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Nov. 15, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:44

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #785

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 15th of November.
	I am joined by Bo and Carl, and today we're going to be talking about Suella Bravman torching Sunak, Denzel Barker, and Five Quotes to Live By.
	And some of the more perceptive members of the audience may have noticed I'm not wearing a jacket.
	I'm wearing a hoodie, and that's to do with the merch store.
	Don't bully me.
	You know, this wasn't my choice.
	Carl has forced me to.
	It was not!
	It was entirely your choice!
	You liar!
	I did not say he had to wear any merch at all!
	No, it was other people, but I'm blaming Karl because it's funny.
	I'm sorry, Karl.
	That's alright!
	I didn't!
	Okay, well.
	Shall we get on with it?
	Of course.
	What year is it?
	What year is it?
	Yeah, you didn't say in the beginning.
	Well, I thought people were aware of the year.
	I'm not aware of the year.
	It's 2023.
	Thank God.
	It's the current year.
	Thank God.
	Anyway, let's talk about how Sweller Braveman is torching at the Tories, specifically Rishi Sunak and the kind of globalist wing of the Tory party, which seems to be firmly back in the driver's seat to successfully plow the Conservative Party into the ground.
	It's really weird that anyone would join the Conservative Party cabinet at this point, because it's such an obvious train wreck that's impending and about to happen.
	So when they brought back David Cameron, people were like, Why?
	That was a really unexpected move.
	I realized, okay, David Cameron.
	Why am I thinking about him?
	Uh, and a lot of people like, well, I mean, surely he's just there to appease China and, uh, apparently the Chinese media agree.
	They're thrilled.
	That's not good PR, is it?
	He's just an arch-globalist, W.E.F., shill, bought and paid for, globalist.
	Oh yeah, totally.
	100%.
	I should have got the article up, but a few months ago, I think last year, he wrote an article in The Times saying, you know, we were pale male and stale, so I brought in diversity lists and affirmative action hiring lists, and I turned the Conservative Party into the Blairite Party it is today.
	Yeah, well that's something to be ashamed of.
	Yeah, well done Dave.
	Slow hand clap.
	Yeah, exactly.
	You know, don't you have a pig's head to violate?
	Inside joke, if anyone gets it.
	Anyway, so the people who are on Sweller-Braveman's side for, and just to be clear, I'm just picking up from where Connor left off yesterday, so basic summary is Sweller-Braveman said correct things, said base things, but everyone was always complaining that, no, no, no, no, she did.
	She did.
	For show, sure.
	Well, that's the point, right?
	That was the point, because everyone was always saying, Well, you're in government.
	I mean, I literally, once you tweet something, I just reply, aren't you the Home Secretary?
	Aren't you the Home Secretary?
	That really annoys me that politicians in government, in positions of power, tweet like they're still activists and I think that social media is letting them get away with it because other people tweet like it and so it flies under the radar.
	It's a bit more than annoying, it's sickening, isn't it?
	Yes, but I think actually we have some answers to it now.
	Right, so this is one of the good things about the meltdown in the Conservative Party is actually what it reveals to us is very useful to know and it shows we can see the sort of I mean, Jacob Rees-Mogg is not my favorite conservative, but he's on the more conservative side of the conservative party.
	And I think Jacob Rees-Mogg really is just a kind of nimble navigator and tries to just keep his head out of the firing line in order to move through the dangerous waters.
	But of course he was against her firing and we'll see more from him later.
	So, what's interesting is that Rishi Sena is having trouble filling his cabinet because, of course, why wouldn't you?
	After firing Swela Braveman, this really annoyed a lot of people because Braveman had just told the truth and suggested sensible things that would actually fix the problem and nothing happened.
	Okay, well, she's the Home Secretary.
	If she can't make anything happen, why not?
	And we saw as well how leaks, and when you get Westminster leaks, Whitehall leaks, they're always, yes, it's obviously the case, especially when it's the civil service cheering that Cruella Braverman was sacked because she was trying to fix the country in some small way.
	That's definitely representative of the 95% remain voting civil service.
	They are definitely in favor.
	And so the conservatives have got the problem that kind of Trump has had.
	They've got many problems, but one of the problems they have is the sort of Trump problem where he's fighting the entrenched bureaucracy of the state.
	Braveman and Patel, Priti Patel especially, have this problem.
	She bullied Philip... Paulman or something?
	That's an author.
	No, it's some guy then.
	She bullied... It wasn't Philip Hammond, was it?
	He's in a verse.
	I can't remember the guy's name at the moment.
	I'll look it up.
	She, the sort of five foot one Indian lady, was accused of bullying Sir Philip someone.
	It's always so pathetic when politicians accuse each other of bullying.
	Was it Philip Scazes?
	No, no, no, no.
	He was a civil servant.
	Oh, right.
	But he was Sir someone.
	I'm sure it's Sir... Permanent Secretary of Home Office.
	Yeah, I'm sure his name was Paul.
	I know you mean anyway.
	Yeah, but he was, you know, bald loser and he was like, oh, I'm being bullied by Predictor.
	I was just like, good, good.
	That's great.
	That makes me actually like her now, you know.
	Phillip Rutland.
	Phillip Rutland, there we go.
	Um, but anyway, she bullied him and basically there's a persistent pattern of the conservatives, like, A relatively based Indian woman Conservative gets put in position of Home Secretary and wants to do things, but the Home Office is totally resistant.
	Now, a sensible Conservative Party would look at that and go, hang on a second, why is 80% of the Home Office's work immigration?
	I'm just going to dissolve all of that and fire all those people.
	Zero percent.
	Love my zeros, right?
	But of course they don't do this.
	And so Rishi can't fill his cabinet.
	Everyone's really pissed off.
	And the sort of globalist faction within the Conservative Party don't really have a constituency to appeal to, right?
	I mean, like, who is David Cameron's base?
	The same base as Keir Starmer.
	It's the same people who vote for the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats.
	What constituency are you appealing to?
	Who was like, God, if only David Cameron would get back into politics?
	Exactly, right?
	But there's no organic constituency of voters that aren't already captured by Keir Starmer.
	So why would you bring Cameron back?
	And so obviously the Conservative base is like, oh my God, what are you doing?
	The the conservative wing of the Conservative Party is just like, right, okay, it looks like it's going to be civil war, which it is, and it looks like Sweller Braverman is the person firing the shots.
	It looks like there's going to be a lot of rumblings in the very near future.
	One Tory MP anonymously was like, well, we don't think Seneca will make it to the next general election.
	We're going to lose our seats anyway if we do nothing, so we may as well try to see what will happen with a different leader.
	Fair enough, really.
	Entirely possible, but it just makes the Conservative Party look like a roiling mass of chaos, which is really not what the projection that the Conservative Party wants to put forward to the public should be.
	But it is a truthful one.
	It's a totally truthful one.
	I mean, how many, you know, this would be what, the fourth Prime Minister in the last year?
	If they're trying to project some sort of competence, well, their constant infighting and that sort of side of things doesn't necessarily suggest that they have the interest of running the country well.
	There's a lot of self-serving things going on here.
	And I like the reference to the constant shambles, right?
	Trying to project the feeling of competence.
	Because this is a video that Rishi Sunak put out Well, good morning, everyone.
	Welcome, especially a warm welcome to those for whom it's their first cabinet and also welcome to those for whom it may not be their first time.
	Lovely to have you.
	Lovely to have you all here.
	Our purpose is nothing less than to make the long term decisions that are going to change our country For the better.
	And I know that this strong and united team is going to deliver that change for everybody.
	We've got an important week coming up.
	On Wednesday we'll have inflation numbers.
	We'll also have the Supreme Court ruling on our Rwanda plan.
	And next Wednesday the Chancellor will be delivering an important autumn statement.
	And across all of that I'm confident that we can demonstrate to the country that we're making progress on the priorities that I set out at the beginning of the year.
	It strikes me as metropolitan school headmaster on an open day.
	That's what I have in mind.
	Metropolitan school headmaster on an open day in his Führer bunker.
	Being like, oh yeah, everything's going great.
	You know, we're strong and united.
	It's like, you look like a shambles.
	Like saying, well, we're strong united.
	No, no, no, you're obviously not.
	You just fired your home secretary.
	There's an absolute inferno raging outside of you and you're sat in your little, uh, meeting room going, yeah, everything's going great.
	Isn't this guys?
	No, everyone can tell that you're falling apart from the inside.
	It's really embarrassing that they would put this video out and think, oh, well, you know, we can just pretend we'll just keep up the face and everyone would split.
	Oh, everything's going great.
	I wouldn't say headmaster.
	I say more like a wannabe head boy.
	He's like a 14-year-old nerd of a kid.
	He's so weak.
	Everything about him just screams weakness to me.
	And he sounds like a CBeebies presenter.
	He genuinely does.
	He addresses you like a CBeebies presenter.
	To be fair, he is.
	I've had to watch a lot of CBeebies because I've got kids, so I know exactly how they come across.
	And when people started levelling their criticism, I was like, yeah, that's true.
	I think he is talking to Tory MPs.
	That is appropriate language for his target audience of the cabinet here.
	David Cameron wasn't in this because he was in India, like, arranging to have millions more Indians come here, I think, which is brilliant.
	But yeah, this video just struck me as a position of total denial of the facts of what's going on.
	And this was released We're still yesterday morning somewhere.
	Yeah, yesterday morning before Sweller Braverman decided to fire back.
	And we got reports that she was holding off on her letter for maximum impact to do maximum damage to Rishi.
	And good God, this is a great letter.
	So I thought we'd just read it because for anyone who's not familiar, the conservative party makes a very big show of trying to Demonstrate that they're all on the same team, all on the same page.
	We're all part of the same group.
	We, we all, you know, I thank, thank my, um, respected colleague for their service and we look forward to everything great they do in the future.
	Solar Braveman's letter took a slightly different tone to that, which, um, I really enjoyed.
	So I thought I'd read it, right?
	Dear Prime Minister.
	Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave the government.
	While disappointing, this is for the best.
	It has been my privilege to serve as Home Secretary and deliver on what the British people have sent us to Westminster to do.
	I want to thank all the civil servants, police, border force officers and security professionals with whom I've worked and whose dedication to public safety is exemplary.
	Now that's dripping with sarcasm, surely.
	Because all of those people are the problem.
	Right.
	All of those institutions are the problem.
	The first one is so passive aggressive.
	Yeah.
