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March 10, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:31:01
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1117
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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Caesars for Monday, the 10th of March, 2025. I'm joined by Stelios.
Hello, everyone.
It is, unfortunately, a Monday, but should be a good show today.
We have a lot on.
So, in fact, let's just crack on with it because it's been a stressful weekend.
Friday evening, stuff started exploding, and then it kept exploding all weekend, and it's still exploding on Monday.
It has been unbelievably bad.
Also, I'm going to talk about the massacre of Christians and Alawites in Syria, and I had to look at all these videos during the weekend, so it's horrifying.
Yeah.
So, Rupert Lowe, a Reform MP and possibly the most popular Reform MP after Nigel Farage, has been suspended from the party following a series of allegations that we are going to go through.
These allegations are very strangely worded, and things have come out that suggest that maybe The wording was designed to make people think one thing while actually saying another.
So we'll get to that shortly.
Before we do, Islander number three is on sale.
It's on sale for, I think, another two weeks.
So get it while you can, because when it's gone, it won't be coming back.
And let's begin.
So, Rupert Lowe is a known quantity.
A lot of people didn't know who Rupert Lowe was before he became an MP for reform, and I didn't.
But this is something that is down to the fact that he was involved in an area of life that if you weren't paying attention to, of course, you would have never heard of him.
He was a successful businessman.
Began in banking, became a successful businessman managing nursing homes, and then in the 1990s took over Southampton Football Club, which is my dad's football club, and became the manager for a decade.
Now, I don't follow football at all, so I had no idea about any of this.
He did for more than a decade, in fact.
And in 2019, Nigel Farage asked him to stand for the Brexit Party, and he became an MEP. In 2023, he returned to Reform UK as their business and agriculture spokesman.
Then he contested the 2024 Kingswood by-election, came in third place with more than 10%, which was the best by-election they'd ever received until Ben Habib got 13% in a by-election.
And then in the July 2024 election, he stood for the Great Yarmouth and won 35.3% of the vote, making him an MP.
He is also the MP who donates his entire salary as an MP to charity every month because of course he's independently wealthy and therefore doesn't need it.
And so recently he did an interview with the Daily Mail in which he said that Nigel Farage acts somewhat like a messiah and he had a few other criticisms in there.
there as well about the party structure and he says, quote, we need to start behaving as if we are leading and not merely protesting.
This was taken very badly by reform and Nigel Farage and they went to report him to the police.
Why?
Yeah, why, exactly.
Suddenly, the day afterwards...
A series of allegations were made against Rupert Lowe, which the timing seemed more than coincidental.
You had Isabel Oakeshott going on Talk TV and smirking about how naive Richard was.
Poor little Richard doesn't understand how politics works.
And then suddenly, bam, you've been reported to the police.
For several allegations, including workplace bullying made by two female employees, and one against Zia Yusuf as well, which came as something as a surprise, because Rupert Lowe, well, like I said, he's a known quantity.
He doesn't seem to be a very aggressive person, personally, and it seems unlikely that a 67-year-old man would be trying to bully a 38-year-old man as well.
And also, these are accusations, as you said.
It's just one thing for accusations to be made and quite another for them to be proven true, whatever they are, whether they are ridiculous or not.
Completely correct.
But also, it seems to me that we're talking about two completely different kinds of people here because you are not representing, you're not talking about a career politician.
You're talking about someone who has made a whole career in the market, let's say.
It's not where he isn't just constantly rescued by other people.
And so his mentality is going to be different.
That's how I'm interpreting the statement he made about leading rather than reacting.
Yeah, I mean, what these are are constructive criticisms, right?
What he had made were constructive criticisms that were actually useful to the party.
Say, look, we need to have an established front bench that people can...
Buy into if they want to see what would our government look like?
Will it be this person there, that person there, that person there?
These are criticisms I've made myself.
They are sensible criticisms.
Instead, reform...
Are still acting as if they're not the next government, which I don't think was up until this point true.
I mean, they were doing very, very well in the polls, and there was no reason to think that they shouldn't be planning for government, actually.
And I've been predicting this for a while.
But anyway, so this was the statement they put on the 7th, signed by Lee Anderson and Zia Yusuf.
It is with regret we feel obligated to disclose that the party received complaints from two female employees about serious bullying in the offices of the Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth.
Right.
About serious bullying in the offices of Rupert Lowe.
And then we are going to suspend Rupert Lowe, which in people's minds creates a natural connection.
There is bullying in the offices of Rupert Lowe.
We are suspending Rupert Lowe.
Ergo, a normal, reasonable person would assume that that means Rupert Lowe had been bullying someone and therefore he is suspended pending investigation.
Hmm.
Interesting.
It seems to me to be entirely a recipe for disaster because if you suspend members of your party, especially members who are actually very vocal and are among the most popular of your party, if you suspend them merely on the accusation that they've done something wrong, then you're communicating to everyone in the political sphere, if you want someone out of my party, just accuse them and I'll do so readily.
I mean, they say here, Okay, but was it by Rupert?
Because notice what they're not saying there is Rupert Lowe.
There is evidence that Rupert Lowe did these things.
So far, they have not actually pointed the finger at Rupert.
What they have said is his offices have done this.
And so that's very, very interesting, isn't it?
And what's also interesting is apparently these complaints were made in December.
So they have sat on these complaints for three months.
And it's only after Rupert Lowe suggests that Nigel Farage considers himself some sort of political messiah for reform and doesn't play well with others that suddenly this all comes out.
Well, the timing hasn't escaped anyone, of course.
And Nigel Farage put out a statement in The Telegraph saying, quote, reform has acted responsibly over Rupert Lowe.
Well, okay, why exactly did you wait three months?
Why didn't you do it on the day that you received these allegations?
Why three months?
Why not two months?
Why not a week?
Why not that day?
He says, and this again, pay attention very closely to the wording that is being used here.
So far, there's no actual allegation against Rupert Lowe.
They've just suspended him.
If the last general election has taught us anything, it's that the public does not like political parties that engage in constant infighting.
Right?
Okay, so that's nothing to do with an allegation.
Thanks to one of our MPs, Rupert Lowe, unloading a barrage of criticisms against our operations and its main actors, that sense of unity has been dented.
Right.
So this is the real issue here, is that Rupert Lowe, and this is how he begins it, that sense of unity has been dented.
Third paragraph in.
So, the main issue, the primary thing they lead with, is that Rupert Lowe criticised the party in public.
Well, Rupert Lowe says that he'd been trying to raise these criticisms in private, but was getting stonewalled.
So, who knows?
Anyway, moving on, further down, he says...
Someone quite far down here, actually.
There we go.
Zia Yusuf, the chairman, showed me two letters sent by female members of staff to our party headquarters.
Each letter contained an accusation of workplace bullying involving Mr Lowe.
Right.
Involving, but not by Mr Lowe.
Very, very, exactly, exactly.
Slippery wording.
But also accusations.
I'm not saying they're false, but they're not necessarily true either.
Sure.
Remains to be seen.
I agree.
But the wording is the thing to pay attention to.
An accusation of workplace bullying involving Mr. Lowe.
Now, Stelios, if you were bullying Harry, and I came over and said, Stelios, you have to stop that.
You could render an accusation of workplace bullying in load-seaters involving me, even though I would be the one directly in seeding, stopping you from bullying Harry.
Just to be clear, Stelis is a lovely gentleman and would never bully Harry.
Also, Harry is a giant.
So it would be difficult for you to do.
But the point is, that would be technically involving me.
The language would be correct, even though it would be misleading.
And again, no direct, not by Rupert Lowe.
Just involving Rupert Lowe.
Well, it's his office.
So you can expand this to quite as well as, you know, it's your demence.
Why aren't you dealing with this thing in your office?
So it could mean someone else did whatever they did and Rupert Lowe was present or was in the office or something.
Maybe he wasn't even present, but it's his office anyway.
So ultimately the buck has to stop with him.
So that's interesting.
And so he says, well, he finishes by saying, well, it's so important that our party and every single one of our representatives behaves responsibly at all times.
Well, there's not actually an allegation of Rupert Lowe behaving irresponsibly in this.
There's just a series of very, very cunningly worded statements to imply that Rupert Lowe has done something.
There is no direct allegation in all of this.
The question is, the point is, we need to read between the lines.
And when they are using a language like that, they use the notion of responsibility.
It's an abstract concept.
You need to flesh it out.
You need to understand how the person is using it.
And most probably, it's as you said in the very beginning, that behaving responsibly consists in never criticizing the party line.
It appears to be the reform opinion on what responsible behaviour is.
Anyway, so Rupert Lowe took to Twitter to make a very long and detailed rebuttal of this, saying, quote, These allegations are not against me personally, but the office.
Both of these employees only raised their complaints once disciplinary proceedings had started against both of them for serious offences.
They both admitted to these offences, no complaints whatsoever before.
Parliamentary HR were involved every step of the way, and full parliamentary process was followed.
One of the individuals later dropped her appeal.
They were parliamentary employees, not reform employees.
