TRIGGERnometry - Reform Donations Scandal and War with Argentina？ - Off the Fence

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Off the Fence with myself, Constantine Kiss and Francis Foster, of course, Winston Marshall of the Winston Marshall Show and last but not least, Tom Slater from Spiked. Welcome back, lads. Good to have you.

00:00:12.640 our four stories for today are war with argentina potentially javier malay says argentina will

00:00:20.420 prevail over declining britain we've got the reform donation scandal the lindsey clancy case

00:00:26.580 and of course andy burnham is back and uh better than ever presumably we will find out so let's get

00:00:33.100 into our first story that is of course javier malay uh saber rattling uh saying that he will

00:00:39.040 prevail or argentina rather will prevail over poor declining britain um could we be facing war

00:00:45.180 uh over the falklands with argentina well a few quick things introducing the story uh there may

00:00:51.780 be other dimensions going on here so president trump very bitter against the uk's lack of

00:00:57.340 involvement in trying to reopen australia from us apparently has signaled that he's prepared to

00:01:02.980 reconsider uh america's neutrality on this there's some oil considerations which we'll talk about and

00:01:09.240 of course we will discuss britain's military capacity to actually deal with this problem so

00:01:14.000 uh first and foremost when how do you feel about argentina saber rattling uh over the falklands

00:01:19.880 you're going to start with me are you brilliant well i'm extremely friggin about this issue

00:01:26.400 I'm sick to death of this what is essentially Latin American Palestinianism the Falklands are

00:01:34.480 British we saw it first right the first written European sighting is John Davis in 1592 we were

00:01:43.100 the first to set foot there in 1600 no sorry I've got that date wrong in uh 1690 with John Strong

00:01:52.380 right this is British now it's been British longer than the Argentines have been Argentinian

00:01:59.920 it was British before Argentina existed not only that there have been several polls where 99.9%

00:02:07.760 of the people of the Falklands want to be British they are ethnically British the indigenous people

00:02:13.640 of the Falklands are British not only that we have had considerable blood spilt because of this

00:02:21.240 continued claim by the Argentinians, of course, talking about the Falklands War.

00:02:24.320 I was at the Argentina game in the World Cup and I had these Argentines shouting in my face about

00:02:29.580 the Los Malvinas and Argentinians nonsense. They're British. And it's actually offensive.

00:02:35.280 I have friends who are veterans from that war. That they're still banging on about this is

00:02:40.660 just, it makes me very angry. And I just want to add that there's a few other things that have

00:02:50.020 come up with this story Benjamin Netanyahu's son which I know you got on a spat with him KK this

00:02:55.540 week has come out on the side of the Argentinians trying to provoke us because of the British

00:03:00.480 government's response to Israel throughout the the war with Hamas but it's it's completely

00:03:07.800 contradictory from him his point of view because it is Palestinianism firstly we have the longest

00:03:13.660 claim to the to the island secondly the people there want to be British that this they are

00:03:19.880 British and thirdly like Hamas Argentina keeps starting wars they can't win and a lot of people

00:03:25.860 die along the way so it's not entirely a joke so anyway I'm pretty annoyed about this whole thing

00:03:31.280 and I'd add to it I'm not confident that our Prime Minister Burnham is going to have the

00:03:36.980 balls of thatcher to stand up to this antagonism well in addition to lacking the balls i mean one

00:03:45.460 of the things that i did is i was quite curious because i don't know if you saw there was a story

00:03:50.460 i think in the telegraph earlier this week about the fact that the british army is now cancelling

00:03:55.520 live fire drills and we're not talking about for reserves this is a a prominent uh front fighting

00:04:02.560 division uh they're cancelling live fire drills to save money so the preparedness of the british

00:04:09.920 armed forces to do anything about this irrespective of the political will is an interesting question

00:04:15.040 so actually i looked this up on veniceai and it's a mixed picture um the garrison on the

00:04:21.600 falkland islands is much much stronger than it was uh 40 years ago at the time of the falklands war

00:04:28.000 so at the time there was only 80 servicemen on the islands today we have somewhere between 1300

00:04:33.520 and 1700 including helicopters fighter jets etc um the problem is the navy so the 1982 task force

00:04:42.080 had 127 ships there is now only 63 ships in the entire british navy so we are at half of the task

00:04:52.080 force now and so uh britain could realistically can i just add to that yeah go for it constant

00:04:59.520 just on the 63 ships in the navy if you actually look at aircraft carriers frigates uh and

00:05:06.860 destroyers where it's it's far fewer i mean it's only two aircraft carriers i think there's only

00:05:11.700 six destroyers and and there may be eight i don't show the exact number off the top of my head well

00:05:16.240 it's worse than that so in terms of what we could deploy in terms of what we could deploy now would

00:05:20.800 be a carrier two destroyers and five frigates and the first sea lord uh general sir gwynn jenkins

00:05:27.200 i suspect he might be welsh has stated that the royal navy is not ready for war so uh that's one

00:05:33.620 side on the other hand i also got venice to tell me the argentinian numbers and this is where it

00:05:39.860 gets really comical they basically have nothing they have no name no navy whatsoever and so it'd

00:05:47.520 like i was thinking what the it would be like the battle between stephen hawking and hamza

00:05:52.240 uh not hamza use of abu hamza the one with the hook so we would we would be in the role of abu

00:05:58.080 hamza in this situation uh slightly slightly advanced but um so so irrespective of the

00:06:06.720 political will i just think tom militarily when javier malay slags us off and says he they're

00:06:14.080 going to triumph over declining britain it's sort of hard there's there's part of that where you

00:06:18.400 can't argue with it yeah no absolutely and on the one hand it is kind of not saber rattling like

00:06:25.360 plastic saber rattling like no one really expects something to properly kick off here neither side

00:06:30.240 could actually wage any kind of conflict i have been thinking though in tandem with the story

00:06:34.720 that we're going to talk about next falklands and and reform hitting a lot of controversy it's been

00:06:39.040 a very bad day for gammons in britain you know and i share in that sadness you know um two very

00:06:44.080 crucial important things there but yes i mean to see what um javier muley can play on our kind of

00:06:51.280 relative weakness even bringing up the question of migration how we're kind of internally weakened

00:06:56.240 and so on and so forth on one hand he obviously has a point um the british armed forces not just

00:07:00.640 the navy but in general has long been sort of four blokes the packet quavers uh there's very

00:07:05.360 little that we could possibly project even that we like to pretend that international summits that

00:07:09.760 were a terribly important player but um it's also a reminder though isn't it that even though we

00:07:15.240 shouldn't expect any kind of conflagration anytime soon that we're increasingly in an era in which

00:07:19.720 hard power resources um are of increasing importance and also that there's a lot of

00:07:25.600 players on the world stage who are dropping the pretext of international law and agreements and

00:07:30.600 whatever and just going for the raw assertion of what they seem to be their interests their

00:07:34.920 territorial claims, what have you. And we're just so fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with that

00:07:39.100 kind of environment. So what I don't think is about to kick off over the Falklands anytime soon,

00:07:43.600 it's a reminder of the kind of era that we live in and how our politicians are so almost uniquely

00:07:48.380 incapable of reckoning with that in the broader sense. You say you're not convinced it's all

00:07:52.960 about to kick off, but I would put it to you with what happened in Venezuela, with the fact that

00:07:57.600 Trump is clearly behind the scenes, very pissed off at the UK not providing support for the efforts

00:08:03.640 to reopen the strait and is signaling to have him. I mean, we've got a clip of Hamim

00:08:08.480 Lea. Look at this. He looks exactly like Vladimir Putin announcing the Special

00:08:12.120 and Military Operation in 2022. Look at this.

00:08:15.820 Por eso, asegurar nuestra preeminencia en este territorio no es un capricho político,

00:08:21.940 es una cuestión de supervivencia. Y por ese motivo, cualquier avance adicional sobre

00:08:27.400 las Islas Malvinas será considerado como una violación a nuestra seguridad nacional.

00:08:32.620 We must act today in terms of the future, and Malvinas is the future.

00:08:38.620 It is not just a matter of our past.

00:08:41.620 Defending our sovereignty and recovering our islands

00:08:44.620 requires a nation politically relevant, economically influential

00:08:49.620 and militarily respectable. There is no other way.

00:09:02.620 is not as intimidating as russian let's be honest francis you you're a token uh latin american

00:09:08.780 famously finally i get finally i get a chance to speak right about about one of the nations

00:09:15.980 from my continent oh and by the way winston it's pronounced malvinas malvinas oh don't you start

00:09:23.900 anyway listen right this is the problem i had a video that went viral at the time of the uh

00:09:29.820 at the time of the World Cup, about the Argentine football team,

00:09:33.820 in which I basically said that they were representative of their nation,

00:09:37.720 a terrible country.

00:09:39.100 I think the actual quote was a nation of...

00:09:41.380 And I stand by that 100%

00:09:45.260 because nobody in the whole of South America likes Argentina.

00:09:50.560 They've always, always, always thought of themselves as above their station.