	Thank you for firing me.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's actually hilarious, right?
	But it gets better.
	She, the next paragraph is her saying, well, I'm proud of what we achieved, which is, you know, 20,000 new police officers, programming reform on grooming gangs, knife crime, stuff like this.
	Right.
	But then it gets to the good stuff.
	She says, As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as Home Secretary in October 2010-2 on certain conditions.
	Despite you having been rejected by a majority of party members during the Summer Leadership Contest and thus having no personal mandate to be Prime Minister, I agreed to support you on the firm assurances you gave me on the key priorities.
	Bloody Hellsweller.
	That's great.
	I don't doubt that's true as well.
	Oh, it's completely true.
	It's completely true because obviously the membership voted for Truss.
	He got a third of the votes and then Truss got absolutely yanked by the internal machinery of the party and by the globalist machinery of the party.
	And then Sennac was like, yeah, I'm your boy.
	And everyone was like, no one wanted you.
	It was the Bank of England.
	It's interesting.
	She sort of sets herself up as though she's a kingmaker type figure.
	I mean, I know nothing illegal was done because it was allowed within the Tory party, within their own mechanisms.
	You can change a leader like that and by law you don't have to go back to the country for another mandate.
	It does leave you open to the accusation that you have no mandate from the people.
	Rishi has no mandate to lead the country as head of government from the people.
	From the accusation of the former Home Secretary that you just fired for trying to do her job.
	I always hate that when Gordon Brown did it, or even when John Major did it when I was young.
	First time I realised that was possible when I was a kid.
	Gordon Brown did it, didn't he?
	Anyway, whenever it's done, I always think how dare you not go back to the people.
	Yeah, you slimy, weasley politician.
	The rules are unjust in my mind.
	It's a perversion of democracy that you're allowed to do it.
	Yeah, but anyway, let's carry on because it doesn't...
	This is just the opening salvo, right?
	So these priorities were, among other things, one, reduce overall legal migration, as set out in the 2019 manifesto, through inter alia, reforming the international students route and increasing salary threshold on work visas.
	Okay, that's great.
	That's something rare for a conservative to say.
	Reduce legal migration.
	Because normally they try to kick it to the small boats, because that's a drop in the ocean, but it allows them to divert the attention onto something that everyone, there's just no argument against, right?
	It's more emotively frustrating and for people who aren't clued into politics, they see that as the greater indiscretion because there's a greater affront to the dignity of the British people.
	Absolutely, but it's not the real problem.
	Yes.
	Number two, include specific notwithstanding clauses into new legislation to stop the boats, i.e.
	exclude the operation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights Act, another international law that has thus obstructed progress on the issue.
	So the small boats are the second issue.
	Primary issues, just immigration overall, then the small boats.
	Good job so far, Sweller, right?
	Deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol and retained EU law bills in their then existing timeline, and issue unequivocal statutory guidance to schools that protect biological sex, safeguard single-sex spaces, and empower parents to know what is being taught to their children.
	Brilliant.
	Love everything about it so far, right?
	This was a document with clear terms which you agreed to in October 2022 during the Sherkin leadership campaign.
	I trusted you.
	It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become Prime Minister.
	For a year as Home Secretary, I have sent numerous letters to you on key subjects contained in our agreement.
	Made requests to discuss them with you and your team and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals.
	I worked up the legal advice, policy detail, and action to take on these issues.
	This was often met with equivocation, disregard, and a lack of interest.
	You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies.
	Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so, or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.
	I mean, this is brutal.
	But you waited until you were pushed those swellers.
	Sure, and I'm sympathetic to that criticism, but the argument would be, well, if I just quit, I'd get no influence over it at all.
	I'd have no particular platform from which to continue making the debate.
	But be morally bankrupt, yeah, I mean.
	Sure, but I am sympathetic to the argument, but I think there is also another argument that is fair enough.
	Getting more political capital if you're fired by someone you disagree with, I think, is the argument, isn't it?
	Maybe, but if you're outside of the government, you've got no particular leverage at all.
	If you're the Home Secretary, at least you can say, well, I'm the Home Secretary, why aren't you doing what I'm saying you should do?
	But she carries on.
	These are not just pet interests of mine.
	They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory.
	They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
	Totally agree with all that.
	That's great.
	Our deal was no mere promise over dinner to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged.
	I was clear from day one if you did not wish to leave the ECHR, the European Court of Human Rights, The way to securely and swiftly deliver our Rwanda partnership would be to block off the ECHR and the Human Rights Act and any other obligations which inhibit our ability to remove those with no right to be in the UK.
	Our deal expressly referenced notwithstanding clauses to this effect.
	Your rejection of this path was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do whatever it takes to stop the boats.
	At every stage of litigation, I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win.
	I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat.
	You ignored these arguments.
	You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices.
	This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.
	I mean, this is savage.
	Like, she is not pulling any punches here.
	She's like, Rishi, you stop this by being essentially a wastrel.
	It's like, yeah, agreed.
	If we lose in the Supreme Court, which we'll talk about in a minute, an outcome which I've consistently argued we must be prepared for, you'll have wasted a year in an act of parliament only to arrive back at square one.
	Worse than this, your magical thinking, believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion, has meant that you've failed to prepare any sort of credible plan B. I read you on multiple occasions setting out a credible plan, what a credible plan B would entail.
	Make it clear that unless you pursue these proposals in the event of the defeat there is no hope of flights this side of an election.
	I receive no reply from you.
	I can only surmise this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people.
	She carries on but like it's just...
	It's continual just punches below the belt, basically.
	What a normal Conservative Party would never do, right?
	And so, good for her.
	Well, I don't give her any credit.
	I know.
	No, she's trying to set herself up to be the next leader.
	Yes.
	I think she's put her career before the interests of the country, repeatedly.
	I've got no sympathy for her or someone like Preeti Patel.
	The Tories have been in government for 13 years.
	Yes.
	They could have made new departments, they could have repealed all sorts of things, they could have stamped their authority on the policy, and every single day, including all her time in office, they've refused to do so.
	That's all true.
	They allowed the enemies of this country to flourish under their misgovernment.
	That's all totally true, but can I not just enjoy the stabbing for a minute?
	Yeah, fair enough.
	Just on a small scale, come on!
	Briefly, I'll allow it.
	Very briefly.
	But I don't give her any credit.
	You're obviously correct about everything you're saying.
	And every conservative government since David Cameron is guilty exactly of all the failures.
	I mean, you talk about the globalist wing and the conservative wing of the Conservative Party.
	I don't really see much of that.
	I see all the words in here, the things Lee Anderson's been saying today, it's all part of the same game.
	It's all part of the game of we'll reduce immigration to 10,000 and then we'll be flooded faster and faster and faster exponentially, endlessly.
	I don't buy any of it anymore.
	I think there are factions within the Conservative Party and I think what we're witnessing is essentially a civil war between the parochial patriotic conservative faction than the globalist faction.
	The globalist faction is really, really powerful, though.
	But this could be a complete tanking for them.
	If they were all on the same team, though, they wouldn't have public infighting.
	Yeah, this wouldn't be happening.
	This is an unprecedented letter.
	No one has ever written a letter like this before, to my knowledge.
	Because it's like, oh, my standing in the party...
	But this is knives around, you know, you're useless.
	You deliberately blocked me at every point.
	And to be honest with you, she's probably telling the truth.
	There's some power.
	I don't think so.
	There's some power on the line.
	I don't, I don't believe anything they're saying.
	I mean, I think you'd have to be quite credulous to at this point, to be perfectly honest.
	I mean, they're, they're liars.
	Yes.
	Moral bankrupts.
	Yes.
	Traitors.
	Yes.
	Self-seeking tricksters.
	Yes.
	But some of them don't want to be, I think, is what we can take away from it.
	But anyway... I was just going to say, I think, Beau, you are right in that most politicians seem to be largely motivated by self-interest, although they do seem... She's ambitious, that's what this letter is.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Sure, but like, I don't... How's that a fault?
	Well, when it's at the expense of the public will.
	I don't think you can point to Sola Braveman's behavior and say, well, she's not tried to get stuff done.
	I do think, actually, she's coming up against the globalist wing of the Conservative Party.
	I think they've been shutting her down.
	I mean, I don't think that she's telling a lie in that little essay.
	And she's been consistent on these points.
	But, like, I appreciate the zooming out.
	Yeah, that is a generally broad characterization of the Conservative Party.
	But at higher resolution, you can find areas in the Conservative Party that are essentially being suppressed by the sort of Blairite faction in the Conservative Party.
	And if we can get rid of the Blairite faction, then maybe we could have something that would actually approximate to a useful government.
	But that's not going to come this side of an election, just so we know.
	She talks about the Rwanda program.
	That was only ever an exchange program.
	So that was She mentions, with one word, the legal immigration.
	I would bet my bottom dollar that if she became Prime Minister, there wouldn't suddenly be a massive change in policy and flights, and she'd get rid of the Supreme Court and the ECHR, and suddenly we'd be deporting thousands and thousands of people.
	No, no, no, no.
	She's just as much a creature of globalism as they are.
	And this is all just a power play.
	Maybe.
	That is the cynical interpretation.
	But I'm going to take the less cynical interpretation.
	I'm not saying... I didn't say it was the wrong interpretation, okay?
	I didn't say mine was the right interpretation.
	I just said that I'm going to be a little less cynical.
	But anyway, as you can see, Mog Starts, uh, signal boosting this and I mean, as well as a tweet got 30 million views on it as well.
	So this was a really public torching of her former boss.
	And so you've got to be able to enjoy that at the very least.
	Yeah.
	No, if I can just dial myself back a little bit, it was delicious to see her dig some claws into Sunak.
	Yeah.
	Who is, I mean, awful.
	He's a cuckoo in the nest.
	He's a creature of the WEF, of Davos, of interests above and beyond that of the voting public.
	Yes, 100%.
	And so it is nice to see that there is a Conservative wing in the Conservative Party that can at least now voice themselves.
	She's at least broken through in that way, which is decent.
	And then you've got the new conservatives, which are the half-decent conservatives left in the Conservative Party, led by Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, who are, of course, on her side in single business.
	So you have an active movement within the party that's like, look, you guys are terrible.
	You're doing everything everyone hates.
	You're betraying the 2019 manifesto promises.
	You're betraying Brexit.
	You're betraying everything about this country.
