The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1343

Jan. 29, 2026 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1343

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Is Reform's Tide Turning? 00:14:30
	Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
	Welcome to the podcast of Load Cities for Thursday, the 29th of January, where we will be debating whether Jesus should have actually kicked the money changes out of the temple.
	No, I'm joking.
	We're just having just before we wound up.
	Camera, I'm joined by Ferras and Josh.
	Lou.
	See what I have to put up with.
	Today we're going to be talking about, is it over for reform already?
	Because it might be.
	We're going to go inside the mind of a lib when they are presented with some facts and logic.
	And then we're going to talk about the upending of Britain and how Labour are actually doing really insanely structural things to the country with zero mandate.
	And we're not paying close enough attention to that.
	But before we begin, if you can get a copy of Islander off the store now, good luck because it is 95% sold and there aren't any left in America.
	So you'd have to go to the worldwide store.
	So don't wait, basically, is what I would advise.
	But all right, let's begin.
	Okay, so the next election is set to be no later than the 15th of August 2029, which is quite a long way away, really.
	Perhaps too far away to make predictions about, you know, results and things.
	But I thought it'd be interesting to look at reform because there's been a significant drop in their polling recently.
	And I wanted to examine some of the reasons with both of you as to why that might be and also whether they can recover from this.
	And my sort of spoiler alert opinion is, you know, it's all up in the air at the minute.
	We don't really know, but there is reason to think that perhaps maybe they've peaked.
	Maybe if Shabana Mahmoud defects to reform, that'll fix it.
	Yes, sure.
	Her digital panopticon would be wonderful.
	That'll be nice.
	So in September of 2025, of course, they were polling around 35%.
	And this is obviously just one poll.
	But there were also others.
	Here's an Ipsos poll, of course, widely touted as one of the more reliable ones, or at least as far as polling goes.
	Here they are at 34%.
	So in September, it seemed like a lot of the polling agencies agreed it's roughly about 30%, or at least the high 20s.
	About a third of the country was going for a fall.
	Exactly.
	And then this happened, whereby they formed this sort of Tory Party Avengers here, where they had the defections of Robert Jenrick, Bravan, Zahawi, Rosindale, and just to really emphasise...
	Just to be clear, there have been 27 MPs or former MPs who have defected from the Conservatives.
	And I was actually going to list a few just for the sake of emphasising this.
	So they've also obviously got Lee Anderson, who used to be a Conservative, Danny Krueger, Nadine Dorries, David Jones, Jonathan Gullis, Andrea Jenkins, Sir Jake Berry, Adam Holloway, and there's also 15 others not including counsellors.
	So obviously they received a bunch of counselors on top of that from the Conservatives too.
	And so that's a quite large contingent of the Conservative Party that has just shifted to reform.
	And you've sort of got this ship of Theseus thing going on where how many Conservatives does it take to reconstruct the Conservative Party?
	It's sort of a reverse version, really, isn't it?
	I mean, the people who...
	I covered this in my chat with Dan the other day.
	There are basically two people in reform who were never part of the Conservative Party.
	One being James McMurdo and the other being the boxer who is the who's a mayor or something somewhere in the north.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	So it's basically two people.
	That's it.
	So this has obviously received a lot of criticism from many people, even people who wanted to vote for reform.
	Because of course, the elephant in the room is the reason reform has taken off is because of the failures of the Conservative Party.
	And it's a similar thing with the Greens as well in the sort of left-hand side of politics.
	They've taken off because of the failures of the Labour Party.
	And so when the politics of today is defined by the failures of the establishment parties, how much of it can really be attributed to the successes of having a really gravitational campaign from, say, the likes of Reform or the Greens.
	A bit insulting to compare them both.
	So, well, I don't know.
	I think they actually fulfill very similar roles, right?
	So what we're witnessing is essentially the Tory right peeling off into the Reform Party and the Greens, what we're witnessing is the Labour left peeling off into them.
	So the Greens have become the sort of Islamo-Communist Party.
	And reform, I mean, they've got people in there that are far to the right of Nigel Farage.
	So, they're not the based party, but you know what I mean?
	It's those people who are still civnads, but are to the right on the Conservative spectrum.
	Yeah, I suppose if I'm to be charitable, although I'm often not feeling that way, I think that you could say that over the past five years, things have shifted at least rhetorically for what that's worth, which isn't a lot because, of course, actions speak a lot louder than words.
	But for the glacial pace of British politics, a step to the right is an unheard of thing.
	So at least that's something.
	But it's such a small tidbit or morsel for us, really.
	Yeah, and a lot has happened in a very short period of time.
	January's been a long month, man.
	So, yeah, you're not wrong to pick up on this.
	Yeah.
	Oh, sorry, for us.
	No, I mean, it's the endless pace of scandals coming from Labour and the complete and utter failure of Kemi.
	But then you have to ask yourself, if bringing in the Conservatives is causing you to tank in the polls, that means that you need to drift a lot more to the right than has already been the case.
	I mean, Nigel must be thinking about how to recover this ground, right?
	Yeah, and it's not unrecoverable because if I'm being charitable, and I don't necessarily believe this, but a potential explanation that isn't too far out is that he didn't want to be too hard in signalling, listen, we're not the Tories, which he should have been doing because they're occupying a void which they've left and the voters feel betrayed.
	So the best rallying cry would be to say, listen, we're not the Tories.
	We're actually going to do what we say and we're going to listen to you.
	And people would love it.
	And they didn't really do that.
	And I feel like that is a tactical failure.
	But if Farage's strategy is that we're going to take in as many Tories as we can and then we start saying that, and then we actually start saying, listen, we're going to pledge to do these really good things, then there's perhaps, you know, he's not coming across as hypocritical.
	Maybe that's what he's thinking, but I don't actually think that's the case.
	There's a couple of things.
	On Zahawi, this guy, in my view, is there to provide Emirati money.
	I think he's the conduit to do that, and so...
	Raj Alba said that in the press conference about him coming across as well.
	Giving him a seat in the Lords in exchange for some funding, given the poor financing of pretty much all parties in Britain, that kind of makes sense.
	He needs a couple of people who are reliable on the media front, who can sit down and do interviews and not say things that create massive openings for The Guardian and for these kinds of left liberals that have become so insane.
	Danny Kruger position.
	Yes.
	So there is some use for some of these people.
	And then hammering at the rest of the Conservatives by saying that, look, those of you who want to survive have to jump ship, kind of accelerates the death of the Conservative Party.
	And the last thing I would say is that come the May election, which is the deadline that he's imposed for anybody who wants to defect.
	There is nobody in the reform camp who can challenge his authority.
	It's slightly like Jenrik can mount a leadership bed.