Now, again, he goes on at length saying that he has obviously complied with everything that's happening, and that he has plenty of evidence to back up what he's saying and things like this.
And I'm sure that when this all goes to court, as it's inevitably going to, I think, at this point, we'll get to see exactly what the details are.
Rupert also claims to have been completely cooperative and received this from the Parliamentary King's Council.
Now, for anyone not British, that's just a senior lawyer, basically, who has given, she has given Rupert this advice, says, quote, I advised that you should simply say the party was precipitous to state that these allegations had been made without also saying that the party had commissioned an independent investigation and the investigation had not yet gotten away to look at all the evidence and evaluate its veracity.
He also then says, so the council is saying, well, the party seems to have acted a bit too swiftly.
Without doing the things they ought to have done in order to make sure that this investigation was going to go ahead with them.
No due process.
But also, the question is, who has the burden of proof here?
Well, the people making the allegation.
Exactly.
But the thing again, okay, if this had been done on, say, Wednesday last week, okay, maybe one could understand.
But no, it was in December.
They had all the time in the world to get this done.
There's no reason that they should be...
Jumping the gun on this, because this apparently happened months ago.
Notice he says there, he's spoken to the KC at length, on the phone and through a message.
I've got to know her over the last week.
She's been very helpful.
Charming lady who's trying to do her job in a very difficult position.
And he, in another message, says that she's been shocked by this.
And so she had to publicly say, no, actually I don't.
I don't say that I'm shocked.
So what I'm thinking here is that Rupert's probably picked up the phone.
She said, oh yeah, that's terrible.
But she was appointed by reform.
And so if she seems to be sympathetic to his cause, well, she's not going to get any more appointments by reform, is she?
So she is actually employed by reform against him.
And so she comes out and says, well, look...
She said the lawyer herself, who's not been named, but whose credentials have been verified by the BBC, says, I've seen a number of statements made by Mr Lowe which are attributed to me and describe my reactions to the process conducted by the party and to the allegations made.
I find myself in the unfortunate and regrettable position of having to make this statement to correct the record.
I have not expressed either dismay or shock at this time.
Well, those were Lowe's statements about there being zero credible evidence, as far as I'm aware.
But, okay, so she didn't say she was dismayed or shocked.
And again, I get the feeling that she's kind of got to say this, because she needs to cover for herself with her bosses.
Rupert Lowe probably shouldn't have made her sound so sympathetic, frankly.
But, okay, small, small thing.
Not in any way germane to the substance of what is being talked about.
And that's an important thing to remember.
She hasn't said that Rupert Lowe is guilty or something like this, and she hasn't retracted her statement that the Reform Party acted precipitously.
They obviously did.
So, the next thing that happened was that many, many, many, many people came out and said, what, Rupert Lowe was bullying someone?
Because, like I said, Rupert Lowe is a known quantity, and people have been working for him for years.
So, this is David Maddox, who is the political editor of The Independent.
Now, The Independent is one of the most left-wing newspapers in the country.
They are insanely woke.
Insanely, Remainer.
They led a Remain campaign for years after the Brexit vote.
They have been absolutely as woke on pronouns and immigration and everything else.
The only thing they've actually been good on is grooming gangs, actually.
The Independent has actually been really firm on the grooming gang issue, but on every other issue, they've taken the most radically left-wing stance in the world.
And so when the political editor of The Independent comes out and says, well, hang on a second.
I interviewed all of the other Brexit Party MEPs, so they've been working with Rupelo for six years, and I asked the other ones if there were any signs of trouble with Lowe then, and they said no.
They described him as a team player with a teddy bear personality.
Well, how convenient that someone who hasn't had a whole career in politics ends up being a very popular MP and suddenly gets allegations on character.
Despite having a whole career of no stain to his reputation.
I mean, Rupert Lowe was the manager of Southampton FC when Matt Letizia was there.
And Matt Letizia said, from what I know about Rupert Lowe, these accusations would be incredibly out of character.
And there were loads of others that I featured in a stream I did the other day.
Whereas a woman saying, look, I've known him for 45 years.
There's no way he was bullying a couple of women in his office.
This is nonsense.
And exactly as you say, you know, oh, he comes out, criticizes Nigel Farage and Reform, and suddenly, oh yeah, actually, it's just as his star is rising that he becomes a really bad person.
Which, you know, I mean, I'm just saying, you know, at 67 years old, people aren't inclined to change that much, actually.
I think your character's probably fairly well set by that point.
But anyway, another thing is, and again, you can't help but notice this remarkable pattern here.
But it was Rupert Lowe who was basically doing the work.
Right?
Rupert Lowe is the only person in reform basically doing any work.
So you get to submit written questions to the government that the government has to answer.
So they're a useful weapon, as Wolf here points out, for backbenchers to actually get the government to admit things otherwise wouldn't want to admit.
And Rupert Lowe submitted 965 of these.
He's only been an MP for six months.
So that's an incredibly high rate of work that Rupert Lowe's been doing.
Tice has done 120, and Farage himself has done 20. So I'm starting to see what's going on here.
I think Rupert Lowe has been excellent in communicating and also criticizing the government.
He's been superb.
He has been superb and every statement of his is incredibly polished and professional.
Yes.
He was the one who managed to smooth over the Tommy Robinson issue, for example, because Nigel kept dropping the ball on it.
And Rupert Lowe came out and said, no, we appreciate what he's done, but we need to move on and actually get this fixed.
But this, the whole ordeal that happened during the weekend, I think is a refutation of a theory that several reform fans have, according to which they said that Nigel needs to take a step back.
He is being criticized as not being like Trump.
The system is different here, and his MPs need to win in their constituencies, and he has to sort of go back and allow them room to breathe.
But it looks like Rupert Lowe made the most out of it, and he is exactly punished for it.
So this theory is being refuted.
Yes.
So, I mean, not only was Rupert Lowe doing the work in the parliament, he was also doing the work in the party.
Rupert Lowe was apparently hosting a dinner for reform donors hours before he was reported to police by Zia Yusuf.
So Rupert Lowe is there fundraising for the party.
He's there in Parliament all the time.
And often you'll only see Rupert Lowe on his own in the Parliament, standing there, you know, making a statement.
And even then, that's still not good enough.
Which is very interesting.
He was there with Nick Candy.
And so the BBC went down to Great Yarmouth and said, okay, well, what do people in Great Yarmouth think of Rupert Lowe?
And, my God, this is bad news for Farage, I would say.
I mean, you can see.
Angela Grout said she was gobsmacked by the developments, saying that she had had an issue with the local council.
Rupert Lowe had intervened and the problem was resolved the following day.
He's a great guy, she said.
He's been doing a lot for Great Yarmouth.
Lowe was described as the best MP Great Yarmouth ever had by Chris Breon from Hemsby, a village in the constituency, which is suffering from severe coastal erosion.
He's done more for us with the flood defences, giving money to good causes.
No disrespect, but the last MP was about as useful as an ashtray.
Norman said, Again, like, if you want to pick a fight with someone, try not picking a fight with the one guy in Parliament who's good.
The one good guy in Parliament.
Like, he says he's a rich man, so he's not doing it for the money, is he?
He's doing it to help this area.
Yeah, what else could you take from this?
You could say that this is precisely why they're waging war against him.
Well, yes, actually, you could say that.
So, yeah, you know, Rupert Lowe basically is saving puppies all over Great Yarmouth, and the people of Great Yarmouth, the BBC, again, the BBC of every reason.
To come out against Rupert Lowe.
Rupert Lowe is, as far as they're concerned, a hard right when it comes to immigration and things like this.
The Independent, every reason to hate Rupert Lowe because he's far right, as far as they're concerned.
And yet, what do they get when they go around asking people on the streets?
Cherise Pollard says, this is the first thing I've heard about them that's negative.
The first bad thing anyone's ever said.
And the worst thing they have in this article about Rupert Lowe from one of the residents is David and his wife who says, well, we're not huge fans because he's not from around here.
No, he's not.
He's not from around there.
And that's it.
He's not from around here, which is the worst thing.
That they can say.
And so lots of people found this sus on GB News and Talk TV. Lots of people were like, hang on a second.
It's obvious they'd had enough of Lowe and just wanted to get rid of him.
This appears to be premeditated and there was another one.
But I've obviously got the wrong link twice.
So anyway, this was all fascinating.
Seemed like an obvious, premeditated way that they'd kept in their back pocket.
So when Rupert Lowe finally becomes too big for his boots and dares criticise Nigel Farage one too many times, and remember, Elon Musk was like, Nigel Farage isn't the guy.
He doesn't have all its takes.
Rupert Lowe's good.
Reform needs a new leader.
Well, you can tell, I think, at that point, Rupert Lowe's a marked man, and so they kept this in their back pocket.
It's an allegation.
Well, let's go to the allegation, actually, because Andrew Bridgen...
One of the allegations was made by one of his former parliamentary aides, and he says she went on to work for Rupert Lowe.
She is one of the staff involved in these allegations against him.
She has told me that her original complaint had nothing to do with Rupert personally, and was related to the actions of another member of his staff.