00:09:55.000 they've always thought of themselves as this great power within South America and you can

00:10:01.360 see this by the way that they actually behave like Argentina is a country that has for the

00:10:08.480 vast majority of its existence has been broke it has been absolutely broke it has suffered

00:10:15.260 record levels of inflation now Malay has actually done a good job in managing to turn around the

00:10:22.300 ship but the reality is his approval ratings are very very low they're not where they used to be

00:10:29.300 he's in real danger of not getting re-elected so for him this is a very cunning strategy

00:10:36.360 in order to play to the jingoistic elements of that country of which there are numerous

00:10:41.560 in order to get him re-elected I don't think there's anything really in this I think this is

00:10:48.220 as Tom said, glorified plastic sabre rattling in order to make himself look strong, powerful

00:10:54.500 and relevant and also taking a bash at the English who are always the great nation that

00:11:01.220 Argentines have always hated. We are the pantomime villain and what better way for him to make

00:11:08.620 himself look strong and powerful than taking a little dig at the English? I think it's the case.

00:11:14.660 firstly you're absolutely right that all of South America hates Argentina I went to the

00:11:19.700 Mexico England Mexico game and all the Mexican fans like we don't mind that you beat us just

00:11:23.800 beat those bastards from Argentina like everyone in South America hates hates Argentina but the

00:11:30.440 the difference I think when it comes to this is how weak the British are at the moment as we've

00:11:37.680 already stated John Healy who resigned from Starmer's cabinet as defense secretary because

00:11:43.900 they weren't going to meet the three percent of GDP defense spending, has now, as Chancellor

00:11:49.480 of the Exchequer, kicked the defense spending commitments down the can for a year.

00:11:54.460 Not only that, you've got the Trump is it seems to be more on the Argentine side of

00:12:02.760 this because he's so pissed at us over Iran, not letting them use RAF Fairford, not letting

00:12:08.360 them use Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands so we're not in a good position there he might try

00:12:15.920 and antagonize us more I think Argentina are in as good a position as they could they've been

00:12:21.740 since the Falklands war to actually do something here I guess I guess we'll see I also note that

00:12:29.000 for them this is the every time they're in trouble whoever's in government they bring up

00:12:33.280 Las Malvinas, as they call it, this is the one thing that unites the whole country.

00:12:38.660 It's a real central point of Argentine nationalism.

00:12:45.560 I mean, it's the same sort of thing with the Palestinianism, where you have this grievance at the very core of their identity.

00:12:55.180 And I think that's the same with Falkland Island. It's a grievance that unites the country and is the core of their identity.

00:13:00.700 my my worry is that you i i worry that we we may be underestimating here certainly francis and tom

00:13:08.520 the the moment we're in in terms of the possibility of this actually becoming much more real i mean

00:13:13.960 first of all there's some oil interests involved here and i don't know if you guys caught a

00:13:17.900 president vice president vance's press conference yesterday he kept talking about the fact well

00:13:23.560 yes the stray isn't quite as open as we'd like to be but that's why venezuela was so important

00:13:28.280 actually 130 miles off the coast of the falkland islands to the north uh is uh an oil field called

00:13:36.260 sea lion which has way more oil in it than either of the two major fields in the north sea they're

00:13:42.920 due to start uh production of these fields in the next two years and one of the things malay

00:13:47.900 specifically said is they will sanction the british and israeli oil companies that are set

00:13:53.060 to explore this uh my point being is oil control of oil in in the in the western hemisphere is

00:14:00.680 clearly something that the united states is very very heavily focused on at the moment

00:14:05.260 and uh combined with the fact that the current administration is willing to tear up

00:14:11.180 conventional norms about who our allies are and who our enemies are um i i am concerned that this

00:14:18.760 actually may be something real and look i've been saying this for many many years uh probably so

00:14:23.240 many times francis has got bored of hearing it but there is a very simple rule to geopolitics is

00:14:28.200 if you signal weakness you invite violence and we've seen it over and over uh all over the world

00:14:34.760 and my worry is as i said from the beginning when people like mille talk about britain as a

00:14:41.240 declining nation they're kind of right and if you are a declining nation people will start to have

00:14:48.040 a go they'll start to test you absolutely i mean it's one of those things which we've been

00:14:53.320 telegraphing to the world i mean i forget the exact date that kirsten put on it when he was

00:14:56.840 still in power saying that we need to be ready for war by x date as if to say hello russia

00:15:04.280 you've got this window in which to exploit and the fact that as we've already been talking about

00:15:09.240 this we were in this bizarre situation where we've got this new chancellor who obviously resigned

00:15:13.000 as defense secretary precisely because keir starmer and the treasury couldn't stump up the

00:15:18.840 money to reach the three percent of gdp by 2030 target is now incapable of saying in public john

00:15:25.880 healy he resigned over this issue and yet now as chancellor he cannot tell anyone categorically

00:15:30.440 that we will meet precisely that three percent of gdp target by 2030 and that's even without getting

00:15:36.600 into whether or not these kind of arbitrary targets are actually even going to translate

00:15:40.200 in the kind of capabilities deterrent which is actually going to be effective you see across

00:15:45.320 other nato countries where a lot of kind of creative accounting takes place and you know

00:15:49.400 the pensions of military personnel or whatever suddenly starts to take up a outsized proportion

00:15:55.240 of what it is that's supposed to be that three or ultimately 3.5 percent of gdp so we're still

00:16:00.840 playing these quite silly games kind of rhetorical games meanwhile whether or not it's the falklands

00:16:06.600 whether or not it's something else um we're just so clearly not capable of even just even just

00:16:13.800 creating the impression that we might do something let alone actually doing something which is a big

00:16:18.280 problem and i think it was very interesting i'm sorry go for it win uh the there was a story last

00:16:28.280 year about how we'd been we'd spent billions on ajax tanks but tank warfare is just not relevant

00:16:33.400 anymore and you'll remember also at the beginning of the iran war hms dragon was sent out a week

00:16:39.640 after our bases in cyprus were hit and then it had to come around and turn around in the end

00:16:46.840 because it wasn't it wasn't ready our money's being misspent we don't it needs to be we need

00:16:51.320 to have a proper navy as constancy said earlier but we should be investing in drones we should

00:16:56.040 be investing in actual tech that's useful tanks aren't useful and tanks aren't going to be

00:17:00.320 particularly helpful if we're at war with the Falklands. And look the problem is as well is

00:17:06.040 as a country and we'll come to this in the fourth story where I will talk about Andy Burnham and

00:17:10.940 Parliament reconvening is that we're broke. We don't have the money to let alone spend not just

00:17:17.740 to spend on defence but to spend on our own country because what we need to do is we really

00:17:22.840 really need to tackle the deficit that we have. We spend a huge amount on just interest alone on

00:17:30.280 debts that we owe and until we actually make those very difficult decisions which successive

00:17:35.720 generations of politicians have refused to do we're simply not going to be able to fund our

00:17:41.000 defense in any way that is adequate yeah well we spend more on welfare than we raise in income tax

00:17:47.800 um so that will tell you quite a lot about the position we're in i wouldn't go for a last word

00:17:53.800 before we move on we're just on your point there francis if we had a proper look at defense spending

00:18:01.240 actually you could increase the size of our armed forces and military it would give employment

00:18:07.960 and it would it would create it would wean people off the welfare welfare stick by the way this is

00:18:13.960 what happened in the second world war with fdr i just had james holland on the show uh discussing

00:18:19.560 this but actually if you you can actually use a proper defense strategy to pull people aware away

00:18:26.360 from uh welfare create employment and the massive added bonus as well as having a bloody defense

00:18:32.200 that protect our small islands is that you create national unity you actually give something for

00:18:38.440 everyone to get behind so i think it's a frame of mind not even just a financial thing it's it's it's

00:18:43.320 how we look at our defense and how we think about our defense well francis says we have no money

00:18:48.520 left you know who has some money it's reform because they've got a lot of donations uh great

00:18:53.940 good transition uh but seriously there's been a story actually front page story now in all the

00:18:59.680 newspapers i think and on the bbc which is the two senior reform officials have had to result step

00:19:06.380 down pending an investigation into their conduct after allegations of unlawful activity in relation

00:19:15.140 to two donations uh tom do you want to tell us more about the story before we get into the debate

00:19:20.820 absolutely i mean this is the biggest story in town not least because it coincides of course

00:19:26.060 with reform uk conference which is kicking off in birmingham as we speak so there was this

00:19:30.900 investigation which was put together by an organization called verbatim which is basically

00:19:35.580 a offshoot of something called the center for climate reporting so you can kind of understand

00:19:39.680 where they're coming from politically and channel four and essentially the journalist in question

00:19:45.280 or the campaigner in question depending on your perspective posed as the sort of british son of

00:19:51.520 an american businessman who was looking to contribute to reform in any way that they could

00:19:57.920 financially and he's got all of this footage primarily meeting with james or the head of

00:20:03.500 policy at reform who's one of those officials who has just stood down pending this investigation as

00:20:08.160 well as Dan Jukes who for more than a decade has essentially been Nigel Farage's kind of closest

00:20:12.600 aide right-hand man maybe kind of would-be chief of staff if he ever got into Downing Street and

00:20:18.460 essentially it boils down to because of the electoral law prohibiting foreign companies

