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March 14, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:53

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1121

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	Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
	Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Friday the 14th of March 2025. Yes, it's Friday.
	Best day of the week.
	You've made it.
	I'm joined by Harry.
	Hello there.
	Andrew Bridgen.
	Hi there.
	And we are going to be talking about the drawn lines in the Reformed Civil War.
	How we are turning into a total Blairite state.
	So don't take the abolition of NHS England too literally.
	It's not going to be as good as you think.
	And how the consequences of their own woke actions are coming to bite them.
	Because if we end up going to war with Russia, we don't have any soldiers.
	So, yeah, how interesting is that?
	Anyway, let's begin.
	So, the Reformed Civil War has been raging all week.
	It's now been a week.
	In fact, it was Friday in which they launched their what seemed to be...
	Unnecessary attack on Rupert Lowe for making sensible suggestions as to what reform ought to do, which is nominate a shadow cabinet and perhaps incorporate the party into a more democratic framework rather than relying on this kind of messiah-style politics that Nigel Farage has done.
	And that's when they decided to make a bunch of allegations against him, kick him out of the party, and then the next day report him to the police.
	Which is not exactly very nice and very kind.
	And this has led to a week's worth of raging, mostly online, that's true, but some not, about whether Nigel Farage is in fact the right person to lead.
	The right, going into 2029, and there are many divided opinions on this.
	But before we begin, Islander 3 is of course still on sale.
	There's another week left, so get it while you can, because when it's gone, it's gone forever.
	We won't be reprinting it.
	This is a moment in time, so get it while it's available.
	So, let's talk about some of the narratives that have been swirling around.
	Because, of course, when you have a large number of people attacking a very small number of people, the small number of people feel they have to come up with some quite decisive arguments.
	And these decisive arguments have been poor, say the least.
	And one of those arguments is, well, reform would be nowhere if it wasn't for Nigel Farage.
	And that's not true.
	In fact, it was reform success that...
	Encouraged Nigel Farage to come back.
	As you may remember, back in May, the end of May, just before the polling results came out of Clacton, Nigel Farage said, no, I'm not going to stand in the UK election.
	I'm going to go and help Donald Trump in the US. Okay, fair enough.
	Makes sense.
	Good enough.
	And then this servation poll came out, in which Clacton turns out 37% were going to vote for the Reform Party.
	Oh.
	That very day, Nigel Farage entered the race as the Reform UK candidate.
	So, it wasn't that Nigel Farage was leading from the front, because he has never led from the front, as we all know.
	This is a perennial problem with Nigel Farage.
	It's that he saw that something useful was happening that he could take advantage of, and so he did.
	And Reform did get a bump in the polls after that.
	That's true.
	You can see here, where it's about...
	Let's just zoom in here.
	As you can see, reform were already doing quite well in the polls at 17%.
	Then Nigel joins and it actually went down a bit because he started talking about Ukraine.
	In a way that the public weren't big fans of.
	But then Keir Starmer got in and people decided actually they hate Keir Starmer, they hate the Labour Party, and reform went up.
	So we could possibly ascribe this sort of seven-point bump to Nigel, but I don't think it's exclusively him.
	I think that the general trend was towards reform.
	I think Keir Starmer is a bit like Jeremy Corbyn before him.
	You know, the Conservative...
	Landslide victory in 2019 wasn't down to Boris Johnson.
	It was more down to Jeremy Corbyn, and that bounce is due to Keir Starmer and his policies.
	Yes, and the way that he just treats the general public, because it's awful.
	But yeah, no, I think so.
	Any disagreements there, Harry?
	No, this is slightly off-topic, but something that's been troubling my mind for a little bit regarding Nigel Farage was, do you remember, I think it was in December or January, right before the sentencing of Axel Rudakabana, I think it was as part of a Winston Marshall interview, he stated that there was going to be some, if it went to trial, there was going to be some kind of revelation that would absolutely rock Keir Starmer's government and the British state.
	Has he said anything regarding that since then, or was it just to gin up publicity?
	Because, as far as I'm aware, there would be no kind of laws preventing him, because it wouldn't be biasing the court anymore, because there's no trial.
	He already admitted, he said, I'm guilty to all of these charges that I'm presented with.
	So does Nigel know anything?
	Was he just trying to get publicity?
	Was it just that Prevent already knew about Rudicabana?
	Because that's happened multiple times where Prevent have known about a terrorist attack.
	Well, not necessarily.
	A potential terrorist attack before it happened.
	So that's not enough to rock the state.
	So what was it, Nigel?
	Are you actually going to say anything?
	Or was it just for the sake of...
	Oh, I feel like being in the news today.
	Yeah, remember when he said that Keir Starmer had revoked his parliamentary privilege as well, didn't he?
	So Keir Starmer had muzzled him.
	So that's a great point, actually.
	It's something that's been troubling my mind for the past few weeks, because I've been considering, like, why haven't you said anything?
	If you're trying to gain electoral ground in the lead up to 2029, do something that will absolutely rock Labour right now.
	Start early.
	Instead of just making videos of yourself eating sandwiches.
	Didn't Nigel Farage say that reform were going to have their own inquiry into the Muslim rape gangs?
	He says a lot, doesn't he?
	He does say a lot of things.
	In politics, it's not what people say, it's what they do.
	And you're right, Nigel.
	Most politicians are not intrinsically brave.
	They're very risk-averse.
	And there's no doubt, Nigel does not make the political wind.
	He follows it.
	He's the sort of person who will let the battle happen.
	And while all the bodies are writhing on the floor, he'll stride across the battlefield with the flag and say, haven't I done well?
	You know what, let's have a look at one of those writhing bodies, in fact, because Nigel Farage didn't do the groundwork in Clacton.
	Other people had done the groundwork in Clacton, and in this particular case, it was one Mr. Anthony Mack, who was a good old local person, who was a taxi driver and things like this, and he was the one who was the candidate when reform was on.
	37%.
	And so Nigel Farage had a phone call with him, and he promised him that he would pay him back every penny that he'd spent on his campaign, which was £8,500, and that he would get a paid position in Nigel's staff.
	Neither of those things happened.
	That was before the election, though, those promises were made.
	That's like a sort of manifesto, isn't it?
	Yes, that's a great point.
	Now, we've won, so...
	Tony Mack was just cast out on his ear.
	Collateral damage to the greater good.
	Exactly.
	For the cause, Tony.
	It's your money that Nigel spent and your seat that he's taken and you're getting nothing out of it.
	And he, Anthony Mack, after not being able to get any recompense...
	In July, decided to deliver a bill to Farage.
	I don't know whether it was paid or not, because I couldn't find anything further on it.
	But Anthony says, I fear for the future of reform unless it is democratised.
	I fear for the future of a movement like that when it is led by a man who cannot keep his promises.
	Where does that leave his constituents or supporters who have invested their faith in reform to deliver the kind of change that is needed?
	And he accused Reform UK of creating a...
	Fascistic atmosphere in the constituency.
	Well, I'll let you into a couple of inside bits of knowledge.
	So when I was speaking out in November, December 22, to stop the government from, as a Conservative, to stop the government from vaccinating the under-fives, when I'd exhausted going around all my colleagues I thought would have been helpful in Parliament, including all of those who admitted to me they'd had heart attacks after the second Pfizer jab, but still...
	Obviously, there was so much compromise on them, they couldn't speak out about something affecting babies.
	I actually was desperate enough to go to Nigel Farage, and I had an hour and a half with him.
	And in front of witnesses at the end, when I presented all my thoughts about why the vaccines were neither safe nor effective, and should certainly never be used on healthy small children at no risk from the virus, Nigel turned to me at the end and said, Andrew...
	I'm not going to be speaking about the vaccine.
	This is in January 23. I'm not going to be speaking about the vaccines, and if you know what's good for you, you won't either.
	And also, I'd been to him and asked him to come out with me and go against Starmer's obvious plans to take the UK into the European Defence and Securities Union, which will end up giving the EU full control of our Army, Navy, Air Force, MI5, MI6, GCHQ, our nuclear deterrent.
	And our local police force.
	It's the only security pact on offer, is the European Defence Securities Union.
	And Nigel said, I'm not talking about that, Andrew.
	Brexit's done as far as I'm concerned.
	And those two things back in 23 were huge red flags to the point where before the general election last July...
	I had told both Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe, who I've known Rupert for a couple of years, good guy, I told them, you realise that it's only a matter of time before Nigel's going to come for you.
	And it was.
	And I did remind them both of it last week and give him his due.
	Ben Habib texted me straight back and said, so you did, Andrew.
	So let's in fact talk about what's happening with reform itself.
	Because a lot of people are saying, well hang on a second, Nigel Farage has given up control of the party and has democratised it.
	No, they've given over reform...
	What is now called Reform, but was called the Brexit Party, to a company called Reform 2025 LTD. So what was a private company is now owned by another private company.
	Now, Richard Tice and Catherine Blakelock and six other people were the directors of the original Brexit Party company that became renamed Reform.
	Who do you think are the directors of Reform 2025 LTD? I imagine Nigel Farage is there.
	He is definitely on there, but the only other person is Mohammed Ziyadin Yusuf.
	So even Richard Tice has been sidelined now.
	He was at least an owner of the Brexit Party slash reform.
	Not anymore.
	Well, Nigel originally said to Ben Habib that he didn't want to come back into politics.
	All he wanted to do was make money.
	Do you think he's found a way of combining the two?
	Well, I mean, he hasn't given up his position at GB News, has he?
	No.
	Still a million pounds a year from that.
	But you know what?
	I'm not against people making money.
	I'm against people stabbing people in the back.
	Well, in politics, I always stab them in the front.
	Well, that's the honourable way to fight your back.
	I remember that was my quote when David Cameron had to go.
	It was in the Daily Mail.
	Andrew Bridgen said, I'm not going to stab David Cameron in the back.
	I'm going to stab him in the front because I want to see the look in his eye when I stick the knife in, but I'm going to have to twist it because I need it back for George.