	And so having these people who have experience and relations with donors does have certain pragmatic justifications.
	Am I fully convinced that he's going to swing right?
	No.
	No.
	I'm as skeptical as you are.
	But since you're not in a charitable mood, it falls on me to play that part.
	The problem with all of this, though, is that Farage has got his face firmly pointed towards the Conservative Party.
	I mean, literally saying, look, you've got like May the 5th or whatever it was as your deadline to come over to me is not him being the insurrectionist that I think people were voting for.
	No, it seems a little bit cordial in a way that I think people don't want to be.
	It's not even just that it's cordial.
	It is basically saying, I'm the legitimate ruler of the Conservative Party.
	And so what he has broadcast to the public there is that, no, we are actually the Conservative Party and I'm the true king of it.
	And so I will give my wayward vassals a deadline from which they can come over and reconstitute themselves under my new brand.
	But there's no reason for any member of the public to think, oh, I'm getting something substantively different now, which is what they were voting for when they wanted to vote for reform.
	They're like, no, I'm voting reform as like a right-wing protest vote.
	Okay, but essentially, it's not a protest vote anymore because literally you have like the Boris Wave cabinet being reassembled in front of your eyes because they realized that the protest vote was going to get them kicked out of politics.
	They were all going to lose their seats.
	Or maybe actually Jemrik's one of the few who wasn't going to lose a seat.
	So maybe Jemrik's just made a misstep here.
	But the point being, like, essentially, this is a rebellion against the Tory Wets.
	Them saying, look, we're not happy with the Lib Dems and the Conservative Party.
	Okay, but Kemi Badenock isn't the Tory wet.
	Kemi Bainock's actually quite hard line on a bunch of issues.
	She's on the Tory right.
	So why doesn't she just kick them out and you guys stay in the Conservatives?
	Like, what is going on?
	Like, the whole, like, the whole scheme of politics at the moment is just being really badly mismanaged by people who I don't think really understand their own positions on the board.
	Yes.
	And so I think that the climate in Westminster is very different than the climate with the electorate, in that in their world, it makes a lot more sense what they're doing, but that world is slowly becoming something different and they don't necessarily realize it.
	For example, we want people with experience.
	Well, how much experience did David Cameron have?
	How much experience did Tony Blair have?
	These people, I mean, Blair in particular, obviously no experience in government, but he came in with a huge mandate because he was promising, what was it, change.
	Things can only get better.
	We are going to, people, like, I don't know why Nigel Farage is even entertaining the narrative of experience.
	Who cares?
	My argument would be because the donors want it.
	The donors would be that the donors want it.
	You're going to get the victory whether you like it or not, right?
	Because as you saw back in September, Farage on 35%, Labour on 22%.
	No, the victory was coming to Farage, whether he liked it or not.
	He could just sit there and go, no, I'm against them all, actually.
	And we're just going to go in there like a bull in a china shop and ruin all of their job, ruin everything that they've done.
	And that got them 35% in the polls.
	So Farage has basically been kind of allowed to have his feet slip from underneath him with silly narratives where they're like, oh, but what if you don't have experience?
	So you didn't ask that of anyone else.
	No one else had any experience when they went into government.
	Did you say that about David Cameron?
	Did you say that about Boris Johnson?
	Did you say that about anyone?
	No.
	But you said it about us because we represented in the minds of the voting public something substantively different.
	And to be honest with you, I don't really want the same people who have experience of ruining the country to go back in there and be like, oh, yeah, you know.
	And the argument, sorry, I know I'm going off.
	The argument is, ah, well, Sweller and Jemrick have been radicalized by the White Hall process.
	Yeah, maybe, but so?
	They've also got to be held accountable, right?
	Well, it's not even that.
	It's like, okay, they're like, yeah, I couldn't get anything done.
	Yeah, okay, great.
	I hear you.
	You couldn't get anything done.
	Great.
	What am I going to do as Farage?
	I'm going to come in and just legislate it out of existence.
	I'm just going to, who's got power?
	Right.
	I can see the reins of power here.
	I'm just going to make it, like, reconstruct it in your own image.
	How do you think it should be?
	Right?
	I think it should be ministers who have bodies underneath them rather than quangos that float along the top.
	Great.
	I'm just going to legislate that.
	I don't need someone who's been like, yeah, I just couldn't get anything done, guys.
	You don't actually need that guy if you have a plan.
	He's too timid to cut the Gordian knot.
	Exactly.
	He's too timid to actually cut the Gordian knot.
	So what he wants to try to do, again, to try to be charitable to him, is to get these people who can do this in a surgical way.
	But he doesn't understand that the system itself is fundamentally broken and won't respond to him.
	So there is a world where essentially Swella Breverman is a spad for whoever takes over the home office.
	There is a world where that is a possibility, where these people don't run as MPs.
	And so they do instead damage to the Conservative Party and they are used in that capacity and then they're ditched, which sort of satisfies the voters.
	And there is time for him to actually achieve that.
	They all want their jobs back, which is a problem.
	So whether or not he can do this, I don't know.
	Having defectors from both parties does have some benefit, but he hasn't gotten any serious labor defectors yet.
	Unless you count Lee Anderson, who sort of...
	But it only has a benefit if you are in the minority position.
	Yes.
	So if the Conservatives are at 27.
	Adding something.
	Exactly.
	If the Conservatives are 27, Labour at Labour and Reformer are like 18.
	Yes, it's worth having a defector in that situation.
	But actually, when you're on 35 and they're on 20 or 18 or whatever, why do I need you guys?
	I've already crushed you.
Reform Voters Leading 00:15:50
	And also, I think Farage doesn't seem to be paying attention to the people who will be voting for him.
	As in, look at the map of Britain and the North has gone teal.
	It is ex-Labour heartlands that have decided, yeah, no, screw it.
	The Labour Party is a bunch of traitors.
	I'm going to vote for Nigel Farage because at least he seems like a patriot, right?
	Okay, they're not natural Tories.
	No.
	They're naturally deeply socially conservative, but they're not Tories.
	And so giving them, here's a lineup of Conservatives who are literally just in government.
	I need you guys to vote for.
	I can see them going, oh, no, this isn't it.
	This isn't it.
	I can see why it's like, no, slowly but surely they're realizing, oh, no, this isn't the thing I was asking for.
	I thought Nigel Farage was Mr. Brexit, who literally came in from the outside to upend the system like he did with Brexit.
	But if he's just reforming the Tories, why would I vote for that?
	There's also a sizable portion of people from that sort of constituency that have never voted conservative before that will be going from Labour.
	And I've been looking at some of the data on this.
	And it's a surprising amount, actually.
	It's a non-negligible amount that are completely stepping over the Conservative Party and going from Labour to reform.