Right.
So, this means that...
And the other one dropped the allegation, right?
And it wasn't against Rupert anyway.
It was against someone else.
And so Rupert tweets out, the main staff member involved has confirmed her allegations are not about me.
The second staff member's allegations were also not about me.
So there are, as far as I'm aware, apart from the allegation from Zia Yusuf of Rupert bullying him, there are no...
And again, that doesn't seem to be the thing people are focusing on.
Zia Yusuf hasn't made a statement about it or anything like this.
It's been about, and Nigel Farage didn't make a statement about Zia Yusuf.
And so, what are the allegations?
Well, there seems to me to be a sort of very disruptive behavior.
It seems vile.
It seems intentionally disruptive.
Let's make accusations, let's project misogyny that women are...
Not particularly against it, it looks like it.
They're trying to create a kind of woke allegation.
They try to create a stain.
And they know that in the general public, this is going to stick.
Theoretically.
In previous eras, it might have stuck.
But Rupert Lowe's a good man, and he's obviously been doing the right thing, and people really like him for it.
You know, his own constituency, like, best MP we've ever had.
Like, he's actually solving my problems.
And so, obviously, we need to splatter him with this muck.
But, again...
The allegations are not actually about him, so why are we even having this conversation if not the fact that Rupert Lowe is starting to make Nigel Farage feel inferior?
Well, people who are independent financially are less easy to control.
You know what?
Put a pin in that, because we'll come back to that in a minute, right?
Because that is basically the issue here.
And so, Lee Anderson replied to this just before the podcast, said, the independent...
Casey, the King's Counsel, investigating the allegations already publicly rebuked Mr. Lowe for making false claims.
Right, okay, yeah.
She publicly rebuked him for saying that she was sympathetic to his plight.
Not that he was innocent or guilty.
Not that the allegations were even against him, Lee.
What a slimy way of approaching it.
This is the sort of thing I'd expect from the BBC, Lee.
The way that they would try and...
Paste over the actual detail of the fact in order to make it seem like that person was a bad person.
This is precisely the kind of thing they've done to you, so it's very disappointing to see you doing it to Rupert Lowe.
But then he says, as the Casey statement makes clear, the written complaints include allegations about the conduct of Mr. Lowe.
Where?
Where are they?
Because in the written statement that you've made, it was the...
Office of Rupert Lowe and both of the complainants have apparently come out and said, no, it's not about Lowe himself.
So why are you saying this?
This is in direct contradiction and I'd like to see some evidence.
What are the allegations?
Show me the actual written allegations.
I mean, in fact, I replied to this and he got 379 likes, oh, 2,300.
Where are?
Where are the allegations?
Show us the written allegations that you've sent to the police, word for word, that name Rupert Lowe and what he's done so he can at least defend himself.
Why does this constitute no respecting?
Why can't he defend himself?
Well, that's another great question, isn't it?
You're doing everything you can to publicly blacken his reputation.
Why should he not come out and use his public platform to defend himself?
In fact, it seems crazy that he wouldn't, especially as it seems.
I mean, I'm not really inclined to believe he was being a bully.
I'm going to take the people who knew him for literally decades.
I think an important issue of communication is quantity.
So as you said in the very beginning, the way they framed the accusations, they wanted to link the image of Rupert Lowe as a bully to the accusations.
And they wanted this to be the main message that was going to be heard.
Rupert Lowe is defending himself and other people are defending Rupert Lowe.
The more the quantity shifts and he comes off as someone who is basically defending himself.
Other people are saying, well, if we trust what Andrew Bridgen wrote, the allegations aren't exactly what they seemed.
They aren't about him.
Well, even in Reform's own statement, the allegations were against the office of Rupert Lowe.
You would just say against Rupert Lowe, if the allegations were him personally, if he personally had been bullying two women who were working for him, the allegations would be, well, why wouldn't it be?
Why wouldn't the allegation be directly against him?
It's crazy that Reformer being so slimy about this.
And this is genuinely, I'm genuinely disgusted by what not only Zee, Yusuf and Lee Anderson have done, but the fact that Nigel Farage has come out and, again, slimed him as well.
This is disgraceful.
It's absolutely disgraceful, and I just don't see how Rupert Lowe warrants this, for his mild, constructive criticism that you could otherwise have just taken on board and benefited from.
To do what Rupert Lowe had suggested in the beginning, in the Daily Mail interview, would have been good form and made you a stronger and more robust party.
Instead, you've leant into this bizarre fragility.
And the politics of smearing people, just like the mainstream media, is just really gross.
And it's not lost on the Conservatives.
Like, this is the shadow Home Secretary, Chris Phillip, coming out and saying, look, he got stabbed in the back by his own party.
He's welcome to join the Conservatives.
Why wouldn't he?
Why wouldn't he?
In a year's time, Rupert Lowe might be leading the Conservatives.
Like, what a fumble this will be.
If that happens, who knows?
I don't want to see the Conservatives resurrected out of obscurity, but who knows?
It could well be that that happens because of this bizarre fear of taking even the most mild criticism.
But we'll get on to why that might be in a minute.
Any last thoughts before we go to the comments?
No, I mean, it should absolutely not be the case because if you want to have a big party, it can't be just structured around one person and everything that one person says.
Oh, really?
That sounds like you're against messianic politics, Delios.
Yeah, but, I mean, a lot of the times people don't get the obvious and the mistakes we were pointing out are obvious.
I think that, yes, I mean, if reform is to become a larger party, it's going to accommodate more voices.
Yeah.
You just think you'd have to.
I'll do a video at some point explaining the kind of difference, paradigms, and foolish paradigms that we've adopted.
But Dan Tubbs has sent in a super chat, hello Dan, saying, quote, absolutely champing at the bit to get into this reform implosion tomorrow.
So I guess Dan's covering this some more tomorrow.
But the thing is, there's...
I'm just covering stuff that happened over the weekend.
Loads of stuff has happened this morning, and I've just got to the end of it.
By tomorrow, there's going to be a whole slate of other things that have happened.
There was no need for this unforced error, and you can tell that this is kind of bitchy, mean-girl politics that is being weaponized against someone who seems to be, from literally all the evidence...
A really decent chap who's done the right thing.
Like, Rupert Lowe giving his salary away, like, actually writing the letters to the parliamentarians, actually fixing things for people in his constituency.
Like, I wish our MPs were that good.
I just genuinely wish.
Neo Amrila says, Once again, Farage acts as a gatekeeper of any rising right-wing figure who develops a profile or popularity independent of unrivaling his.
I suspect Elon saw this when he said Farage isn't manual.
We'll talk about that in the next segment, actually.
Dogbreath says, Rupert is in favour of re-migration.
The party chairman is a Mohammedan.
You do the sums.
I don't want to say that Zia Yusuf has a particular opinion just because he is of a Muslim heritage.
Because there are Muslims who are against mass immigration and swamping Britain with foreigners.
I don't know much about Zia Yusuf's actual political opinions other than the sort of basic Sivnat talking points that he espouses, which themselves do not warrant flooding a country with foreign...
So, I don't want to go directly against Sir Yusuf's personal beliefs and morality here, but there are other things I think that are an issue here.
Sigilstone says, I can't see the difference between Nigel and Grima Wormtongue, with King Theoden being played by the right-wing British public.
That's good.
Yeah.
We cannot deport the Ismus, my lord.
Their diversity is our strength.
Well, that's an interesting thing, isn't it?
Bald Eagle says, Farage is pulling a Merkle.
Both destroyed all upcoming leaders to their party to maintain power and control.
One crippled her party, the other is going to kill his party.
Binary says, I've run dozens of major HR investigations and conduct in my working life.
Reform's behaviour is almost a textbook example of what not to do.
Prejudicial and premature conclusions at every stage.
Yeah, but Binary, that's because Rupert Lowe I don't think has done anything wrong.
I'd be very surprised to hear that Rupert Lowe was manhandling or beating up some Labour MP on the other side of things.
Again, like, Rupert Lowe's, you know, I'm sure of him to find health, but he's a retiree.
You know, like, I'm not taking those allegations that seriously.
But this is not about actually finding truth, right?
This is about destroying Rupert Lowe's reputation.
Glees says, Rupert Lowe, you've committed crimes against Nigel and his ego.
What do you say in your defence?
And that's basically what it comes down to.
Anyway, so let's move on.
So, what exactly is Nigel Farage's problem?
Because it seems that there is one consistent factor amongst all of the problems that UKIP have had, the Brexit party have had, now Reformer having, that all seem to have one common denominator, and that appears to be Nigel Farage himself.
And it is not a secret that Nigel Farage has killed off more right-wing careers than the left has.
It's not a secret by any stretch of the imagination.
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So, Rupert Lowe has apparently been banished.
He has been banished from the party for life after he crossed Nigel Farage by questioning his leadership.
The Daily Mail has learned from, quote, And that's true.
That is a true statement.
When Elon Musk endorsed Rupert Lowe and, of course, condemned Nigel Farage, Elon Musk also retweeted various other things.