	Jess Phillips said the same about Jeremy Corbyn and everyone got on her back about this, but I actually thought that was respectable.
	Well, no, yeah, come out and, you know, attack them in the front rather than from behind.
	But anyway, as we know, of course, Rupert Lowe got suspended.
	And Rupert Lowe then put out a last-ditch effort to Nigel Farage, a letter requesting reconciliation.
	A million people have seen this on Twitter.
	Nigel Farage has not responded to this.
	And so the question is, well, how is the war going?
	Well...
	No salutation there, is there, you know?
	No, just Nigel.
	Well observed, actually.
	But yes, but this is like the third or fourth attempt that Rupert Lowe has made to try and get Nigel to come to the table.
	When Tice was on TV a few days ago and said, basically, we're not interested.
	It doesn't matter what comes out of any investigation, Rupert's not coming.
	Isn't that a bit of predetermination?
	Yes, I mean, you could have just dropped the false threats that you've ginned up.
	You should have said, we just don't want him.
	Yeah, I mean, forget all this.
	He's not coming back.
	He's out.
	Then let's dispense with the charade.
	We don't need this.
	Okay, you're not doing it.
	Fine.
	You don't want him.
	That's fine.
	Just be honest.
	Yes.
	Don't try and invent some mental health problems.
	I mean...
	Insufferable.
	I mean, you saw him on Dan Whitton the other day.
	He's obviously...
	He's one of the most complimentous politicians I've ever heard.
	Like, I wish our politicians were as lucid as Rupert Lowe was.
	Anyway, so this is taking attack with Nigel Farage.
	Of course, Nigel Farage had a 90% approval rating with reform voters, and that's down to 73%.
	And this was from three days ago, so I don't know exactly what it's going to be today, but I can't imagine it's getting any better.
	And as you can see, this has been something that has affected Nigel's credibility.
	Reform voters themselves are kind of annoyed by this, and that's interesting because the response of reform has been to crack down.
	On their own members.
	So apparently, according to LBC, if Reform UK organisers and members speak to the media, they will be dismissed, just like Rupert Lowe was.
	So it was a bit bizarre when Lee Anderson said, no, this isn't true, this isn't true, but we've already seen this happen, Lee.
	Also, I mean, anyone who...
	Any time in the last 20 years has, on social media, made any hints that they were supportive of anything that Tommy Robinson has done, that's been used to hoof people out after decades.
	So that all fits in line.
	And again, that's not true, but we've seen you do this to one of your own MPs.
	You knocked out a fifth of your parliamentary party on this very basis.
	So I don't know if I believe that.
	Actually, Lee.
	So, the response to all of this has been to debate who should be the leader of reform.
	And this is a debate they've been having.
	It's not a debate we've been having.
	Because Rupert Lowe has not actually made a bid for the leadership of reform.
	Because, of course, there's no avenue for him to do so.
	Because it's not a democratic party.
	And he's actually out of the party now.
	And he's out of the party now.
	In fact, I have not once seen Rupert Lowe even mention the term.
	Becoming party leader.
	This has been about making sure the party is in a fit state to properly govern.
	As in, we need a shadow cabinet of heavy hitters.
	And this was treated as a leadership challenge.
	They certainly hit Rupert rather heavy.
	They certainly did.
	And so the common response has been, well, 86% of the public failed to identify a photo of Rupert Lowe.
	So he's not famous enough to lead the party.
	Right.
	But that's not...
	How anyone has ever been chosen for the leader of any party, is it?
	Well, ask any man in the street in 2020 who is Keir Starmer.
	Precisely.
	Would anybody have known?
	People wouldn't have been able to go, oh, he was that evil human rights lawyer that got the death penalty banned in the Caribbean, wasn't he?
	No, they wouldn't have been able to do that.
	They would have gone, who?
	Who's that?
	This is the NPC meme.
	I don't know what you're...
	But this is the point.
	I mean, Kemi Badenoch, was she well-known before she was made Conservative Party leader?
	No, of course not.
	She's not very well-known now.
	Exactly.
	Nobody knows who she is now.
	But then conversely, hang on a second, 14% of the public can actually identify a backbench MP who's been there for six months in a non-governing party.
	That's actually remarkable.
	That's incredible.
	I don't even know who my North Swindon MP is.
	I don't know who it is.
	But the fact that 14% of the public can identify it implies that in six months, Rupert's actually really made his star rise, and who knows where he'll be in another six months.
	So that's actually quite impressive.
	I must say, I did defend Rupert this week.
	And I have considerable sympathy for what he's going through.
	I mean...
	You know, being expelled from your own political party on spurious grounds, smeared, vilified, attacked in the media, cancelled, attempt to cancel you.
	Yeah, I mean, I can understand all of that.
	And by fate, one of my former parliamentary assistants...
	Ended up taking a position with Rupert.
	She's one of the people supposedly implicated in the bullying.
	Apparently she was.
	And she contacted me and said, but it wasn't Rupert that I was complaining about.
	It was somebody else who works in the office.
	And she said that was the same for the...
	Other person who complained of the bullying culture, and that was someone in the constituency office, but they were complaining about another member of staff, not Rupert.
	Yes.
	And that was conflated.
	And if you actually listen to what...
	Deliberately so, as well.
	Yes, and listen to what Reform Nigel and Tice have said, the wording is you can tell it's not actually about Rupert.
	Exactly.
	I went through that on the podcast when we first covered it.
	Yeah, they knew.
	It was very slyly worded to make people think that it was Rupert without actually accusing Rupert, because, of course, it wasn't Rupert.
	It wasn't.
	And then the number of character witnesses that came out and said, no, Rupert's lovely, he's a teddy bear, what are you talking about?
	You can see that this is...
	Honestly...
	So I felt obliged to defend him.
	Oh yeah, I was just saying that.
	Because it's right.
	Yes.
	He's being smeared.
	Yeah.
	Maliciously.
	I'm tired of people of incredibly low character being able to get one over on people of good character.
	I'm very tired of this paradigm, and I want it to change.
	But anyway, so Matt Goodwin came out and said, well, look, let's look at the favorability.
	And actually, I'm not sure this is as good as Matt interprets it as being.
	Because, yeah, a lot of people, 68% of people don't know who Rupert Lowe is in a different poll.
	And 9% find him favorable and 16% find him unfavorable.
	Nigel Farage, 67% of people find him unfavourable.
	And they do know who he is, don't they?
	Yeah, they exactly know who he is.
	Lowe's actually got the best ratio there of favourable to unfavourable, even if not as many people know who he is.
	He actually does, doesn't he?
	So, you know, if we're going to go by a net favourability rating for Reform UK politicians, well, Rupert Lowe's the most...
	Well-liked by the general public, even if they know the least about him.
	I mean, look at Tice as well.
	Tice was the party leader and 63% of people still don't know who he is.
	What an empty suit.
	I mean, he's a very forgettable person.
	Yes, he is.
	Yes, he is.
	But the point being, if Nigel Farage has only got 25% favourable, well, that kind of explains why reform can't seem to break 25% of the polls, actually, doesn't it?
	Because you've got 67% of people who don't like him and do know who he is.
	And made their minds up.
	So Nigel's done all he can do for reform.
	Yes.
	He's carried it as far as it can go.
	Yes.
	Whereas Rupert Lowe has still got a huge amount of potential.
	And actually, Rupert Lowe is not nearly as sort of chalk and cheese as Nigel is.
	Rupert's actually a much more sort of conformable kind of guy when you hear him speak.
	He's not offensive in the way that Nigel Farage can be.
	He's not as confrontational.
	Except for when he's being attacked by Nigel.
	And that's okay.
	I think you're allowed to defend yourself.
	Are you?
	Oh, I think you are.
	I think so.
	He's a businessman, and didn't he used to manage Southampton as well?
	He did.
	He was chairman.
	Not the manager, the chairman.
	So clearly he's had to develop great communication skills over the years.
	And diplomatic skills as well, which Nigel Farage simply doesn't have.
	And to have a bit of rhino hide as well, it would be in football, I'd imagine.
	Oh, yeah, I'd imagine so.
	So I'm not sure that this actually makes the point that Matt Goodwin thinks it does.
	And again, Pure fame is just not how we choose party leaders anyway.
	Because, I mean, Jeremy Corbyn was incredibly famous and he lost.
	And again, Keir Starmer, he's Prime Minister now.
	If you'd asked ten years ago, oh, do you know who the last DPS was?
	No one would have known.
	No one would have known.
	Anyway.
	Sorry, DPP, I keep getting that wrong.
	Director of Public Prosecutions at the CPS. Yeah, I keep getting mixed up.
	Thank you, Andrew.
	So Matt continues making the point that, well, I mean...
	Nigel Farage has got the name recognition.
	Surely he can get the 32% required to win.
	Yes, but 68% of people don't like him.
	Exactly.
	It goes both ways.
	You know, being disliked by a large number of people.
	They've sucked it and seen and spat it out.
	Well, that's the thing.
	This is the problem I think the Democrats had in the United States with Kamala Harris.
	Everyone knew who Kamala Harris was.
	They just didn't like him.
	And actually, an empty suit who started on zero favourability net.
	Because people just didn't know.
	Or would you call them a clean skin?
	There we go, the proper term.
	A clean skin.
	Would have been a better choice because of the baggage that that person comes with.
	And Rupert Lowe doesn't carry that baggage.
	So, anyway, you had people like Julia Hartley Brewer saying, well, look, you need to suck it up and put egos aside.
	And it's like, well, hang on a second.
	The person you need to tell to put their ego aside is Nigel Farage.
	Because what did Rupert Lowe do?
	He said...
	Look, we need a more democratic structure, and the reason that Ben Habib got kicked out, we need a more democratic structure, and we need a proper front bench that people can get behind, as in other people outside of Nigel Farage who might be appealing to the public in the sort of RFK-Trump scenario.
	So there was about 5% of the American population that was backing RFK, weren't backing Trump, probably wouldn't have backed Trump.