	And he should be encouraging that and not aggravating it by getting more.
	Especially since it's actually Labour that's the bigger party.
	Labour is at 20%.
	Conservatives are struggling at the 18 level.
	So Labour have been holding steady at 20 to 22%.
	You want to chip away at that.
	And with a first pass of the post system, if you chip away at that enough, you beat the Conservatives every time.
	But also, this is very Westminster focused, right?
	As in people around the country are just hearing gossip from the Westminster bubble.
	This is literally just like teen girls at the dinner table at one end of the cafeteria, just bitching money.
	And then everyone else is just getting on with their lives or playing video games or whatever they're doing.
	And it's just like, look, man, like you are exactly right.
	You should be further destroying the Labour Party.
	Like in Manchester, Reform have a really strong hand at the moment.
	Why is Farage in London?
	Like Manchester is something like half voting reform at the moment.
	It's like, you know, in the polls.
	Like, you see the constituencies from the outside chewing into Labour's, what was otherwise an insanely secure Labour place.
	And so why isn't Farage constantly just touring Manchester, you know, ruining the Labour Party in there?
	It's like, no, I'm stuck in Westminster.
	I'm stuck in Whitehall, the bubble.
	And I'm talking about the people who, I mean, literally, Boris, Jemerich was in Boris's cabinet.
	Sweller was in Rishi's cabinet, right?
	This is the Tories who promised they would level up the North, who didn't.
	Like, these are the people involved in the betrayal.
	And you can say, well, look, you know, they've changed.
	Okay, whatever, man, whatever.
	The average person just sees a bunch of Tories and remembers, like, literally five years ago, not even very long ago, you promised to help us and you completely sold us out.
	I'm not a very of you guys.
	And, you know, what are we doing here?
	And whether it's this effect at play in the latest polling, here we have some from this month here, and it's showing them this is YouGov down to 25%, only 4% head of Labour here, which, by the way, you know, one of the most unpopular governments in history.
	The most unpopular government in history.
	Keystar is the most disliked prime minister ever.
	At least in recent history, I can think of a few governments in the distant history that might have been slightly more disliked.
	Sure, it's in the history of modern polling then.
	And one thing that I did find.
	Just a quick thing on this, right?
	If I were Farage and I'd lost 10% of my vote share in the last couple of months after doing essentially silly things, I'd be panicking.
	This would be cause for panic in Reform HQ.
	I'd be like, Jesus, guys, I thought we were a shoe in here.
	What's happening?
	Well, one thing that I found interesting, to skip ahead a little bit here, is that when a lot of this polling was coming out, you had both Nigel here saying we've now led in over 200 consecutive opinion polls, which is true.
	Obviously, they have been leading, but the question is, how much of a lead?
	And you also had Reform's official account saying the same thing at the same time.
	And to my mind, this spoke more of insecurity of people saying, listen, you've gone down in the polls quite a significant degree.
	And they're saying, well, actually, we're still leading, you know, of the past 200, which isn't really good enough.
	But also, it's actually way worse for reform to just be in the lead in the polls, right?
	Because the Liberal Democrats are never in the lead in any poll, and yet they're the third party when it comes to seats.
	Because they got like 3.9 million votes in 2024.
	Reform got 4.1 million votes.
	They got, what is it, 70 seats or whatever it was.
	Reform got five seats.
	Because of the distribution.
	Exactly.
	It's because of the distribution.
	Because the Lib Dems know who their constituents are in the southwest of England, basically.
	Campaign heavily there and are concentrated in this area.
	So they only need to get their votes in this area, and they know they get a nice big flush in parliament.
	Whereas to be, and so they can be way behind.
	For them, it's all zipped up here.
	But for reform, it's spread across the entire country.
	And it was the same with UKIP as well.
	They would get about 4 million votes and basically nothing out of it because of first pass of the post.
	And so Farage has to know that he has got to be way into double digits above his opponents if he wants to sweep that map.
	He has to know that.
	So like you say, this comes across as insecurity.
	Yeah, because actually you're on the downswing.
	And what's the plan?
	The problem that you have with taking in a bunch of old Tories is actually you are pinning your colours to a mast and that mast is on a sinking ship.
	It's like, okay, why are you doing that?
	You know, you were doing great before you took these Tories.
	Why are you doing this?
	And I found it interesting actually that YouGov explicitly asked, does former Conservative MPs joining Reform UK make you think more positively or more negatively towards reform?
	And actual reform voters, 17% of them said it makes them think more negatively towards reform.
	23% said it makes them think more positively.
	I don't know why, I guess, because they're getting defections.
	And then 48%, the majority, said that they don't care.
	It makes no difference.
	I'm going to vote for them anyway.
	Still, like, you know, losing 17% of the people who pinned your ship is not good.
	Like, that, you know.
	It's a significant enough auction, isn't it?
	And the thing is, like, okay, 23% makes me think more positively towards reform of reform voters who are already supporting reform.
	So who cares?
	Yeah, not really.
	They're changing anything.
	You've already got those people.
	You might lose 17%.
	And the people who, 48% who decide, don't care, I'm here as a protest vote.
	Like, why would you mess with the formula?
	You're at 35%.
	Don't change anything.
	No, they were doing business leaders.
	Well enough, yeah.
	Why haven't you got the business leaders?
	Like, why isn't Alan Sugar coming on?
	Alan, like, you know, get on there.
	I want you to be the chancellor.
	I want you to go in there.
	You know, you're fired.
	You're fired.
	You're fired to a bunch of bloody home office, you know, Bank of England or whatever.
	The Treasury, yeah.
	Like, why aren't you doing that?
	Why don't you have, like, what was the super nanny or whatever?
	Not necessarily her, but, you know, someone of that sort of like, no, that's in charge of the home office.
	We're going to sort this country out morally.
	You know, we are going to fix a bunch of the problems.
	Why you just, oh, well, we'll just bring in the old dregs of the old party and then hopefully they'll fix it.
	It's not persuasive.
	It's a terrible narrative.
	It's such a weak and easily exploitable narrative.
	And everyone sees it.
	I've seen it from both the left and the right going, right, okay, this is just Tories then.
	But everyone sees it.
	And it's not just the YouGov poll as well that's found this sort of trend.
	Here's another one here that puts them at 26% rather than 25%.
	And then here is a third one, which also points out that almost half of Britons say they would never consider voting for reform, which is unsurprising, actually.
	They have them at 27%.
	And so they're sort of floating around this market.
	It's a fundamental problem of the margin between them and Labour.
	At six points ahead, four points ahead, you're in very bad shape, considering the unpopularity of Starmer.
	If you say that Starmer's 20% or 18% or whatever it is is just the sort of payroll vote, fair enough.
