united states the secretary of state

00:54:23.320 various other uh partners in the world have said these are iranians our prime minister says they

00:54:29.580 are it's an iranian best terror plot but now they're sort of free to knock about okay they

00:54:33.100 live in westminster my studio's in westminster so what's going on here the double the reason why

00:54:39.740 this actually been offensive to a lot of people is because at the same time danny tomo who was

00:54:47.060 arrested last week was this week charged for criminal damage to a dinghy so there you've got

00:55:00.140 your rubber dinghy rapids the dinghy as far as i can can make out but either belongs to one of the

00:55:05.480 illegal immigrants or belongs to one of the illegal immigrant smugglers his other charges

00:55:11.140 that he didn't give over his pin code but the real offensive thing is he's not been given bail

00:55:16.160 so he's going to have to wait until march for his court case so this is a nut it's kind of

00:55:22.980 everything in one story for me it's two-tier justice it's two-tier britain it is the idea

00:55:30.540 that we don't know whether they're islamists exactly or whether they're you know a foreign

00:55:35.980 nation and there's no huge point in speculating but either way or whichever way it is we should 0.96

00:55:41.500 be making as hostile an environment as possible for people doing these sort of criminal acts

00:55:47.100 we're not we're a joke country anyway i i've been extremely triggered by this

00:55:51.580 this whole story and if you think i've got it wrong i'm all ears

00:55:54.540 i was going to say but no go ahead go for it tom no you go for it mate i was just going to take

00:56:02.740 the piss out of winston i think i've done that enough this episode there'll be other opportunities

00:56:07.660 um no i think this whole thing has been an absolute fast like it can't work out whether

00:56:12.360 it's a episode of homeland or like an ealing comedy this whole thing as we've been going

00:56:15.980 through it um the fact that it seemed to have taken just a plucky farmer returning home from

00:56:22.100 a party at one o'clock in the morning who spotted these men in balaclavas who then dashed into the 0.99

00:56:28.020 woods the fact that she was the one who raises the alarm is farcical i mean this raf base it's

00:56:33.040 for all intents purposes like a u.s air force base and has been for a very long time the fact

00:56:37.280 that it was that easy to get that close they knew that an attack was coming their stories in the

00:56:41.580 area of people being stopped by american military police um and checked on the roads in the days

00:56:46.280 running up to this clearly they were nervy something was going to happen but i didn't have

00:56:50.080 trying to protect themselves against that they just did things like put a tractor in front of

00:56:54.160 one of the gates you would have thought it was slightly more sophisticated than that in terms

00:56:57.520 of how they might defend themselves but that's going on and then um don't mess with us we've

00:57:03.300 got practice exactly you'll struggle to drive through there son i mean that's just well we've

00:57:07.080 got tractors that have run out of diesel and have never been abandoned in front of the gate

00:57:11.920 yeah they were driving it up and then it ran out helpfully in front of the gate but um and then

00:57:18.120 this happens and then you're expected to believe

00:57:20.400 that

00:57:21.020 the story has shifted so many times and we

00:57:24.200 were just constantly being told off for daring to speculate

00:57:26.280 about it but you thought you know

00:57:28.040 clearly there was something untowards going

00:57:30.160 on it whether or not this is as

00:57:31.940 Nigel Farage suggested some kind of dummy

00:57:34.160 run for something more serious whether or not 1.00

00:57:36.240 this is something that you're seeing the Iranians 0.98

00:57:37.860 doing much more increasingly which is that

00:57:40.060 rather than this being someone who's been dispatched

00:57:42.120 from Tehran to go and build up

00:57:44.160 a cell and do something that you just sort of

00:57:46.020 on the dark web find kind of local petty criminals and pay them money to do something even if they're

00:57:51.220 not entirely sure what it's for and what the actual point is all of these questions are important but

00:57:56.660 like for a while we were expected to believe that we shouldn't speculate and that maybe it was just

00:58:00.420 a stag do that got our hand or something i mean it was absolutely absurd and that that's that

00:58:04.820 response now that the government always have which is do not speculate this has nothing to do with

00:58:10.740 trying to protect any investigation this has nothing to do with trying to make sure things

00:58:14.100 are done in the right way it's just a way of telling people to shut up and it's not they don't

00:58:17.620 speculate it's because they say don't speculate on this but when it's danny tomo burnham is prepared