	So they are basically saying the same thing as you, just in slightly nicer language and with a little less venom.
	I am not blaming you at all.
	Such things are beyond good manners, sir.
	I didn't say they weren't.
	But then, what do you think Rishi Sunak's response to Swilla Braveman being very specific and totally cutting towards him was?
	I don't know.
	Ignore it.
	Try and laugh at it.
	The PM thanks the Home Secretary for her service.
	The PM believes in actions, not words.
	Are you effing kidding me?
	That's some excellent hypocrisy there, isn't it?
	It's just wild.
	It's just total denial of reality.
	Like the plastic rhetoric of Rishi Sunak.
	It's like, we believe in actions, not words.
	It's like, but Sweller Braveman is literally showing how all you have done is block her and taken no action whatsoever to...
	So, okay, well let's take you on your actions then.
	You want mass immigration, you want illegal immigrants, you want the ECHR to be the ruling legislative body of this country.
	You want these things.
	You want all of these things.
	That's your actions then, Rishi.
	And a layer of censorship over the top, so men fear for prosecution lest they speak their minds.
	Yeah, and you want all of the radical trans stuff.
	You want all of this.
	And central bank digital currency as well.
	Yeah, that's right.
	He definitely wants that.
	Which is terrifying.
	Yeah.
	But see, you're totally on board with the global agenda, and you're a liar and a traitor.
	Okay, great.
	Your response shows this.
	Fantastic.
	So Braveman is plotting a Tory rebellion.
	I'm not so angry about ambition.
	I'd like some ambitious people who want to deport loads of foreigners, actually.
	I think we need some ambitious people about doing that.
	As the Guardian reports, hard right Tory factions.
	Fantastic, I love the idea.
	Hard right, really?
	Yeah, Jacob Rees-Mogg, basically.
	Right, okay.
	But it's the Guardian reporting, of course.
	They're due to hold a meeting 30 minutes after the Supreme Court releases its verdict on the Rwanda plan and whether to call to leave the ECHR.
	I mean, they've been calling for this for years.
	You know, Sweller Braveman has been actually saying this, so okay.
	If they go against the government, they're going to look for further advice, which is obviously going to put them on a closing course with Sunak, and Sunak's in a particularly precarious position anyway, so it's entirely likely that he's going down.
	Sunak, of course, is expected to argue in favor of remaining in the ECHR, which is wild considering everything that's happened, because he fears leaving it could damage relations with Joe Biden.
	He cares, yeah.
	How much longer is Joe Biden going to occupy his bloody office?
	Zelensky was like, hey Trump, do you want to come over and have dinner in Ukraine with me?
	He wasn't Joe Biden, do you want to come over?
	Joe Biden's not long, he's about as long for this world as Rishi Sinek is.
	If the Prime Minister actually had a set of testicles...
	They should be dunking on Joe Biden.
	It's easy political points.
	And, you know, even some on the left are now saying actually Joe Biden's useless in America.
	Like 60, 70% of the Democrats themselves don't want Biden.
	Most of Europe are pretty skeptical of him because of his handling of international affairs.
	His allies in the Middle East won't have meetings with him.
	The Saudis refuse meetings with Biden.
	It's easy home runs, isn't it?
	And yet they're not doing it.
	We should be saying, he's useless, worthless, get rid of him.
	And that would help them out, but alas.
	It's all just nonsense.
	It's all just misdirection.
	He doesn't want to leave the ECHR because the plan of his overlords is to keep us flooded with foreign people.
	So it's nonsense.
	I totally agree.
	Anyway, breaking news.
	Guess what the Supreme Court decided?
	They literally said, quote, it was In breach of EU law, the Rwanda plan?
	Brexit means Brexit.
	Get lost.
	Yeah, okay.
	Well, let's ask the Supreme Court what they think of Brexit.
	They tried to scupper Brexit.
	Remember the spider broach lady?
	Yeah, they tried everything they possibly could.
	For anyone who is curious, the Supreme Court, I think, was instituted in 2007 and actually came into being in 2009.
	Labour invention.
	One of Tony Blair's abominable constitutional reforms.
	In his election manifesto.
	Yeah, I have t-shirts older than the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
	Dismiss it.
	Just get rid of it.
	Dissolve it.
	Fire them.
	It's also a sort of legal abomination.
	It goes against our legal practices that have fared us well-ish.
	It's at odds with the common law.
	It's there purely to damaged the authority of Westminster.
	Yeah.
	And some people, lefty boomer types, Blairite types, Labour people and Lib Dems, they try and make out as though we never had any liberty.
	There was no rule of law before we had the Supreme Court.
	We invented the concept, you freaks!
	And that's the correct reaction, yeah.
	Just, yeah, no, no, okay, no.
	It should be swept away.
	Absolutely.
	I'd dismantle it, bulldoze over and build a nice park where people can walk in the sun or something.
	You know, just whatever.
	Just get rid of it, right?
	So anyway, in the beginning of October, the Conservatives sucked in the polls.
	24% to Labour's 44%.
	This is for the month of October.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Yes, and so just this is a very brief, before all of this chaos kicked off, the Conservatives were sucking, right?
	Really sucking, like due to have a really, really historically bad defeat.
	You know, hundreds of Conservative MPs are going to get politically slaughtered at the polls here.
	It's interesting, Ipsos has decided not to put Reform on there, which is currently polling at about 11%.
	Well, we'll get to that.
	Because back then, actually, they did get folded into Other, because they were about 7 or 8%, right?
	But let's see the latest.
	Ooh, Conservatives below 20%.
	19% of the Conservatives.
	Reform at 11%, which is fantastic, which is above Greens and the Lib Dems, which as you can see in October, they were below.
	You know, so the Reform actually starting to gain some momentum here.
	It's.
	Is it conceivable that if in a couple of weeks, more chaos, the conservatives reform arrive at about the 14, 15% that UKIP did and the conservatives get down to about the 14, 15% range, like this is genuinely an existential crisis for the conservative party at this point.
	Now, I know there are people on your side who like destroy it.
	I'm like, well, maybe we should take it over either way.
	I don't care, as long as we get some party that acts in our interests as British people to move forward.
	Really, I'm very flexible on how this is done, you know?
	It just has to happen.
	Immigration has to stop.
	Obviously, the reform guys are just loving this, you know?
	Going very, very well.
	Lots of good statements from Tice and stuff like that saying, yes, we're finally gaining some ground.
	Fantastic.
	Brilliant.
	Thank God.
	So I could be giving a press conference today at 4.45 p.m.
	because we have the Rwanda Judgment.
	I know this is going on, but there's a lot happening, right?
	So, um, this was not the outcome we wanted, but we spent the last few months planning for all eventualities and remain completely committed to stopping the boats.
	Sweller has already scuppered this narrative, right?
	She has demonstrated, she said, look, you've, you didn't reply to any of my emails.
	You blocked me at every turn.
	You made sure this couldn't happen.
	And so him coming in and going, wait, we committed to stopping the boats.
	You're not.
	She's already nailed you on that one, right?
	This is not the outcome you wanted.
	Well, if it wasn't, why didn't you have a contingency plan?
	Why no plan B?
	Why not leave the ECHR?
	Why not repeal the Human Rights Act?
	Why not do anything?
	They've done nothing and just wishful, magically thought that somehow the Supreme Court would be on their side.
	They've got nothing.
	Chaos is what we're seeing.
	They've got no plan, unless this is the plan.
	So, first and foremost, you know, Parliament has the ability to get rid of these foreign laws.
	Parliament's got the ability to legislate.
	The sky is purple.
	Yeah, well, that's how it should be, right?
	And so they're acting as if they're limited and they've got their hands tied when they're obviously not.
	And I think Rishi Senak here is hoping that people haven't read Suella's letter 30 million people on Twitter alone saw it, and obviously it was in all the papers.
	Everyone's seen Swell.
	Normally a minister's resignation letter isn't as well viewed as that.
	Maybe he's made a miscalculation here.
	Yes.
	Which I think is likely.
	It's just, Taurisi, just stop lying, liar.
	We know you're lying, liar.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Get real.
	Like what planet is he living on?
	Like going back to this, like just plastic, these are just liars.
	These are the group of condemned men.
	Like they know they're about to take, I mean, literally historic, like this, um, the, the 20, 19%, right?
	This, this is probably going to equate to something like 60 or 70 MPs.
	Like the conservatives are literally going to lose like 120, 320 MPs.
	There has never been a defeat of a ruling party that bad in all of British history.
	Like there's never been, this is the worst it could possibly be.
	And they're like, yes, we're the strong United cabinet.
	It's like, no, you are literally about to hang tomorrow.
	You know, it's crazy.
	I mean, they're all rich.
	So obviously this isn't their problem.
	They're not like, he's got his ankles wet on a sinking ship and he's still acting like it can sail.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's literally, you know, I'm going to put new people in my cabinet.
	It's like, why do you want to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic?
	You're sinking.
	What are you doing?
	You know, get out.
	I mean, what they've really done is acted for years on end now against the sort of clear voice of the people.
	Yes.
	Um, installed a type of soft tyranny.
	And just to be clear on that, the repeated demonstrations of the clear voice of the people, like there have been at least like four elections where the Conservatives won very successfully.
	And in 2019, accumulating in the Boris smashing victory that have all been do the things that Brexit implies.
	That's all it's been.
	And keep changing the leader without going back to the people.
	It's like it's an immovable party.
	Yes.
	The globalists have such a firm handle.
	Right, yeah, some sort of uniparty thing and that's more obnoxious than a tyrannical king or something.
	We removed kings for such as this.
	Well, 19% in the polls.
	It looks like they're going to get removed.
	So anyway, I thought we'd just go to this quick post by Dominic Cummings, which I think is interesting, because he's basically come to the same conclusions that we have.
	He's like, look, Synax Debacle is a great example of relatively clever people trying to create complex fudges to fool NPCs.
	Such tricks on ECHR have worked with dummy Tory MPs and the Mail Sun Telegraph for over a decade, but they don't solve real problems.
	The actual solution is to repeal the Human Rights Act, withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights, primary legislation empowering the government to use the Navy to stop the boats and prevent anyone on them claiming anything here under any international law of any kind, explicitly naming international law that does not apply, and explicitly limiting the power of the Supreme Court to interfere, Dissolve the Supreme Court.
	International laws can only be enforced in UK courts if Parliament allows it, as in reclaim the sovereignty of Parliament, which is what people voted for in Brexit.