	They got 7, 8% pay rises.
	They're happy.
	But you should be doing much better than this.
	Well, yeah, this poll in particular, if you're only six points behind the Conservative Party, you're doing something wrong.
	Yeah.
	Everyone knows that they're the ones that screwed up the country.
	You're not even 10 points ahead of the Labour Party in this one, though.
	Again, everyone hates Labour.
	It's, of course, worth mentioning.
	I'd be remiss not to mention it.
	That polling, of course, is fraught with mistakes recently.
	However, it's still interesting.
	It's still measuring something, however inaccurate it is.
	But a 10-point shift, I think, is significant enough that it's an effect that you've got to take as real.
	Well, this one's just a quick thing.
	So I often track just the average of polling.
	Politico does one, Electoral Calculus does one.
	And there has definitely been a sort of downturn.
	The latest one we covered in the chat we did with Dan, they're on 28% on average, which, I mean, some of the polls are like, oh, they're on 33%.
	And, you know, some of them on 25%.
	And so they're on 28% on average.
	But that's not good.
	That's not good.
	I mean, why isn't Nigel on 40%?
	Why hasn't he just eaten up the Labour and Conservative votes?
	Like, why do you think bringing in the failures are bolstering your party?
	I just blows my mind.
	There's two points to make here.
	One of them is Labour and the Greens will be working with the Commonwealth Boris waivers to get their votes based on the idea that these guys will deport you and you have to vote for us.
	So the lead has to be substantially bigger than it currently is.
	And with this deadline, I think we're going to see more conservative defectors, including people like maybe Jacob Reese Mog.
	Mog will go down to the ship.
	He's been the signaling that he's been doing against the Conservatives might get him sacked out of the party.
	It might be that.
	Which would be hilarious.
	Kemi is in a sort of dictatorial mood, is sort of, you know, one wonders why.
	So you see that and you realize this should be much better.
	He should be doing much better than this.
	So I wanted to point out that since 2024, reform has grown in support with the public a significant degree.
	This is sort of my playing devil's advocate to my own point.
	And you can see that there are quite significant swings here as well.
	And so there is at least potential to regain this momentum that, you know, it's just got to be handled correctly.
	But it is worth pointing out, and I need to scroll all the way down this YouGov polling, I think, to show that it might not necessarily, this is the reform data I just showed.
	But here are the Greens with a similar phenomenon.
	And this is why I was comparing the two, is that they've both had a sort of meteoric boost in popularity.
	And that's because of the collapse of Labour here, as you can see, just absurd levels of falling popularity here.
	But also the Conservatives as well, to a slightly lesser degree, and they've even got some gains here somehow.
	But even so, it's the failure of these two parties more than the successes of the other.
	Sorry, just a quick thing on this one, right?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	These are people who went to reform, right?
	These negatives, a portion of them will have gone to the Greens, but most of these will be the white working class vote.
	There we go.
	By household income, right?
	This is reform voters right here.
	These are the reform voters.
	If we can see by household income for reform, there we go.
	There we go.
	This is all stolen from Labour, right?
	This is all stolen from Labour.
	And the top ones will probably be stolen from the Tories, right?
	So it's just Just saying, Nige, you need to start thinking about who you are actually trying to get in the coalition.
	And he's not thinking about it.
	There is another problem here, which is that, if I remember correctly, the lower income households aren't as reliable as voters, and that they may choose to not turn up.
	Sure, maybe.
	And so there has to be a message that boosts turnout significantly, in part to counter the Boris Wave voters, who, as a, you know, five million people.
	It's not small.
	That's not a small amount.
	And if one of the far-left parties can organize them, be it Labour or the Greens, that's Dak Pulaski's policy.
	And so you see this weird coalition that gets created in this way that can really make all of this polling irrelevant.
	Another interesting thing is that the phraseology, like Britain is broken, it's like, yeah, obviously.
	But it's not revolutionary, is it?
	No.
	It sounds like I'm going to fix the Blairite order.
	I'm going to just wind back and clock 10 years or so to when things were quite good.
	And it's like, you know, that's not sufficient.
	I genuinely think a lot of people actually want basically a revolution, like genuinely revolutionary, like rhetoric.
	But the British would be a much better slogan.
	There's no way Nigel Farage would say that.
	People would definitely buy it.
	Yep.
	Definitely buy it.
	Yep.
	So I just wanted to end on this, that the real test of how this polling translates will be this by-election, which, to be fair, reform are slated to win from a lot of the polling.
	Although it's a little bit closer, but then of course it is Gorton and Denton, which is up near Manchester, isn't it?
	It is Manchester, yeah.
	Matt Goodwin is sitting for.
	Yeah, this one where Andrew Burnham got snaked by Keir Starmer and just made the calculation that better to lose one seat than my own premiership.
	But the thing is, and this is something we just haven't talked about, is the left is very willing to vote tactically.
	It's incredible.
	I mean, this is what happened in Kerphilly, where it didn't look like Plaid Cymru were going to win it, and then they stormed it because it was just tactical voting.
	All right, we're not going to vote for reform because he's an evil Nazi.
	And then, so we'd vote for the Plaid Cymru, which the voters themselves didn't realize how left-wing Plaid Cymru was.
	They didn't know what they were voting for.
	They just thought, right, okay, I've been told Nigel Farage is a fascist.
	So great, I get, you know, gay race communism instead.
	This is entirely likely to happen here.
	It's entirely likely.
	So Gorton and Denton, demographically, is about a third Muslim.
	I'm not sure exactly what the percentage of overall.
	That remains the green percentage then.
	Yeah.
The Conservative Bet Matters 00:02:42
	Right.
	And so Labour and Greens, they're going to be split between that.
	And the white working class is going to be split between Labour, Reform and Conservatives.
	So, and you can tell it's a working class seat because there's only 2% lib Dems.
	So, you know, only 2% of the people in Gorton and Denton have big gardens.
	So it's like, right, okay, good to know.
	So the point is, I mean, it looks like they're going to squeak it on paper, but I think that come the actual day, there'll just be informal or like in mimetic agreement where it's just like, yeah, okay, we're just going to vote for whoever's got the biggest just to beat Farage, just to make sure the fascists don't get another seat.
	Yep.
	The Conservatives, I bet, are the thing that split it as well, because usually about 10% you can expect.
	So with the Conservatives, maybe reform if the Conservatives didn't stand down, Mog put out a video the other day saying we shouldn't be challenging the Gorton and Denton by-election because we are probably going to snake Fraser.
	And Farage has stood down for us in the past, like it did in 2019 with Boris.
	So actually the honorable thing to do would be, because they've got no chance of winning it.
	So what are you wasting your time and your money and screwing it over for the right more broadly?