00:58:25.220 to say oh yeah he's definitely racist so it's it's it's always the same bloody story it's that

00:58:30.900 don't speculate about what's going on with axel ruda cabana and then kiaz karma comes out and

00:58:35.700 goes oh yeah everyone protesting this is far right so you're speculating it's always the speculation

00:58:40.820 is one way it's two-tier speculation it's and it's it's this is why i get so irritated by this it's

00:58:47.300 through every part of our society this two-tier system well and it's not just two-tier speculation

00:58:53.540 it's two-tier commentary so for example shabana mahmoud the home secretary will go on tv and say

00:59:00.020 we will deal with the dover protesters to the fullest extent of the law when asked about

00:59:05.940 other cases she will say we don't comment on individual cases right there's so much of this

00:59:13.060 going on you almost get tired of pointing out the hypocrisy yeah and i think you when you say you

00:59:19.300 get tired of pointing out the hypocrisy actually that's a really profound point because when

00:59:24.660 something is just so obvious and you see it wherever you go and you point it out and you say

00:59:32.340 what about this and what about that and what about this and what about that eventually what

00:59:37.460 happens is you become demoralized because what is becoming more and more obvious to you is you're

00:59:44.500 living in a society where there's one set of rules for one people and there's another set for others

00:59:52.020 and i don't remember that being the case in our society not in my lifetime now you could use

00:59:59.300 certain examples and you know there was racism there was quite severe racism particularly in

01:00:05.220 the 80s and the 70s when I was growing up there was an unfairness but we addressed that we talked

01:00:10.000 about that but with what's happening now there just seems to be a disinterest in it which

01:00:17.280 I find baffling because what that means is that we are going to erode the respect for the rule

01:00:26.180 of law and justice and the justice system in this country and what people seem to fail to realize is

01:00:34.100 all of these things they're done because we agree to that this works we agree that this system

01:00:42.320 this culture and this society works for us but it seems like we're getting to a place where

01:00:49.460 we don't think it works for us and that is really really really dangerous and again this to me is

01:00:58.300 just another example of this type of behavior really well don't worry francis the good thing

01:01:06.080 is uh the green party have come up with a way of dealing with all of these challenges uh which tom

01:01:12.300 you've written an article in the telegraph this week about uh the solution is to ban words tell

01:01:17.780 us more about this yes surprise surprise the greens have still completely lost it where woke

01:01:26.320 matters are concerned and this inclusive language guide is yet another example so it's ahead of

01:01:31.460 their conference which is getting underway in brighton and the telegraph got their hands on

01:01:35.640 this guide which points out to the members of the green party that there are certain words that they

01:01:40.760 should avoid not talk about the n-word we're not talking about various slurs although i suppose

01:01:44.420 various anti-semitic slurs they probably could be do being told not to use quite so openly in

01:01:48.660 whatsapp groups and whatnot but it's words like mother and father um elderly which is a quite a

01:01:53.780 new one to me uh homosexual is also out because it's insufficiently inclusive of non-binary people 0.85

01:02:00.660 the people who identify as plurals and all that uh what can we say instead can we say benders

01:02:08.740 exactly fenders shirt lifters i presumably that's fine you get more retro with it maybe

01:02:13.700 maybe that's way that's more inclusive i could do this winston i am surprised at the offensive

01:02:18.260 language you're choosing to use in this instance given that you yourself came out as non-binary on

01:02:22.900 brexit mate spoiling the battle is basically trans let's be honest yeah exactly it is so it's um 0.54

01:02:36.020 i can't you know i'm trying to think of a slow we can use for winston's fence sitting on that 0.61

01:02:40.260 that particular question but no it's uh this is i mean obviously it's nuts everyone knows that

01:02:44.580 funny details that they've also included the words nutter and lunatic as things that you shouldn't

01:02:49.940 say which as you rightly pointed out constant is just robbing us of our words that we can use to

01:02:54.060 describe them presumably they're worried about alienating the nutter or lunatic communities

01:02:57.820 but if you look at the green party these days and the kind of island of misfit toys that it has

01:03:02.340 become under zap palance's leadership i don't think you should be worried about alienating

01:03:06.300 those people the thing that's striking apart it's two things to me one of which is that we have a

01:03:11.440 lot of in recent years we were tempted to believe that woke was over or at least that it had been

01:03:16.200 pushed back sufficiently so that even left-wing parties knew that it wasn't a good idea to go