	Blaming judges as always stupid.
	The debacle is not the fault of the judges, it's the fault of our useless MPs.
	Totally true.
	Although the judges aren't exact.
	Great!
	MPs can solve a boat problem.
	It is not even one of the 100 hardest problems we face.
	But because they prefer to fool themselves rather than face reality, they are more afraid of fighting Whitehall than of failing and losing.
	As in, they're more afraid of going up against the Civil Service.
	Like, yeah, well you should have been brutal with them.
	That reads like I wrote it myself.
	And that shows That they are truly spineless.
	Yes.
	Truly, truly spineless.
	A government leadership, you wield the power.
	If you don't wield it, then the civil service will run roughshod over you.
	Yes.
	And I don't think it's stupidity or incompetence, they're choosing not to.
	Yes.
	They're choosing not to.
	Just as a quick ender to this segment, where's Nigel Farage at the moment?
	Nigel Farage is on I'm a Celebrity 2023.
	He's in a jungle off the coast of Australia somewhere.
	Might be worth explaining what this show is to our foreign audience.
	For anyone who doesn't know, I'm a Celebrity is literally as it sounds.
	A bunch of celebrities are sent off to some desert island somewhere, a jungle island somewhere, to eat bugs and essentially be kind of humiliated.
	And the British public love it.
	Matt Hancock, the former health secretary who everyone hated, went on it and came third because all he did is just eat the bugs.
	You know, whatever.
	Just as Klaus intended.
	Whatever it is.
	And people respect the fact that you'll just dig in and do it.
	Nigel's already quite a popular figure.
	I imagine that he'll just knuckle under.
	He knows the game here, right?
	And what this will probably do is raise his popularity just overall in the country.
	But yeah, Nigel was all right.
	You know, he ate those bull's testicles or whatever it is that they put in front of you without complaining.
	And I respect that, right?
	And that's what the general public...
	What a weird world we live in that the anti-globalist candidate is going to go on TV, eat some bugs, and his approval is going to go up.
	Yes, but this is a well-trodden path at this point, actually.
	Millions and millions of normies watch this, right?
	And so the situation might, but Nigel Farage doesn't have internet access in the jungle.
	So he has no idea that any of this is going on.
	So when he comes out, it's going to be like that scene in Community where Donald Glover comes in with the, uh, the pizzas and everything's just on fire.
	The Tories sub 20%, um, approval rating, you know, cabinet unfilled, everything tanking, like knives, you know, Farage is going to come back tanned, popular and enriched because he's been being paid a million and a half pounds to do this.
	And in the prime position say, you know, what we need is an actual conservative government, you know, and so Farage is going to be, it looks like Farage is going to be perfectly placed to just start smashing things down, especially if they have to call an election because Senec's government falls apart.
	Which is entirely possible.
	So it could be before this side of Christmas, maybe, that we have to have a snap election.
	Who knows?
	He is currently the Honorary President of Reform.
	Yes, I know.
	And has explicitly said he wouldn't join the Tories.
	I know, but we've discussed it and we're going over time significantly.
	So we'll talk about that another time.
	Oh, blimey, that flew by, didn't it?
	Sorry, I didn't pick up so much time there.
	It's a good segment, though.
	It's the most important thing of the day.
	There's a lot happening.
	And that's the thing about British politics.
	Nothing happens for a very long time, then everything happens at once.
	Anyway.
	So, far less important.
	I'm not going to start my segment like that, by the way.
	I'm going to get people to click off immediately.
	So, some of you may be familiar with Hannibal Barker, the Carthaginian general that famously took elephants over the Alps and took on Rome, and almost won.
	Not sure if there are any students of history in the audience, but it's little known fact that he is in fact a black man.
	This is his actual identity.
	You know, the Carthaginians, famously sub-Saharan African.
	From their seat of power in Spain and North Africa.
	And of course, originating from Phoenicia, which is sort of around the modern day Syria area.
	Yeah.
	It's off the coast of Tyre.
	The Phoenicians were a Semitic people who founded lots of trade colonies and Carthage they found in like... Just off the coast of Lebanon, isn't it?
	Modern Lebanon.
	Oh, yeah.
	I believe.
	Yeah.
	But the Phoenicians, famous seafaring trading people, they set up a Colony at the, what we call Tunis now, uh, that happened to be on a very, very advantageous place that connected the Mediterranean and it grew and became a flourishing power of its own.
	And that was Carthage.
	And it was very exclusive.
	They weren't an incorporative people in the way that Rome was.
	Um, you couldn't become a Carthaginian citizen.
	You were born one.
	Um, and they were definitely Middle Easterners.
	Yes, 100%.
	But, and this is the thing that you hear all the time, but Carthage was in Africa!
	This is some proper urban geography, urban American geography, to use the more politically correct way of putting it.
	Apparently all of Africa is just the same, that belt of North Africa, you know that massive desert separating it from sub-Saharan Africa with the two different peoples?
	Yeah, that doesn't exist.
	There's no desert there, the Sahara, it's not real.
	Which is why all of the North Africans today are all black.
	Yeah, that's right.
	People from Morocco are sub-Saharan blacks.
	They're all of them.
	It's actually a conspiracy.
	Big Globe out to get them.
	We are going to do an Epochs at some point, aren't we, about the campaigns?
	Oh, we absolutely are.
	The reason I've been sort of kicking them down the line is just because there's just other stuff I've just wanted to do in advance because we did them a few years ago on History Bro.
	Did you check that out by the way?
	They're very good, I've watched them.
	But we will do like really long and in-depth... Because Polybius covers it in fantastic detail.
	The thing is just me getting around to rereading Polybius.
	It's an excellent story though, isn't it?
	It's one of the greatest stories.
	So for anyone who doesn't know, Hannibal decided in 218 BC that actually Rome sucks and we hate Rome.
	And I happen to have an army of 120,000 men, which is really useful, and 40 war elephants.
	And just lying around.
	Rome controls the sea.
	So how am I going to get to Italy?
	Well, I'm going to cross a mountain range in winter, actually.
	And everyone's like, Hannibal, that's a bit nuts, isn't it?
	I mean, not only is it winter, but that mountain range is full of like barbarous tribes and they're going to try and kill you.
	And I'm like, yeah, but I don't care.
	Watch me get 40 elephants into Italy in the middle of winter.
	And so at some point in about 217 BC, There was some gall who was just standing on a mountainside, probably thinking, right, I'm going to shoot that goat with my bow.
	And they had the brrrr of an elephant and looked up and saw a series of elephants tramping down out of the mountains.
	And I was like, right.
	This is mad.
	I must have eaten something strange, what am I saying?
	Exactly, just like, what did I eat yesterday?
	And that was sort of just the opening salvo, the string of incredible events, right?
	That's just the first one.
	He was an excellent general, I think.
	One of the best of all time.
	I personally am a huge Hannibal fanboy and I think he's the GOAT.
	So, you know, come at me in the comments, by the way.
	Yeah, the Romans kind of employed Russian-style tactics.
	That's an anachronistic comparison, but it's just sort of human waves.
	In the defense of the Romans, though, the Romans did have a good institution in their military, right?
	So they didn't have to be very creative to win battles, because most of the time it was just the quality of the training and discipline and the Standardized procedures that they had was good enough to basically win battles against like the Celtic tribes or the Greeks or whoever, right?
	You know, the average Roman soldier was quite good quality, had quite good equipment, had quite a good institution behind them, quite martial leaders.
	So overall, this was a very successful thing.
	But the thing is, Hannibal was a genius and knew what the Romans were about.
	That's not good enough.
	He was also aware of how the Romans would behave because they had this very stratified way of operating.
	You know, you could predict what they were going to do quite easily and counter it.
	And as I understand it, obviously I'm not the historian.
	No, no, no, that's totally true.
	And the Romans were definitely very confident as well, because they're coming off a string of victorious wars.
	You know, they pacified Italy.
	They've already fought the Carthaginians to a standstill in Sicily.
	And they are the likely winners of any battle, basically, because they've got a good army and they're very militaristic and they just go straight for the kill.
	And so it's like, okay, well, You know, why not?
	Why don't we just attack Hannibal then?
	And I mean, I won't go into the whole thing, but... Just super quick to say there's just a three-piece of just brilliant successes, aren't there?
	Staggering.
	The River Trebbia up in the mountains and Lake Tresemmine, my personal favourite Lake Tresemmine.
	And of course, Canna.
	Three masterstrokes that tacticians today, I think they are taught.
	This is how you can do an amazing ambush.
	Get in the mind of your enemy, all that stuff.
	I had a friend who went to Sandhurst, he had to learn about this.
	The thing about Hannibal's three initial victories is that each one's better than the last.
	You know, it's like, normally it's like, right, you've got your big victory and then you're kind of limping along a bit until it's over.
	No, no, no.
	Hannibal just keeps raising the ante.
	And so, like, one of the best... And the thing is, Hannibal's such a great general.
	The Romans built statues of him.
	Like, we have Roman statues of Hannibal.
	So it was like, okay, he may have been a mortal enemy, but look how amazing this guy was.
	You can't get around it, you know?
	Polybius himself is something of a fanboy, isn't he?
	Yeah, you can't help it.
	Yeah.
	He was a worthy enemy.
	Absolutely a worthy enemy.
	Unbelievable enemy.
	And against any other state, Hannibal would have just crushed them.
	If it wasn't Rome, everyone else would have just lost.
	No questions asked.
	And Fabius is everything wrapped up with...
	The Roman General Fabius, but go and check it out if you want to know how it all ended.
	But the most important thing is that he was a black man.
	So yeah, just to be clear, we know what we're talking about when we talk about Hannibal.
	We know what we're talking about when we talk about the Roman, the ancient world, and who the Carthaginians were, and who Hannibal was.
	And so we know that Denzel Washington is the perfect casting for Hannibal, of course.
	So I'm going to be a slightly controversial.
	I care less about Denzel Washington as the fact that he's black because Denzel Washington is quite a good actor, actually.
	I like him as an actor.
	He's in lots of good films.
	Yeah.
	And I'm not, you know, obviously it's not historically accurate to have a black guy as a Carthaginian, but Denzel Washington is a decent actor.
	So, OK, I can Get past that, or at least not care about that as much.
	The thing that actually really bothers me is the age of Denzel Washington.
	He's 68.
	Yeah.
	Is he that old?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Right.
	Is he that old?
	68?