Well, this was, I think, when the target was put on Lowe's head.
And so the disgusting work of what I can only call mean girl politics is being done by Farage and his team.
It's the politics of character assassination.
And this is disgusting and I loathe it in every form I see it.
If someone has a problem with someone else, don't go poisoning the well, address them directly.
Be direct.
Be a man is how I would respond.
So anyway, Rupert Lowe tweeted: "I've been informed by a reliable source that senior reform figures have been briefing journalists that I have dementia.
In politics there's rough and tumble, I get that, but this is sick, what they're doing to me is disgusting." Yes, that is exactly true.
They are...
Deliberately now trying to create a narrative of smears.
And again, if you listen to Rupert Lowe in interviews, it's very clear that this is obvious BS, right?
I mean, he has more clarity than all the others combined.
And that's one of the problems.
He actually can formulate arguments, good questions, the philosophy of the issues.
Because Rupert Lowe...
Has a history of being a businessman where you have to be a clear communicator if you want people to understand what you want and to give you their money.
So Rupert does a great job giving his speeches in Parliament or wherever else, at reform conferences, and you can tell that someone feels upstaged.
Exactly.
He's very specific and detailed.
He has an eye for details.
He's not just throwing platitudes.
That's correct.
And so they just come out with just various, again, in the Telegraph, so...
The right-wing papers in Britain.
Quote, sources close to Mr. Farage claim that Mr. Lowe has drifted politically from the leader.
Oh, right, that's interesting.
Quote, being captured by the online radical right, with myriad ex-posts about mass deportations and other preoccupations.
Is that really the online radical right, or is that actually the most populous position on the concept of immigration in the country?
Right?
So, I mean, this is a YouGov survey, only from last year.
Would you support or oppose a move to increase the number of deportations of illegal immigrants in the UK? Two-thirds of people are like, yeah, I support or strongly support.
And only 20% of people say, I oppose or tend to oppose.
Like, that's not fringe online radical right-wing politics.
That's normal mainstream politics, you weirdos.
Like, fringe radical politics online, like Kanye West stuff, you know, like that kind of nonsense.
This is totally mainstream British.
I mean, is it even conservative?
I imagine, like, let's actually, can we go to the politics on this?
Yeah.
So, Labour supporters.
That's 60% nearly, and 58% of Labour supporters support, or strongly support, like, deporting illegals.
Like, even Liberal Democrats are more than half agree.
Even more than half of Liberal Democrats agree.
Like, that we need to get rid of them.
So, like, oh, this is an online radical right.
No, this is just normal politics.
It is normal politics to deport illegal immigrants.
Looks like the overwhelming majority of the reform base.
Well, yeah.
But it's not weird to want this.
I mean, it's...
I love the idea that 1% of reform tend to oppose.
Why are you supporting reform?
Like, what was...
Oh, no, sorry.
4% strongly oppose as well.
But anyway, sorry, go on.
No, it's just funny.
Yeah, they strongly oppose, yeah.
And so you may have seen this meme going around, right?
Now...
You might say, hang on a second, I don't recognise those people.
Well, those people are all the people whose careers have been killed by Nigel Farage, basically.
The most recent one at the bottom there you can see is Ben Habib, but there are loads of others.
Frankly, there are loads of them I don't even know.
This is Godfrey Bloom, top right.
Friend of the show and occasional guest, Godfrey Bloom.
Douglas Carswell, again, another friend of the show.
Kilroy Silk and various others.
Again, people I don't even know because Nigel Farage has been doing this for 30 years.
What he wants is for Rupert Lowe to join that pantheon of people whose careers have been killed by him.
And I'm not sure that that's great, right?
I mean, we can just go through it.
So, you remember Gwaine Towler?
Gwaine Towler was the head of press communications for...
Well, UKIP and then Brex Party and then Reform.
He's been a Farage loyalist for decades now, known as the last great amateur in politics.
And he came out defending Reform, saying, well, if we push complaints under the carpet, there will be hell to pay after the allegations of bullying in Rupert Lowe's offices.
Again, not by Rupert Lowe.
Everyone's keeping that very specific.
We're not saying that Rupert Lowe has bullied.
They're just allegations in the offices.
Often the problem isn't the offence, but the cover-up.
Well, you've been covering up three months, Gwaine.
Why did we have to wait three months?
Why is this so politically convenient?
And why are you naming Rupert Lowe when he doesn't appear to be the guy at the end of the actual allegations?
But why are you doing it in the face of you getting canned by Zia Yusuf?
Because a couple of months ago, back in October, in fact it was, Gwaine just got sliced out.
Oh no, we're professionalizing the party.
That means Gwaine Tala has to go?
Like, he's got more experience than Zia Yusuf.
I mean, he's probably got more experience than Zia Yusuf is old, right?
Like, Gwaine Tala has been doing this for such a long time.
He knows exactly what he's doing.
And yet, he's still supinely supporting them because, I guess, don't change the habit of a lifetime.
But Ben Habib.
Got shoved out of reform because he criticized publicly the structure of the party.
When's the party going to democratize?
When's this happening?
And even now they're claiming they're democratizing, but I find it unlikely because there's a weird sort of loophole that they've included.
I don't want to get into that now.
But what happens after Ben Habib comes out with, again, reasonable criticism?
Well, Najaf Raj acts like a child about it.
It's like, yeah, this is a champagne moment.
Hip hip hooray, the sun has got his hat on.
It's like, why are you acting like this?
Like, why are you acting like Ben Habib has personally stolen your girlfriend or something?
You know, like, all he did is say, look, we should probably democratize the party.
And so Farah's causing bitter and twisted?
I know Ben Habib.
We had him on the show after you kicked him out.
He's not bitter and twisted.
Like, I'm friends with Ben and B, but I see him a lot.
Like, you know, bump into conferences.
Hang out with him when he comes over.
Like, he's not bitter and twisted.
He's just like, oh, why have I just been screwed?
Why are you dragging my name through the mud?
Because I made a reasonable criticism of your party.
That's the question.
And then you've got Catherine Blakelock.
This is in 2019. The story is put out that I was fired by the Brexit party.
She's like, no, I couldn't be fired.
I controlled everything from the shares to the bank accounts.
I was put under enormous pressure to give my shares, and I did, and for no money.
And then I was effectively barred from standing as an MEP or even a parliamentary candidate by the party I'd founded.
And she says, I was not treated very well.
As in, Farage got her to hand everything over, and then just kicked her out.
Mercilessly.
I mean, again, Catherine Blakelock, someone I know.
I don't think she's lying.
I don't know why they would do this.
Like, what's the benefit to treating people this way?
Back when I was in UKIP, Gerard Batten despised Nigel Farage.
And I couldn't understand it because, of course, I was always coming from the outside of things.
And he was like, no, Nigel Farage has basically abused us.
You know, he was basically abusive to us, calling him the help.
Gerard Batten was the leader of the party, and Nigel Farage would refer to him as the help.
It's like, wow, that is insanely disrespectful.
And Gerard Batten's a lovely, lovely man.
Lovely man.
Anyway, so, a month ago, or in January, sorry, ten councillors from the Derbyshire branch of reform all decided to resign, all at once.
And, again, this story didn't get that much coverage.
There are articles, but it didn't blow up.
But it's crazy the way that they said that they were like, no, we're not doing this, after Elon Musk said he's not up to the job.
The council has alleged that the party was being run in, quote, an autocratic manner and accused Farage of disloyalty to long-term members.
Yeah, there's a long history of this.
He will throw you under the bus, apparently, and...
The autocratic governance, well, yeah, that seems to be the case.
All are from Derbyshire, including Alex Stevenson, who came second in Amber Valley with 28% of the vote.
So it's not like these people are bad candidates.
You know, if you come 20, like this was like the first proper election reform fought and you got 28% of the vote, you'd be looking at that guy and say, right, okay, next time, with a bit of hard campaigning, bam, you're getting more than enough to secure the seat.
So why would you not treat this guy well?
Why would you treat him as if he's disposable?
In a statement seen by The Guardian, let me carry on.
They said they could not in good conscience carry on under the leadership of Raj, adding, quote, we believe that the current party management is either incompetent or malevolent, and we have lost all confidence in the leadership and its structures.
And I'm just saying there's enough circumstantial evidence to make me believe that the leadership is malevolent and not incompetent.
I think character plays a huge role here.
And the behavior of people across the years reveals a lot about who they are and what their intentions are.
My entirely outside perspective here is that Faraj is someone who is much more interested in appearance and not at all interested in governing.
Yes.
And when it comes to...
To politics and how he handles his party and all the people you've said.
It looks like there is a long history of feeling threatened by some people.
100%.
So what do these people have in common?
Well, these people have in common the fact that they worked hard and started making a name for themselves.
And Nigel Farage found that threatening, and so he threw them under the bus.
I mean, there are more.
We're not finished yet, obviously.
You've got...
What's his name?
Howard Cox, who was the Reform Party's candidate for the London mayorality.
He didn't do well.
He only got 4% of the vote.
But he decided that he had to leave the party.