00:20:24.220 from making donations to British political parties this would be an arrangement in which

00:20:29.340 and what seems to have happened is that a poll would be commissioned it would be paid for by

00:20:35.160 again the British son of this American businessman and that that was a this is being presented as a

00:20:41.000 potential breach of electoral law a kind of way to get around what the letter of the law says in

00:20:45.940 order to enable a donation in kind if not exactly in form as it were and it's now naturally turning

00:20:52.420 into a big enormous story um I think there is a couple of things I'd lay out about this before

00:20:58.180 we get into it one of which is that um I think we do have an increasing problem with scandal

00:21:02.400 mongering as a kind of political weapon in british politics and british media and what i mean by that

00:21:07.680 is not to say that in all instances there's no bad smell to a particular story that there is no

00:21:12.640 story that there is no potential wrongdoing it's just that something is taken sort of leapt upon

00:21:17.600 turned into a kind of totalizing unprecedented never before seen kind of story and then used

00:21:22.960 as a stick with which to be in particular populist upstart often right-wing parties um meanwhile you

00:21:29.920 you know it doesn't take a particularly long memory to remember that after the 2015 election

00:21:34.160 you had the Conservatives fined more than £70,000 for failing to declare or not properly declaring

00:21:39.080 around like £300,000 worth of donations. There's a whole kind of Labour Together scandal which I

00:21:44.860 could bore everyone to tears by explaining but basically again boiling down to a kind of very

00:21:48.460 pro-Starma think tank, the people who led it ending up being key parts of the Starma government

00:21:53.720 again failing to declare large amounts of donations and then crucially also commissioning

00:21:59.720 a organization to produce a report to discredit the journalists at sunday times potentially who

00:22:04.840 had produced those allegations and published them in the newspaper so i'm not trying to sound like

00:22:09.480 a kind of cynic everyone's at it whatever but at the same time one must always take these stories

00:22:14.200 first of all subject them to scrutiny this is um not yet a kind of cut and dry legal case most

00:22:19.320 stretch the imagination also kind of putting it into perspective so that the it doesn't allow

00:22:24.920 itself to be too weaponized the other part of the story though of course is that i think reform have

00:22:29.400 often said and rightly so that particularly as they were looking like they were spoiled to

00:22:34.840 you know potentially win the next election dropped off in the polls a little bit since

00:22:38.840 then but still have been the kind of preeminent party of government for much of the past year

00:22:42.920 that the media that various wings of the establishment were going to throw absolutely

00:22:47.320 everything at them and in that environment you've got to be as cautious and as squeaky clean

00:22:52.200 as you possibly can be you certainly can't invite this kind of thing and also

00:22:56.360 just sort of you know whilst the full details are yet to come out you do wonder whether the kind of

00:23:01.080 the the basics of due diligence would have avoided this kind of story from ever taking place so as

00:23:07.240 ever i think it's as ever with stories like this there's a lot that we don't know there's a lot

00:23:10.200 that we'll still find out there may well be a there there but whether or not it is the totalizing

00:23:15.000 this proves they're rotten to the core that is something that i think we need to deal with a

00:23:19.240 to take with a huge amount of skepticism because i think we've seen that story play out over and

00:23:23.000 and over again. And it's often not in proportion to the scales of the allegations that have been

00:23:27.180 leveled at them. I think one of the things actually that this story has shown, and it's

00:23:32.760 disappointing for a lot of people who support reform and support the issues that reform raises

00:23:38.860 is the lack of professionalism when it comes to the organisation itself. As I was watching

00:23:44.900 Channel 4's expose, I was thinking to myself, well, who was vetting? Why weren't these people

00:23:51.120 properly vetted? And if they were, why weren't they exposed as to who? And I'm talking about

00:23:56.520 the undercover journalists. Why were they allowed to go in and just have direct access to Nigel

00:24:02.680 Farage? I really couldn't imagine this happening with the conservatives. I couldn't imagine it

00:24:07.860 happening with Labour. To me, it just shows just how inexperienced and in some ways naive reform

00:24:15.980 actually are that they're prepared to have these types of conversations which are highly sensitive

00:24:21.920 possibly legally incriminating and they're just prepared to have these conversations openly

00:24:27.980 with people that they barely know or have met a few times it's really really really worrying for

00:24:34.440 reform and you have to say on the back of the times expose which i think looking back on it

00:24:41.460 was a bit of a damp squib, possibly. These things are cumulative, and I don't think it's going to

00:24:49.780 hurt Reform's base, who will always vote for reform, but what I think it will hurt are the

00:24:56.080 floating voters who have been disappointed by 14 years of, to put it bluntly, inept and

00:25:03.360 incompetent Tory rule, and a couple of years of Labour proceeding to essentially throw their

00:25:10.040 opportunity away as well so it's deeply worrying and potentially potentially a body blow to reform's

00:25:19.020 chances of getting elected in the next election like I said not because it affects the base I

00:25:24.000 don't think it will but those floating voters it's another one in the minus column yeah it'll

00:25:29.260 be interesting to see whether it is a body blow so I think of Trump particularly in his period

00:25:35.280 out of office between the his two terms and they threw everything at him they were you remember

00:25:43.120 various sort of investigations and they were going to mar-a-lago to sort of investigate things and

00:25:50.080 they were all sorts they threw the book at him and what it did to the american public is actually

00:25:58.100 made them more inclined towards him because they felt like the blue stack was against him and and

00:26:04.080 and that there is an element of that going on here uh look so if i were to break this down

00:26:09.200 i agree with you guys watching the video it's sloppy from james oran and dan jukes and

00:26:17.680 they said some things which are not great uh i'd also note that it's a heavily edited video

00:26:23.280 so we don't see everything i also note that the case of the so it's a british son of an american

00:26:31.600 father if this had not been sloppy there's nothing i don't think there's anything legally wrong if the

00:26:39.840 american father had said right son i'm going to give you some money it's up to you what you do

00:26:44.080 with it i know you like reform you can give it to them if you want it's not my business

00:26:47.600 and that would have been i i don't think that's illegal i'd and it would have been fine and so

00:26:53.520 why they didn't just make it as simple as that if they were going to do that route

00:26:56.800 it seems uh a little bit strange to me but so that's one side of it i also note

00:27:04.320 that the organization uh as you as you say tom it's the center for climate reporting

00:27:11.980 these are this is a foreign these are foreign funded so it's a it is a version of foreign

00:27:17.220 interference into uh british politics about and they're claiming it's about foreign interference

00:27:23.440 because it's it's the money side so there's a kind of hypocrisy here i'd say that the it's

00:27:28.720 channel four have have legitimate sort of verified uh this work uh but it is very much activist so

00:27:37.360 these are activists working against reform i see it as part of a uh the what dominic cummings

00:27:45.200 describes sort of everyone throwing the book at the reform party or the sort of uniparty trying

00:27:49.440 to destroy them i think that uh you mentioned in passing uh tom that there's examples of this kind

00:27:55.460 of stuff happening with other parties yeah there is there's been there's been foreign money coming

00:28:00.540 to the labor party for example there was the gary lubner story when when there was 6.5 million from

00:28:07.820 johannesburg to london and they kind of you know he became a uk resident or there's a cayman island

00:28:12.820 hedge fund who gave four million quid to labor after their election in 2024 so there's foreign

00:28:19.040 money going to the other parties. And I imagine this kind of stuff's happened with the Tories as

00:28:25.440 well. But they kind of left themselves exposed here, reform. I would also note, and this is

00:28:36.160 important, the Times and the Telegraph who published that polling without checking into the

00:28:41.240 source of it, they look bad in this. JL Partners, the polling company, look terrible in this.

00:28:47.320 like absolutely I mean I think they're finished or they're not finished as heads have got a

00:28:51.580 presumably role to if they want to preserve themselves as an entity so there's a lot of

00:28:56.820 people who look bad in this whole thing and I'd also say the problem for reform is James Orr who

00:29:05.560 full disclosure I'm friendly I'm friends with and I actually think he's a very honorable man and

00:29:11.900 um this is this what we see of this story isn't in keeping with the man i know um uh i think that

00:29:20.720 he's actually key for reform he is he brings them a intellectual rigor and robustness that makes

00:29:27.580 reform seem serious and and so to lose him would be significant there's a report that lee anderson

00:29:34.520 has says that has said that who's the mp for reform has said that james or and dan jugs are

00:29:40.320 permanently gone. I'm not sure if that's confirmed. It looks like there's a further

00:29:44.660 investigation into the story. But it is, it's not pretty. My frustration, personally, is that

00:29:54.800 Britain has got some very, very serious problems. Our current government, and we have a new prime

00:30:01.600 minister who had his first week sitting and first PMQs this week, is under a fraction of the

00:30:07.340 scrutiny of this insurgent party who only have a handful of MPs that we you know we're in serious

00:30:15.720 problems and we're going to come to Burnham later so we'll cover it then but the people who actually

00:30:20.820 have power are not getting the scrutiny they deserve and the uniparty the blob all of these

00:30:28.080 are focused on reform trying to destroy it because reform are calling out some of the problems our