01:03:20.040 down this road this is another example amongst many of that not being the case there are whole

01:03:24.300 sections of progressive politics we'll talk about the labor party as well in a second because they've

01:03:27.520 come out with some howlers this week which are entirely untouched by the sort of return to

01:03:32.340 common sense that much of the rest of society were enjoying. They're like this kind of Amazonian

01:03:36.780 tribe that has been undisturbed for its entire existence, or like the proverbial Japanese

01:03:40.980 soldier in the jungle with his pronoun badge on still. They just haven't noticed. The world has

01:03:45.960 moved on, but they haven't. So I guess that's an example of this. The other thing where the Green

01:03:48.900 Party is concerned is not only is woke not dead, it's also gotten quite a lot darker. So they've

01:03:55.720 kept all of this kind of fussy speech policing, which was the sort of embarrassing student union

01:04:01.240 shtick but then they've bolted onto it the islamist apologism the israelophobia the going by the

01:04:09.100 people who've washed up in their membership and even some of their parliamentary candidates

01:04:11.980 outright anti-semitism you know the woke thing to chant from a festival stage a few years ago 0.96

01:04:16.960 was trans women are women now it's death death to the idf like in the space of quite a short

01:04:21.220 amount of time not only is woke not going away it's mutated into something much more explicitly 0.93

01:04:25.560 sort of third worldists quite grim and not only is it just extending this kind of paternalistic

01:04:33.420 posture towards it's like favored minorities it's also treating those disfavored minorities i.e

01:04:37.760 jews with a level of sort of sulfurous scorn that you thought had disappeared from british

01:04:42.900 politics frankly so it is a it's a slightly silly example but i think it's um of a probably a way

01:04:49.020 into this whole question of you know woke one woke two some people talk about it and if it ever

01:04:54.260 really went away to begin with well yeah you see this now i don't know if you saw this yesterday

01:04:59.620 uh soella bravman was on question time and it feels like uh there was a moment when just calling

01:05:05.860 everyone racist for expressing an opinion that kind of stopped for a while and i think that was

01:05:11.620 maybe the moment in which we were all like oh woke is on the decline but it has now come back and now

01:05:19.460 you've got the basically the spectacle of a bunch of white people calling a brown woman and soella

01:05:24.500 bravman these white people have spent the last 10 years saying we must listen to ethnic minorities

01:05:28.500 when they speak and white people need to shut up now there's a bunch of white people basically doing

01:05:32.980 a struggle and struggle session with a british asian woman and calling uh everything she says

01:05:37.860 racist because she says she's not english and it just feels like this whole thing is back with a

01:05:43.220 vengeance yeah i think you go for it you go for it winston and then i remembered in school uh

01:05:54.560 sorry not in school in uh when i was still with the band with mumford being in a band meeting and

01:06:00.060 i said let's brainstorm this and someone said uh uh mind shower you can't say brainstorm that's

01:06:07.360 a microaggression and because it's offence it's offensive to uh um people with uh who have um

01:06:14.660 what's those attacks where you uh no yeah no i mean um epileptics yeah yeah um i'm just in the

01:06:23.100 states and there's this story that's been going wild there about this lesbian bar in massachusetts

01:06:29.780 it's it was it was totally failing as a bar the woman who one of the lesbians who started it had 0.91

01:06:37.300 to sleep in her truck because she couldn't afford to keep the thing going her partners had quit one 0.82

01:06:41.720 of them to be was to become a clown the other to become a drag queen and then they wanted to have 1.00

01:06:47.180 one day of the week where they didn't have to wear a mask so they wanted to saturdays on saturdays

01:06:53.660 We don't have to wear a mask, which then just became this huge drama between them with the owner being accused of racism for crying in the Zoom meeting and for centering it and making it about her.

01:07:10.220 Someone suggested they put Lady Gaga on. They said, no, no, Lady Gaga's cancelled. She's a Zionist.