He quit the party because he was told that if he was critical of the party, because he'd been mildly critical...
And he was sat down by Zia Yusuf, apparently, and others, Nigel Farage not being there at this time, and told, look, you either don't say anything about the party and about Tommy Robinson or we're just going to kick you out.
And so he said that he had to leave.
Howard Cox spoke about quitting the party, claiming that Nigel Farage runs it like a dictatorship and does not allow people to think.
These are people who have been in the party.
Who have been directly exposed to Nigel Farage and his governance style.
So if this was like some random lefty or something, I'd be like, well, you just hate him.
You know, you're obviously...
Yeah, exactly.
I'm not going to take anything a random lefty is going to say at face value.
But when it's literally people who have worked for him for decades, and they're all just like, yeah, no, he did this, he did this, he did this, he did this, he screwed me over here.
He...
They run it like a dictatorship.
I'm not allowed to say anything.
Yeah, I'm going to take this seriously.
I think these people are being honest.
I don't see any reason to think that it's not him.
And if the only three words someone has in mind is me, myself, and I, most probably they're not going to govern the country well.
They're the least qualified people to rule.
Yeah, that's another thing as well.
If he runs his own parties this way and constantly just generates dozens and dozens of people who loathe him, With a passion.
Well, I don't really want him being the guy in charge of the entire country.
Anyway, Howard Cox says, well, look, I blame a lot of this on Zia Yusuf.
Ever since he brought his way into the chairmanship, there's been infighting.
Yeah, but the thing is, Nigel chose him for a reason.
This kind of behavior, this pattern of behavior, predates Zia Yusuf by decades.
By absolute decades.
Nigel Farage has always been like this.
And, like, we see this kind of arbitrariness constantly.
So today, the Reform UK Stafford branch posted this on their Facebook page.
It's with great regret, I have to tell you, that the Stafford Reform branch has been closed down by the regional manager for no apparent reason.
Acting chairman and officers have all been removed and threatened with disciplinary action for trying to run the branch.
Letters to Zia Youssef have gone unanswered.
Four weeks of requesting assistance have been ignored.
And this is another thing that people, and again, there are just so many people I'm not even bringing up.
Like, just loads and loads of people, like Douglas Carswell and things like that.
People who...
Just got frozen out of the process.
They just get, no, you get sidelined.
You don't receive anything.
And that's what they're trying to do to Rupert Lowe at the moment, right?
So these letters went ignored.
We've been told that a new chairman will be appointed from outside the branch, and until this happens, we have no access to the membership.
We've been trying to support candidates for the county council elections, but this is no longer possible.
The growing evidence from around the country is that loyal active members of Reform are being removed for no apparent reason and replaced by appointees from Reform Central.
I have no idea what's happening.
Nigel seems to have lost...
See, this is another thing.
It's not that Nigel's lost control.
This is what he wanted.
He appointed Zia Yusuf for a reason.
He is allowing this to happen for a reason.
And so, anyway, they're going to close their page down because, of course, what else can they do?
And so, what we see here is a pattern of reputation, destruction, and centralization of control.
We have seen this, from his days in UKIP, from...
The Brexit party, and now here.
And so this is a little, it's a three-minute clip, but I really want to play the whole thing, because I think it's absolutely eye-opening, by a man called Stephen Wolfe.
Now, Stephen Wolfe was a UKIP MEP. You may have seen pictures of him knocked out because he was arguing with Mike Hookham over, well, this whole process, actually, the things that Nigel does to other people.
And Mike Hookham punched him in the jaw and knocked him out and gave him a seizure.
But Stephen Wolfe was a really good chap.
From all accounts, like, so I joined UKIP after Stephen Wolf left, but lots of people knew him, and they also know he's a really good chap, and he was a rising star, because he's a clear communicator, seemed like a decent chap, and suddenly forced out of the party.
And so he's going to explain exactly what happened to him, because again, tell me if this sounds like it's sounding familiar.
When you see all this, does it all seem eerily familiar?
Absolutely.
I saw this build-up of the way that Nigel and Nigel's team, whether it's using the chairman or using certain selected individuals who led different parts of the party, to attack individuals that seem to rise through their talent or their skill to be able to be on a par with Nigel or seen as a threat.
In my case, I came in in 2014. By 2016, people wanted me to take over as the new leader of UKIP. And only then were the political dogs of war unleashed on me with false accusations I'd committed offences, false accusations that I was with various people despite being married.
All of these were fed to the press to undermine me.
And that led, unfortunately, to the massive row that occurred in the European Parliament that led to the injuries.
That led me to leave the party.
But I wasn't the first.
You see what he's using against Rupert Lowe at the moment, saying that we've had allegations of him committing various...
I don't want to use the phrases, against individuals.
Well, certainly there are bullying allegations.
There are allegations that Rupert Lowe threatened physical violence.
It should be made clear that Rupert Lowe denies all those allegations.
In fact, this morning, he has written for The Telegraph as well.
No, absolutely.
Let's look at the way that this particular methodology that's used by Nigel Farage's team to undermine and get rid of them.
In Kilroy Silk, if you go back to the days of 2004, Kilroy Silk, very famous Labour MP who was challenging Nigel for the leadership.
At that time, they said that he was a threat to the party.
Kilroy Silk had said that the party was unskilled, wasn't democratic enough, didn't have...
We have the organisation.
Words that seemingly are the same that Rupert Lowe said.
What happened then is Kilroy Silk was undermined and suddenly the chairman came out and said that we need to get rid of Kilroy Silk because he was no longer a member of the party that could be trusted.
We couldn't work with him.
Kilroy Silk.
David Campbell-Bannerman, also an MEP at the time, wanted to become leader of UKIP at the time.
Same sort of allegations.
David Hanneman defected to the Conservative Party.
Douglas Carswell, big name that came in along from the Conservative Party.
He did not give the money that Nigel Farage wanted out of the benefits of being an MEP. He defected from the Conservative Party, yeah.
And along that, he had some very, very good and talented people like Patrick O'Flynn.
Susan Evans, an immensely articulate woman, all rising the stars coming up suddenly.
They, too, were undermining Nigel, not part of the party.
And the same stick was used by political people.
In that time, it was the leader of people who were in charge of the party, the chairman, Stephen Crowther, that led sorts of investigations into Carswell, investigations that these people...
Now you're seeing it with Ben Habib, now Rupert Lowe.
And I faced it myself.
So this is a standard methodology.
Someone rises, someone looks as though they're as good as Nigel, better than Nigel in some ways, the membership love him, then they're no longer a part of the party.
They're a threat.
They create division.
We can't have division in our party, otherwise we'll lose the next election.
So he goes on to then say, sorry I let that play on so long, but I think that's really important to hear.
Because, again, it's just the same playbook that they're using.
And it explains Isabelle Oakshot's, which is Richard Tice's girlfriend, her dagger-like smile, where she's like, oh, poor, sweet Rupert, he's so naive, he's so silly.
He's like, yeah, because they knew exactly what they were going to do to him.
They knew exactly what they were going to do to him.
And Stephen Wolf goes on to point out that they use, essentially, coercion.
But Farage and others around him would use the power of selection.
Say, look, you're not going to get a job as an MEP, so you're not going to get paid, you're not going to make money, if you don't do as we say, which keeps a lot of people in line.
Well, if you're Rupert Lowe and you're independently wealthy, they can't use that threat on you.
It's really not your problem.
And so, just to top this off, there's one former UKIP candidate for Westminster, put it, Paul Weston.
Farage has revealed himself.
Again, people who know Farage, right?
I'm not using people who don't know Farage.
I'm using people who have worked with him for his entire career and have been in all of the parties with him.
And so, like I said, this is a former candidate for Westminster back in 2010. Right?
But this is a statement that Paul made today, saying, quote, Farage has revealed himself as a pathologically unpleasant man.
This would be hard to ignore even if he promised a manifesto commitment to saving Britain from a theocratic third world future, but he doesn't promise that.
And now we know he is a psychopath to boot.
Reform is dead in the water.
our search for salvation continues.
Nia Mrealis says, you can run the party in an autocratic manner if you must, but it usually only works if your power is directed at your external political enemies, not primarily internally.
Yeah, if you're so insecure about your own perspective and your position in things, which I don't really see why he fears, Because I think at this point, Nigel Farage could have easily relaxed and said, well, obviously, I'm Nigel Farage, I'm in charge.
And I think everyone would have agreed to that.
But he's too paranoid, it seems.
So anyway, that's that.
So let's move on to something more jolly.
No, God, no, we're talking about...
Sorry, I forgot what your segment was.
We're not talking about anything jolly.
We're talking about things that are actually way worse.
So if you thought Monday was going well, well, no, it's going worse.
Sorry, please go.
Right, so we have Islander 3 still on sale.
Definitely check it out.
Only £14.99 and I've heard really good things about it.
Oh, nothing but glowing praise.
Excellent.
Right, so now we're going to talk about a very sad topic, and we have lots of footage of the massacres happening in Syria at the moment, and I decided not to show them.