	But I think the Conservatives will run a person.
	Think that the left will tactically vote, and I think that reform won't get it, which is a shame because I'd like to see Matt Goodwin in parliament.
	I could think of far worse people to see in parliament, so you know.
	Now, one final thing I did want to mention is that until 2029, August at that, a lot can happen.
	And what we have seen in the past is when there's been a horrific attack, reform goes up in the polls.
	And one thing that you can bet on is that that's going to happen again.
	And if it happens again and again, then it might see reform no matter what Farage does.
	People are just so desperate for a potential solution that they'll say, well, maybe you've got a few Tories, but you know, I'm still going to vote for you.
	Or it might flip some other people seeing that, okay, I can see the damage that immigration is doing now.
	I'm going to not vote lib dem anymore in my quaint little village, which unlikely.
	I don't think so until the actual diversity gets their villages.
	I don't know.
	That's true, but I have started to notice it actually in small villages, just random roathing people that I'm just like, what are you doing here?
	And so it is permeating into the countryside now.
	Yeah, I know.
	So I suppose we'll have to wait and see how reform's actually going to do here.
	But there are points of concern, but of course, 2029 is a long way away, and so anything can happen.
	Sigil Stone says, Carl, I just saw your tweet about the absurd casualty rate of the American Civil War war.
	The Americans weren't incompetent.
	Actually, I disagree.
Donald's Decent Place Comment 00:14:41
	You weren't even using bayonets to shove people off positions.
	I don't have time to get into it, but actually, from a European perspective, the American forces in the American Civil War were amateurs.
	Well, no, they were.
	Angry people.
	No, but it's just strictly true.
	And we literally would send generals over, and the general's like, why don't you...
	Like, there's a battle on a bridge, and they're shooting at each other for ages.
	And I think it was, I can't remember if it was a Prussian or British general.
	It's just like, okay, now put your bayonets on and go charge them off it.
	And they're like, what do you mean?
	It's like, well, that means they run away and you don't lose way more men than you ought to have lost.
	I don't want to get sidetracked on this.
	But honestly, Americans, it's only in the 20th century you became an impressive military power.
	I'm really sorry to tell you.
	Johan says, remember, tomorrow is International Alzut Remembrance Day.
	That's a, if you know, you know, meme, isn't it?
	Anyway, let's let's let's move on.
	So I thought we'd go inside the mind of a lib, a lib who writes for the times.
	Because this is one of those things where it's very wonderfully class-coded and it shows you everything about the problem with the elite class in this country.
	So as you can see from Jarle Corrin, the brother of Victoria Corin Mitchell, he's a food holiday writer at the Times.
	So someone who is just a million miles away from real problems, right?
	This morning I cancelled our family holiday to America.
	I cannot in good conscience take my wife and children there and tell them they will be safe.
	The United States is no longer a place for decent people.
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah, yeah, okay, Giles, right?
	That's really interesting.
	So this comes off the heels of the protester, was it Pretty getting shot by the authorities.
	Now, there's a video came out just today, actually.
	I forgot to put it in this because I heard this yesterday.
	Of him literally running up to one of the cars and kicking the lights off of it and scrapping with the cops and stuff like this.
	And it's like, okay, so it's not that this guy was just standing there and Donald Trump's Gestapo walk up and say, oh, you, do you vote Democrat?
	Yes.
	Right?
	That's not what happened.
	It wasn't execution.
	It was a guy resisting and it was a terrible tragedy.
	And if there are people involved in ICE who made a mistake that they shouldn't have made, I mean, two people I think it was been put on administrative leave.
	So clearly someone's made a mistake.
	But the point is, it wasn't a targeted execution, as Giles is kind of implying here.
	Well, when I covered it, it seemed to be just a miscommunication.
	Agreed.
	Someone says gun.
	A few seconds later, someone takes the gun.
	The other officers don't realize and so they shoot.
	And because the handgun went off in the officer's hand, because it was a SIG.
	A gunshot went off, so the officer thought he shooting had been fired, etc.
	Yeah.
	So terrible tragedy.
	but completely avoidable by not running up and start kicking their car and physically abusing them and forcing them to wrestle you to the ground, right?
	Completely avoidable.
	When you see this kind of situation, if your instinct is to attack the police, don't pretend that you're on the side of law and order.
	But also, just what do you think the best possible outcome is you don't get shot, right?
	An entirely predictable outcome is that you do get shot.
	One of the problems with the left, though, is that they fail to perceive threats properly.
	It's a correct mental disability there, whereby just threat perception, like if there was someone with a gun, however much I disagree with them, I would treat them with a certain degree of respect because I want to be alive.
	You know what it is, right?
	I know what this is.
	This is because they've never been punched in the face.
	That's probably true.
	And we've talked about my hatred of the middle class many a time, Josh.
	But not all bad, all right?
	I'm not saying you're all bad, but you've been punched in the face, right?
	But a lot of these people have not been punched in the face.
	And so they don't understand what it actually is like to be in a kinetics experience in this situation.
	They think that everything is actually discursive and that everything stops at the realm of we will talk and then, right?
	And so when they start breaking this, they have no idea what pain is like.
	They don't know how much physical force they're supposed to be applying to get to the position they want to be in or how much can be applied to them because they just have no experience with this.
	And so this is what this sort of like libt hard, oh, I'm going to go fight the cops like, man, you're just going to get shot at best.
	You know, you know, at best, you just get a beanbag.
	Once you get arrested, beaten.
	There was another.
	Exactly.
	I saw this guy getting beanbagged in the stomach.
	Oh, and it's like, what did you think it was like?
	You know, what did you think it was like?
	You an idiot.
	It's not meant to be nice.
	Exactly.
	You know, oh, you're not dead.
	Lucky for you.
	Could have been worse and probably will be next time.
	Stop messing around.
	But Giles is like, yeah, I saw this terrible tragedy and accident and entirely avoidable thing happen.
	I was like, right, well, now I just can't go to America.
	Can't in good conscience go there.
	It's no longer a place for decent people.
	This is one of the clearest examples of a virtue signal.
	It should be like printed off and used in textbooks.
	This is the example of a virtue signal because there's no reasonable reason to cancel your holiday to America unless you're going to like Minneapolis and you're an illegal migrant.
	There's no reason to cancel your holiday.
	Exactly the point.
	I was going to go on holiday to California.
	Well, I can't go now.
	It's like, what's that got to do with Minneapolis?
	I was going to go to New England or wherever.
	It's like saying there's a warrant crane, so I can't go to France.
	Although, actually, bad example.
	No, no, but literally, it's a continent.
	It is an enormous place.
	And ICE is operating in all of these other things.
	It's just there's a problem in Minneapolis that is political.