	Yeah, he's 68, right?
	So Hannibal was 25 when he was given command of the army in Spain because his brother died, Hasbro Hanson.
	I think his name is Hasbro Hanson.
	And then he was 29 when he launched the invasion of Italy.
	So he's less than half Denzel Washington's age, but that's mad.
	I mean, Hannibal died at 64 or 66.
	It's not sure.
	But he was younger than Denzel Washington when he poisoned himself.
	And so it's just like, what are you doing?
	You know, if you've got to have a black guy doing it, have a guy who's in his thirties.
	It is worth mentioning as well, this is being made for Netflix.
	Of course it's being made for Netflix.
	That's I think the incentive because Netflix is very egregious for doing this sort of thing.
	I categorically refuse to watch anything they put out.
	Definitely don't pay for it, that's for sure.
	But just to hammer it home a little bit, there's a statue of Hannibal, there is a sort of colorized recreation of what he might have looked like and there is Denzel Washington.
	I mean, you know, Hannibal looks like your average Middle Easterner.
	Denzel Washington doesn't.
	Okay.
	Fair enough.
	All right.
	Fair enough.
	I'm like I said, I'm, I'm so inured to the black washing of things.
	I'm kind of over it.
	And I do like Denzel Washington acts.
	So I'm like, okay, but it's just the age though.
	Like Hannibal at Cannae, he was in the front lines with the Gauls controlling the retreat as the Romans pushed in, go look up the Battle of Cannae.
	It's amazing.
	You know, he's, he's a fighting man, but he's not like just an old dude who sits at the back.
	This might be a controversial opinion, but I'm of the opinion that if you're depicting a historic figure, you have to look like that person.
	I know that's very controversial these days.
	I agree.
	And that would be the ideal thing that you would do.
	But like, you know, I can think of worse people than Denzel Washington.
	At least say Joaquin Phoenix kind of looks a little bit like Napoleon in his depiction.
	You mentioned the guy that played Hannibal on TV a few years ago.
	I've already got it in the mix.
	I've already got it in the...
	Oh, okay.
	Fair enough.
	I do actually have a segment prepared.
	Sorry, sorry, go on.
	I'll let you carry on.
	One thing I would say though is, did you see fairly recently, I think it was on Netflix as well, but they did a Cleopatra thing.
	I covered that, yeah.
	Will Smith's wife wrote it, or the producer or something.
	Yeah, that's right.
	And I think the actual state of Egypt They launched some sort of legal action.
	They did, yeah.
	I'd be interested if Tunisia, I guess it would be the state of Tunisia, if their government said, no, you can't just misrepresent our history like this.
	Yeah.
	Of course, when it happens to us, someone like Henry V is played by... Or Anne Boleyn.
	Or Anne Boleyn.
	We wouldn't really dream of bringing a legal action.
	But I liked it when the Egyptians did that.
	I think that was bloody brilliant.
	Good for them.
	I'd love it if the Tunisians I suppose it would be the modern teenager.
	He's the same.
	He's like a hero-struck figure, isn't he, for them?
	Oh yeah.
	He would be among their greatest heroes, no doubt.
	It would be like the Greeks having Alexander usurped.
	I think that actually happened.
	That has happened.
	And Achilles.
	There was a remake of Troy with a black guy as Achilles.
	It's just silly.
	Achilles famously had blonde hair, don't we?
	This is the director, he's worked with Denzel Washington a lot and also he's been asked by Netflix, he's a black guy, having a black guy play Hannibal, I think there's a certain amount of that from the Netflix side of things.
	He's actually done quite a few good films if I scroll down.
	not produced no one cares about producers sorry John producers of movies John where's the mouse I can't get it to there we go Here we go.
	So yeah, he's done loads of quite famous, well-received films.
	The Terminal List is quite highly rated on IMDb.
	A documentary film about Muhammad Ali.
	I think he did Southpaw, which is a boxing film with Jake Gyllenhaal.
	He does have directorial chops on him, so he's not necessarily going to do a bad job.
	But also a massive chip on his shoulder to the point of rewriting history.
	I just, like, get a young black guy if that's how you've got to do it.
	Like, because I'm thinking of Harrison Ford as, like, 80-year-old Indiana Jones, you know what I mean?
	But at some point, Hannibal's going to have to be depicted on the battlefield, running and fighting.
	And Denzel Washington's 68 years old.
	Like, it's going to be, like, geriatric.
	Come on.
	I'm a fan of Denzel Washington, but he's just past the prime, man.
	So, this has been done before.
	The History Channel portrayed Hannibal as black, and the Atlanta Black Star here is whinging about it.
	Surprise, surprise.
	Really?
	Who'd have thought?
	I know.
	And Denzel Washington has also done similar things like this before.
	Denzel Washington wants viewers to look past Macbeth's race.
	I get the impression from Denzel Washington, maybe I'm being charitable, I think Bo might call me out on this, but I think he just wants to play interesting roles and I think he's somewhat limited in the fact that he's a black guy and he wants to play roles that are historically white.
	And that's why I'm actually generally a bit more forgiving in this instance.
	Like, he strikes me as a sort of actor who might at least try and respect the character he's trying to portray.
	From my understanding, there's a video here where he's talking about systematic racism and incarceration, and he basically says, it's not race, it's culture.
	He brings up an 11-year-old kid in Chicago who murdered someone, and the first thing he says is, well, where was his father?
	It all starts in the home.
	You know, you just need to Yeah, at least he's putting the onus of responsibility on the community itself, rather than mythological systems of oppression.
	Not saying it's the system, as they're trying to prop him up to say.
	And again, here he is saying, it's not colour, it's culture.
	And he also got asked about diversity at the Oscars, and I'm going to read a direct quote from CBS.
	It says, to those who think the Academy's process is unfair, he says, yeah, and so what?
	You're going to give up.
	If you're looking for an excuse, you'll find one.
	Is race the excuse?
	You can find it any way you like, says Washington.
	Can't live like that, just do the best you can do.
	I actually really respect that opinion.
	Yeah, and so what?
	Get on with it.
	I totally agree with that, you know.
	Even if it is, get on with it.
	Playing Macbeth, a Scotsman.
	Sure.
	I wonder what Denzel might have to say if a white man was cast as Mensa Musa, let's say.
	I think he'd probably pipe up, actually.
	Maybe, but I just don't get the impression that he wants to...
	Maybe it's because we've got such a plethora of young actors and actresses who are outright trying to disrespect the previous thing, like the Snow White woman, the one who played Snow White with weird, far apart eyes, who was just insane and seems to have actually destroyed Disney's version of Snow White with her Genuinely disrespectful attitude towards the property.
	But I don't think Denzel Washington is going to take that kind of attitude.
	So I'm a lot less angry that it's him, even though he doesn't fit the role.
	But I'm actually more concerned about the age thing, you know, but you are obviously correct.
	I mean, Hannibal wasn't black.
	This is going to be a like a mismatched casting, but there could be worse people.
	Yeah, fair enough.
	You know, just the old, if it was reversed, what would the reaction be?
	There's a biopic of Nelson Mandela and they cast Ryan Gosling.
	Which is a great idea.
	I think old Denzel would probably have a word or two.
	Yes.
	I would have thought.
	Maybe.
	But when it's the other way around, you can play Macbeth, it's fine.
	Don't mention it.
	I mean, we've got to see it happen, really, don't we?
	I wasn't able to find anything of him commenting saying, oh, you know, you're disrespecting a black person or such and such.
	I just couldn't find it.
	Maybe it's not reported on.
	I mean, I don't know, but we can only kind of guess, can't we?
	So, there were lots of interesting reactions to this.
	I'm going to start with a Wee Wuz Kang sort of reaction in this one, and if you can humour me reading it out because it is amusing.
	Carthage had been settled by Phoenicians as a city-state in North Africa near current Tunis.
	In his 1961 work, French historian Gabriel Odissio commented that he considered Hannibal to be neither Phoenician nor Carthaginian nor Punic, but a North African.
	Hannibal was definitely a Phoenician, which the Latin is Punic.
	He was definitely a Carthaginian.
	His family was one of the leading families in Carthage.
	Also, who were the North Africans if not those people?
	No, no, they were Libyans.
	Of course, but they were further south, weren't they?
	Well, further east.
	Isn't it like the Berber people?
	That's what they're called today.
	Someone like Zinedine Zidane.
	Categorically not sub-Saharan Africa.
	It's crystal clear and there's just no debate over it.
	So it carries on saying, the majority of the Punic populace seems to have had African, indeed, old-timey n-word ancestry.
	I'm not going to say that.
	Absolutely not true.
	No, it's not true.
	The Carthaginians were really racially exclusive, actually.
	The Romans had a very incorporative structure, which is probably why they succeeded, whereas the Carthaginians had a very exclusive structure, which is probably one of the reasons that they failed.
	They were sort of supremacists in a sense.
	They weren't inclusive.
	It was more like a mercantile empire, the Carthaginian Empire.
	It was more like something akin to Genoa or Venice in the Middle Ages.
	Yeah, it was very, very different in style and tone and tenor to the Roman Empire.
	Oh yeah, completely.
	But it was definitely an ethnic empire.
	I mean, like, Roman emperors include people from all over the empire.
	You have Philip the Arab, Maximinus Faxini.
	Yeah, exactly.
	You've got all sorts of... But there were never any Carthaginian rulers who were not ethnically Phoenician.
	Like that's the thing.
	The Carthaginian Empire was an ethnic trading empire where the Phoenicians, by birth and blood, were the rulers of what was underneath them.
	You know, you could become a mercenary leader or something like that if you were foreign, but you were never going to become like a ruler in the city.
	It just didn't happen.
	There's just no record of it happening.
	And so like to say, oh, well, these guys were black.
	No, they weren't.
	They were literally racists, actually.
	The Carthaginians were a very racist civilization.
	Way more racist than the Romans actually, who were actually quite incorporated.
	Wasn't Hanna the Navigator Carthaginian and they went down to Africa and didn't they presume that a, was it a monkey or a gorilla was a person?
	Apparently, yeah, they thought some gorillas were a type of people.
	Yeah, but that's actually quite common.
	Like they used to call them like wild men and stuff like that because they didn't have the kind of taxonomical categories.
	So they'd assume that like lots of different kinds of apes were humans.
	There's all sorts of strange things.
	People thought that walruses were mermaids and things.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Or that a man riding a horse is actually a centaur.