Well, yeah, it's probably for the best.
It's probably for the best, but it's unbelievably harrowing, and we are going to talk about what happened that we know of, because obviously there is the issue of sources, and the...
I would say appalling statement made by the EU and some other approaches by the US which I consider to be correct.
Right, so what happened?
We have reports of more than 1,300 people dead, and most of them are civilians.
We have also some other reports by a Greek member of the European Parliament who went there, Faradouris, who spoke of at least 7,000 people dead.
Out of these 7,000 people dead, a very small number are members of the government now or affiliated with them.
Most of them are Alawites and Christians and civilians.
So this is ethnic cleansing?
Yes, and religious.
So what happened was that there are reports.
I don't know how trustworthy they are, but I'm going to tell you what is being said.
Last Thursday, there were several Alawites who tried to ambush government security forces in Jabla near Latakia, which is on the western part of Syria, northwestern, close to the Mediterranean.
It's a coastal region.
And they failed.
The government asked for reinforcements and a lot of people...
In those reinforcements were most probably militias who started doing revenge killings.
And they've killed a lot of people, but you can definitely see footage of lots of families wiped out and young children killed.
I saw loads of videos on Twitter and I was just like, oh God.
Yes.
So, and I don't know how people think about this, but Syria's interim leader announced that there will be a committee investigating both the clashes, but also the massacres.
Right, so let's see here how the Guardian is presenting it, because it's an interesting frame.
So, let us just see here.
We are talking about the Northwest...
Part of Syria, here is Latakia, here is Jabla, and here is the Tartus province.
And they are saying to crush the rebellion, the Syrian government called for reinforcements with thousands of fighters converging on Syria's coast from all over the...
Though fighters are nominally under the auspices of the new Syrian government, militias still persist, some of which have been implicated in past human rights abuses and are relatively undisciplined.
Just a quick thing, as I understand it, Assad was essentially fighting the civil war to a standstill for years against radical jihadi forces that had various interesting backers, but these were incredibly porous groups where...
Again, they're all jihadis, really, that would move from group to group.
And so it was very difficult to track because the lines of demarcation between them are not particularly clear.
And so Assad has gone and any secular Syrian troops, you could say, have disbanded.
And so who's left?
Is it just the jihadis?
Well, it's one of the most complex conflicts.
Yeah, I don't know.
And we have more than 10 years now.
I think it's on the 11th year.
It's one of the most complex conflicts.
People from all sorts.
And here I have a religious map.
So Assad, whose regime was toppled on December 8, was an Alawite.
And the Alawites are concentrated here, or there is a really strong concentration of Alawites here.
And Assad's family was also an Alawite.
And also we have Greek Orthodox and Syrian Orthodox.
We have several religions here, but the issue is that after the topple of the government, there is considerable fear as to whether religious minorities are going to be respected or not.
And I saw a statement by Donald Trump about 10 years ago who was saying the problem is literally we don't know who the other side is.
And he said 10 years ago, the other people seem to me to be worse than Assad.
Well, Tulsi Gabbard said this in a Senate confirmation hearing.
He said, look, there's going to be a massacre of the Christians if Assad falls.
Yes.
And here we have a Daily Mail article that says, horror in Syria as naked women operated and shot dead, more than a thousand killed in just two days as countries gripped by deadly violence between new rulers and Assad loyalists.
And they are describing all sorts of crimes that happened.
There have been several people who are trying to say that all this is Western propaganda.
I mean, just to be clear, these people have access to mobile phones.
They film themselves committing the atrocities and then put it up with their own captions.
Exactly.
And I don't think it's entirely coincidental that they put some people in crosses and machine gun them while on the cross.
This definitely has a religious meaning.
So there were several other...
Just a quick thing.
Nothing in the Middle East doesn't have a religious tone.
Everything in the Middle East is religious.
Exactly.
So we have several reports of all sorts of crime.
I'm not going to say more.
So we have here the interim president of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, who was also known before the...
Before these months, as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, he gave a speech addressing the nation and he basically said that we're now facing a new danger at the crucial moment in that the remnants of the other regime, supported by foreign elements, are trying to create another civil war and drag her country towards a civil war in order to divide it, destroy its unity and stability.
So he is saying essentially...
What everyone would expect.
We're in a situation of emergency.
We need to protect the unity of our country from domestic and foreign enemies.
And he added that those who harmed civilians will be held accountable and brought to justice.
Now, I really don't know if there's actually a will to do this, but even if there was a will...
Even if there were a will, I don't know if there's the ability to do it, because if the government required reinforcements...
And lots of militias came in order to answer to the government's call for enforcements.
The most probably means that the reliance upon those militias is much higher than we would speak about in a traditional setting when you have standing armies and not militias.
So I really don't think that we should take that at face value.
I think a lot of Westerners who try to take it at face value and see it with as best light as possible are incredibly naive, such as Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell, who went for the rest of his podcast.
Well, they interviewed him, didn't they?
West's latest golden boy.
statement and literally he reposted a thread of someone who mostly focused on economic issues.
Right.
So, right.
Okay.
Yeah, see, here we have Roman Adolu English.
The Syrian presidency announced the formation of an independent national commission to probe the recent violent incidents in the port cities of Latakia and Tartus.
I'm sure it'll be totally impartial, independent, and...
No trust issues whatsoever.
Yeah, we'll get to the bottom of the problem from the former jihadi.
Exactly.
And here, let us go to discuss the several statements that people have made.
Here's from David Lammy.
The reports that a large number of civilians have been killed in coastal areas in Syria in ongoing violence are horrific.
The authorities in Damascus must ensure the protection of all Syrians and set out a clear path to transitional justice.
They're insane Islamists.
Yes.
Why would he say that?
They're not going to do that.
They probably approve of what's happening.
Yes.
And there have been several posts on X saying that David Lammy is giving £50 million to Syria.
So we're funding the regime.
This has been happening since October.
So I don't know why there is no will to suspend funding or to pressure the government.
It's crazy.
But okay.
Right, so I will say this.
I think one of the very few people who made an actually good statement on this was Marco Rubio.
Who said that the United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis that murdered people in Western Syria in recent days.
The United States stands with Syria's religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families.
Syria's interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria's minority communities accountable.
And what happens if they don't?
No idea.
And this is exactly what we said before, because we don't know to what extent there is a will.
And even if there were a will, we don't know whether there's an ability to hold them into accountable, because they asked for reinforcement.
If America was actually going to intervene in the Middle East for some reason, I think protecting Christian communities from genocide and Alawite communities from genocide actually would be a fairly good one to use.
Here we have a statement that actually...
It's unbelievable.
I'm literally lost for words.
I was looking at that statement for a long time.
The pro-asside elements?
Yes.
So the European Union, the external action service that is led by Kayakalas.
It says the European Union strongly condemns the recent attacks reportedly by pro-Assad elements on interim government forces in the coastal areas of Syria and all violence against civilians.
So who's doing the violence against civilians?
It's not the pro-Assad elements, is it?
Yes, but also they make zero explicit mention of...
The massacre of Christians.
Yeah, just random, abstract violence.
Yes.
And there are several questions as to why that may be happening.
And I think in the segment we did about three months ago, when the regime was toppled, we said that essentially it looks like Syria is going to be led to a proxy war between Israel and Turkey.
Turkey is very much against the Kurds and also wants to...
To appear within the Muslim world as being the top player.
And also Israel wants to be as safe as possible within that region.
And there is plenty of context from both sides.
But we'll talk about also why right now Europe is...
Sort of trying to approach them to a greater extent, try to portray them to as best of light as possible and try to not inflame tensions.
So I think to a very large extent...
There's an immediate context and a larger context.
And the immediate context has to do with Zelensky and the result of the meeting at the White House, which literally created panic in Europe.
There's a lot of discussion about NATO possibly being dismantled or something, or the US leaving NATO. And the Europeans want to have an anti-Russia front.
And they are approaching Turkey.
And Turkey wants to portray itself as being necessary for European defense against anyone.
As the army of Europe in the new days.
Trust Turkey with that.
Exactly.
So Zelensky went to Erdogan and he asked for extra security.
And now there's lots of...
There are several claims about Turkey needing to be included into the Russia-Ukraine war talks and an elevation of the image of Turkey and also the importance of Turkey as a mediating factor, but also as someone who is one of the main actors within Europe from the EU. That was a gap of power that was created.
It's a perceived gap of power.
And whenever there's a gap of power, some people will try to fill it.
And Turkey is trying to do this.
And we have here Turkish President Erdogan, who says we want our European membership process to move forward quickly.
Jesus Christ.
And we have also Donald Tusk, who is going to...
Go to Turkey and talk about it.
Now, personal opinion, I really don't think that anything's going to happen fast.
Maybe it could take time, but it shows a lot of how the pieces are moving in the new chessboard.
And we have a Turkey that is simultaneously more...
More active in the Middle East, but also wants to present itself as more active within Europe.
So there's a question.
There are some people who are a bit more reluctant to comment and they say never interrupt your enemy when they make a mistake and maybe Turkey's biting more than it can chew.