	Because RFK's a Democrat, and when RFK goes over to Trump, those people also go over to Trump.
	You know that when the Conservative Party actually announced, leaked out that expelled me, that was so I couldn't appeal, because it has to be on the basis there's no publicity around it.
	They already told me that, so then they leaked it so I couldn't appeal.
	And I'd been in Parliament sort of 12 and a half years, nearly 13 years, and...
	One of my colleagues I'd served with for all that time text me or rang me to say, I'm very sorry you've been expelled from the Conservative Party.
	But I did, within an hour, I got a phone call on my mobile from a US presidential candidate called Robert Kennedy Jr. Really?
	He said, it's a disgraceful answer and I'll back you.
	And, you know?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	So anyway, this is the calibre of people who are lining up.
	To support Nigel Farage.
	And if there's one thing that we can say about them, I think it's they're quite establishment.
	They're all people who are...
	Essentially still part of the establishment.
	They are the kind of release valve for the establishment.
	And on the other side, you've got basically everyone else.
	So I'm going to use Peter Lloyd as an example of the online right-wing commentariat who used to like Farage.
	Peter had dinner with him.
	He said he was a nice chap.
	But Elon is right.
	He needs a new leadership.
	And this goes for pretty much everyone.
	There are very, very few notable right-wing commentators online who are...
	Backing Farage at this point.
	Everyone seems to be pro-Rupert Lowe, which is good.
	And Britain does love an underdog, don't they?
	They don't like bullying, do we?
	We don't like it.
	We don't.
	Why should we?
	Well, exactly, because there's never a good reason for it.
	It's totally uncalled for, especially in the case of Rupert Lowe.
	You have Sammy Woodhouse and various other rape gang survivors who have said, no, Rupert Lowe, I would like to personally and publicly thank Rupert Lowe for continuing to support me and highlight this issue.
	Nigel Farage, of course.
	Told Rupert Lowe to stop talking about it.
	So, we'll carry on.
	He told me to not talk about the vaccine harms and excess deaths.
	Exactly.
	Constantly leading from the rear.
	The next one that I found surprising was Douglas Murray.
	Why Nigel should listen to Rupert Lowe in The Spectator, which was, of course, an excellent article.
	And Daniel Hannan.
	It's not necessarily backing Rupert Lowe, but he did come out and reinforce the point that Rupert Lowe had made, saying, look, reform does need to make the transition from protest to potential party of government, so verifying that Rupert Lowe was correct, it needs a shadow cabinet, it needs dozens of big beasts, men and women with their own profiles.
	And that's obviously true, because they are extra percentage points where people would hold their nose, because they're like, I don't like Farage, but I will vote for that chap, or that chap, or that chap, or that woman.
	That woman, yeah, whoever it is.
	And then get them on.
	Of course, we've established that Nigel Farage's ego simply cannot...
	You're not saying that Nigel's not a team player, are you?
	Then he accuses Rupert of not being a team player.
	I am precisely saying that Nigel Farage is not a team player.
	It is the breathtaking hypocrisy of politics, isn't it?
	It is.
	It is.
	And so, finally, the person who also seems to be behind Rupert Lowe is Elon Musk.
	Because this...
	This account posted, can we get Rupert Lowe's Prime Minister?
	And Elon Musk replies with a couple of British flags.
	And of course, Elon Musk has previously said that Farage is not up to the job, and reformed his new leadership, and he likes the cut of Rupert Lowe's jib.
	So that's interesting.
	So, to round this off...
	I got some information on that.
	Oh, please.
	And I was told by a source from America before Christmas, watch what Elon posts about Nigel.
	Oh, really?
	Yes.
	Very interesting.
	Allegedly, I was told that Elon Musk had been tipped off by the joint leader of the AFD in Germany about things that had gone on in the European Parliament.
	Oh.
	And that was why Musk had turned.
	And Musk was not also, that Musk was not speaking as a loose cannon.
	It was all with the...
	Prepared.
	And it was all with the full knowledge of...
	For Donald.
	Because, I mean, Nigel Farage has done nothing but just trash the European right-wing parties.
	He's just constantly trying to distance himself from him, saying, no, they're evil and far-right.
	I'm Nigel Farage, a moderate centrist.
	That may well be what urged the AFD to put the poison down for Nigel.
	Well, you know, you reap what you sow.
	Those who live by the sword.
	Exactly.
	So, so far it's not affecting the polls, because this has only been a week.
	For example, there's a by-election in Runcorn and Helsby, which is in the northwest, which is normally a strong Labour stronghold.
	But it looks like reform may well win it.
	I don't actually know who their candidate is going to be.
	So this is from Lord Ashcroft Polling.
	So good luck to the candidate.
	I hope you're in empty suit.
	I hope you've not got any thoughts about politics of your own, because otherwise you know exactly what's going to happen to you.
	No strong beliefs.
	No.
	Don't think that illegal migrants should be deported, whatever they do.
	Yeah.
	I mean, preferably you'll be in a coma.
	But just able to sign something, I don't know.
	And so the question is, how is the Civil War going?
	And the answer is not brilliantly, actually.
	So Isabel Oakeshott has been sweeping for this on Talk TV, saying things like, well, it's always tremendously naive when people go off in a strop as what happened with Rupert Lowe.
	I don't think he went off.
	I mean, he was just kicked out, stabbed in the back, bundled out.
	Yeah, reported to the police you wanted him to be punished.
	You wanted him to have a criminal record.
	And it was all on fake accusations.
	I mean, why do you hold that against somebody?
	They report you to the police on spurious grounds?
	Why are you going for a straw?
	Yeah.
	What's wrong with you, Rupert?
	But notice the framing.
	Oh, well, reform are the victims of reform trying to frame Rupert Lowe for something he didn't do and get him the criminal record.
	Like, this is pathetic.
	Absolutely pathetic.
	It's like, oh, this is a horrible fight.
	And then she came out and said, well, look...
	Can we just stop the row?
	In fact, let's play this clip because it's just gold.
	A, that Rupert Lowe has done a really good job in some areas as an MP and he works really hard and that's great.
	But B... Can we just end this stupid route?
	You know, because there are so many big things that the Reform Party needs to do to save the country and so many people are putting their greatest hopes for saving the UK into reform and every day that this horrible fight goes on is a day that is a distraction from the main business.
	Really sweet, isn't it?
	Poor little Rupert.
	He's quite new at politics.
	He's really new in the House of Commons.
	Condescending or what?
	Oh, yeah.
	But you can see that this civil war has not gone the way she expected.
	She's almost saying now that she just went, why doesn't Rupert just go away quietly?
	And, you know, suck it up for the team that have looked after him so well.
	I think.
	I think Nigel's...
	Outed himself and confirmed my worst fears about him and to the country.
	And it's best he does it now.
	Yes.
	Because we've got time to take steps.
	And people are saying, well, there's no alternative.
	It's got to be Nigel.
	Well, I mean, we can't waste another five years.
	This is going to be a very painful five years for the country.
	We can't suffer another five years of decline without turning it around.
	And Nigel...
	He hasn't got it.
	So we need another alternative.
	And people say, well, you're not going to get another party up in four years.
	It's like, yeah, we've got to vote for reform.
	The party that was officially incorporated in 2021. Yes.
	And now leading in the polls.
	It's completely possible.
	Reform is the proof of it.
	It's just look at the people controlling reform.
	And there was actually a spectacular article.
	And as you would say about Isabel Oakchuck, she would say that, wouldn't she?
	Well, of course she would.
	She's Tice's girlfriend.
	And a good friend of, very good friends of Matt Hancock.
	Who I was in court with on Wednesday last week.
	So there was a superb article in The Spectator, actually, by Stephen here, who points out what the actual civil war is about.
	And the point is actually ideology.
	He says, Nationalism is a growing force among the millennial and Gen Z right.
	A generation ago, young right-wingers were still reading Hayek, Friedman and Sowell.
	Myself, you know, I've read all those.
	Today's up-and-coming reactionaries are devotees of Bronze Age pervert, Drukpa Kunle and the Lotus Eaters.
	So we get a mention.
	It's your fault.
	It is.
	That's literally...
	You're being smeared there, aren't you?
	No, no, I embrace that proudly.
	Ironically enough, like you, I've read Hayek, I've read Freeman, I've read Soul.
	I quite like all three of them.
	Soul especially, I think, has got some excellent work.
	The problem is that I don't agree with every single one of their conclusions, and in fact have my own conclusions, which is what separates me out from those who apparently used to just read them and just nod along and agree with everything that they said.
	And so he carries on, because this is superb.
	He says, This
	is Reform's core vote.
	They have no ideology beyond objecting to the excesses and contradictions of the status quo they otherwise accede to.
	Brilliant summary there, Stephen.
	That is scathing.
	Yeah, absolutely scathing.
	And that's not going to get you across the line, is it?
	No.
	That's not going to fix any of the problems.
	No.
	The problems come from the paradigm.
	The paradigm has to change, as Stephen is...
	I think it's too late for reform as well.
	I think we need far more drastic change than just a bit of tinkering around the edges if we're going to pull the country and the nation back from the abyss.
	We're going to leave the...
	We're hanging over.
	Yeah, no, you're...
	I think, you know, if Nigel became the...
	The Prime Minister, through reform in 2028 or 2029, I think the nation would be on a precipice and it would be a great step forward.
	Yes.
	Anyway, we'll leave it there.
	We've got loads of comments here, by the way.
	Very, very generous rumble rants right here.
	Xenithium for $50.
	Carl, congratulations on your appointment.
	Here's enough for one pint in London.
	Well, thank you.
	I'll get two pints in Swindon with it.
	I've been appointed to the advisory board for Ben Habib's Great British Pack, which is lovely, and I look forward to working with them.
	Ifwinah says another $50.
	Very generous.
	Thank you.
	They say rule number one for being happy is be kind and generous.
	So have a bit of money.
	Listening is a great skill, too.
	I'm a criminologist.