	There's all sorts of things in the ancient world where they just saw something and came to a weird conclusion about it.
	So you can't blame them.
	Yeah, that wasn't like them trying to be prejudiced or something.
	No.
	It's just them not knowing what they did.
	Literally knew no better.
	So to carry on, whether described as Carthaginians, Phoenicians, or Punics of North Africa, according to Odysseus' research, they were certainly a mix of Aboriginal North Africans, that's a weird term to use, that included native Bourbon Moors and other groups.
	The image...
	This image, the one there, is not a flattering image to be honest.
	Is a coin bearing the image of Hannibal and his famed battalion of elephants?
	Well, the bottom one, perhaps.
	But I don't think that that top one has much resemblance to the statues of Hannibal that were named.
	Or the coins of Hannibal.
	No.
	It seems like a very strange case to make.
	Also, there's no inscription to suggest it's Hannibal at all.
	So, it's speculation at the end of the day.
	There was a sort of population of Libyophoenicians, but it's like they're, you know, intermixing.
	But they were not part of the main sort of aristocratic families of Carthage.
	Again, they were just a really racist civilization.
	Okay, well, that's what they were like.
	But anyway.
	But even then, they weren't black.
	The Libyans weren't black.
	Of course not, and nor are they today.
	Yeah, I know, yeah.
	I mean, if they were in the past, what happened in the interim?
	So, on the more sane side, here we have Robert Sethe, who's an anthropologist with a YouTube channel, saying, that's it.
	I've been pushed to my edge.
	Cleopatra is one thing, but depicting the Phoenicians as sub-Saharan is a declaration of war.
	Next video will be calm and cool as usual.
	The content will be blatantly savage, expect an academic bloodbath, I will take no woke prisoners.
	That's the kind of fighting language I like to hear.
	That's completely correct.
	And on the more humorous side, the comedian Hannibal Buress who has a part in his stand-up routine where he talks about his name Hannibal not being from Hannibal Lecter but from the general in admiration of history and how it scares women away because they think he's a serial killer.
	And finally when a black man is playing Hannibal, he gets overlooked and he's a bit salty about it I think.
	So I wanted to end on a bit of levity also.
	I enjoy his stand-up, it's quite funny.
	But yes, obviously this is ridiculous.
	I respect Denzel Washington as an actor and I also respect the director although clearly... How much of it is Netflix as well?
	Yeah, Netflix clearly has a part to play, but I also think that if you're depicting history, depict it accurately or not at all.
	I'm not interested in this weird modern subversion of things.
	I think it's kind of pathetic.
	Ridley Scott.
	Get your own history.
	You know, there's history there.
	Just, you know, if you want to depict black history, choose something.
	Depict it accurately.
	Don't co-opt other people's history.
	It's weird.
	And that's the thing, isn't it?
	It's just really disrespectful.
	It's like, no, we're not going to tell the story of a black guy.
	If you actually care about history, you know, you want it to be done right.
	And if, you know, you get a bunch of, I find it a bit weird when you get, you know, in old timey films, you get Middle Easterners depicted as a white person with just brown face makeup.
	I'm just like, I can recognize those features.
	You're not fooling me.
	Yeah, like Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia.
	That's what I had in mind, yeah.
	Alec Guinness, browned up to play an Arab.
	I mean, to be fair, this isn't as egregious.
	The other night I watched, I saw on TV, flicking around late at night, I think it was the actual Royal Shakespeare Society, although it may not have been.
	Either way, there was a rendition of Richard III.
	Yeah.
	And Richard III was being played by a black woman.
	Who also chose to play it as just shouting all of her lines.
	It was bad acting.
	I mean she had hunchback.
	I could watch for more than a few minutes, but as far as the blackwashing of non-black history goes, it's not that egregious.
	But it's certainly too old.
	Yeah, that's the thing that really bothers me.
	And it is obviously completely deliberate.
	That's another example.
	To me, as a historian, it is a disgusting thing to do.
	We wouldn't really dream of doing it the other way around.
	You know, like Chris Pratt playing Nelson Mandela.
	It would be so weird.
	I think AI might be able to make that happen.
	Anyway, let's move on.
	So I've got five historical quotes that I think you ought to live by, and this coincides really well with the launch of our new merch shop.
	So we have a few problems with the previous one, specifically about delivery.
	So this we have, if you go to shop.lotuseaters.com, it will detect whereabouts in the world you are and take you to the appropriate shop where the delivery costs will be very reasonable.
	I ordered myself a couple of the t-shirts today, two pounds delivery to the UK.
	Fantastic.
	That's good.
	I know.
	I was actually really impressed.
	That is good.
	And so we have a new line of merch that was designed by me and put together by John and Michael that I think I was thinking about it, like, what do I actually want out of merch?
	What would I want?
	I would want things that I could say, no, I agree with that under unconditionally, under every circumstance.
	I thought, right, I'll find a bunch of really good historical quotes and put, you know, a really nice picture of the guy next to them and just be like, I'm not going to put their name on it.
	So if you know, you know, right.
	So hopefully you're going to get people like, Hey, that's the Duke of Wellington.
	Or Hey, that's Aristotle.
	What are you doing?
	You know?
	And so I, you know, and, and also they look cool.
	It's a good conversation starter then.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's a good conversation.
	And I think that the, the statements themselves not only stand on their own two feet, but you can also stand behind them.
	You know, I was, I wanted something I'd be like, no, I do agree with that under all times and all places.
	Um, so for anyone who was wondering, okay, what's the birthday surprise for the subscribers?
	Cause of course we have.
	The third birthday promo going on at the moment, which is if you sign up to the website with code BIRTHDAY in capitals, you get 33% off for three months.
	That's for new signups?
	That's for new signups, yeah.
	But for existing subscribers, we have a promo code that I, of course, can't tell you that is exclusive on the website for people who are subscribed to get 12.5% off the merch.
	So you get a discount on the merch right in time for Christmas.
	So, I thought we'd have a look.
	The discount code will be appearing on the website, won't it?
	Yes, it'll appear on the website when you log in.
	So, you will know what code to use when you order the merch.
	And so, I thought we'd begin because I'm really proud of this.
	I really like these.
	So, obviously, we've talked a lot about Aristotle.
	Now, this is just one example of the work of Aristotle that we've done.
	And, of course, Aristotle being the preeminent virtue ethicist who really If we think about it, kind of all of our philosophy kind of hinges really on what he was saying in many ways.
	And so I thought I'd take a great Aristotle quote to start with, which I think is deeply appropriate to this time and place.
	Courage is the mother of all virtues.
	Now this hammers home the basic point that if you're not brave enough to act, you can't have any virtues at all.
	And that's actually kind of the problem that we have right now, isn't it?
	You know, so many people who are just like, I mean, and we get messages like this all the time.
	I wish I could speak out in my workplace.
	I wish I could do something.
	I wish I could do this.
	It's like, well.
	You can't do anything if you don't have courage.
	It's like, yeah, but things might go badly.
	So yeah, maybe they will.
	Maybe they will.
	But if we don't all have the courage to speak out with one voice, then nothing will happen and we will continue to take losses.
	I can certainly back up from the psychological literature that risk taking seems to be a benchmark of masculinity as well.
	It's one of those things that men take considerable more risks than women, and the men who are rated as most masculine are the biggest risk takers.
	And so I think that's tied into courage in a sense.
	Completely.
	And without the courage to speak up against those things we think are wrong, those things will continue, even if we personally have to pay a price.
	I mean, everyone working here took a big risk to come and work here.
	This might have failed, and this might then have been on your resume forever.
	I remember not even buying furniture because I thought, I may as well keep my stuff in boxes just in case something goes wrong.
	Exactly.
	But thank God to people like you, this has all panned out pretty well and we're able to do this.
	And so, yeah, courage, I think is, he's correct.
	It is the mother of all the virtues.
	Without courage, you can't have virtue.
	And it is something that I think everyone here at least has demonstrated.
	And this leads me to the second one.
	I'm really glad to be able to put an Alexander the Great quote up because Alexander the Great is a man who's actually kind of terse throughout history.
	We don't have many quotes from Alexander, actually.
	In the same way as Hannibal, actually, we don't have many quotes for them.
	They're known for their great actions rather than their great speeches.
	But I like this one in particular.
	Upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.
	And this is particularly important.
	It lines up with the previous one.
	It's like, look, if we are all courageous, then we win.
	If we don't, then we don't.
	Uh, how each one of us behaves impacts the whole, and that's true.
	And we are the children of modernity, the individualistic civilization in which we think that we are only our own actions and these don't affect other people.
	And that's not true.
	That's never been true.
	Actually.
	Uh, we have to have a more.
	I don't want to say collective understanding, but your community, a communal understanding.
	Yeah.
	That's a much better way.
	Now, Alexander was saying this at the battle of Galgamela, uh, where he's facing down quarter of a million Persians with his 50,000 Macedonians.
	So for him, the stakes were quite high in the immediate, uh, for us, the stakes are quite high in the long term.
	Uh, so how you conduct yourself.
	Absolutely.
	The cavalry charge that day, I believe.
	Yeah.
	Straight at Darius, which routed them.
	The point of the spear of a cavalry charge.
	Yes.
	I mean, Pretty ballsy.
	Leading by example.
	Yeah.
	Sort of nth degree.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I'm not, I'm not pulling any punches with the quality of the people that we're taking advice from.
	Um, but this is the point we are part of something bigger than ourselves.
	We are actually all connected.
	We're not actually atomized individuals.
	And you should think that way.
	You should understand that that's you now, right now in the world.
	And so I thought I'd go on this again, leads us to the next one, which is just, um, a great one.
	Now you think, Oh, Napoleon?
	No, not Napoleon, but we've covered of course, the battle of Trafalgar and at the battle of Trafalgar, the final message of Nelson.
	Need I say more?
	Yeah.
	What legend?
	Yeah.
	Need I say more?
	You are expected to do your duty.
	Get on with it.
	The next one, Marcus Aurelius.
	How could we miss Marcus Aurelius?
	This I particularly love from his meditations, which is a really, really, really great starting point for you in your life.
	If it is not right, do not do it.
	If it is not true, do not say it.
	You can't postmodern your way out of that.
	Wait, did Jordan Peterson paraphrase that?
	Or steal that?
	Or just say that at some point?
	So I'm not that familiar with JP, but I think he's got a similar thing, hasn't he?