But there's also the other question of why would you want Europe to base European defense upon people who...
Been your enemies?
Invading Europe?
But also being playing both sides on every conflict, basically.
I mean, the idea that you'd want Turkey in the European Union is bonkers.
It's absolutely bonkers.
And I think it's incredible that lots of EU politicians are even considering it.
Now, let's be very realistic.
Turkey is in a really important...
Strategic position for Ukraine and Russia because they're in the Black Sea.
Sorry, I may have...
It's fine, it's fine.
But also really close to Russia and also Ukraine.
And right now they have changed stance.
Completely.
They try to play both sides of the topic, of the conflict.
But now, after the meeting with Zelensky, Turkey is very much pro-Ukraine and wants the Ukrainian border to move into the 2014, where it was in 2014. So what they're thinking is we'll be able to take some territory off Russia.
Exactly.
So I think if we bear this in mind, we will see that the immediate context has to do with a perceived lack of power within Europe and the perceived necessity to appeal to Turkey and be a bit more friendly towards her on behalf of some European politicians.
But also, if we look at how...
The events in Syria are unfolding.
We are going to see that it doesn't look like it's going to be peaceful for a while.
And let me just mention very briefly the Israeli side.
When the regime of Assad was toppled, the Israelis bombarded the military equipment, both naval and also air equipment.
Right now, they try to move close to the Kurds, and they try to present the Kurds as their natural allies within the region, and they have extended the rhetoric they had against the Assad regime, that it was supporting the Hezbollah, now to the current government.
They're saying that they are trying to re-revive and support Hezbollah.
So we have seen atrocious scenes.
And hopefully you understand some bits more about the immediate context, but also about the larger context.
Sadly, it doesn't look like it's going to be peaceful for a long time.
Yeah, it doesn't look like it's going to get better at all.
Anyway, we have some comments.
Lots of comments, so I'm going to skip the ones for only $2.
Sorry for time.
J.M. Denton for $20 says, Roy Stewart being taken seriously by an apparently large group of non-woke people disturbs me.
Yeah, the sort of new men of the early 2000s consensus take Roy Stewart very seriously.
Despite the fact that he's been wrong on every major issue for the past five years.
He was probably wrong about Brexit.
Not more than five years.
He was wrong about...
That was Kamala, obviously, and Trump.
He was, like, wrong about this.
Like, I can't think of anything he's been right about recently.
Hewitt says, Rory Stewart is a homunculus made from the leftover part.
I'm not saying that.
That's disgusting.
Bald Eagle says, if Turkey is suddenly pro-Ukraine after one meeting, how much do you want to bet that Zelensky said he'd support Turkey's admission to the EU and use his pull within the EU to make it happen?
No doubt, actually.
Yeah, that's what they are saying.
And also, let me add very quickly, pardon me, the animosity they have towards Orban makes lots of European leaders opposition in...
Or people in the EU saying that we need to ban the veto.
Right, right, yeah.
Take away one of the final few pieces of power, constitutional power, that the member states have.
In the name of fighting anti-constitutionalism.
Incredible, incredible.
Right, let's go to the video comments.
Touch grass, they tell us.
What do you do when there's no grass?
Patience.
I don't really know.
Let's go to the next one.
Never forget your roots, lads.
They're always there for you.
Concise message that I agree with.
The skepticism of the moon landing on yesterday's podcast is quite understandable.
Sci-fi reality tends to look an awful lot like low budget sci-fi special effects.
I'm personally not skeptical of the moon landing.
I don't know why Dan has this brain worm in his mind.
We all have our conspiracy.
Yeah, yeah.
Favourite conspiracy.
Yeah, exactly.
Turkey's going to join the EU or the Bigfoot's real.
I like the one that says there are crocodiles in the sewers.
Oh, well, there were alligators in the sewers in New York.
I actually watched a video about this last night.
So there's a really good channel called Wild World.
It's just really nice deep dives into a particular subject.
And basically, in the early 20th century, there were no laws governing pets.
So people would buy alligators, bring them, they'd grow, and so they'd just throw them down a sewer.
And so there were reports of there being alligators in the sewers by the people whose job it was to clean the sewers, and they would kill them and clear them out.
They're not like a breeding population, but basically someone's got a pet, or some circus animal or something, and they're just throwing it down there.
So that definitely has happened.
But modern reports say that it hasn't happened because having these pets was banned in, like, 1980 or something, right?
So it just hasn't happened since.
So there we go.
That is true.
Next one.
Loosely speaking, the right values the past and the left values the future, so the destruction of something that has a long and storied history is never as meaningful for the left as it is for the right, even if it's a leftist asset at the time of its destruction.
The left in these situations never suffer enough.
They never learn, they never understand that it's their own ideology leading to this inevitable consequence, and so they never stop doing it.
When the left subverts and takes over an institution, we lose it and all its accrued history and prestige, and we mourn that.
When the left collapse it, at long last, they don't care in any meaningful way, and they move on to something new to ruin.
This is a cycle, and this beautiful French theatre is only the latest example.
We still lost.
Yeah, that's 100% true.
It is frustrating how the right doesn't look at itself as a party of the future either.
Because the future, the present, and the past, they all exist and they're all always part of the same continuum.
And so the right wing, like, oh, I only look back at the past and then to the present.
Yeah, but you're on this continuum.
You recognise you're on the continuum.
You have to look to the future then.
You're not a leftist.
History doesn't end now.
You know tomorrow is coming, so you must think of yourself as...
The future is a part of you as much as the present and the past are from a right-wing perspective.
But he's not wrong.
A lot of right-wingers are just kind of nostalgic and just don't think of the future.
It's like, no, we should have a plan for the future.
I really think some are very melancholic, psychologically speaking.
And when they go Duma, Dumeristic, maybe they're too...
Accustomed or melancholy and they don't want anything to change, basically.
Some of them.
Some of them don't, I think.
Yeah, no, no, that's absolutely right.
And instead, having an affirmative plan for how things ought to change means that you can at least affect the outcome somewhat.
You know, if you're just sat there going, well, I hope nothing changes.
Well, trust me, it's going to change.
That's what happens.
Change the one constant of the universe.
Let's go to the next one.
Carl, if you come to Australia, I'll take you to a really proper Catholic Mass.
And while I'm at it, I'll take you to a real proper Anglican Mass with chanting, Gregorian choirs, the lot.
It's amazing.
I'll show you, man.
And that does actually sound great.
So I was complaining that on Christmas Eve, I went to the local church in the parish that my kids had been baptised in.
It's modern.
And so they've got pop songs with Jesus lyrics dubbed over them and stuff like that.
And I'm like, no, I want a choir chanting heavenly choirs and stuff.
I want it to be properly, authentically traditional and quite aggressively anti-modern, actually.
If I've got to go to a church, I want it to be really authentic so I can at least try and enjoy.
The non-modern nature of it, but instead it's all modernized church and it's like, I hate it.
Like, I would really love it if I was being browbeaten by some guy with the Bible being like, sinner!
I would actually enjoy that.
I want to go to Australia.
Yeah, well, I don't want to travel to Australia.
I mean, it's like a 24-hour flight and it's full of dangerous animals and Australians.
Sounds funny.
I always like Australians.
All right, let's go to the next one.
I am a classical liberal.
The government should restrain itself from violating our liberties.
Drums.
Drums in the deep.
We cannot get out.
They are coming.
I never wanted this.
I never wanted to unleash my legions.
But you betrayed me.
You betrayed us all.
Who was that comment from?
Do me a favour, make sure that's in the share drive, because I'm going to tweet that after this podcast.
That is exactly, exactly how I feel.
I'm sorry, if we've got to become Horace Lupercal, then we will.
Honestly, that is so good.
That is exactly how I feel.
Right, let's get some comments.
So, lots of people have been saying that Islander Magazine has arrived, and everything is wonderful, which I'm glad to hear.
I told you it would be a lot quicker, didn't I? Didn't I? I told you we got it sorted.
But no, I'm really glad, and I'm sorry that the previous one, Out of our hands, really.
But I am sorry that it took so long, but the new one is there, so all good.
Mason says, Well, I didn't ever tell him he was wrong, you know?
I knew, but...
Starmer would be exactly as tyrannical as we expected.
And I, like, Lelani Dowding tweeted out, being like, I just hoped Farage would have changed, would have been better, or something like that.
And he hasn't.
I just retweeted at the beginning, like, yeah, I know.
I was hoping to.
I was hoping to, but no.
But also, I mean, people who vote, they have to sometimes hope for something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You sometimes have to.
Even if it's the least bad option.
Yeah, no, I know.
The man has my full support and the way he's being treated by reform is despicable.
Furthermore, if some of the details he is releasing from reform are true, they are well on the way to losing support of every single supporter they have.
However, despite my wish to see Rupert at the forefront of their platform, I understand where we are in this situation.
We can't afford to be rejecting reform outright just now.
They haven't yet proven themselves to be wholly captured by the establishment.
And if that does happen, they can be dropped and forgotten.
This is too important a moment.