	And I love them.
	I can't take my wife there and tell them they'll be safe.
	It's like, what?
	You think that six months ago, you thought you want to go to South Central LA or something and tell them they're safe?
	And then is the murder rate in these areas not something?
	No, it doesn't bother you.
	It doesn't bother you at all.
	No, for some reason, you've adopted the position that, yes, Donald Trump might have my wife and children shot.
	I just think that's absurd.
	That's where it turns out that he's going to somewhere like Detroit.
	No, definitely not.
	I mean, this is Giles Corrin.
	As you can see, he's privately educated.
	He's a journalist, a restaurant critic for the Times.
	It's like this guy has such a soft life.
	Imagine you get paid to go to a restaurant and eat a dinner there at the company's complaint and then whine about it.
	That's his career.
	Writer of the year at Fortnum and Mason.
	That kind of sounds.
	Why me?
	Just this is the softest man who has ever existed.
	Like all of human history, all of the wars, the deaths, the plagues, the struggles, is all a giant pyramid upon which he stands on the top as the most privileged of privileged people.
	He's just sat there like, yeah, I'm going to get my, go get my soft hands a bit wet by spilling gravy when I'm writing my, like, dude, you were an embarrassment.
	It is genuinely embarrassing.
	And so we'll go to his article.
	It's like, by America, this time it's really over between us.
	Like, okay.
	Now, I realize that you can have a bit of vanity in this, right?
	Because the way that you were brought up and the environment that you have and the connections that you have allow you to be essentially a blogger at the Times, right?
	The paper of record in Britain, right?
	And so if you're at that point, you might think that your opinion, your ego is that important that this is something that you'd want to publish.
	I wonder if the White House has responded to this devastating news.
	Yeah, what was Donald Trump's?
	But this is what he says, right?
	When authorities shot dead a middle-class mum at the wheel of her family car in Minneapolis and then held down a nurse and shot him several times in the head as he lay on the ground, Sam didn't have to say a word.
	He just tossed Sunday paper down in front of me and put his hands on his hips.
	His son, this is.
	And though he said nothing, he was right.
	America was no longer a place for decent people and we will not be going there.
	This is the thing, right?
	Giles, have you seen the interracial rape rate in America?
	Have you seen the violence rate of black women?
	Have you seen the black on black crime rate in America?
	Have you seen the rate of just car crashes on the motorways in America?
	Have you seen the fentanyl zombies in the cities of America?
	The homelessness in America?
	Like it just the Mexican gangs operating in the South?
	No, it's this that is the problem.
	And I think it's him that are saying, well, it's the middle-class mum.
	So was she middle-class?
	I don't know.
	Yeah, she probably would have been.
	She probably would have been.
	Also, a lot of these problems, he's basically taking the perspective of evil ICE and they're right wing and they're rounding people up to shoot them.
	But all the problems you've listed there have been created by the Democrats, really, haven't they?
	From the drug crisis to the Trump is trying to solve these problems using ICE.
	But ICE, ICE wasn't perfect.
	Well, it's not a place for decent people.
	Oh, well, I'm so glad you're such a decent person, Giles.
	There are millions of Americans who are struggling with the problems that ICE are trying to solve, who are just like, well, I guess we're just not decent people, guys.
	This is just...
	Go ahead.
	Sorry.
	Deaths by Fentonil have fallen substantially.
	Yes.
	And all kinds of crime has fallen.
	Precisely because ICE is out on the streets willing to round up anybody who shouldn't be there.
	As Tom Homan said the other day when he went to Minneapolis, how many children haven't been trafficked into America?
	How many women have not been raped being trafficked into America?
	Like, you know, they have actually got the border sealed.
	They've actually done it.
	And this guy's at well, you're just not a place for decent people.
	As if being a decent person is predicated on having this drug and rape and child trafficking.
	If you can't do that, then you're not a decent place.
	That's what decent is for the left.
	But the point of this article in the first place, I think, by him talking about decent people is that he's signaling to people like him, listen, I'm a decent person, but these people, I'm not associating with them.
	And so the purpose of the article isn't really actually to talk about American politics at all.
	It's to say, listen, I'm good.
	It's sort of like arguing, you know, I'm going to sound a bit like a misogynist here, but it's sort of like arguing with a woman in that the content of the argument isn't the important part.
	It's the social aspects, isn't it?
	Very much.
	This is bourgeois social signaling.
	Not having a go, ladies.
	By the way, just throwing that out there.
	Sure, but the point is...
	He is.
	Giles is bourgeois social signaling.
	He's saying, well, our class can't tolerate this, right?
	Yes, exactly.
	He's going to be writing the same article if Nigel Farage wins.
	Absolutely.
	He's going to be before the 2029 election, he'll be putting something out about how he might emigrate to America now.
	Yeah.
	Or Canada, probably.
	Or Canada.
	And all of that load of nonsense.
	And he's going to be signaling in exactly the same way.
	Unless, you know, he gets mugged or something.
	But it's well, yeah.
	But the.
	Exactly right.
	So he exists in a world in which all of the real problems of America that Trump is currently trying to fix, they don't ever affect him.
	Obviously, they don't affect him.
	Because the high-end restaurants in New York don't have that problem.
	Exactly.
	He just hired the illegals and he loves the waiter Pedro.
	Exactly.
	He is sufficiently insulated from this.
	And so he can afford the luxury morals of being a bourgeois lib.
	And look at the look at the this is the end of the article, basically.
	So we've booked a few days in Northumberland instead.
	Well, you're going to go slump in Northumberland, are you?
	The kids have never seen Hadrian's Wall.
	It'll be cold and wet and the wall doesn't do much.
	But the pubs are nice and you don't get murdered.
	As if the U.S. government is just murdering tourists.
	Like, again, doesn't this just feel like a kind of led-by-donkeys thing, right?
	You know, IPA beer-drinking twat who's just like, well, you know, at least.
	It's feeling very targeted, Carl.
	I'm middle class and like an IPA.
	But you're not a twat.
	It's okay.
	It's debatable.
	But the point is, like, this charitable.
	This whole thing, it is just a bubble that is so remote from reality.
	And this guy lives in this bubble where he doesn't understand.
	I mean, like, for example, like, he was going to go to America until this terrible thing happened.
	Well, America has got a five times higher homicide rate than we do.
	So what, you were going to go to Florida or Georgia or something?
	Do you know what the chance of you being killed there?
	Oh, I'm not going to go there now.
	I know Donald Trump's going to kill me.
	But before, if it was just some rando on the street that was going to, were you going to go on the New York subway system?
	Like, are you mad?
	You know, like, what is your perception of danger here?
	Well, yeah, saying you supported Black Lives Matter isn't going to stop you getting mugged, I'm afraid.