	He has a sort of stoic philosophical strain throughout it, so he might have done it indirectly.
	Right.
	Not deliberately, I know.
	And there's no criticism of him either.
	It may well be the case that you just hit on it, because it's just the most basic axiom of how to live your life.
	It's common sense to my mind as well.
	It is, but it's very rare that it's so forcefully put, I think.
	Sure, yeah.
	And again, someone who would have known, you know, you don't have to think hard about it.
	If it's not right, don't do it.
	If it's not true, don't say it.
	If it's true of an ordinary person and it's true of a Roman emperor, and one of the better ones as well, then it speaks of something that is transcendent of your station in life, a virtue that is universal, dare I say.
	Follow this axiom and you'll never be ashamed of your own conduct.
	And so the next one was one of my favorites.
	I've got to have a Wellington one.
	Got to have a Wellington one.
	Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.
	Now, that's not an edgy statement, I think.
	But in the modern day... Simple statement of fact, is it not?
	I would say it's a simple statement of fact.
	It's in the context of Wellington discussing whether he was an Englishman or an Irishman.
	He's like, well, I may have been born on an island, but I'm an Englishman.
	Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.
	But what that really means is we need to start calling things what they are.
	No more, you know, pretense, no more allowing the sort of hyper-reality to dictate that we call things fictional things.
	Again, if it's not true, don't say it.
	And a person born in a stable doesn't make them a horse.
	Imagine going to an immigrant rally with that one.
	Possibly apocryphal, but I'm choosing to believe it's true.
	And the last one, no one's going to enjoy this particular one, but someone called the media a bunch of dirty, dirty smear merchants.
	Don't know who that was.
	Unascribed, but definitely a world historic figure.
	It's a good line, whoever said it.
	Don't trust the media.
	They'll lie about you.
	Don't give them your time.
	Don't be interviewed by them.
	And go and buy the shirt, because I had a lot of requests to bring that back.
	So I thought, okay, fine, I will.
	I have to get my hands on one of those now that it's back.
	But yeah, so go to shop.lostseason.com and go and support us by grabbing some merch.
	It's also worth mentioning as well that John says if the discount code doesn't appear, if you're a subscriber to our website, refresh the homepage and it should show up.
	Right.
	Do you have any other comments?
	Sure.
	As just an average Lotus eater, I've followed the shenanigans since the beginning times, but I've never seen an explanation for this image.
	Here's Perseus, and what's this all about?
	Is it Minerva in shades?
	Which statue?
	Uh, yes.
	So it's a Perseus holding Medusa's head, Apollo in the background, and Minerva just having a smile for some reason.
	That was your idea, wasn't it?
	No, no, I didn't.
	I thought, well, it was someone said.
	Jack put it together.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But, um, someone said, oh, all of the statues look sad.
	And so Jack changed it to make her smiling and put some sunglasses on her.
	Is that why he did it?
	I think so.
	I can't remember who said it.
	I just overheard it.
	Yeah.
	For anyone curious, we've got Poseidon there.
	Yeah, Perseus.
	I don't know who that is laying down.
	I think that's Athena or maybe Aphrodite.
	It's a very modern thing to just be smiling as a matter of course in a picture, even if you go back to early photography in the 19th century, hardly anyone's smiling.
	Photographs from the American Civil War.
	Sorry?
	It took so long.
	Oh yeah, you had to be still, but you could still put a smile on if you wanted to.
	It's just very, very rare.
	I imagine people were probably a bit more serious back then as well.
	Yeah.
	They were just miserable all the time.
	Certainly in the ancient world.
	Sorry.
	That's it.
	I was just going to say in my household, it's very egregious not to smile in the picture.
	Yeah.
	Nowadays it's like, what's wrong with you?
	Put a smile on.
	Come on.
	Well, yeah, that wasn't just, wasn't always the case.
	The Marvel Cinematic Universe is an excellent example of the decay of the suspension of disbelief throughout a franchise's life.
	Many of the early standalone movies had their improbability domesticated heavily, such as Iron Man the Hulk or Captain America.
	It felt like it could actually be happening in our world.
	But if you start involving gods and giant alien wormholes, it gets a little silly.
	Especially when characters don't actually act like people and more like political stereotypes.
	The weird robot is throwing me a message.
	I agree with his point though.
	Yeah, the reason I don't watch any superhero films or I'm not interested in that sort of thing is because I can't get over the suspension of disbelief.
	You know, it's a sticking point for me.
	Yeah, same.
	And I find that I like things to be, you know, even if you've got a sort of out there premise, try and ground it in reality.
	Don't just make it a spectacle that people kind of drool out of their mouth and consume popcorn to.
	I'm not even necessarily against like really bizarre premises or anything like that.
	Well, I enjoy it in a film.
	Yeah, but I just don't like the execution of the Marvel films.
	That's pretty much what I'm getting at.
	Yeah.
	I just don't like them.
	Do you remember the Short Circuit films?
	Oh yeah, they were fun.
	That's what that robot reminds me of, a homemade version of Johnny Five.
	Right, shall we go to some comments?
	Sure.
	Dragonhawk says, no underpants in the store yet, I see.
	That's a good point.
	John, can we bring up the socks?
	There is a range of stuff.
	They couldn't get me to model those, unfortunately.
	Yeah, like various types of tops and cups and stuff like that.
	So there are various things you can put the things on.
	And there will be all sorts of new designs, right?
	Yeah, so these, oh yeah, I should have mentioned, these are going to be there for one month.
	So...
	After one month, they will be gone forever.
	Well, for a long time anyway, but they'll be gone after one month.
	So you have a month.
	So yeah, I think this, this hoodie is not on there anymore.
	Is it, um, the logo hoodie?
	It doesn't look like it is.
	Oh, it is there.
	Is it?
	Oh, so it is.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, yeah, here it is.
	And in the flesh.
	That's the stuff that'll probably just stay on there.
	But George says, new historical quotes merch is fantastic.
	Perhaps we can use a Roman one in regards to the media propagandists, Hollywood Delenda-esque.
	Well, I will in a month's time have a new range that I'll make.
	So if anyone's got any suggestions, leave comments for anything you'd like to see on the shirts.
	John did a really great job with the images as well.
	I love the color transitions on the guys.
	I like not having the name of the person on there as well.
	You know, so like, if you know, you know, that's all.
	Hollywood Dillander Est is quite a funny line.
	I've not heard that before.
	Yeah, quite funny actually.
	That Texas gal says the merch store is not complete without the Saigon body pillow.
	Who knows what will come back in the future.
	Don't say that.
	It was funny.
	Matt says, despite how scathing and pointed excerpts of Braverman's letter was, it still appears to be motivated primarily from containment.
	She argues banning the Palestine protesters was to stem the rising tide of racism.
	It's as if not being able to see the issue of demographic change on the streets of London makes that issue go away.
	That is fair.
	That's fair.
	She's, she's not perfect, you know, not arguing that she's the best or anything.
	It's just nice to see a few public knives, see a bit of, you know, cabinet blood splashing around.
	To be fair, normally it's Sadiq Khan that is the politician involved in Knives, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Sorry.
	Terrible.
	The Crusader says, that Cynic clip is a literal manifestation of the This Is Fine meme.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Literally, like, the party is on fire and Cynic's like, we're a strong United Cabinet.
	Thomas says, Braverman's letter could only have been better if it was delivered wrapped in a brick, removed from a Millwall Football Club shithouse wall, through number 10's upper window.
	It was pretty good.
	Liam says, I'm so confused by the Tories here.
	What are they hoping to happen?
	They kick out the only cabinet member, the silent majority and conservative base-like, and expect what exactly?
	Are they completely out of touch, and delusional rulers are a bigger plan here?
	I don't know.
	I mean, I think that the problem is that a lot of them essentially have golden parachutes ready, right?
	Like David Cameron's just going to go to wherever, you know, Jeremy Hunt's probably going to move to China or something, you know, some corporation or whatever.
	Like none of them are really going to suffer.
	It's going to be the MPs who won in the outside, like the, you know, the, the red wall MPs, Boris's MPs, the first timers who came in the sort of 300 MPs around the country were like, wait, I don't have a golden parachute.
	I'm actually a bit concerned that we're all going to get trashed and it's going to be the world's most humiliating defeat, which is going to be.
	I think it is all just, you know, nearly it's all, all containment as far as I'm concerned, even the things that even people like Lee Anderson or that letter, it's all different shades of containment as far as I'm concerned.
	In a way.
	But it's not working.
	I feel like perhaps the upper echelons of the truly globalist types, the bought and paid for globalist types, like Sunak and Cameron, they see that their time in power is coming to an end.
	They've got like a year at tops.
	11 months or something, absolute tops.
	And they will be voted out at that point, at that juncture.
	So, if we can just flood the country as hard as we can, unapologetically, in that window of time now.
	No real pretense of anything else.
	Just remove any voices, any power bases that are in our way from doing that.
	I think they're just idling out the clock really actually.
	I don't even think they're that intentional.
	I think that...
	Essentially, I think Cummings has probably got the measure.
	They're basically cowards.
	They know they'd have to fight Whitehall and they're too afraid to do it.
	They know they're constantly afraid of the media.
	Like, Sweller really got fired for causing a media stir, right?
	That's sort of my point, though.
	I don't think they're afraid to.
	I don't think they want to.
	They don't want to.
	Well, yeah, no, no.
	They don't want to.
	I think it's kind of like, oh, no, this will be a lot of hassle that I'll have to deal with.
	I'll have to go out and make a statement to the media.
	I'll have to try and put out some fires.
	And I think they're just Afraid of doing that.
	I think there's no moral courage in them at all.
	And so obviously there's no virtue in them.
	And I'm not prepared.
	I mean, maybe there are.
	I mean, it's entirely possible.
	I can see your look!
	It is entirely possible.
	But conversely, I think a lot of it is also cowardice.
	I think there's a lot of self-interest incentivising them not to do the things that their voter base actually want them to do.
	They're going to get trashed.
	Like, they're going to bring the party into total disgrace.
	But then they get a paycheck at the end of it.
	If they actually cared about being re-elected, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.
	They'd actually be paying attention to their voter base.
	It's sort of a gravy train.
	Ryan says, I believe Bo's apprehension to be well-founded.
	We would have to see him make huge moves if given the power to even begin to trust her.
	I mean, I totally agree, but like publicly shanking Rishi Sunak is a good start, right?
	Because that's just not that.
	Don't cut that out of context.