00:30:33.620 country has and for me things particularly immigration i don't hear that it's certainly

00:30:40.780 not being dealt seriously with uh from from the labor party so my frustration is if we want to

00:30:45.140 actually sort our problems out we're in a double fight trying to make the problems clear and having

00:30:52.480 the the blob attacking those types of parties in any any way they sort of uh can just to tack

00:31:01.580 on to that because i think it's so clear now that this is essentially one of the sort of weapons in

00:31:07.040 the toolkit to try and do with scandal what the establishment has failed to do electorally or via

00:31:14.080 kind of conventional means which again is not to suggest that this you know that the press should

00:31:18.360 go easy on reform by any stretch of the imagination they shouldn't be subjected to scrutiny but in the

00:31:23.180 in the middle of a kind of media maelstrom it's very easy for a narrative to set hold when the

00:31:26.940 plain facts might not support the level of scandal which is being discussed like as you were saying

00:31:31.740 there winston like the again the kind of finding of kind of neat ways in order to make sure that

00:31:37.120 a poll can be paid for it's the sort of thing which might look a bit grubby might smell a certain way

00:31:42.700 but at the same time in the grand scheme of things is not the kind of image of corruption which is

00:31:47.400 being presented as um that said it's not to say that it still can't do damage that's the unfortunate

00:31:52.200 kind of power of the media in these sorts of situations and also the fact that this could have

00:31:57.080 led to immediately just that that those resignations whether or not they're permanent

00:32:01.640 is a question that we have to wait for the thing i would add is that whilst of course james or

00:32:05.720 slightly more recent recruit to the party and has become very central as you say winston

00:32:10.040 in terms of building out the policy offer the kind of philosophy of the party what have you

00:32:13.880 dan jukes has been basically by farage's side for more than 10 years and is someone who everyone was

00:32:20.040 particularly surprised to have seen stepping down in the manner that he had and farah's then going

00:32:25.560 on lbc this morning and referring to both dupes and or as contractors of the party so whilst we

00:32:31.400 wait to hear what is going to happen with this internal investigation and where the dust is going

00:32:35.320 to settle um it's clearly already landed a blow rightly or wrongly onto the party as it goes into

00:32:40.360 this conference so yes the political consequences have been pretty significant this is part of the

00:32:44.840 problem is that in the midst of the the media maelstrom suddenly you get a a narrative that

00:32:50.760 is set which to a certain extent these stepping downs have played into whether or not that was

00:32:55.080 the intention well see this is where i i've agreed with pretty much everything everyone said to this

00:32:59.480 point but this is where i actually have a different view on it because to me those two stepping down

00:33:05.320 is a clear indicator look i i'm not a legal expert i can't say what's legal and what's not but the

00:33:11.480 The fact that Nigel Farage, who said to our faces only a month ago, I'm really loyal to the people who are loyal to me when we interviewed him.

00:33:19.380 The fact that these two men have resigned, to me, that's an admission of guilt, personally.

00:33:23.580 Just as an outsider, that to me is what it looks like.

00:33:26.400 The fact that he's been prepared to lose Dan Dukes, who's effectively his right-hand man, as people have said, and James Orr, who is as central to reform as we've discussed already.

00:33:37.740 That to me is them basically saying, we've screwed up here.

00:33:41.480 and we have to put distance between ourselves and the story by getting rid of these two people

00:33:47.780 who are really big assets in in their perspective to their party so from that perspective i think

00:33:54.160 it is an admission of guilt but i also think the context that all of you actually have presented

00:33:59.420 so far is really important because you know what this reminds me of it's like in russia and forgive

00:34:04.440 me tom you mentioned you are not this cynical everyone's at it i am this cynical partly because

00:34:09.740 of my background and partly just because of what i think the reality is uh i actually when last time

00:34:15.260 i was saying of wins i pinched his copy of michael crick's biography of nigel farage which is by no

00:34:21.100 means a flattering book to farage but crick repeatedly details how the tories cheated over

00:34:28.220 and over in by-election after by-election when contesting seats with reform now what does ukip

00:34:35.740 was yeah definitely ukip as a ukip that's right as as them was my point being is everybody does

00:34:42.140 cheat and this is why i actually never get excited about any of these stories we had a discussion

00:34:46.700 last night about about whether we actually wanted to cover this at all and i think the thing that

00:34:51.420 actually tipped us over the edge is the resignations yeah because if you take that out of this what

00:34:57.260 you're looking at is let's be honest a fairly trivial story about some behind the scenes

00:35:03.820 shenanigans about sourcing a bit of money and by the way this is another thing that is actually

00:35:09.180 very disappointing if you are someone who's reform aligned or reform curious you might say

00:35:15.820 we're talking about tiny amounts of money americans are shocked as to how little we're

00:35:21.180 talking about like 30 i know look 20 grand is a lot of money for for ordinary people and for all

00:35:26.060 of us but for a political party that is seeking to become the government of the country all of this

00:35:33.420 over 20 grand to do a poll it just it seems a level of risk that forget about the morality of

00:35:39.820 it it's not remotely commensurate with the with the potential gains of this go ahead when i have

00:35:45.340 more just one point on that yeah so it's a tiny amount of money in in respect to the money for

00:35:50.460 paying for polling but the hit job was expensive in terms of paying for a hit job so they paid

00:35:58.380 okay sorry i'll let you make the point then well well what i was going to say is so there is

00:36:03.260 this broader context which is basically everyone's up to it but i just i think the thing that that

00:36:07.980 you see here is reform are kind of amateurish when it comes to this and that it's not a surprise

00:36:12.380 because they're an amateur new party but it's disappointing nonetheless and then on top of that

00:36:18.460 we have to talk about the angle of this this is it's not a coincidence that the reform party

00:36:23.740 conference is starting today this is a deliberate hit job by a far left anti-net zero pro net zero

00:36:30.700 activist organization channel 4 had nothing to do with this these activists did all of this work

00:36:36.680 and then brought it to channel 4 who then went oh yeah it looks decent let's let's get it out there

00:36:41.780 and what you are seeing as tom rightly said i think is uh the the media class doing what

00:36:49.400 electorally the political opponents of reform couldn't do that said you know if this is properly

00:36:57.600 investigated by the police given the evidence that we've seen it would not be surprised me if there

00:37:02.960 are potential prosecutions out of this because let's be honest the footage is not a good look

00:37:08.720 at all yeah which also wouldn't be unprecedented it's worth saying which is not to create excuses

00:37:14.320 for anyone and just to try and rebuff any accusations of double standards or hypocrisy

00:37:20.160 here certainly if you look at the way that we at spikes have covered various of the kind of stories

00:37:23.920 involving the conservatives even the the labor party um would essentially apply the same level

00:37:30.080 of skepticism to many of this these stories a lot of this scandal mongering like even when they were

00:37:34.240 going after like angela rayner over a stamp duty or going after keir starmer over lord alley buying

00:37:39.520 his wife dresses for some bizarre reason um again what was embarrassing there was the hypocrisy

00:37:46.560 they were running on being whiter than white on complete polar opposite to a supposedly grubby

00:37:52.560 boris johnson they got caught out i think whenever you have you know beyond clear-cut obvious

00:37:57.760 corruption money being used to influence policy in a nefarious fashion politicians becoming bought

00:38:03.840 mouthpieces um influence being bought and peddled in a really kind of clearly undemocratic and

00:38:10.160 unseemly way of course everyone's against that but when you get down to these kind of more fine

00:38:14.080 grade distinctions around electoral law ethics procedures what have you what tends to happen is

00:38:18.400 it tends to empower the law the state or some kind of quango at the expense of democracy it's

00:38:24.080 like what we need is more rules what we need is more ethics committees what we need is more laws

00:38:28.560 that would bar particular political parties if they overstep the mark in this way that that way

00:38:33.360 or what have you so again as ever outside of clear-cut examples of corruption which everyone

00:38:38.800 is against there's when you get into these kind of finer distinctions loopholes bit of wheeler

00:38:44.320 dealering bit of you know creative accounting in order to get around what might be the um the

00:38:50.140 spirit of a lot of the regulations this can very easily be be weaponized i think we need to be on

00:38:56.260 our guard against it regardless of where it's coming from and if you reform you need to be on

00:38:59.820 your guard against not falling victim to these sorts of efforts to entrap you when they come

00:39:05.060 along definitely and also look and i think you've made a great point tom this is politics this is

00:39:11.160 the game of politics. Once you get to a certain level, once people start recognizing you as being

00:39:17.820 a legitimate threat to them getting into power, whether it's Labour or Conservative,

00:39:23.320 these shenanigans are going to start. And really now, this is a moment for reform where they have

00:39:29.560 a choice of whether they go down the similar route that they did, which is sort of the, you know,

00:39:34.760 the wheeler dealer, you know, let's play at what we're doing here. You know, we can be a little

00:39:40.900 bit woo a little bit way a little bit geezerish and we can you know make our way and all the rest

00:39:44.980 of it or you're going to actually now professionalize and think to yourself we can't do this

00:39:52.200 anymore if you want to get into power if you want to lead this country then quite frankly the whole

00:39:59.000 organization needs to up their game and there needs to be far more stringent they need to start