	Absolutely not.
	Or worse.
	My favorite video of these guys was shouting, we're on your side as their windows get split.
	I know.
	I love that.
	But again, it's about threat perception because, like you say, as he's going to high-end restaurants in London or New York or something, yeah, they're very, very low threats.
	What do you mean?
	I'm not in any danger.
	But for some reason, he thinks that Donald Trump might have him and his family shot.
	It's like, listen, man, you're just missing the point.
	So anyway, the responses to this were just gold, obviously.
	Unless you apply to take your wife and children on a day out following ICE agents harassing and assaulting them, then you'll be fine.
	You're a virtue signaling wet wiped.
	I literally laughed out loud at this, but seriously, please stay away forever.
	I can only imagine the impact that you cancel a week at Disneyland will have on global geopolitics.
	People were just like, come on, bro, come on.
	You're an idiot, right?
	But then people start pointing out, well, hang on a second, Giles.
	I mean, here's you on holiday with your family in Oman, where homosexuality and transsexuality are illegal.
	Marital rape and domestic abuse are legal.
	And estimated 33,000 people, mainly migrants, are trapped in legalized modern slavery.
	Yeah.
	The boundless hypocrisy of the lib knows no limits.
	But remember, when he goes on holiday, he doesn't see this.
	None of this.
	No, I went to a high-end restaurant in the capital.
Oman's Hidden Horror 00:05:26
	What are you talking about?
	Modern slavery for?
	That happens in like the plantations or whatever, right?
	And so you had this going on because he just deserved this lampooning because of the just complete detachment.
	Like, it would have been better for him to have just said nothing and write another restaurant review.
	But then people have this exchange with him.
	And, you know, Giles is like, yeah, the UK is the safest place on earth.
	And it's like, Lawrence, there's a report, rape reported every 54 minutes in London.
	And he's like, do you really believe that?
	Sorry, sorry, Giles.
	Yeah, I do.
	Because I read it on the BBC and we're supposed to believe the BBC, aren't we?
	Aren't they a reliable source of information?
	And obviously, you can see the thing, oh, I just Googled that.
	Looks like it's true.
	That, F, that's a lot of rapes.
	Okay, Giles, how does that impact your worldview?
	How does that impact your worldview?
	What do you believe about the world that you literally two hours ago before like this, you were like, what a preposterous right-wing conspiracy.
	Oh, it's in the BBC.
	That's bad.
	And the rape rate in London has gone up like four times in the last 10 years.
	So it's one of the most rape-saturated places in the world.
	So what now, Giles?
	How does that change your perspective on the world?
	What do you learn from this?
	Right.
	I thought something that was not only completely wrong, but monstrous.
	Yes.
	This is monstrous.
	Every hour a woman is held down and violated in your little safe bubble where nothing ever happens because you're nowhere near the problems because you're sufficiently insulated because of your personal class privilege.
	How does that change your perspective?
	Do those people who are like, look, I want ICE to get the illegals out of my community because we're worried about the rape rates around us too.
	Does that change your opinion?
	Does anything change?
	Or do you just like, does the bubble get pierced very briefly and then pops back and you go, right, yeah, no, I don't need to worry about that.
	That's not me.
	That's not my family.
	That's not my wife.
	That's not my kids.
	Or do you go, okay, no, that is something that's a problem.
	And that's people who are just like me, just they don't have my economic advantages.
	Right.
	So do I want those people helped?
	Or do I sit there and virtue signal more about how Trump's ICE is eaten evil Gestapo and they're bad?
	Decent people don't want that.
	The question is, does he have a conscience?
	No.
	My initial answer is he doesn't.
	Deeply self-confident.
	I hope he has one.
	I hope he develops one.
	But that's the fundamental question.
	Does he have a conscience?
	If he has a conscience, he can't stay with these politics.
	Because he seemed like he genuinely had no idea that this was happening because of the bubble that he lives in.
	Now that he knows, there's a real question here, Giles.
	Do you have a conscience?
	And if you do, you will have to retract some of the things that you've said and say, I actually didn't know, and I'm going to keep my mouth shut while I learn about it.
	Yes.
	But if he doesn't do that, I think the only fair conclusion is going to be this man doesn't have a conscience.
	He just has socially approved opinions that he will bleed on demand.
	And also, just a quick thing.
	These people are a willing sacrifice.
	Yes.
	You know, the 22,000 rapes a year or whatever it is in London.
	Like, no, that's a willing sacrifice for me to maintain my luxury beliefs, my virtue status.
	Pretty much.
	There is also another way of confronting this rather than accepting it and integrating it into his worldview, which is blaming it on misogyny, which we see quite a lot.
	Well, yeah, you didn't do that.
	I didn't, to be fair.
	You know, same question.
	Does he have a covidence?
	Look into it and look into it.
	Why did it increase by 400% in X period of time?
	What changed?
	What changed, precisely.
	So it boils down to the same question.
	When these people are confronted with the facts, if they don't change their opinions, you must assume that they are evil.
	Some of them, you see them on video, actually struggling with new ideas.
	God bless them.
	I wish them the very best.
	But, you know, here's reality.
	Are you going to change your opinions?
	Everything becomes validated.
	Like, suddenly it makes more sense.
	Oh, yeah, no.
	I are preventing the rape rate of London.
	Right.
	That's okay.
	What do you do, Giles?
	That's the question you have to answer now.
	You genuinely, I realize you'll sit there and go, yeah, but look at my nice, comfortable office.
	I'm not in any danger.
	Why can't I just be blasé about it?
	Why can't I just be flippant?
	Why can't I just be like, oh, well, is that really happening?
	Yeah, no, that's really happening.
	There are really people suffering.
	And actually, it's the collective opinion of the bourgeois upper class who are just like, but I'm eating a lovely steak when I'm doing my Times review.
	We should definitely tag him in this segment.
	We should definitely tag him in this segment.
	And he'll be flippant and dismissive on Twitter because that's all he does.
	Well, Ben, our conclusion would be validated.
	That's true.
	It's a lot of rapes.
	Anyway, Magnus says, American forces during the Civil War were rarely properly trained to European standards.
	Videos exist on YouTube going to detail how they didn't know how to aim rifled muskets.
	Yeah, I know.
	What I'm saying is not controversial in any way, shape, or form.
	It's just that.
	Nor is it an attack.
	It's just a fact.
	Yeah, it's just a fact, right?
	It's just that the Americans don't know that.
Rural Education Parachute 00:15:10
	Matt says there are five or six cities that will drive up US homicide rate due to gang violence.
	Yeah, I'm aware.
	Outside of these cities, the US is as safe or safer than Europe.
	I'm aware because it's just a normal, you know, European colony.