01:07:15.880 And it's escalated so far now that Hollywood want to make a movie about it. 0.89

01:07:19.420 but watching that story i was thinking aoc said well one was crazy well they've skipped two and

01:07:25.340 three and they've just gone straight to four this is it's not gone anywhere these people they've

01:07:30.220 dug in their heels they've just got new faces and sometimes getting quite sophisticated you know

01:07:34.780 mamdani is pretty sophisticated this woke for this uh there's this new guy out in michigan as well

01:07:41.740 and there there's a there's a silly version which is zach polanski and the green party but there's

01:07:47.180 an intelligent version there as well which which is more robust and a lot more of a threat

01:07:54.620 well absolutely and because wokeism is a type it's extremism and a lot of

01:08:02.940 you can be a person who is extreme but that doesn't mean you're unintelligent it's a temperament

01:08:08.700 there are people who are highly intelligent extremists just like there are people who are

01:08:12.460 They're not very bright and quite moderate.

01:08:15.720 So the people you all should be worried about are the people who are highly intelligent and have that temperament or that worldview or that outlook.

01:08:25.300 Well, then let's stop talking about Zach Polanski.

01:08:27.340 We shouldn't worry about it.

01:08:28.220 Yeah. Well, I don't actually want to stop talking about Zach Polanski because I think something very interesting is happening with Zach Polanski in that he is running in the by-election in St Pancras and Holborn by-election, to be precise, to be, which was Keir Starmer's former seat, to be a MP in our parliament.

01:08:49.660 And he's running against Labour. And to me, this is the litmus test for the Greens. Burnham has come in.

01:08:58.220 he has absolutely given the greens a body blow and this like i said this is a real test for the

01:09:05.800 greens if they're going to do anything if they had their brief moment in 2025 and early 2026

01:09:13.400 or was that a flourish a flash in the pan and politically their day in the sun is over we're

01:09:20.000 going to see we are indeed frankie frankie that is quite interesting what's happening

01:09:25.600 oh sorry no no no go ahead i was gonna i was gonna bring in the uh the labradors but we can

01:09:31.120 oh we'll definitely get to that but just on the by-election so they the labor are running a hijabi

01:09:38.060 girl of somali refugee heritage background so they're trying to outflank the green so it is

01:09:45.180 actually worth keeping an eye on this and it's it's a big part of burnham's re shifting and

01:09:51.880 and repositioning of the Labour Party and it it might if Zach Palancey can't win that seat

01:09:57.800 it we might actually see the kind of end of this Green Party moment that they had it could be a bit

01:10:04.280 of a high watermark we hope but I suppose looking at Labour conference this week though which is 0.98

01:10:08.680 where the Labradors come in it's clear that this tendency still is very much in presence there I

01:10:14.120 think we've got this clip of this is the Labour nature minister who was speaking at a fringe

01:10:19.400 meeting and had some pretty striking things to say about the countryside and fascism I think

01:10:24.980 we've got that somewhere for us to all enjoy I do believe that the next election is going to be

01:10:29.340 fought on a battle line of nature and rural affairs and there'll be the far right deciding

01:10:34.080 and determining what that looks like and it'll be a vision a nostalgic vision of Britain that

01:10:39.400 never really existed there'll be that warm ale a black lavender all by your feet in a pub that

01:10:43.980 doesn't exist and it'll be a variant it'll be with symbolism of fox hunting all around them

01:10:48.820 It'll be a very far right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don't want to have never really existed.

01:10:56.700 There we go. This is Black. What are they talking about? 1.00

01:10:59.660 Can I just say Black Labs matter and this is Black Lab denial. 1.00

01:11:03.880 Black drabadoors are real. They exist. They have rights and their values. 1.00

01:11:09.360 And and by the way, I should say for our American viewers, a fringe meeting of a party conference is not where you get all the lunatics in your party 0.99

01:11:18.140 to get together and say the most stupid things they can think of it's just like a side meeting 0.97

01:11:22.540 at the conference and uh it's interesting she says the next election will be fought on rural 0.99

01:11:27.100 affairs which seems to me quite a stretch in and of itself but the idea that pubs labradors and warm

01:11:33.260 ale never existed that is quite something it's i've done about you guys i'm struck by how much

01:11:39.500 this has cut through as well like it feels like the more rural version of emily thornbury's tweet

01:11:44.460 from the rochester instrued by-election with the with the england flag outside of the semi-detached

01:11:49.500 house with the white van outside it's kind of sneering attitude towards white working-class

01:11:53.340 patriotism this feels like the equivalent with the kind of rural life which um people from those

01:11:59.660 communities are obviously pretty affronted by the idea that the way in which that they go about

01:12:03.980 things the way in which people in rural england have been going about things for a very long time

01:12:07.260 that sense of continuity which exists there which certainly doesn't exist in many of our towns and