	Breaking ranks like that is really unusual.
	In the rhetorical sense.
	Yeah.
	Rhetorically shank.
	But breaking ranks like that is really unusual.
	It is, that is unusual.
	They do not do that, because they understand that they have to maintain a kind of united front, and it's all done behind the scenes, but Swellers just comes straight out and be like, no, you did all of this, you betrayed everyone, I'm gonna... And so, the zombie Philip the Duke of Edinburgh throwing racist slurs from beyond the grave says, I actually, which he would, I actually think Farage being in the jungle will actually raise Reform Party's chance of getting seats.
	I'm a Celeb is like a long form interview and allows people to digest a lot of truths going into the country.
	What was it, Conor reckons they'll parachute in like a Labour MP or something, because they reckon, he reckons that after like, you know, a week or something, people are going to be like, yeah, this Nigel Farage is making a lot of sense.
	You know, why aren't we listening to him more often?
	And then you're like, oh god, we're going to have to get like a Labour MP in to call him a racist, you know?
	Nigel's going to come back and there are going to be union flags flying everywhere.
	All the boat people, all the migrant hotels shut down.
	He's going to think, what's happening?
	No, no, the Conservatives will be on fire.
	Everything's collapsing.
	Nigel comes back with a tan, well rested.
	Popular, more popular than ever.
	And hopefully at the head of a party that's in, uh, upper double digits, so like 20%.
	That would be ideal.
	You know, reform getting up to about 20%.
	Takeover from the Tories.
	Eclipsing the Tories.
	That would be ideal.
	I mean, like, like I said, I'm totally agnostic on how we win this, right?
	If it means Nigel, you know, taking over and consuming the Tories.
	Okay.
	If it means reform, just destroying the Tories.
	Okay.
	I'm fine with that.
	I don't care.
	I just want us to have a genuinely patriotic party leading the charge.
	I would like to see, love to see, just a whole bunch of defections to reform.
	Yeah, that'd be great.
	That would be nice.
	I mean, literally like a hundred or something.
	It'd be amazing.
	But I mean, I don't know.
	Anyway.
	Lord Nerevar says Braveman is controlled opposition.
	It doesn't mean that she isn't absolutely correct in her destruction of Sunak, and it in fact is very impressive to see a sitting MP being so excoriating of the current PM.
	However, she's been in a position to take action on the issues she's raised for years now and never really seemed to do much.
	Make no mistake, Braveman is not your friend.
	So I'm not sure about that because In the framework that she's in, she's identified all of the things that are stopping her from doing anything, right?
	We need to get out of the ECHR, we need to get rid of the Human Rights Act, we need to essentially ignore the Supreme Court.
	All of these things have physically blocked her from actually getting any action.
	It's not that she hasn't tried.
	So I'm actually a little more sympathetic towards Braveman here, because, and it's not like she hasn't been constantly saying, and you know, very vocal about it, There are physical barriers stopping her, well physical barriers, like legal barriers stopping her, and so they won't do anything about them.
	And they could, they could do anything about them tomorrow.
	The thing is, the problem for me is that she waited to be pushed.
	If all those things are true, and I'm sure they are true, at some point in the last however, how long has she been Home Secretary now?
	A few years, a good few years?
	No, no, she hasn't been Home Secretary for a few years.
	It was November 2022, so yeah.
	Now wasn't that when she was re-appointed?
	I'll have to look it up.
	Anyway, even if it's only one year, at the juncture that that became clear, she should have come out and said something then or even resigned on principle then.
	Sure.
	Not wait until she was fired and then wave the flag.
	Sure.
	But the counter argument is, well, if you're not the Home Secretary, then you've got no platform or leverage to push to get the things you want.
	Yeah, I get that argument.
	But for me, that's a weak argument because even outside of office, you can say this is what it was.
	You still have a voice.
	You still be an MP, you still be an ex Home Secretary.
	It's not like you're suddenly voiceless.
	That is a statement, a powerful statement for a sitting Home Secretary under no pressure from her own leader to just resign on principle.
	That would have been a powerful statement.
	But no, she waited until she was fired.
	That's a weak source for me.
	Thomas says Bo is 100% right, but Karl is right to enjoy it.
	In an alternative timeline, Braveman and several other candidates would have resigned in disgust, likely starting at Boris' victory when Boris could have done anything they liked, and pushing necessary populist changes when it mattered, not before the Rome burns, the Boris Johnson majority burns.
	Yes.
	Ewan Baker says, I don't even want to see an American play a Shakespeare character.
	Great point.
	That's true.
	It's very weird to have American accents in historic things because it sounds so out of place in time, which it is, obviously.
	Yeah.
	They did a remake of Lion in Winter.
	No, not Lion.
	They did a remake of... I can't remember exactly what it was, but there was something where Glenn Close played a Shakespearean actor, a Shakespearean role.
	And it was like she didn't know what she was saying.
	Right, I haven't seen it.
	Yeah, you get that a fair bit sometimes.
	An American will play a Shakespearean character and it's just not, it's not right.
	It doesn't sound right.
	It's just an aesthetic choice.
	It's just tinny on the ear.
	You know, it's just, I know this is a modern accent.
	I don't buy it.
	Emweather says, surprised Denzel has agreed to such a silly casting.
	From what I've seen, he has tended to be pretty normal on race stuff.
	Yeah, same actually.
	I don't know.
	You took objection to it, but I've never seen him say anything.
	Yeah, well, I just don't.
	Yeah.
	I'm not saying he's great.
	Yeah, I don't.
	X, Y and Z says correct my understanding of the time period.
	Didn't Carthaginians see themselves as the descendants of Aeneas, i.e.
	Troy?
	No, the Romans see themselves as the descendants of Aeneas.
	I'm actually reading the Aeneid at the moment.
	It's not great, actually.
	No, no, genuinely, because I'm doing a big study on the Iliad.
	And so I'm listening to an audio book of the Aeneid just to put things in more context.
	And the Iliad is way better than the Aeneid.
	I realized the Aeneid was written by Virgil.
	So it's just one guy, whereas the Iliad is many iterations of many hands.
	But there's a notable distinction in quality.
	It's not terrible.
	It's not bad.
	It's just the Iliad is beautiful.
	It's a very different beast.
	The Odyssey in all sorts of ways follows on from the Iliad and on some level there's the argument that the Aeneid follows on from those.
	It doesn't.
	It doesn't.
	It's a whole different, even though it's still about Aeneas from the Trojan War and all that sort of thing, it's a whole different animal.
	It's written more than a thousand years afterwards.
	It was commissioned by Augustus as a political piece.
	Absolutely.
	Completely different thing.
	It's just a completely different thing.
	It's hard to believe that, I mean, maybe it was a representation of a story the Romans told themselves, but the codification of it is definitely political propaganda.
	The whole point is to make Augustus look good in all sorts of ways.
	And it's definitely evident as well.
	Because what's interesting is Aeneas isn't exactly one of the Trojan's greatest heroes either.
	He's not great actually.
	In the Iliad.
	He's okay.
	He's pretty good, but he's not Hector is he?
	No, no, no.
	Or he's not the equivalent of any of the Greek heroes either.
	He's pretty good, but he's not.
	He's not Sarpadonis.
	Anyway, Andrew says, so the sick fetish like urge of the left to make every historical and fictional hero a black person.
	It's ludicrous and unfortunately only fuels public ignorance when backed by such authorities.
	Yes, that is frustrating, to be honest.
	But like I said, I'm not that bothered about it being him being black because I'm used to it at this point.
	I think I'm just an abused housewife.
	I'm looking forward to the remake of Downfall with a recasting of the lead actor.
	Downfall?
	It's the film about Hitler and his last moments.
	Well there are a bunch of them.
	I'm looking forward to the Netflix version of Tarzan.
	Go on!
	I dare you!
	I dare you!
	If they did cast a black lead that would be one that I would watch.
	Yeah they're not going to cast a black guy as a monkey in a tree.
	It's not going to happen.
	So we've got Tarzan if nothing else.
	Roman Observer says, England expects that every man will do his duty.
	Always love this quote, even though I'm not an Englishman.
	Yeah, me too, man.
	There's something about it.
	Genuinely, like moves me.
	It makes me upset.
	Like I can't say it without getting teary.
	Just before you go into battle as well.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Dirty Belt says, can we suggest more quotes for shirts?
	Yes, you can leave suggestions in the comments and I will collect them.
	I've always been fond of Rules are for the Obedience of Fools and the Guidance of Wise Men from Douglas Bader.
	Interesting one.
	Derek says, nice job with the merch store.
	Thanks.
	I was really worried that it'd suck, but I feel like, you know, that you'd think it sucks, but I quite like it.
	I think they all look really good and I've ordered a bunch for myself and I will wear them on the podcast.
	Omar says, I think the best thing about being bored in a stable doesn't make one a horse, quote, is that in order to connect it to the trans movement, you have to internally agree with it.
	It's just so good.
	And the thing is, right, we had to create a new merch store because we were going to use Teespring, but they flagged that up as being like hate speech or something.
	It's only anti-Irish.
	It's fine.
	And so we had to move to different stores.
	But we couldn't get that, and England expects one on Teespring.
	So we had to change stores.
	That's what the delay was, basically.
	We had to set up whole new stores, because Teespring was like, no, you can't say being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse.
	It's a really spicy statement these days, even though it's totally normal.
	What could you disagree with?
	It was a common tenor phrase.
	Exactly.
	And yeah, exactly.
	From Wellington, you know.
	Sorry, Teespring.
	Yeah.
	I'm sorry if we've offended your political... Sorry, sorry.
	Who are they?
	Who are they to say what you can or can't say?
	The political titan of Teespring.
	They're the arbiters of what's right and wrong, are they?
	Teespring.
	Sorry, can we not quote some of our greatest war heroes?
	You got the quote from Nelson and Wellington?
	Sorry, we can't say that England respects every man who'll do his duty and we can't say being born in a civil doesn't make one a horse.
	From Wellington.
	Oh, sorry, you know.
	So anyway, I'm glad that we're on a different set of stores, basically.
	But yeah, remember to order from the location.
	So there's UK, America, USA, and Global, which is EU, basically, in order to make sure that you don't saddle yourself with a massive transport cost.
	But yeah, there we go.
	There we are.
	It looks like we are out of time.
	So thank you very much for watching and make sure to tune in tomorrow, same time at one o'clock GMT and watch us then.

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