	It's like watching a train wreck this week.
	And it's definitely felt that way, but we're the ones on the right side of it.
	So I appreciate that.
	Nigel Farage is a modern-day Richard III. Betrayals everywhere is his undoing.
	You know what?
	He actually feels a lot like King John to me.
	It feels that he's...
	Pissed off all the barons.
	And all of those people have been sort of kept out of his administration.
	And it's like, okay, well then, we're in revolt now.
	Except he's not even king yet.
	No, exactly, he's not even king.
	Alex says, Nigel volunteers for the forlorn hope plays dead in a ditch and then rises again after the breach has been stormed to act like he took part in storming it.
	That's good.
	Sigilstone says, Farage is set to announce a new party, the Gormus Muppet Party.
	It's Farage with all the people that meet his stringent criteria.
	A bunch of googly-eyed puppets on his hands.
	I'm very sad that you didn't include the reform candidate who looked like a...
	I didn't want to be mean.
	It was funny, though.
	I'm sure he's a very friendly gentleman, but he was the spitting image of the glasses and moustache Guess Who character.
	He was.
	They announced a new candidate, and he kind of looks like he's from the game Guess Who.
	And it's a really easy joke, but I don't know what he means, because I'm sure he's a lovely guy.
	Exactly.
	I'm sure he's a lovely guy.
	Anyway, let's carry on.
	But anyway, yes, let's discuss the most recent announcements that will be careening us towards the absolute totalitarianism of the complete Blairite.
	State Blairite.
	Blairism is only a semi-complete project at the moment.
	Keir Starmer, being a Blairite himself, is pushing it through to the other edge.
	And that is what he was discussing in his speech on public sector reform yesterday.
	today and it ties into a lot of the other changes that Labour are planning on making at the moment including their New Britain plan where there's going to be a greater and greater centralization of the government whilst also and in an incredible level of doublespeak bragging about how it's actually a decentralization of the government.
	For instance in the New Britain a viewworm looked into those plans that they put forward.
	I think it was originally written up by Brown and announced at the beginning or end of 2022 and it seems that they're starting to move forward with these plans where it's changes to the local council structures where they're taking the...
	The mayoral elections which they're seeking to delay local elections this year in some areas.
	I mean, basically, that's the European boundaries that they were...
	Trying to bring in the 70s.
	It's the European boundaries.
	It's all very interesting.
	The thing they're trying to do is take a load of the separate councils in particular counties and then just...
	Bungle them all together into more larger unitary regional councils, which they're saying is a form of decentralisation, but sounds to me more like, well, you've got one...
	These are the vehicles they'll bring in the 15-minute cities and the low-traffic neighbourhoods and all the restrictions and say, oh, it's not us, it's your locally elected mayoral candidate that's bringing these in, because that's how they're going to get the money in.
	Harry, you do, as a...
	You'll remember the first piece of legislation in 97 that the new Blairite government...
	When I was one year old, yes.
	Well, I expect you to remember.
	I sometimes should have told you.
	And if not, the first piece of legislation that Blair's government bought in 97, which was not in their manifesto, nobody saw it coming.
	At the time, no one could understand it.
	But it all makes great sense now.
	They took the death penalty out of the Treason Act.
	What a strange thing.
	What a strange thing.
	They must get that through straight away.
	As if they knew exactly what they were going to be doing.
	They also took away the annual vote in Parliament on the death penalty after a few years, didn't they?
	Yes.
	Yeah, that's interesting as well.
	But I think it's still the death penalty can be for crimes against humanity, so we're okay.
	We're going to bring it back when we win.
	That'll be our first move.
	No, but what I expect with these unitary councils will be that obviously you'll get massive central hubs looking after administering areas of...
	Do you think that'll be lower local taxes or higher local taxes?
	Oh, much higher, because what I expect is that instead of having, you know, accountable local civil servants, they'll just be stuffed full of their own Labour Blairites who are going to make whatever decision...
	When I won the election in North West Leicestershire, against all the odds, and got my...
	Friends in as the council.
	Always Labour.
	We put through the longest council tax freeze in UK history.
	15 years we never raised the council tax.
	How about putting that back?
	Good man.
	15 years.
	We got a breakdown from the Swindon Council recently about what's your council tax being spent on?
	80% of it is redistributive.
	80%.
	So it's basically giving out free stuff to people.
	Buying votes.
	Fork barrel politics.
	80%.
	I covered the one that came through a few years ago when I was still living here.
	I don't live here anymore, thank God.
	And it was, I think at the time...
	No one lives here.
	They're existing.
	I suppose so.
	What is living if you're in Swindon?
	But it was 80% of it was going to the health and social care, which was millions and millions and millions of pounds, like tens of millions of pounds, for I think it was something less than a thousand people.
	Which just sounded like a racketeer.
	We're taking far too many children into care of their parents.
	I mean, in the country now, the people who are classed as poor, they're not really scared of the police.
	They are a bit, but they're more scared of social services because social services take your children away.
	Yeah.
	And that's a huge cost.
	There's far too much of that.
	And obviously local councils have got the burden of looking after the elderly as well.
	And since the COVID jab rolled out, we've got a lot more people on long-term sick as well who can't work.
	But speaking of things that aren't a huge cost...
	You should buy Islander, which is available on the website right now for $14.99.
	And it's only available for the next week.
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	And you can get that for the low, low price of $20.99.
	And again, for the Redditors in the audience, we go all the way up to 5XL now.
	So there you go.
	So the speech that was given was an hour long, and it was very dull and very boring, as you would expect, as these things are basically designed to be.
	It's almost as if he didn't want anyone to listen to the detail.
	Well, that's always the case.
	So the big announcement that came from the public sector reform, there were a few things that he mentioned in it he wanted to do things that sound like they could be good, to be fair, which was the cutting away of certain business regulations by 25%.
	25%.
	I don't know how exactly you figure out how much of the regulations equals 25%, but he was saying he wanted to do things for good local businesses, but the big one that came from this was...
	And he'll pick the winners, will he?
	He's going to pick the good local businesses?
	Well, obviously.
	Or maybe the Unitary Councils will.
	The big thing that came from this was his announcement that he was going to abolish NHS England, which on the government website has been now called the largest quango in the world.
	Now, it's interesting to me that when you are a Blairite heading a Blairite state, who all agree with you, how things that were impossible under our previous government, under the Conservatives, can just be done like that.
	Can you imagine if the Conservatives, as Liz Truss was trying to do and she wanted to cut away parts of the state, had tried to do something as significant as this, when the actual reforms that were taken in 2012 under the Tories are what set up the NHS England in the first place?
	Could you ever imagine the last Tory administration trying to get, removing the old-age pensioners winter fuel allowance through Parliament?
	It could never have happened.
	Of course not, but Keir Starmer has just kind of got a bit of a free reign to do whatever he wants.
	The institutions know the direction they're meant to be moving in.
	Which certainly shows...
	The anointed guy.
	Certainly shows where the actual power centre of British politics is.
	It's whoever's...
	Got Tony Blair's back.
	But some of the other stuff that was going on with this was that in a brief before the speech, but one that wasn't given in the speech, was that he wants a target for 1 in 10 civil servants to be working in a digital or data role by 2030, and 2,000 new digital specialist apprentices by the same date.
	And in the speech itself, he gave a new recommitment to further using AI. Is that to monitor all the extra data they're collecting on us all the time?
	Data's only any good if you've got all people monitoring it and AI. It's a greater digital hub for them to collect all of our information.
	Obviously, Tony Blair being behind a lot of this, he wanted the sort of digital passports.
	He wants the large digital infrastructure, which on a certain level for most people, I'm sure, will make many things more convenient.
	Tony Blair tried to bring in physical ID cards when he was in government.
	He's never let it go.
	He's never let it go.
	At least he's been consistent in many areas.
	He's been consistently evil in many areas.
	And also, doesn't he look now in his face?
	It reminded me of a line from the Wilfred Owen poem, the war poem.
	A face like a devil sick of sin.
	See, I'm always given to think of Gollum searching for the One Ring.
	You know, and it turns him into this hollow...
	Oh, the longer he holds onto the ring of power, the more it corrupts him.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And so that's how I felt about Tony Blair.
	But clearly the intention is to create a digital center hub for basically all of your government documents, all of your government records on one single app or maybe one or two apps on your phone that the government can use to track everything for you.
	And again, for many people...
	This will be convenient.
	Yeah, this will just be convenient.
	But when you're talking about a government like a Prime Minister like Keir Starmer, the actions that he's already taken, I would be very, very hesitant to be able to give over all of my information, access to all of these private records.
	in one thing, especially when, if we look back to COVID and the lockdowns, when they were trying to talk about things like lockdown vaccine passports and such, you're handing over an immense amount of power that the government does not yet Already have.
	They've already got an immense amount of power over you, but they want more power to be able to continually track you, lock you down, censor you for things.
	There's a great saying, I think, from which we need to slightly amend from America that you'll always be asked to give up your freedoms for security or convenience.
	And if you're willing to give up your freedoms for security, you will end up with neither.
	Freedom nor security.
	And that's where we're heading very, very fast.
	And also, what an opportunity for the Chinese or the North Koreans or anyone else to hack that information.
	It's assuming we don't just outsource it to them anyway.
	We nearly sold the infrastructure of the...
	It'll probably be done in India anyway, through Infosys, won't it?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But we nearly sold the communication infrastructure to China.
	So what are we doing?
	Well, also, we've sold the Royal Mail to the Czech Republic, haven't we?
	Yeah, there's nothing.
	Well, I mean, we can't fall out with them now, can we?
	They'll be opening our mail!
	Another country we can't fall out with.
	Yeah, I know.
	So to carry on with a little bit of this, again, to show just how easy it is for Keir Starmer, with his backing, to just...
	Do this.
	They mention in this independent article that in a surprise move, the leader of the party which founded the NHS announced he would abolish the independent Quango.
	It was a surprise move that he announced it.
	And in a statement that they gave to the independent, they basically said...