01:12:11.420 and cities anymore is something which is nefarious suspicious neo-fascistic it's particularly funny

01:12:18.120 because this nature minister jenny riddell carpenter she's from rural suffolk um that

01:12:23.520 they didn't take long for the tabloids to dig up pictures of her enjoying pints of ale in country

01:12:29.520 pubs with a dog so there's this element of this which is just sheer performance i think but at

01:12:34.800 the same time it does tap into this strain which really exists in the labor party women that defra

01:12:39.840 is currently as a matter of government policy thinks that the countryside is too white that's 0.58

01:12:44.200 not just like a kind of bbc news talking point they've put out they've commissioned reports from

01:12:48.940 various organizations like what can we possibly do to make the countryside less hostile to people

01:12:54.320 from ethnic minority backgrounds because and the underlying assumption there being that problem

01:12:58.140 with the countryside is it's full of english people doing english things and we've got to do 0.96

01:13:01.760 something about it um so this is not just a froid you know some kind of slip or some kind of brain 0.97

01:13:07.780 far it is a kind of tendency which exists and you think that whilst me myself i'm sort of an

01:13:11.760 inveterate town he never really lived outside of the the city of the suburbs this is still

01:13:16.760 something which people who live in the countryside if you know if you grew up in rural surrey or

01:13:20.980 rural hampshire or whatever that sense of kind of not only just liking it for the landscaping

01:13:25.960 because it's beautiful but the sense that there's a kind of connection to a history and a tradition

01:13:29.960 you know the english tradition of pastoral poetry and the rural idyll and all of that is quite

01:13:34.280 important to people i think even increasingly because of the way things are going a bit south

01:13:38.020 in many of our cities even people who people wanting to escape to the countryside or liking

01:13:43.100 the fact that it's there because it's it's a reminder that um some kind of quintessential

01:13:48.480 englishness persists so to see that kind of painted as something that is yeah proto-nazi

01:13:53.940 i you know i was kind of surprised by how out there it was if i'm honest

01:13:58.420 it's a total mask slip i think that this this ideology sure it's she's not sort of hugely

01:14:08.000 prominent but this is a wide widely held a view and they it's a classic far left view and that

01:14:14.260 is now a part of the labor party i was saying in the last bit that uh we're seeing the end of the

01:14:19.120 green party we're not seeing the end of the ideology it's just getting swallowed up into

01:14:22.000 the labor party these people hate us and i i resent that what they they have any power and they have

01:14:28.340 they choose the direction of this country why why govern over a country if you if you hate it

01:14:34.340 well so you can destroy you want to remake in you know remake in your image but this does feel like 0.67

01:14:42.140 sort of agents of saruman destroying the shire while claiming it never existed in the first

01:14:47.060 place because when i think of england and particularly rural england i mean that's kind

01:14:51.940 of what the shire is based on it's a it's a people living in a peaceful and somewhat isolated and

01:14:57.340 perhaps somewhat inward looking life but nonetheless the comforts that come with that

01:15:02.060 um and one thing you didn't mention there tom that i think as someone who does live outside

01:15:07.840 of the big cities and by choice that people do enjoy outside of the cities in a way that people

01:15:14.220 who do live in them don't quite have at all is community and the sense that there is a pub that

01:15:21.340 everyone in the village goes to that's where everyone has a drink they meet etc yeah exactly

01:15:28.540 and and the thing is that actually is something that is incredibly valuable um and uh is not

01:15:35.500 available in the cities and p and so the people who live in these transient non-communities in

01:15:41.100 the centers of towns they not only don't appreciate it but to them it's a it's an inherently suspicious

01:15:47.100 thing that you know this is what these these people get together and they they know each other

01:15:53.100 and they're and and then the knowing of each other instead of moving flat every three months and

01:15:57.260 not knowing their neighbors that's when the darkness sets in right that that's their idea

01:16:02.860 um and that's why you know they clearly just hate that part the country as winston says

01:16:08.300 anyway ladies and gentlemen what enough uplifting episode it has been yet again on off the fence

01:16:13.660 this week we are francis and i are back tomorrow with andrew neil we are back with the guys uh

01:16:18.720 next friday for off the fence again we will see you then

TRIGGERnometry - October 02, 2026

Labour Conference, Diesel Shortage and Far Right Labradors - Off the Fence

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