00:40:06.460 professionalizing and they need to start looking at who the people are that they're interacting with

00:40:12.600 and really really doing some stringent checks because this can't happen again this is a massive

00:40:20.080 wake-up call for everyone involved it's a potential body blow like I said before particularly with the

00:40:27.500 floating voters but I don't think this is the end for reform this is a chance for them to go right

00:40:33.280 we can get better but it means we're going to have to make some very tough decisions

00:40:38.140 and it means we're going to have to take out and eliminate some of the kind of wide boy antics that

00:40:45.280 you can see in this video well the the thing is that while that may all be true i think as i

00:40:51.940 mentioned given the small amounts of money involved you know i remember having a conversation

00:40:57.040 with a just a randomly bumping into a very senior media executive at a function of some kind and

00:41:03.920 them saying to me well the problem for reform is they just can't raise the money that they need

00:41:09.600 and so you've got these competing things you say well they've got to professionalize what we know

00:41:15.280 this from our own experience running trigonometry what what does professionalize means it means you

00:41:18.800 have to hire people who are better than the people that you have uh that costs money where do you get

00:41:23.840 the money from donations how do you get donations and then you're back to to where we started this

00:41:28.720 entire conversation to say nothing of the fact by the way that i you know i agree with winston

00:41:33.600 we know james personally james or is a very decent and principled and moral man so he found himself

00:41:40.560 and broadened this smacks to me either of desperation or of slip of standards or whatever

00:41:45.840 i don't know but my point is i don't think it's as easy as you know get a grip and sort it out

00:41:51.440 like there are structural issues going on here which is for a party to be successful you have

00:41:57.440 to raise a lot of money and as we've already talked about you're not competing in the level

00:42:02.080 playing field everyone else around you is cheating while not being subjected to the same scrutiny and

00:42:06.480 this is what i was going to say from my russian angle it it reminds me a little bit of what

00:42:10.880 happens in russia where effectively everyone is guilty but your guilt is identified and

00:42:17.600 investigated not when when it's sort of the police miraculously discover that you've been

00:42:22.640 doing something wrong but rather that when the powers that be decide that now is the time for

00:42:28.640 you to be exposed and so what you have is the the the completely uh unbalanced application of these

00:42:36.320 rules and norms because i guarantee you i guarantee you that if independent journalists which these

00:42:43.280 people were not these were activists were spending tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of

00:42:48.880 pounds trying to entrap labor officials and trying to entrap tory officials and trying to entrap the

00:42:55.440 officials of other political parties and similar schemes they would all come out with egg on their

00:43:01.680 face and the only reason you're not seeing that is that those efforts are not being made equally

00:43:07.280 but rather they're being targeted or wrong because they're seen as the enemy

00:43:10.880 advertising on spotify with audio and display ads helps brands turn attention into results

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00:43:24.500 and also just to add to that the extent to which the rules aren't being applied or the rules of

00:43:29.300 engagement aren't being applied equally also the rules around and the law around donations

00:43:34.040 the late party been trying to change them precisely in response to reform doing quite well

00:43:38.900 in relation to donations it's one of the many things that Andy Burnham has had to kick into

00:43:42.720 the long grass because he's just got too much to deal with at the moment and there's a story

00:43:46.720 earlier this week they kind of realized that some of the proposed caps on donations would have

00:43:50.480 potentially affected the Labour Party's coffers in terms of the union so naturally that's oh we've

00:43:55.120 got to rethink this now but um again that not only are the the standards not necessarily being

00:44:00.080 applied equally the government is has been trying in real time to change the law so as to scupper

00:44:06.560 the insurgent threat from reform so all of that is very very real and it's like how you deal with

00:44:10.960 that how you kind of scale and also how you do what reform been trying to do which is which is

00:44:15.520 genuinely unprecedented british british politics which is to go from five mps at one election

00:44:21.840 to potentially being a majority party at the next one we've never seen that before and the

00:44:27.120 of course that's going to come with it a lot of thrills and spills and arguably a bit of

00:44:30.480 corner cutting that's not to excuse any wrongdoing and any alleged criminality if that is what

00:44:35.440 comes out of it of course but that's the context in which all this has has happened um and it's

00:44:40.480 at least worth bearing in mind when we look at the full picture of this all right well moving on to

00:44:44.960 uh i was going to say let's go to something more light-hearted but unfortunately this being a

00:44:49.280 topical news show it's it's all downhill uh next story is uh of course the story of lindsay clancy

00:44:56.240 the trial of lindsay clancy and winston is going to bring us the details so lindsay clancy killed

00:45:03.680 her three children in January 2023 and the murder trial has been underway these last weeks and we

00:45:13.440 have had now another day where the jury are undecided neither the prosecution or the defense

00:45:22.560 are disputing that she killed her children neither the prosecution or defense are disputing that she

00:45:29.680 is mentally unwell. What they are disputing is how culpable she is in knowing and perpetrating

00:45:41.680 the killings. So it's really a question between whether this is first degree murder,

00:45:46.480 secondary degree murder or manslaughter. I don't think it's a question about acquittal although

00:45:52.320 technically that could be uh what the jury decides so it it continues to go on so that's the

00:46:00.560 the very core of it but at the next sort of level you then have a bunch of people a bunch of women

00:46:08.480 not just in america but here in britain as far away as peru south korea portugal who are coming

00:46:13.840 to her defense in the the millions has been raised um to vent to defend her they were wearing pink

00:46:22.720 and they're outside the courthouse protesting and they are claiming that she is the victim that

00:46:30.320 the real culpable culpability lies at the feet of the industrial uh sorry uh the the

00:46:38.880 uh medical institutions that failed her so it is the case that she had been seeing various

00:46:48.880 professionals uh for psychiatric help uh this isn't uh just made it isn't made up post hoc that

00:46:56.080 she had these illnesses there is a there is a a track record of her having postpartum depression

00:47:02.720 and it seems that i don't even think postpartum depression is in dispute right now so that

00:47:10.080 but what's disputing is is how culpable she is and then there's another uh sort of secondary

00:47:18.320 or tertiary offshoot to this story which is that the a lot of men or a lot of women are reporting

00:47:26.560 on social media, on Reddit and beyond, that their boyfriends or even fiancés are calling off

00:47:34.320 weddings or ending relationships because when asked about the Clancy case, they gave answers

00:47:42.120 dissatisfactory to the boyfriend. So men are now ending relationships because they don't like the

00:47:47.820 answers of the women when it comes to asking their opinion about what should be done and what should

00:47:54.040 the verdict in this clancy case i think that's my summation of what's happened is that is that

00:48:00.520 i think before we get into the debate uh and i'm keen to hear everyone's opinions before i give mine

00:48:06.280 i think there's a couple of things that are worth adding factually winston one yeah it's not just

00:48:11.960 that she saw different professionals for for various things so by all accounts including the

00:48:18.040 the the testimony of her mother-in-law who believe me as as a married man i can tell you that isn't

00:48:23.400 as objective a source in these circumstances as you're gonna get

00:48:31.320 according to the jury just get her to decide it yeah well quite prior to the to the four months

00:48:37.960 in which her mental health deteriorated she was uh a devoted mother uh a delivery nurse i believe uh

00:48:47.000 widely respected in her job and so on had no history of violence towards the children or

00:48:52.360 anyone uh and was in every way basically a normal decent person who really looked after the kids

00:48:58.760 she was prescribed 12 different medications including anti-depressants anti-psychotics

00:49:05.400 things to treat her insomnia i think benzodiazepines by different practitioners many of

00:49:12.040 whom were not in coordination with each other uh and she she committed these killings three weeks

00:49:20.040 after being uh after coming out of a psych psychiatric facility so these these just little

00:49:27.640 bits of context and the final one which which will be relevant to my opinion which i'm happy

00:49:31.400 to give later is her own ex now ex-husband whose children it was that she killed uh says that she's

00:49:39.320 not evil she was just ill i leave it there before for us to get into the discussion

00:49:44.280 and just to look at one dimension to it as well which is the there's a sort of outpouring of

00:49:52.380 sympathy for Lindsay Clancy and the kind of the growing number of people it seems like who feel

00:49:58.120 that at the very least she wasn't kind of culpable in the same way as one might be if she wasn't

00:50:03.080 suffering from severe mental ill health as they claim there's also of course that kind of

00:50:07.520 conspiratorial fringe which basically rejects the idea that she killed these children whatsoever

00:50:12.740 whatever, something that even her own defence aren't contesting, completely spurious allegations

00:50:17.840 that the father, Patrick, who discovered his three children killed, and apparently the 9-1-1

00:50:24.340 call, which hasn't been allowed to be released, but was played in court, was so shocking that

00:50:30.440 most of the jurors were in tears. Many, even the kind of very battle-hardened journalists who were

00:50:35.540 in the room, you know, covered a lot of very, very grim cases, were pretty shocked by the kind

00:50:40.220 of prime screams that they heard there's this kind of group of people online which you now see

00:50:44.060 whenever you have a high profile case like this it's a kind of weird mix of kind of post-covid

00:50:48.340 conspiratorialism and sort of true crime fandom which has created this level of uber cynicism