	They had no idea.
	Union bosses hit out of the way the PM announced the job losses with NHS England sources telling the Independent they were given no notice and that there were gasps in the office when the news broke.
	So presumably they just heard, oh by the way, you're probably going to be fired.
	Can you imagine any private sector employer treating their employees like that and where Keir Starmer and his Labour Party?
	It is, again, the rank hypocrisy, isn't it?
	Sort of when they were against zero-hours contracts and it turned out that most of them were in Labour head office, weren't they?
	The people on zero-hours contracts.
	Yeah, they were.
	You remember?
	Yeah, I do.
	Rules for thee but not for me come to mind.
	Funnily enough, the former Tory health minister, James Bethel, tweeted out...
	I wish we'd had the guts to do this.
	You mean Lord Bethel?
	Yeah, Lord Bethel.
	Well, why didn't you?
	Yeah.
	If you wanted to do this...
	Fourteen years.
	Well, yeah, but aren't we all seeing now a lot of former so-called Conservative advisors?
	They're all...
	The policy is the same as under the Conservatives.
	They're moving straight back into...
	Starmer's government as advisers in exactly the same position.
	Whether it was advising Theresa May on her Brexit deal.
	It's a continuation of the same agenda, just with a different mask over it.
	Coming back to that Defence and Securities Union, was it Powell, who was under the Conservatives, adviser, civil servant, refused to come to the Defence Select Committee and answer questions.
	He said, I'm not coming.
	The civil servant just refuses to come.
	Who do you think you are?
	Do you think you're running the country?
	Well, they do think that.
	They do think that.
	Well, the MPs are clearly misguided if they think they're running the country because the civil servants are running it.
	They are.
	And even when it comes to things like the New Britain plans with the unitary authorities, I believe it was the Tories who began to make changes and restructure the local council layout, the way that they were structured.
	2022 or 2023. I forget exactly which year it was, but they shut down a load of local councils and reformatted it so that there were larger authorities that were more centralized as well.
	So you are right.
	It's absolutely the same agenda throughout these governments.
	The thing is, you can see that this is just the system retrenching itself and creating...
	A more effective version of itself?
	It's bureaucratic managerialism where they're tinkering with the numbers and the levers to see how efficient they can be.
	But ultimately it's going to the same goal.
	Hadn't Starmer's Labour government, they've been introducing a new quango a week?
	I think there have been 20 since they came into office.
	Nearly one a week.
	I mean, these are NGO... Quangos, quasi-autonomous, non-government, they're there, whatever election results are, and he's doing exactly what Blair did in embedding in the system things that can never be changed.
	And they're going to go on with the budget, taking powers away from an elected parliament, which has little enough power already.
	And this is the point that Liz trusted.
	It won't matter what happens at the next general election because the direction of travel has been set.
	Oh-oh!
	Any government that came in would have to do something just absolutely, insanely radical.
	I seem to remember that was Francis Moore, the bonfire of the Quangos.
	Yes.
	Remember that?
	What happened?
	It was more of a damp squib in the end, wasn't it?
	No, no.
	It wasn't even a barbecue.
	I think that some senior civil servants would have sat down, look, if you do this, this is going to happen, this is going to happen, we're going to do all of these things, and basically it will be the end of your career.
	And you'll see some bad things about you in the paper.
	Exactly.
	Your reputation will be trashed, and so you're just not going to do it.
	And they sit there and go, you know what, I'm probably not going to do it.
	And that's it.
	Well, I was told something very interesting by a former special branch officer I was doing some work with on the tracking down the child trafficking into the UK. And he said, you know the bodyguards that the royals and the senior politicians get?
	He said, they're not there just to protect them.
	They're there to spy on them.
	He said that every week...
	You're on that duty.
	You have to do a handwritten report of everywhere your target's been and all the people they've met and any compromat.
	And they're handwritten.
	They never go on computers.
	And they used to go in green files at the end of the week and they're called the confidential greens and they go off to MI5 special branch and that's where the compromat comes on all the...
	And I was thinking about Boris Johnson.
	I mean, you wouldn't have a file.
	You'd have a whole library.
	I can't imagine there's nothing on Boris.
	I mean, by the end of the week, we've got him.
	Unbelievable.
	Sorry, carrying on with this.
	So, yeah, for people watching who might not actually know what NHS England is, again, it is a Quango, the quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation.
	And it was set up in, it says in this article, October 2013. Since then, it and the Department of Health and Social Care have contained many teams of officials who do basically the exact same thing.
	and for example each has a dedicated team covering different areas of care such as GP services, mental health and urgent and emergency care.
	Starmer said in his speech that is it a good idea for the front line of the NHS to get rid of two sets of comm teams, two sets of strategy teams, two sets of policy teams where people are basically doing the same thing.
	Yes it is.
	So it does seem that this was just a big bureaucratic mess.
	I think there's something a bit darker here.
	I I think there's a lot of people in NHS England who've had their fingers in the blood over the COVID response, and I think a lot of them would be very glad to get out of that organisation.
	Well, potentially, because up to 15,300 people are potentially going to be losing their jobs over this.
	And similarly, it just seems that it did cause...
	Well, I mean, they are blaming the wait times.
	The waiting lists, the problems with the NHS on the entrenched bureaucracy that existed within NHS England and bringing all of that back under direct control of the Department of Health and Social Care.
	I personally have a much more simple explanation for things like waiting lists, problems if you're going to A&E and other problems with the NHS, which is just simply there are too many people in this country.
	Yeah.
	But they don't want to address that, so instead they're going to lay it all on this and abolish this so they can further centralise again.
	Not that I necessarily thought that some arm's length at Quango was a fantastic idea in the first place, because I imagine it too got filled with Blairites almost immediately.
	What kind of person becomes a civil servant?
	What kind of person joins a Quango?
	It's always the same kind of person.
	You would have to pay...
	If you wanted someone actually good in these things, you would have to pay them a lot of money, and you would have to give them a level of freedom, intellectual freedom at the very least, and moral freedom.
	It's going to dissuade them from ever joining these things.
	You're not going to get many radical thinkers bringing revolutionary change to...
	But in business, you're expected to improve your efficiency by 5% a year, or else you're dead.
	You can't do what you did last year, and I think you're going to make the same money next year because things have changed.
	Exactly.
	There is accountability.
	There is a bottom line that you have to be held accountable to in business.
	Whereas in government, there's nothing.
	So what kind of people does it attract?
	I mean, the bureaucracy's ultimate goal always ends up being just ensuring the survival of the bureaucracy.
	Yes.
	And the civil servants always did that, that their first duty was to maintain themselves, because you could have a radical government in for a while who might say, we want to reduce the size of the civil, and they would resist that on the basis, well, the next government might want us to be bigger, in which case we've got to be able to have that capacity, so we've got to resist.
	But, I mean, I've had whistleblowers in the civil service come to me, which in various government departments, and he said that...
	When a policy comes down from the Cabinet Secretary, from the Government to the Cabinet Secretary, down to the Department of Civil Servants, there were what they called resistance meetings of how they were going to oppose it, and that was at every single layer of the civil service.
	He said, the Ministers didn't know about any of these, and he went to some of these resistance meetings, and it was basically how the civil servants were going to block and delay.
	That policy.
	It's got a will of its own.
	That's the old saying, isn't it?
	It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always get in and they are the government, aren't they?
	They're always there.
	Yeah, that is the problem.
	And the factory cat.
	It's always there.
	Ultimately, though, I do expect that what you're talking about there, which is the resistance of the civil servants to wider changes, is why they're trying to re-centralise it under the Department of Health and Social Care, under West Streeting, anyway.
	Because, of course, Whether or not they are bureaucracy that does get in the way and make things more inefficient, they also are presumably highly lazy and don't want things to change.
	So getting them out of the way makes it easier to implement even more of the centralised digital infrastructure.
	I'm all for governments around the world should share best practice, and I think best practice is what Elon Musk is doing, a department of government efficiency.
	Who could possibly be against that?
	But we're not going to do it in this country because the absolutely outrageous spending waste and corruption would be far greater in this country than we're seeing in America.
	And it's almost unbelievable in America, isn't it?
	Some of the things that the money was going on.
	Oh yes, absolutely.
	It's going to be ten times worse here.
	Yes.
	But again, ten times worse.
	And they're not going to do it, are they?
	And that's what would really upset the civil servants.
	And that shows you who's really in control.
	I think, again, what this probably was, was NHS England, by kind of operating as its own authority, a bureaucratic authority, when you want to push through these massive digital infrastructure changes, might have caused a block.
	To it, or at least a speed bump to it.
	So you want to push it through as quickly as possible.
	So you just get rid of it, put it all under the same centralised department under Wes Streeting, and then you start to push through things like this.
	What could possibly go wrong?
	It's all under Wes Streeting.
	I know.
	I know.
	Well, and he's being advised by somebody very interesting.
	So what Tony Blair wants is he wants, similar to the Unitary Authorities, a new network of super primary care centres serving up to 250,000 patients.
	He said last year in a report for the Tony Blair Institute that current primary care networks look after populations of between 30,000 and 50,000, but that NHS England should take steps to increase that figure to 250,000.
	That was coming through years ago.
	So he was already influencing the previous Conservative government because that was on the cards and that was the way it was going years ago.
	That was the direction of travel.
	Perhaps, given that they're named explicitly in this report, perhaps they were pushing back, being lazy, saying, That's a lot of work.
	So they've just gone, fine, we'll abolish you then, and we'll get it straight under us, and we'll push it through ourselves.
	Having been in politics for 15 odd years, I mean, everything to do with...
	NHS reform, it just goes in cycles.
	You get rid of one layer of bureaucracy, you bring in your new one, and then you have a review, and then it fails, and then you go round again.
	And it's all about, well, we're doing something.
	We're doing something.
	Well, this abolishing process could still, it said, take up to about two years, and even then, Keir Starmer has...
	Given no concrete plan, no steps of how this is going to be.