Well, I'd say we've got four years, and I don't think Farage is the guy at this point.
So I'm prepared to work with other people.
Terra Toddler says, I don't really want to vote for four now.
Not just for getting rid of Rupert, but the way it's been done.
It's clear they can't be trusted, and Farage needs to be removed from the leadership.
Well, this is why Elon Musk came to this conclusion very, very swiftly, didn't he?
He was like, oh, Farage isn't the guy.
Yeah, no, I don't think Farage is the guy.
I'm sorry.
I mean, I don't really...
Just the way he's treated people throughout his entire career, do you want that person in government?
I don't really want that person in government.
Anne says, everything about the story about Rupert Lowe and reform is suspect down to Muhammad Yusuf trying to look more English and not always using his given name.
Seems like reform has not changed from the day they kicked out Bo and Dan for trivialities.
Bo made a joke and was like, yeah, we need to deport illegals.
Dan was like, we need to deport illegals because you say in your manifesto we can deport illegals.
And then they both got deselected for quoting the manual and the manifesto.
George says, Rupert Lowe's loyalty to reform after all they've pulled is undeserved.
I hope he doesn't join the Tories either, but I would understand if he did.
I'm tired of the there-are-good-people-in-reform narrative, considering that they are systematically getting rid of all the good people.
They don't deserve any support from people on the right.
And this is a thing I didn't make clear in the podcast, and I should have done.
There are a lot of good people in reform.
Just like there are a lot of good people in UKIP, and Nigel Farage is basically chewing them up and spitting them out whenever they become inconvenient.
Everyone in Reform is a marked man.
The second, Farage becomes aware of you, and Farage's eyes sour on fixes on you, and feels that you are too good, too dangerous, too much of a liability, whatever it is, you're gone.
They won't even think about it, you'll be gone.
So just be aware that your time in Reform could be temporary.
There's no pleasure saying this either.
I really wish this wasn't the case.
Anyway, Kevin says, So Rupert's lost the whip.
Time for a call to Elon.
Fund a new party made up of Rupert Lowe, Andrew Bridgen, Jenrick, and Braverman.
And well, Liz Truss, there are loads of good people who have been essentially left outside of the uniparty consensus who have been banging the drum quite solidly from our perspective.
And I would support them.
I would absolutely support them.
spot and these are big names as well so uh hugo bossman says hate to be a duma but as this leave leave us as a country with no right-wing alternative ready and waiting to take over in 2029 the prospects of the country are looking bleak i don't even want to imagine what another five years of left-wing politics on top of the existing labor cycle does to our country hard times ahead sadly yeah i'm sorry but it's it's not looking great is it If Nigel Farage could stop being evil for five minutes?
And just stop playing these vile, like, bitchy, mean girl games.
Like, there was no need to do this to the load.
Just take the criticism like a man.
Just say, yeah, you know, we probably could do that.
That's a good idea.
Because I bet, like, next month they do all of the things that he's criticising them for saying.
Like, just do it.
You know, you don't have to run your party like a goddamn Soviet dictatorship.
Derek says, low is your Trump.
Protect him at all costs if you want to have a chance to get your nation back.
You know what's interesting?
He does have these kind of Trumpian asses.
He's just come out and repeatedly like, I don't apologize for anything.
I've done nothing wrong.
I stand by what I said about mass deportations of illegal foreign criminals.
I'm not apologizing for anything.
It's like, yep, that's the correct energy.
Matt says, at this point, as I am, I think that the majority of the performance base will stick with them, and this will be a relatively small bump in the road over the long term.
Nigel has done this sort of thing over and over, and he always manages to survive it.
Well, that's a real possibility.
Do you think the plan is to...
No, forget it, forget it.
No, go on.
No, the plan makes no sense.
Then I don't know.
You're not going to tell me.
If he wants to...
Save the Conservatives last minute.
Well, Farage, well, I mean, if he does, he's certainly going the right way about it, isn't he?
Yeah, that's why I'm asking.
It really wouldn't take much for Rupert Lowe to defect to the Conservatives.
They're offering him.
They've literally said, you're welcome to join us because, of course, the Conservatives need all the help they can get at this point.
And Rupert Lowe has got a stellar reputation amongst...
Politicos, like the people who are following politics.
No one's got a bad word to say about him.
The worst thing that the BBC could find from someone even on the ground was he's not from around here, which is funny.
What can he do about that?
It's hardly a moral failing, is it?
But, yeah, no, it's quite mental.
He just seems to have genuinely been a good chap.
And so it's really rough seeing this, frankly.
Russian says, boomers are too entrenched to split from reform, I reckon.
This is just another attempt at splintering.
The first chance of political change we've had in decades.
Always happens to the right, always.
Yeah, I know, I know.
But that's the thing, isn't it?
It's always going to be this way if we have to be like, well, it's Farage on no one, so it doesn't matter how badly Farage treats people, they just have to get slapped in the face and suck it up.
It's like, I don't know, man, I hate that.
I really hate that.
And it's only always going to be Nigel while there's no alternative.
If there's no alternative to Nigel, of course there's only Nigel, because you literally made sure that there's no alternative.
Someone online says, if your party cannot stand up to the criticisms of your friends, there's not going to be able to stand up to the slander of your enemies.
And that's another great point as well.
Lars says, when you're over 60, your character is very well set.
We can infer from this that Nigel Farage is an incorrigible backstabbing rat.
His physiotomy tracks as well.
Your friendly hope-not-hate opera...
Operative says, breaking news, politicians are lying to protect their political brand at the expense of seemingly honest and decent elected official.
Yeah, I know, it's not exactly revelationary, but, you know, I think it's worth knowing.
Because, really, that is for people around Nigel Farage, right?
Lee Anderson, Richard Tice, Zia Youssef, like, you know.
You are just as much on the chopping block as anyone else if you don't do exactly as you're told and just praise Nigel Farage non-stop.
You are exactly as on the chopping block as anyone else.
It's your pride, not mine.
I don't have to worry about that.
Yeah, that's another thing as well.
I feel that if Nigel doesn't quite get the stellar result he wants, he'll just piss off.
You'll just piss off.
There were nine by-elections recently.
The reform got nothing in.
And there were council elections as well.
And there are local elections coming up in May.
And if they don't do well, what's Farage going to do?
Is he going to be like, oh, well, soldier on.
He seems very reluctant to actually lead.
Because if you lead, you want to persuade others to follow you.
And he constantly says, well, if I say this, People are going to have an issue, take issue with it.
If I say that, people are going to take an issue with it.
That's your job.
Yeah.
You know what?
When he said that you're going to get a Romanian for a neighbor, he got a lot of backlash in the press.
And he seems to have backed down on his hard anti-immigration rhetoric from that.
But it was like, okay, but that's true.
That happened.
Like in a million, like something like a million of them came.
It's a load.
There's loads that he was not wrong.
But anyway, Michael says, we're all waiting for this knowledge.
Can't have anyone actually try and do something that helps.
His captured opposition always has been part of the Uniparty.
Rupert is politically naive because he is not a careerist.
And I get the sense that he would rather be at home with his family, but he knows this is work he must do because he is able.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
Again, Isabel Oakesholtz, genuinely evil.
Dagger smile.
It's like, you know, I know we've screwed you, Rupert.
You know, you're naive.
I just loathe that so much.
I really despised it.
It's something a villain would say.
Yeah, no, it's literally what the villain says.
Yeah, it's not like, you know, you were horrible.
We didn't want you.
It's like you were naive.
Yeah, you were naive.
You didn't realize that we could just crush you like an ant because we've got these, you know, we've got the setup for when you became inconvenient.
And it's like, that's just horrible.
I hate it more than anything.
I really hate that.
I don't want...
I don't want to be part of a party that works that way.
You have pharaohs like Baron Harkonnen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My reform.
My party.
Exactly.
My dune.
I'm sorry, I actually would like to run the political party like House Atreides, actually, rather than House Harkonnen, if that's too much to ask for.
And if it is too much to ask for, that's fine.
I know lots of decent people who would also like to run a party like House Atreides.
You know, maybe we should have a think about that.
Danny says, they think they could move low out, but not surprisingly, are so self-absorbed, not realising the amount of support he has.
This is a catastrophic own goal, and I hate to see it, but for our history of this.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Eloise says, Influencer culture and cultural personality makes people terrible leaders as no one cares about the community occasion and securing the well-being of the group anymore.
Only their own egos and glory and their own legacy, which is starkly built through reputation, contribution and maintaining groups.
Yeah, and Farage has done this his entire career.
I absolutely agree with this comment.
Yeah, it was completely true.
It's completely true.
Like, Trump is going to be remembered, like, literally, it's going to be remembered as a golden age, right?
And it's Trump's ability to be a...
Coalition builder.
He's just brought everyone in and said, yeah, I really like you, this is great, and everyone's like, oh, brilliant, he really likes me.
But he's good at making people feel appreciated and wanted, and Nigel, frankly, is not.
He ain't the guy.
Anyway, thanks for joining us, folks.
We will be back tomorrow at the same time.
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