00:50:54.100 in relation to cases like this they've just been openly claiming that he did it and using as proof

00:50:58.460 the fact that he remarried relatively quickly after the horrors in which he suffered as proof

00:51:03.960 of that so there's that dimension to it the one thing that kind of struck me is even if we park

00:51:08.180 that because there's always going to be some nutters out there and the thing about nutters

00:51:11.420 in 21st century is that they all have social media accounts and more of a platform than they

00:51:15.060 used to have is that even the kind of outsized level of sympathy for her or identification with

00:51:20.440 her is to me quite striking and a little bit troubling like it'd be one thing to say this

00:51:25.920 is an absolute if you take as read her defense which is that she was suffering suffering from

00:51:30.000 this postpartum psychosis and as a consequence of that it wasn't the same as if she was completely

00:51:35.500 and are within her well-minded just decided to do this out of evil or what have you um even if you

00:51:41.260 take that as read the extent to which there are a quite large number of women primarily obviously

00:51:46.380 who see their struggle in her story who see this as part and parcel of a society which doesn't take

00:51:53.660 mental health sufficiently seriously i think is a little bit off is a little bit strange it would

00:51:58.860 be a bit like when we had that killer in nottingham a few years ago valdo calicane who's a paranoid

00:52:03.420 schizophrenic murdered three people in the midst of a very heightened episode again there were

00:52:08.300 various missed opportunities to stop him one of which was the fact that he was black and the

00:52:13.580 local authorities were concerned about putting too many black people in that form of kind of

00:52:17.500 medicalized confinement but nevertheless it would be it's one thing to say that's a horrific story

00:52:22.460 um and of course he was not a well man when it happened but to say we are all valdo callicane

00:52:27.020 and to say that isn't this a damning indictment of the way in which our mental health services

00:52:31.820 of failing people i think we would see as an odd response and it's something that you see

00:52:37.820 nowadays growing when there is a kind of vaguely woke political script that one could apply to it

00:52:43.340 so it's mental health in this case you even saw a little bit bit of it in the wake of arena zarutska's

00:52:49.020 horrific murder on that bus in charlotte where you had the local kind of democratic mayor come

00:52:54.700 out and suggest that basically everyone including the killer was a was a victim in this because of

00:52:59.820 the failure to take mental health seriously because he was also clearly quite a depraved man

00:53:03.340 so even if we we recognize the kind of the ambiguity the complicated nature of this i

00:53:08.620 think that level of kind of full-throated identification with lindsay clancy i think

00:53:12.780 is a little bit strange there's a slight kind of blessed are the murderers tendency which seems to

00:53:17.180 kick in what provided that there is a kind of political script that can be folded into i.e

00:53:22.060 mental health and how that's supposedly not taken seriously by society supposedly in this instance

00:53:26.220 i i think one of the reasons why this case has captured the imagination beyond the obvious is

00:53:32.840 because what it really talks about and thomas used the words mental health when actually mental

00:53:38.560 health is a catch-all term which doesn't really mean anything what we're actually talking about

00:53:44.060 here is mental illness and as someone who uh believe it or not has uh mental illness in their

00:53:50.020 family. And I've seen my cousin have suffered from severe schizophrenic episodes. In fact,

00:53:56.380 I saw her essentially break down and develop schizophrenia pretty much in front of my eyes.

00:54:05.780 What it talks to is responsibility. When somebody is having these types of severe episodes,

00:54:13.440 which the condition that Lindsay Clancy is alleged to suffer from can cause that sparks a

00:54:21.500 debate of responsibility. How much responsibility does the individual have? How much of it is caused

00:54:28.180 by an illness? How much of it is society's fault for not intervening sooner? How much of this

00:54:34.900 responsibility belongs to the medical authorities? How much do these drugs for instance that the

00:54:42.400 medical authorities, the doctors that are prescribed actually work? How much of it do they

00:54:46.780 exacerbate the condition? And how much of it is simply that we don't like to talk about these

00:54:52.140 conditions. And when people are suffering from these type of severe mental illnesses, do we just

00:54:58.200 push the people to one side because we just simply don't want to deal with it? And I think that's a

00:55:04.360 lot of what is happening here and why people are reacting so strongly to it. Of course, there's the

00:55:09.460 obvious the three horrific killings etc because these are issues that we are wrestling with

00:55:15.660 as a society in real time winston you never gave your take on it so why don't you give your take

00:55:21.580 yeah so i'll say something that goes against a lot of the right-wing commentary here

00:55:27.080 who seem to be very shocked that this deliberation is taking so long i'm actually not shocked that

00:55:35.340 this deliberation is taking so long i think uh seeing as what is not being disputed is

00:55:41.720 that she's being killed what's being disputed is uh the the impact of her conditions on her

00:55:50.820 uh for me it's this is bloody complicated and so uh i i'm not actually surprised this is taking

00:55:59.420 so long i think it's quite difficult if you're going to make force me to come off the fence on

00:56:04.260 on this one it's certainly not an easy one to call and i would prefer to do it with more information

00:56:11.460 and have been in the court case before coming off the fence on this one which shows how tricky an

00:56:16.320 issue it is but i also think regardless of what they decide her culpability is she should be in

00:56:22.300 prison for a long long time because as a society we need such crimes must be punished properly

00:56:31.420 and so whatever they decide whether that's some sort of mental institution or serious prison for

00:56:38.160 me that's for them to decide but she should be locked away i i she cannot be free i that that's

00:56:44.360 where i come off the fence well the one thing we haven't addressed so far which is actually

00:56:50.600 to me by the way tragic as this story is i actually don't think this should this should

00:56:56.460 be a new story at all the only reason i've had any opinion on it whatsoever uh is the commentary

00:57:03.380 around it which both you know tom and winston you've both alluded to which is this first of

00:57:09.940 all this idea that women are quote unquote defending her i'm sure there are a bunch of

00:57:14.540 nutters who are defending her but broadly speaking what i see is a lot of people saying

00:57:18.720 there's not enough understanding of what it's like for women postpartum and some of the hormonal and

00:57:27.660 mental changes i'll give you very small example it's got nothing to do with murdering children

00:57:31.560 but nonetheless is important like my wife is breastfeeding at the moment we have a four month

00:57:36.080 old she if we i remember literally the other day we were sitting having breakfast having a chat

00:57:42.260 about our plans for the week and then the moment the the little one latches on she goes baby i

00:57:48.360 literally can't think right now and i can literally it's like you know one of those scenes in a movie

00:57:52.540 where someone in a big like a server room or a big hangar presses all the light switches you

00:57:57.800 could just see the brain just like the lights going off that's what it looks like so i think

00:58:03.920 part of the thing that people are trying to to explain to people who maybe don't understand this

00:58:08.480 is the the female brain in these situations in particular nursing postpartum pregnancy etc

00:58:17.500 undergoes extreme hormonal changes and in those situations things occasionally can clearly go

00:58:23.740 very very badly wrong then there's a lot of evidence i remember reading a very long article about

00:58:31.340 the potential for the links between mass shootings in america and the prescription

00:58:36.380 on certain anti-psychotic medications so when you give somebody 12 different medications of all

00:58:42.140 different kinds in a very short period of time complex combined with sleep deprivation

00:58:47.100 combined with postpartum problems combined with hormonal changes all of that together you may in

00:58:52.940 some individual cases get this kind of thing and this is why i brought up the factual stuff about

00:58:59.260 her previous conduct and history like i i really think about whenever we think about stories like

00:59:05.740 this about trying to put myself myself in the shoes of some of the people involved where i can

00:59:10.540 relate if i put myself in the shoes of her husband and i go my wife who's up to this point been the

00:59:18.780 model mother and everything perfect i come home i find out she strangled our children and tried to

00:59:24.060 commit suicide a thing we didn't mention uh in our factual introduction i can totally understand why

00:59:30.460 he says she's not evil she she was just sick because if that was to happen to me i'd obviously

00:59:37.180 be horrified and devastated but i'd be like going this is completely out of character so whoever

00:59:43.180 did this is not my wife as i understand her something has happened in that situation and i

00:59:49.420 know that people like very much to make these comparisons with you know the guy who stabbed

00:59:54.540 arena zarutsko or the this the paranoid schizophrenic who stabbed people but i think

00:59:59.180 we also have to recognize that your prior conduct really matters both of those if i remember

01:00:04.460 correctly had a long and extensive deranged criminal history so we're talking about people

01:00:11.660 who have a consistent pattern of behavior that was not dealt with because of various concerns fears

01:00:19.020 the way the criminal justice system works etc it's not the case here you're talking about somebody

01:00:24.300 who went from being effectively a model citizen to suddenly strangling her three children in some

01:00:30.220 kind of fit uh and i think these are very different things and so i i totally understand

01:00:36.300 why there's a big campaign about sympathy for her but more broadly understanding mental illness in

01:00:43.500 relation to to these things and the other thing as well we've got to be honest there is a massive

01:00:48.060 difference between the pattern of male violence and female violence um and i think that's relevant

01:00:53.580 in the situation as well i think on that just quickly because what's interesting is that a lot