	It'll be very good redundancy packages.
	Oh, I'm sure.
	But there's no step-by-step process been given, no plan given for, OK, how exactly will this improve hospital waiting times, waiting lists for surgeries, all of the things...
	There's no targets or anything.
	We have to achieve this by then.
	Well, by the end of the speech, he was being asked by some of the journalists in the crowd, OK. What processes will this free up that will improve the system?
	And he was just saying, oh, you know, well, we'll get rid of the bureaucracy and then it'll shore up and allow working people more money in their pocket because apparently it's going to save 500 million pounds a year, which is just slightly less than one day's worth of NHS spending anyway.
	And also nowhere near the tax hikes that Rachel Reeves...
	Put upon us in the budget.
	Well, remember, apparently according to Rachel Reeves, the reason we've got no economic growth is Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
	Is that Rachel from accounts, or was it Rachel from complaints?
	I think she flips between the two, wouldn't you say?
	In the interest of time, though, I think we have to move on.
	Oh, yeah, no, that's fine.
	Just to point out as well that the person...
	Only Keir Starmer would move on.
	Yeah, the person who'd been pushing all of this behind the scene was Alan Milburn, the former health secretary under Tony Blair, who was on Tony Blair's side, and he has been advising Wes Streeting on this for a long time.
	And everything that Wes Streeting is doing...
	The UK Obama, is he?
	He's the power behind the throne.
	Yeah, he's the Dark Lord.
	In the sort of online right circles, he's just called the Dark Lord because his fingerprints are on everything.
	He's behind everything.
	As opposed to Mandelson, who's just the Prince of Darkness, wasn't he?
	He is.
	He is, indeed.
	But again, I don't think it's a coincidence that Mandelson is the ambassador to Donald Trump.
	I thought the Americans weren't accepting his credentials.
	They don't, but you know that Blair was like...
	You know that they tried to make Obama the American ambassador in London and we never accepted.
	Really?
	Yes.
	That's why we went so long with no ambassador under Biden.
	Interesting.
	Because we were rejected.
	Binary Surfer says, imagine if we had 650 or even half of that of MPs of Andrew and Rupert's calibre, integrity and honesty until we have more efficient and different set of incentives in play.
	Our politics, well, strap in and get out of the cities.
	And Binary says, Andrew, I'd love to know where you think all of this ends.
	My view is that David Betts, who's a professor who's been talking about civil war in Britain, thinks we're going to arrive at a sort of low-grade Latin American-style civil war faster than it can turn around.
	Yeah, and what I do say to people is that the darker it gets, you've got to remember we're nearer to the end.
	It is going to get darker and worse.
	But we are relying a lot on the Americans to help us out, even if it's only with a tsunami of truth and justice coming across the Atlantic, which would sweep away self-serving politicians that we've got in this country currently.
	Take advantage of your First Amendment.
	There'd only be Rupert left.
	And Eofwith says, Hubby is a doctor in Australia.
	Luckily, he is married to a criminologist.
	I had to do law and psychology.
	He trained in the 90s for criminology was cool.
	Medicare in Australia.
	Admins aren't doctors.
	Yeah, that's another point is, The admins are not doctors, are they?
	Anyway, let's move on.
	So, do you remember a little while ago when we were told, actually, the RAF doesn't need useless white male pilots because we have impossible to hit diversity targets?
	And good God, do we need those diversity targets?
	So this was only in June 2023, so it's not like this was ancient history.
	And things have changed in the world since then.
	But this is a fascinating thing that was just like, okay, well, can you give me an example of institutional bias against straight white men?
	Yes, from the RAF. One of the three branches.
	The new sentencing guidelines are pretty damning, aren't they?
	They are, but this is one of those ones where it's...
	A remarkable thing.
	So the selection boards were complaining in these leaked emails and documents that they just couldn't get non-white people.
	I passed that at Biggin Hill when I was 16. Oh, really?
	It's called Test in Advance.
	It was for aircrew.
	They say a number of selection boards to place recruits for courses were also cancelled if they did not include women or ethnic minorities, according to these messages.
	So this is outright racial discrimination and gender discrimination, which theoretically is illegal in this country.
	Positive discrimination is still discrimination.
	You're not allowed to discriminate on protected characteristics.
	Technically, this is a crime, but of course, this is never going to be prosecuted for anything.
	And the Air Force had to pay out £5,000 each.
	Wow.
	31 different straight white men.
	It hasn't been possible than that.
	Yeah, it does.
	But at least they got something, because it doesn't really matter the amount, to be honest.
	The fact that they got paid £5,000 is proof you were in the wrong and you had to pay compensation.
	So this is categorically, you have admitted through the payment of this compensation, you were wrong, even if no one will actually be charged or anything for this.
	And the...
	The Chief Air Marshal, Weekson, I don't know who he is, well, the Air Chief Marshal, actually, said that these were well-intentioned efforts to improve diversity, and they didn't discriminate against white men.
	Illegal.
	Yeah, so why are you paying out £5,000 for each one of them if...
	May have hurt their feelings.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So you're admitting it, right?
	And a spokesperson said, well, the selection standards were not and have not been altered and there was no compromise of entry standards and no impact on frontline or operational effectiveness.
	Oh, really?
	But quite an effect on morale.
	Yes.
	Well, no, no, no, no.
	They say no.
	There's no impact.
	No, no, no.
	There's no impact.
	We're absolutely certain.
	No impact on operational effectiveness.
	And we're going to see the...
	So how's the recruitment going then?
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's not going great.
	So for this, no one was punished.
	No one was punished.
	So the Air Force just had to pay out £155,000 because they were being...
	Racist.
	So they were just actively discriminating.
	They were sorry they got caught.
	Yeah, that's what they were sorry about.
	They got caught.
	The service apologised, blamed incorrect legal advice, and said everyone had been acting with the best of intent and no disciplinary action was recommended.
	So no one was punished.
	No accountability.
	No one gets canned for this.
	No one's career is harmed over this.
	No one loses their pension over this.
	No one loses anything.
	This gets me...
	Just overtly discriminatory against straight white men, and nothing happens other than the taxpayer has to pay 150 grand.
	This is how this country is run.
	But the collateral damage is people are getting the message.
	Well, yeah.
	Yeah, no, that is.
	So, Sky actually did a really good job on this, which is remarkable, and they went and looked up, this was a period of time afterwards, so they looked up what happened to these people, and so...
	Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, retired.
	Just no problem at the end of his tenure.
	Air Vice Marshal Maria Byford, retired.
	So she's got her salary up until the point of retirement, £179,000 a year.
	Air commander Joe Lincoln just moved to a new post.
	And group captain William Dole, who was then the head of recruitment, so you would think that this would be his particular decision on who to hire and who not to, was promoted.
	Good job.
	Yeah, bravo.
	Brilliant job.
	Group captain William Dole.
	And so...
	Okay, well, you know, it's just being racist to the straight white men who we expect to defend the country.
	They're surely signing up in their droves to defend the country now that things are going south with Russia, aren't they?
	Yeah.
	No!
	Oh, what a shock!
	The RAF are...
	What would we be fighting for?
	I mean, what would we be defending?
	Freedom of speech?
	You know, the rule of law?
	Equality?
	The country that belonged to your ancestors?
	Even though we're giving that away to foreigners as well?
	I mean, what are we fighting for?
	And who would want us?
	Who wants to invade us with all our problems?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Russia invades, takes over, it's like...
	You can have it back.
	Thanks.
	No thanks.
	I was just going to say, maybe if we said we were going to go and fight and defend for Palestine, then maybe we'd get a more diverse roster signing up.
	You know what they would have done?
	They absolutely wouldn't.
	But they wouldn't stop over there and fight for their own country, would they?
	No.
	Anyway, so the Telegraph here reports that the RAF is now facing a pilot shortage after a diversity hiring scheme backfired.
	An official document revealed that the Royal Air Force's need for a higher number of pilots in training.
	And they're so short-staffed that candidates who were previously rejected are being urged to reapply.
	Really, candidates that know you're white, we're not having you.
	Actually, oh, white men, please come back.
	Please reapply, because actually we need to go fight and die for...
	You know, the multi-culti Britain.
	It reminds me of the poem, Thin Red Line of Heroes.
	You'd be acquainted with that.
	I know of it, but it's been a long time.
	About how no one valued them as soldiers.
	You know, I went into a public house to buy a pint of beer.
	The landlady got up and said, we serve no redcoats here.
	But it's step forward, Mr Atkins, when the band begins to play.
	And the music, the band's warming up.
	And no one's in the crowd.
	We may have racially discriminated against you, but please reapply.
	We really need you now.
	Because you may have to die for your country.
	Exactly.
	We need you to die for the institutions.
	And again, was anyone punished?
	No.
	They were all promoted.
	They were retired.
	They got everything they wanted.
	Of course, what we have got in the military now is all the Blairite.
	They're the people at the top now.
	And also, what I need to share with you, Carl and Harry, is that you think that the MOD is run by the military.
	Under Blair, it's run by civil servants.
	It's not a military organisation anymore.
	That's why you've got things like this going on.
	Because the MOD is run by civil servants.
	My dad was a sergeant at the RAF when he retired from the forces.
	Wellington ran the British Army very successfully with 25 non-military.
	The whole story of the British Empire is one of minimal administration as well.
	It's so good.
	Anyway.
	The point being on this is that they're begging for you to reapply.
	Do you feel like it?
	The Air Force is also short-staffed in various other ways as well.
	And it's not just the Air Force.
	They're trying to parachute people in.
	It's not just the Air Force.
	It's the Army as well.
	Lord Hammond has come out and pointed out that, look, young people are totally unprepared to fight a war for Britain.
	Why would they want to?
	Why would they want to defend the state of this country?
	I don't know whether you've noticed, but this country is falling apart.
	Our town centres are completely overrun by strangers who have just been allowed to come here, and we're paying for the privilege of them being here.
	Who then bring more people in under skilled worker visa schemes for being kebab shop chefs.
	A third of the people who are allowed to come here are just defendants.
	Let me just fire one in there.
	Why do we need to bring in?
	Why would the establishment...
	It's clearly...
	Bring in all these men of fighting age, between the age of...
	And people are worried that they're going to do something.
	Well, what if the plan has been for a very long time that a large number of our indigenous men of 18 to 40 will be heading to the Eastern Front and won't be coming back?
	What do you need in your country?
	I don't even dare speculate on it.
	But honestly, it's a...
	The war's been...
	The war...
	Two years ago, the civil servants knew the war was coming and morale went down.
	They knew the war was coming.
	The plan was for the war with Russia.
	Honestly, though, it's too grim for me to ponder.
	I don't want to think about it.
	But the point being, of course, is that they know that there's no reason that a young person would want to fight for Britain.
	In fact, many of them are thinking, how can I get out of Britain?
	Where can I go?
	And lots of people are going to Australia because this country is going downhill and everyone knows it because everything we have is just being given away.
	It's just been given away.
	It's been taxed away.
	It's been given away to foreigners.
	And you are being treated like a cash cow that will be discriminated against as a second-class citizen, as people were in the RAF. And so Lord Hammond says, There's no point spending lots of money on defence equipment if you haven't got any men to press the buttons.
	And we are unable to recruit even a rather paltry-scale army that we currently have.
	72,000 men.
	We're always about 8,000 under recruitment.
	Because what's the incentive?
	What benefit?
	What bonus?
	What privilege will you be given in society?
	If you fight for it.
	No, you're a straight white man.
	You're at the bottom of the hierarchy in this country.
	You were treated with just open contempt by the institutions.
	Why would you bother?
	Why would you bother?
	It's Tommy this and Tommy that and Tommy go away but a special train for Atkins when the band begins to play.
	You know what?
	I wish you were going to bring that up because I would have re-read it.
	Yes.
	I mean, I was literally in school.
	It's all there.
	It's all there.
	They always treated the soldier badly but it was a thin red line of heroes when the band begins to play.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Well, they're a bit more educated now and they know what's going on.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	So, Lord Hammond here says, and this is just fascinating, right?
	We're not geared towards this, of course, and if you stop random men in their 20s and 30s and ask them how ready they are to drop their pens and computers and head off to the recruiting station, I think we'll get a pretty clear answer.
	There is a major societal shift going to be required.
	Oh, is it required?
	It's not just about money, it's about the organisation, the economy and the orientation of society.
	We'll follow Lord Hammond, he'll be out there, surely.
	It's too late for that.
	Right behind us, like 30 miles behind us.
	But why is it that society is so geared against the native young man and in favour of every kind of foreign or minority interest?
	They've been denigrating him and calling him far-right.
	Exactly.
	Scum.
	He's probably in jail right now because he posted something on Facebook because he didn't like children being stabbed.
	Yes.
	Like, I'm sorry.
	Something he would have stood up for.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Against children being stabbed.
	Yes.
	I'm having to laugh.
	It's just like, this is where we are.
	And so it really does annoy me.
	And they'll say, where are all the real men?
	Yeah.
	Why aren't they staying to our defence?
	Why do you deserve it?
	An element of toxic masculinity might be needed to defend the country.
	So one colonel was interviewed by the Mirror who was talking of conscription.
	It's like, well, are we going to have conscription?
	It's like, no, you're going to have a civil war if you think you're going to conscript.
	I think there'll be an awful lot of conscientious objectors this time.
	Most people I know would rather go to prison than die.
	I did say there's probably a ditch in the Donbass with your name on it.
	I would definitely advise anyone to be a conscientious objector to any war that this state wished to fight because look at what you'll be protecting.
	I did point out in the summer that we were heading...
	Almost certainly for a war.
	And that Rishi Sunak had let it be known to the generals in the MOD that he didn't want to be a wartime prime minister.
	And clearly that Starmer was up for it.
	And he does like his khaki, doesn't he?
	He does.
	He's a lawyer.
	Saw him in the Ukraine outfit.
	I nearly mistook him for Zelensky at once.
	You can see a bit of that, can't you?
	He's very much a hawk, isn't he?
	With what's going on in Ukraine.
	You just can't believe the politics that's going on and the transition.
	When you've got a Labour government now bringing in the other night that they're going to cut benefits for the severely disabled.
	As if giving them less money is going to make them able to work.
	There's so much wrong with this country.
	Everything's inverted, isn't it?
	There's so much wrong with this country.
	Anyway, so basically, if you're a young man in this country, I don't recommend you sign up.
	And I won't let my son sign up when they're old enough.
	So, you know, things would have to be very dramatically different to want to defend the current government of this country.
	Anyway, let's...
	I think we do have enemies, but I'm not convinced it's the people the government.
	government pointing us at who are the real enemies who perpetrate evil things against us no russia never called me a racist no uh right well we'll we'll skip the video comments today and we'll go So, lots of people are saying that their Islander copy has arrived already, which is superb.
	Glad to hear it.
	Thomas says, my Islander 3 arrived last night, and upon opening, my wife became immediately pregnant.
	Which is great.
	That's not how it works, as I remember.
	Well, this is a very good magazine.
	Well, there's a further twist in this tale, actually.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, his wife, he had had the snip five years ago.
	You might want a paternity test there, brother.
	Yeah, Ron says, great to see Andrew back on the show.
	And Ron wants to know that if Rupert Lowe and Ben Habib did start a party, would you join it?
	I'd be very interested in being part of a solution.
	I mean, we can all talk about the problems we've got in this country, and they are myriad, but we now need to start working on solutions.
	And, yeah, I'd be proud to stand with people like Rupert Lowe and Ben Habib and Howard Cox.
	Four years is a long time in politics.
	Yeah, it is.
	I mean, a week's a long time.
	It is.
	Thomas says, Andrew Bridgen is a scholar and a patriot.
	God bless you.
	Hector says, "Kyle, congratulations on your appointment "to the Great British Pack Advisory Board.
	I'll do whatever they ask me to do, really.
	I'll give any advice that I can give.
	The first time I've caught the show live in a while, and by God, I was not disappointed.
	Good to see you guys further laying the boots into Farage after the revelation that he is the little man that he talks about in his maiden parliamentary speech.
	I would say I don't care if Rupert Lowe wins, I just need Isabel Oakeshott to lose, but I also quite like Rupert to win as well.
	Omar says, And that really does, that is how it reads, isn't it?
	And if Nigel's to be removed, in the old Macbeth, which is always best for politics, tis to be done, tis best done quickly.
	Paul says, make Jeremy Clarkson leader of reform.
	Jeremy Clarkson, he was at the farmer's process.
	He doesn't look very well.
	He's had a heart attack.
	Oh, has he?
	Yes.
	I didn't even know that.
	He had a heart attack.
	Right, right.
	I think he was talking about it right before he went.
	He looked very great.
	I hope he's getting better.
	Yeah, I hope he's all right.
	He didn't look well.
	No, I got to ask him one question.
	I was like, are you going to go to politics?
	He was like, no.
	I don't think he wants to.
	Economic Zone 17 says, I don't want supposed right-wing parties to surrender to Islam and make questionable allegations of bullying to the police.
	I'm just a purist, I guess.
	So this is interesting.
	You know, Nigel Farage said, well, if we don't embrace Islam, alienate the Islamic vote, we're finished by 2050. I mean, that is basically saying the nations, we're done.
	Not only do I not agree with that, but he's been saying this since 2017. I actually looked into this.
	Basically what he's talking about...
	Sounds like a cheese-eating surrender monkey to me.
	It sounds like it's always rolled over.
	Yeah.
	And if the kind of demographic change that he's talking about by 2050 is complete by that time and isn't stopped, then the country will just erupt into sectarian interests anyway.
	The Americans were saying we're going to be the first Islamic nuclear power, didn't they?
	Yeah, that was Vance, which is ironic considering...
	Because...
	Pakistan have already...
	Yeah, I was going to say, Pakistan already have...
	The Americans, I mean, they don't really know where anywhere is, do they?
	No, no, they don't.
	But also, the thing is, though, the Islamic population of Britain is massively overstated.
	Our Islamic population at the last census was 6.5%.
	Well, the legally known.
	The legally known Islamic population.
	But the...
	Like, it's not...
	600,000 illegals in London.
	Yeah, I know.
	And I'm not bothered whether they're...
	What religion they are?
	They're illegals, aren't they?
	Sure, sure, sure.
	And they should all go.
	But it is overstated and can be reversed.
	It's not like...
	If there's a will.
	Yeah, if there's a will, it absolutely can.
	And it's just Nigel Farage, for some reason, has no will to do it.
	It's like, OK, well, we're just going to let...
	We're looking at probably going into a Third World War with Russia over Ukraine's borders.
	We can't defend our own borders, can we?
	No.
	And this, again...
	It's not like this is in any way controversial with the actual electorate either.
	You'd have the public backing overwhelmingly.
	Stop the immigration.
	It's just easy.
	I think somebody had said to me, and I think they were right, that the first major politician to come out and say deportation is the answer, they win the next general election.
	I agree.
	I said it last June, but I didn't win my general election, but that's another story.
	That's a different story.
	But the thing is, we've got a great example in Trump and build the wall.
	That was a highly controversial statement, but it reflected the majority opinion of the American public.
	Beautiful wall.
	Yeah.
	Mexico's going to pay for it.
	What a wonderful phrase.
	It's the same here, because all you need to do is polarise the issue.
	So you turn it into a yes or no.
	Are we going to deport the illegals or not?
	Or we're going to surrender.
	Or we're going to surrender.
	And so, you will just forcefully be like, okay, I'm on that side, even if I don't like that guy or this thing, I've still got to come down to this side because this is where my heart lies.
	Roman Observer says, if Farage is such a narcissist who only cares about being applauded by the media and the establishment, why is he always working with minor parties pushing populist topics on the surface instead of just joining the Tories and enjoying a comfy seat with them?