01:00:58.780 of the nuance around essentially culpability where serious mental illness is concerned when

01:01:05.260 people want to suspend that discussion depends on the politics and the optics of the situation so

01:01:09.360 go back to the sort of valdo calicane example who wasn't who might understand it kind of deteriorated

01:01:14.020 over a period of years wasn't unlike the kind of arena's situation wasn't a kind of down and out

01:01:18.960 criminal per se but was a student and was had a series of episodes which were violent and weren't

01:01:24.680 dealt with um in that situation there are a lot of people on the the right who were kind of

01:01:29.180 reflexively saying i don't care about these mental health claims he should he shouldn't be in a

01:01:33.260 medical facility he should be in prison when it was quite clear that he was in the midst of very

01:01:37.620 deep paranoid schizophrenia was convinced that the state were spying on him that all of these things

01:01:42.700 were really kind of textbook and clearly guided his behavior then you get the um some of the

01:01:48.880 commentary certainly on the right around the clancy trial seems to be because of the response

01:01:53.460 to and the commentary around the case has been just sort of so easily folded into a sort of

01:01:59.120 narrative around kind of toxic femininity and the idea like why are all these women seeing themselves

01:02:03.200 in them that therefore again she should not only be locked up but potentially um that she should

01:02:09.040 be potentially you know actually killed as a consequence of um what she has um committed there

01:02:14.820 so again i think it's one of those things where it's just become another feature of the of the

01:02:18.540 culture war not particularly useful fashion i suppose where i find it a bit strange though is

01:02:22.640 again that level of identification with and that level of sort of sympathy for because we can

01:02:26.480 recognize that someone does something absolutely horrific when being quite literally out of their

01:02:30.100 mind but at the same time to see one's own struggle in that person i think is a little bit

01:02:34.840 strange and also we kind of see this conflation going back to a point that francis was making

01:02:38.200 earlier of the kind of forms of should we say men like mental health issues if we're going to use

01:02:42.700 that phrase around postpartum whatever um thing what used to be called the baby blues you know

01:02:48.440 the very very common experiences of women after having children with this most extreme example we

01:02:55.720 could possibly think about and i think it does get to grips with an issue that we've had for so long

01:02:59.880 in our public discussions around this is that we talk so much about mental health and the idea of

01:03:05.560 it being in its most minor forms often you know barely diagnosable and definable issues

01:03:12.280 is something which we talk about endlessly meanwhile very clear-cut mental illness and

01:03:17.400 the way in which it completely can destroy a person's psyche leave them a danger to themselves

01:03:22.280 and others is something which is oddly speaking a less sexy and interesting issue even though

01:03:27.320 it's much more consequential and serious in cases like this so being able to disaggregate those two

01:03:31.640 things i think is really important if we're ever going to get a clear-eyed sense of not just cases

01:03:35.640 like this but how we think about this issue in general well and it's also as well tom we simply

01:03:41.320 don't know how to deal with this issue we don't know how to deal with serious mental illness we

01:03:45.720 don't know how to deal with these these people when they're uh when they're a danger to themselves

01:03:50.760 or to others and in particular in the states this is true i mean go around any city in the united

01:03:57.480 states in the city center and you will see people who are profoundly mentally unwell unable to take

01:04:05.080 care of themselves posing a danger to themselves and maybe to other people as well what do you mean

01:04:11.160 may be terrifying walking around a lot of these places it's terrifying yeah no i'm saying but

01:04:18.200 they may be posing a danger to other people or to themselves or i'm saying it's not there's no maybe

01:04:23.800 about it they routinely attack other people and and because they they are in that state and it's

01:04:29.320 because by the way i don't know if you know this but i suspect you do it's because uh you know

01:04:34.920 uh there was a point there was a big uh anti-institutionalization movement in america

01:04:40.440 which basically said that the way to help people who, by the way,

01:04:45.160 in those days often were held in institutions where they were badly treated

01:04:48.800 and those institutions were, you know,

01:04:51.120 not up to the standards that we would want them to be.

01:04:54.940 The way to deal with that is to let these people out onto the streets

01:04:58.140 because that's freedom and that's, you know,

01:05:00.500 it's liberating them from the constraints of institutions.

01:05:03.980 That's why you have the zombie hordes that you do see

01:05:07.860 in the centers of major American cities.

01:05:10.440 No, absolutely. So and then, but that speaks to a wider problem, which is nobody as of yet has a solution to this very, very important issue that actually affects a lot of people.

01:05:26.220 And you and is actually it's kind of damning indictment about our society as a whole.

01:05:33.380 because if you're not going to look after people and at the risk of sounding well who are actually

01:05:38.120 truly vulnerable and can't support themselves and are a danger to themselves or others

01:05:43.700 then we've gone we've gone wrong somewhere well i don't know the kind of words on this but it's

01:05:52.300 it's a bit so if you like take somewhere like california billions is being spent trying to

01:05:57.900 deal with this problem of what is mental illness but on the surface level homelessness

01:06:03.060 and drug addiction um the the it's not a question of a desire to try and do something about it is

01:06:09.940 that they can their ideology around the problem is so twisted that they that they actually are

01:06:15.980 making things worse because they're incentivizing the bad behavior this is something that i know

01:06:19.880 you've had michael schellenberger on your show he's been on my show a couple of times and he's

01:06:23.600 exposed this and really shown this so i think that the society does actually want to help this but

01:06:28.360 progressive ideology in particular in places like california is exacerbating the problem

01:06:35.060 well this is why i brought up the deinstitutional deinstitutionalization movement because

01:06:40.440 actually i do think there is an answer to this which is if someone is a danger to themselves

01:06:45.140 and or other people then they have to be in a facility where yes they are deprived of their

01:06:51.380 liberty for a period of time until we can be certain that they're not longer in danger to

01:06:56.380 themselves or others uh those are unpleasant trade-offs of this terrible reality the mental

01:07:01.420 illness is a thing that that exists but uh throwing these people out into the street to to

01:07:06.700 smoke fentanyl and be uh the the victims of the most horrific life circumstances is not the

01:07:12.700 solution uh i feel that that in the short history of off the fence that has been the most on the

01:07:18.700 fence segment that we've had actually trying to be nuanced about it but look i think we we live in

01:07:25.180 this era of slopulism where every issue is presented as a sort of black and white good

01:07:30.940 versus evil debate between you know the men who are correct to dump all their girlfriends and the

01:07:36.380 women who who have gone all of them have gone mental over this i really don't think that if

01:07:41.260 you're splitting up with your girlfriend because she has a slightly more sympathetic uh understanding

01:07:46.140 of someone who had a terrible mental episode uh you're probably an idiot anyway um there's me it's

01:07:51.740 It's a new Brexit, Constantine.

01:07:53.700 It's a new Brexit, exactly.

01:07:55.780 Final story of the week is, of course, Andy Burnham is back, Francis.

01:08:02.440 He's back, back again, tell a friend.

01:08:04.920 So I actually think this is possibly the most important story of the previous week,

01:08:12.260 or rather this week, that wasn't really covered,

01:08:15.480 but actually speaks to a very real problem that our country has

01:08:20.480 and is going to dominate conversation either directly or indirectly. And that is Andy Burnham

01:08:27.500 refusing to rule out tax increases in the new budget. So he refused to rule out tax rises.

01:08:36.140 He was also promised by 2030 to increase defense spending to 3% of GDP. So he's already promised

01:08:44.140 to spend more money there. Cost of government borrowing has risen to its highest level

01:08:49.360 in 18 years. We have a 100% debt to GDP ratio. Debt interest costs us around 120 billion a year.

01:09:01.400 Some economists say a little bit lower, some say higher, but that's pretty much the average figure.

01:09:07.120 and our debt now is double what it was after the financial crisis in 2008 and when Andy Burnham

01:09:17.760 and this is where it gets really interesting when he was asked when he was blaming essentially

01:09:23.560 the reasons for our current financial woes do you know what he blamed it on it's let's play

01:09:31.360 left-wing bingo gents come on what did he blame it on thatcher brexit um the far right who else

01:09:39.820 no it's brexit it is brexit it is um it is uh thatcher there's one more it's not list trust

01:09:52.120 is it no come on sport beginning with a the billionaire austerity austerity there you go

01:10:01.260 so well thatcher is a funny one isn't it because thatcher was of course became prime minister

01:10:06.460 before any of us were born and sadly we're no longer that young so uh it's incredible uh

01:10:12.700 i was going to mention oh yes uh the reason i brought up liz truss of course is we all remember

01:10:17.920 how she crashed the british economy famously according to all the media well unbeknownst to

01:10:23.800 the media class who promoted that story as vigorously as they did bond yields this week

01:10:29.020 are higher than they were at the peak of the list trust crashing of the economy um now that's not to

01:10:36.980 say the list trust did everything perfectly certainly not but i think there's just this

01:10:40.640 general financial illiteracy in the media class and uh increasingly in the political class that

01:10:47.660 comes with it as well which is why we're having this conversation for us no absolutely and this

01:10:53.740 is a conversation that we're going to continue to have because what the path and the trajectory

01:10:59.960 that we are on is quite simply unsustainable for this country and we are going to have to make some

01:11:07.400 decisions and we're going to have to make some very difficult decisions and these are decisions

01:11:12.460 which are going to make the current political party and the leader unpopular.