	Yeah, Nigel Farage could be leader of the Tories by this point.
	Just join with them.
	What's his problem?
	He's got a former...
	Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party in his MPs, nearly Anderson.
	The inside track.
	And what's happening on the ground, certainly in the Midlands, with rather reform, they're hoofing out all the patriots, all the people of principle who fought for them at the last general election, and they're bringing in defectors from the Conservative Party, including former Conservative MPs who never...
	Done anything remotely in line with what reforms principles are.
	Notice how...
	And former Conservative area chairmen are now coming in.
	Notice how he's brought in Tim Montgomery, who describes himself as a globalist liberal, who was founder of Conservative Home.
	Who's the...
	Who's the Remainer?
	The hardcore Remainer?
	Oh, Charlie Mullins.
	That's it.
	I mean, I mean...
	Why would you want him?
	No jab, no job Mullins?
	Yeah.
	I mean, yeah.
	Why would you want him?
	Like, Nigel Farage has kept every right-winger in this country out of reform, and yet here's the no jab, no job Remainer comes in.
	Why that guy?
	Like, what are you getting from him?
	I don't know.
	I mean, diversity.
	It's a DEI appointment, isn't it?
	We've got to have our diversity quotient of left-wing lunatics.
	It's all I can only assume.
	Why are you getting these people, Nigel?
	There are loads of really great, strong right-wing voices in this country, and Nigel has blanked every single one of them.
	And again, for the point that Roman Observer's making here, where he says he's pushing populist topics...
	On the surface.
	I think on the surface is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
	Because the only real populist topic that he's ever pushed through on has been his Euroscepticism and Brexit.
	Beyond that, the anti-immigration...
	You know what?
	Sorry, let me...
	And you remember on polling day, polling night, before a vote had been counted, Nigel conceded that we'd lost the referendum.
	Yes, he did.
	Yeah, he did.
	I did not remember that.
	You don't remember that?
	Well, I do, because I was at my count.
	I was running leave for the East Midlands, and as soon as I saw the turnout at 79% in North West Leicestershire, and I saw it was over 60% leave, I got in the car, because I knew we'd won nationally in the East Midlands.
	It was 59% for the East Midlands, 61% in North West Leicestershire.
	I was heading down, and then I heard on the radio, and Nigel's just conceded that Leave have lost.
	Not where I was.
	In his defence on that one, I was as surprised as anyone as well.
	I told Boris Johnson.
	I was covering it live.
	The day before the referendum, they sent Boris Johnson up to the East Midlands to me.
	In North West Leicestershire, we went to Ashby Dillazoo.
	She was all there on the cameras.
	You can film it.
	Boris and I were mic'd up.
	We were also making a documentary called Brexit, a very British coup or something.
	Well, Brexit means Brexit.
	Yeah.
	And we got the radio mics on.
	We were in the Royal Hotel Ashby-de-la-Zouche car park, 60 metres from the cameras, thought we were OK, and I broke it to Boris that we were definitely...
	Leave, we're definitely going to win tomorrow at the referendum.
	Yeah.
	And his response was shocking.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	It'll be close, but we're not going to win.
	So, Boris.
	I guarantee you're going to win tomorrow.
	That wasn't the plan.
	Boris was not a leaver.
	No, no, I agree.
	I agree.
	I don't think he was at all.
	But, no, no, I actually looked into the Nigel on immigration thing, right?
	Yeah.
	So when he came back, because I was looking into Nigel coming back to stand at Clacton, he came out and the first speech he gave was, the next election is going to be an immigration referendum.
	I'm going to make it a referendum on immigration.
	So he's like, you know, we're going to stop immigration.
	Now we know which side he's going to be on.
	Exactly.
	Fooled you again!
	Fooled you again!
	Immigration rhetoric from Nigel always just seems to be, okay, can I get votes with this?
	And if I can't get votes with it, then I'm just going to back away from it.
	That is precisely right.
	I think you're exactly right.
	Now we know which side he'll be on.
	And pointing out that it was going to be a referendum on immigration...
	Nigel's got a sort of reversible...
	I can totally see why you wouldn't have thought that was his position, because he's basically reversed it completely.
	So it's just changeable knowledge, isn't it?
	Your flexible friend.
	Yeah.
	The Flexist says, Farage broke the reform poles out of the 10-point ceiling.
	He has shown time and time again he can deliver.
	You need to back him or die on your unelectable hill.
	You've already demonstrated that when Nigel came in, it was already...
	17%.
	So, you know, I... I'm not trying to be rude on you.
	Except that was 70% under Richard Tice.
	Yeah, I know.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Mr. Charisma.
	Yeah, exactly.
	God, if he...
	Okay, and this, like, absolutism of you need to back him.
	You need to back him.
	Okay.
	There's no alternative.
	Yeah, say he does win in 2029. Okay.
	Now do I trust after everything Nigel has done for him to keep any of his promises when he's come out and made public statements saying that I'm not going to do any...
	He's been a remarkably honest politician saying, all of that stuff I told you I was going to do, I was actually lying.
	I think, in fact, I've been thinking about this.
	Manifesto pledges are so discredited with the public.
	They count for nothing, do they?
	I mean, I remember someone took Brown to court in 2005 over breaking his manifesto.
	And a judge ruled that manifesto commitments should not be regarded as legitimate expectation.
	That's legal gobbledygook saying you can't put your hat on any of it, right?
	I think I'd like to be part of a political party that made a legal contract.
	No more manifesto.
	Legal contract.
	We want to have a legal contract with the public and you can legally take us if we don't deliver.
	I mean, reform branded theirs as a contract.
	Here's our contract to you, the British people.
	And already Nigel's just walked back all the immigration stuff.
	Breach of contract.
	The idea that it's Nigel or nobody, well, I don't agree.
	I think it's only Nigel because he stabbed everyone.
	That's what Nigel's told you.
	Exactly, that's what Nigel says.
	And it's not that I'm trying to be...
	That's what he said to Rupert, didn't he?
	You wouldn't have had any votes except for me.
	If it wasn't for me, you would have had no votes.
	That's not true.
	Again, it's so insufferable.
	You know, I'm not trying to be confrontational.
	All he lacks is confidence.
	Yeah.
	Fuzzy Pirate says, I'm convinced Nigel Farage actually caused damage to Reform by joining.
	There are a large number of people who may have voted Remain, but they can't vote Labour or Conservative and can't bring themselves to a vote for Reform because of Nigel.
	Yeah, I think that Nigel actually represents a kind of hard cap on Reform's potential vote.
	So, you know, swings and roundabouts both sides.
	That's why he would need a team around him who bought their own little voter bases to broaden it, and he's not willing to do that.
	He's keeping the grass mown very, very short.
	That's not a good leader.
	He literally can't build a coalition.
	Not a confident leader.
	Exactly, because he's constantly leading from the back.
	If he was leading from the front, he'd be very confident everyone would follow him.
	But he's constantly watching everyone else.
	Oh, he's getting a bit ahead, right, off with him.
	Oh, he's getting a bit ahead, off with him.
	It's like, no, that's not how this works, Nige.
	That's how an evil tyranny works.
	Actually.
	We've had quite enough of that for one live time.
	Yeah, exactly.
	We've had quite enough of that.
	Eloise says, people were imported to look after aging boomers and fill NHS spots.
	Then the boomers will go, the state will shrink, but the demography has been changed forever now.
	True.
	I think part of the change of demography will be a...
	To ensure that the state can't shrink, because eventually, if things do become just basically sectarian ethnic enclaves or vying for things, the state needs to be bigger and bigger and bigger just to be able to manage that without it erupting into violence anyway.
	Lord Nerevar says, I'm not dying for a Labour government.
	I will happily accept prison for dodging the draft.
	Yeah, I know, same here.
	I would just, come on then, just lock me up.
	I don't care, I'm not going.
	You know, if it was something I believed in, fine, I would, but not this country.
	And in fact, Louise says, I feel so bad for everyone when they go on about how dire Swindon is.
	Yes, it's true.
	Yeah, like, okay, so the centre of Swindon is the kind of colonised bit of Swindon, where all of the foreigners got dumped.
	It's terrible.
	It never used to be this bad.
	It used to be nice, I promise you.
	It used to be quite nice.
	You've told me that as recent as 2019, it was okay.
	Carl, you're giving your age away now.
	I know.
	I was around in 2019. Just before the lockdowns, it was still normal and just a normal English town.
	It was not remarkable.
	It was okay, but it's gone really downhill.
	But outside of the town centre, it's still nice, I promise.
	There are decent parts.
	Yes.
	Lydiard Park, for instance, is still very nice.
	It's basically a corona around the town centre.
	I mean, you've got some sort of...
	You know, working class areas.
	So it's a bit curate's egg.
	It's good in parts.
	Yes.
	North Swindon seems alright.
	Yeah, it's lovely.
	And then as soon as you're outside of Swindon in the rest of Wiltshire, it's gorgeous.
	The old town is still nice as well.
	Oh yeah, old town's okay.
	It's literally just the very town centre of Swindon that's just been bombed out with...
	Changing demography.
	And crackheads.
	And crackheads, yeah.
	There are nice parts here.
	Michael says, so while the rest of us have looked at China's social credit system and said, wow, that's frighteningly Orwellian, we shouldn't do this, queer Stalin and his fellow units were like, that sounds awesome.
	Unfortunately, that is the case.
	But right, it is...
	It's 2.30, so we have run out of time.
	So, Andrew, thank you so much for joining us.
	It's been a pleasure.
	It's been a couple of years since I've been on.
	It has been.
	I've missed you.
	Excellent.
	Well, we've got lads hour in half an hour.
	Are you sticking around, or do you have to go?
	You want to desperately...
	I've got to do a podcast at 7 somewhere with...
	Liz Gunn and Christine Anderson.
	Right, OK. We'll work out the details, but we'll be back in half an hour for Lads Hour.
	Andrew may or may not be with us.
	We'll see.
	And we'll see you.

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