01:11:17.840 Now, where Andy Burnham is, is I would argue that he's at the peak of popularity

01:11:22.420 because he hasn't had to make any decisions yet.

01:11:25.220 But unfortunately for him, and he's going to have to get, and I quote,

01:11:30.880 off the fence at some point and actually make some political decisions,

01:11:36.600 particularly fiscal ones if we are going to progress and turn the sinking ship that is the

01:11:44.720 UK economy around I think it's quite rare situation in which the substance of the prime

01:11:50.920 minister we have and the scale of the problems we face are so mismatched the same was true of

01:11:55.460 but we're kind of expected to be even pleasantly surprised that Andy Burnham can like string a

01:12:00.980 sentence together you got bordering on bankruptcy as you say Francis the borders are still broken

01:12:05.500 and we've got this glorified bus conductor

01:12:07.200 who has managed to find his way into number 10.

01:12:09.680 It's a really dispiriting spectacle.

01:12:12.300 And part of the reason that obviously the markets are so skittish

01:12:14.580 is because Andy Burnham was Mr.

01:12:16.540 I don't want to be in hot to the bond markets not too long ago.

01:12:18.740 And this is the problem.

01:12:19.700 You might not want to be in hot to the bond markets,

01:12:21.460 but we are in hot to the bond markets.

01:12:23.340 You can lament the fact that we have allowed ourselves

01:12:27.080 to become so exposed that that is the case.

01:12:29.720 And you could put in place policies to bring down the debt

01:12:32.460 over time in a significant way to pursue the kind of policies which would not only be good

01:12:37.840 in terms of easing market tensions but would also be good for society getting on top of the

01:12:42.580 welfare bill ending the the kind of social tragedy that is so many people being put out to

01:12:47.340 pasture and all of the sort of downstream fiscal effects of that um but you can't just wish it

01:12:53.040 away and it seems what we're the problem with andy burnham i think that we're going to end up with

01:12:58.200 is that partly because he doesn't have his own mandate

01:13:01.060 and therefore even if he wanted to have some sort of drastic break

01:13:04.680 with starmerism or thatcherism or any kind of ism he kind of couldn't

01:13:07.980 but also because of the just inability to get anything

01:13:12.000 vaguely sensible through the Labour backbenchers these days

01:13:15.280 who have become kind of captured by what is often euphemistically

01:13:18.240 called the soft left but it's basically the most vibes based

01:13:20.600 on a principle we just we're Labour and we do nice things

01:13:23.960 kind of section of the party that is we're just going to have

01:13:27.840 loads of trundling along like it's just going to be walking of a kind of tightrope not wanting to

01:13:31.860 do anything that would seem unfair to this section of society or unkind towards those who supposedly

01:13:38.160 need to be in receipt of the enormous state largesse which is now laid on towards them um so

01:13:43.640 we're gonna it's just going to be more of the same i dare say and i think whilst that might change if

01:13:48.800 an early election comes our way or what have you we're kind of doomed to continuity starmerism

01:13:54.300 where this is concerned which is not anything that anyone should be excited about it's a really

01:14:00.080 interesting point you make particularly about the the fact that you know burnham famously said he

01:14:05.840 doesn't want to be in hock to the bond markets britain is like that position is like a bit like

01:14:10.880 a 35 year old who still lives with his parents and borrows money from them every month going i don't

01:14:16.800 want to be in hock to my parents well stop living under the fucking roof then you moron yeah you

01:14:21.960 have to make it personal mate but you know you go out there one day yeah look you know what i mean

01:14:29.400 it's like if you keep borrowing money from people yeah if you keep borrowing money from people you

01:14:37.640 will be in hock to them and for the reasons that francis laid out beautifully we are now extremely

01:14:45.720 in hock to them in fact uh you know one of the things we talked about the bond yields britain

01:14:51.080 is paying a premium i don't know if you know this uh we were we're all similar age i think certainly

01:14:57.800 in in my 20s and early 30s the the the basket case countries of the world of europe were

01:15:05.400 greece and italy we now have higher bond yields than both greece and italy in this country

01:15:11.400 because our economic policies our government's policies have created a situation where we are

01:15:17.000 less trusted to repay our debts than greece and italy that is the reality um and you know the the

01:15:23.800 point about this is the the biggest problem with all of this is none of it will be solved by the

01:15:29.320 policies that are being advocated for or pursued because raising taxes is not going to solve this

01:15:35.720 problem uh because you cannot tax even more to pay for all this spending that we can't afford

01:15:42.760 the we spend more on welfare now as we said earlier in this conversation than we raise

01:15:48.440 in income tax this is insane this is insane and by the way it's not all scroungers it's not all

01:15:55.000 people who've been you know uh abusing the system a lot of it is people who simply don't have jobs

01:16:01.080 because of the economic policies that our governments pursue and a lot of it by the

01:16:05.240 way is because we have an aging population of pensioners who continue to vote for policies

01:16:11.480 that protect and support them at the expense of their children and grandchildren

01:16:15.800 um and uh that is another massive problem that no one wants to talk about and it's also so many

01:16:21.320 of the problems that are unique in this country like just very quickly sorry wisdom is that

01:16:25.160 things like the growth in sickness benefits and outward benefits amongst the young

01:16:29.800 um which is you know the idea that the young would become a particular area of interest for

01:16:33.400 the welfare state just grates against what the whole point of it was to look after the old and

01:16:36.680 the sick and so on you know and the destitute rather than those who actually should have a bit

01:16:40.360 bit of get up and go that's often blamed as a kind of post-covid thing whether that relates to

01:16:44.520 mental health or long covid or some kind of bollocks like that you look at other european

01:16:48.400 countries you do not see that pattern repeated so there have been particular decisions that we have

01:16:53.920 made in this country which have made the issue so much worse and there's there's a kind of refusal

01:16:59.620 to grapple with that there's just a constant kind of gesture to how terrible it is across the piece

01:17:04.060 and what have you and uh the fact that these are factors almost entirely out of the government's

01:17:08.600 control that's just not good enough there's things that you can do you can act and you can try and

01:17:12.020 deal with and clean up the mess of a lot of what has happened in the quite recent past that would

01:17:17.500 start to amend this you know you don't have to have a reckoning with 40 years of failed policy

01:17:22.480 as Andy Burnham might see it to get us back on the right track even in the near term I think

01:17:26.560 just to add even more detail 30-year bond yields are now the highest they've been since 1998

01:17:33.100 eight the problem we've got is that there's looming tax increases without serious talks about

01:17:43.340 decreases or sorry without decrease elsewhere or welfare decreases and they just don't so I'm not

01:17:51.700 to be contrarian here or I'm not actually against some certain tax increases if they're offset with

01:17:59.880 decreases elsewhere what burnham is doing uh it is so the the other big thing and this is a guy i

01:18:07.180 keep an eye on called lord jim neill he's famous because he he's a labor grandee he took coined the

01:18:13.460 turn bricks and he was at jp morgan and it was rumored there were some rumors that gary stephenson

01:18:19.240 was going to be the uh economics advisor for burnham which was all nonsense but it it was

01:18:24.500 more true that jim o'neill was and he and and jim turned it down because and he said he he didn't

01:18:31.540 want to give up his business uh his businesses and and dealings uh but he's someone really worth

01:18:37.620 keeping an arm because he would have given burnham uh a seriousness in government because he's

01:18:43.700 someone who does understand the bond markets and does understand how to work a budget in a way that

01:18:49.620 would keep the markets and the city settled he has said this week that capital gains tax

01:18:59.220 increases are looming now i don't want capital gains tax because it's going to be tax on me

01:19:04.580 but i'm in theory not against capital gains tax if there's massive reduction in income tax

01:19:09.380 and actually you have you create incentive for people to work what we're seeing is just more tax

01:19:15.620 and no real decrease in welfare so things can only get worse but the most offensive thing to

01:19:25.320 me of all of this is watching Andy Burnham's PMQs and his various videos from cabinet meetings and

01:19:34.460 the amount of times he says uh or um he puts the uh in Burnham and it's very fitting that Burnham

01:19:44.780 as a word starts with an uh and ends of an um because those are the two sounds i basically

01:19:51.180 only hear from that man it is so offensive to me that he talks like that it's so frustrating

01:19:56.880 to hear can he not does he not have convictions can he not just speak shoot from the hip what

01:20:01.940 is what do you think man that thing drives me more insane than the tax talk by orders of magnitude

01:20:09.040 so it's good to see we're talking about the big issues i was going to say welcome to off the

01:20:14.640 fence where we give things their true measure of priority exactly exactly well uh gentlemen that i

01:20:25.120 think is us for the week thank you uh for being here thank you uh for watching and listening

01:20:30.720 make sure you subscribe to trigonometry the winston marshall show and of course spike

01:20:35.360 and share this with a friend, share this with everybody, and we will see you same time next week.

TRIGGERnometry - September 04, 2026

Reform Donations Scandal and War with Argentina？ - Off the Fence

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