	But anyway, right, let's move on.
	Thank you, sir.
	So I don't know if you've seen this recently.
	Well, I'm sure you have, but current Home Secretary and former Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmoud had come out at the Tony Blair Institute, I believe, speaking to Tony Blair and said that her hope is to achieve a panopticon.
	I covered this in this segment, breaking it down, because they were introducing introducing pre-crime.
	So they're using AI and creating a map of England and Wales to predict where the crime is going to happen before it happens.
	Well, I'm sure that the AI will turn out to be racist and then they'll scrap it, but let's not discuss that yet.
	Terror threats in Birmingham?
	Well, I never.
	Yeah.
	But, you know, on top of that, she's made some massive or she's proposed massive changes to how policing is done in Britain.
	And the summary of it includes a nationwide police AI to achieve her panopticon dream.
	But I wanted to first put that in another context, which is a political context.
	And it's got to do with how government in Britain is fundamentally changing.
	What we're seeing essentially is that local elections are cancelled or a bunch of local elections are cancelled because what's happening is that the local councils who are typically small and report try their best to address local concerns are all being amalgamated into ever bigger areas.
	And this is clearly an attempt at centralizing government.
	It's all being done in the name of efficiency, as is everything else that's happening, including scrapping the jury trials.
	But this also has other effects, and I want to discuss those briefly with you.
	Typically, when you amalgamate councils, you add big urban areas or the local urban areas to rural areas.
	And this has a number of secondary effects.
	The rural areas, because they're less populated, get sidelined because they have less voters in them and therefore they are less important to actually winning an election.
	So the ability of your local council to respond to you is diminished.
	Not only that, the dispersal of the rural areas makes networking coordination more difficult as well.
	Exactly.
	It's far more, the cities are easier to coordinate in just by density alone.
	Yep, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	And you can't separate the sidelining of rural areas from the attack on farmers and farming because one of the things that farmers represent is an institutional memory.
	It's an attachment to place and people.
	Say again?
	It's a yeomanry.
	It's a yeomanry.
	The kulaks, you know, yes, exactly.
	They're a power base.
	The eternal enemies of the communists.
	Exactly.
	They're a power base that exists outside of government control.
	Yes.
	Well, it's fundamentally the city asserting its authority over the countryside, is what's going on here.
	And of course, the countryside being a sort of live well of native sentiment and actual native people as well.
	And so it's the sort of last unconquered area of.
	Which is why you constantly see the articles about how unbearably white the British countryside is and how inherently racist the British countryside is and all of this nonsense that is intended to attack identity and place and attachment and linkages between identity and place.
	I've even seen articles where they're trying to get foreign people to be farmers here.
	And it's like, sorry, don't they have lands of their own that they can farm?
	Like, historically, this would have been the result of a conquest, right?
	An enemy army comes in, conquers, and then all of the existing people are either killed or driven out, and their lands are literally parceled up to the enemy soldiers so they can have them as homesteads.
	Yes.
	I mean, this is what the Romans did all the time.
	And so for the British government, like, yeah, so what we want is a bunch of foreign farmers being placed on these lands.
	Like, sorry, that's post-conquest.
	We're settling particularly insane about bringing in farmers from countries that typically rely on food aid to come farm land in Britain, which is an agricultural powerhouse and would be even more so if the farmers were unleashed and allowed to be productive and given due concern.
	Well, you get a Zimbabwe situation, just handing farmland to far less competent people to the detriment of everyone.
	That's going to work out brilliantly.
	Just a quick aside as well.
	Britain has great farmland as well.
	Yeah.
	Some of the best in the world, actually.
	You can find a map of just arable lands and the quality of the land.
	And you realize, oh, Britain's really lucky because we're on the Gulf Stream and we're at the top of Northwestern Europe and we've got loads of rain and loads of vegetation.
	So our land is just great.
	And the rain is often so mild.
	Yeah.
	It's beautiful to walk in the rain in this country.
	It's amazing.
	It's also worth mentioning that many people from other European countries come here and say, your grass is actually greener here.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	In a literal sense.
	It really is.
	Yeah, go anywhere in the country.
	It really is Europe, actually.
	And the grass is genuine.
	The entire place is lush.
	But anyway, I'll stop.
	Yeah.
	So, not only do the rural areas get sidelined as you amalgamate these councils and sort of remove local representation, it also strengthens political parties because you stand a chance of winning a seat as an independent in a small local area where everybody knows you and they know you from church and they know you from the market and they know you from all kinds of pre-existing social networks,
	but you have no chance of winning as an independent in a much bigger area because you simply don't have these connections and don't have these networks as broadly as the political parties do.
	You would have to be a supremely important person in your local area.
	Yes.
	For you to be able to muster the kind of voting bloc that you need.
	Exactly.
	I mean, it can happen, but very rarely.
	Exactly.
	And so the smaller the area is, the easier it is for local political talent that is genuinely representative and attached to place to actually succeed.
	And so when you make these changes, you're eliminating that independent competition.
	Which also means, as a consequence, that it's a lot easier to drop in career politicians and to create and farm a battery of career politicians who understand that their existence depends on the party and who understands that obeying the party line, not local concerns, is the actual path to power.
	So these changes have all of these other effects.
	And the last effect that I want to mention is that when you bring these urban areas in, you also bring in the ethnic dynamic because you typically find migrants in urban areas, not in rural Oxfordshire.
	And so if you're an enterprising party, what you will work on is building up these ethnic voter banks and use them to crush the opposition and make sure that you win.
	So the value of a British vote gets reduced in every single way.
	And the potential for local talent to emerge is reduced.
	And it's difficult not to see this as deliberate.
	And to be fair, this isn't just Labour doing this.
	The Conservatives were also heavily involved and all under the name of better efficiency, etc., etc.
	A quick aside on this is if you really wanted to fix the party system in this country, you would have it so that the person who applies for a seat has to have physically resided there for a period of, say, 10 years.
	Yep.
	Because then it's not just one parliament.
	So they can't just be like, okay, well, I know that in five years' time, like, you know, we're going to have an election.
	So I'll buy a house there like Farage has done in Clacton.
	No, you've got to be there for 10 years.
	And then you can actually stand as the candidate in that location.
	That's the only place in the country you can stand.
	Because I mean, the Conservatives did this with Rishi Senak in Richmond in Yorkshire.
	He's from Southampton.
	That was parachute in.
	It's a completely safe seat.
	Well, who made that decision?
	Right?
	You know, the Goldman Sachs bank, I guess.
	Or with Labour, like with any of them, like with Andy Burnham.
	I mean, maybe Andy Burnham, I don't know whereabouts.
	Andy Burnham actually lives.
	But like, you know, in this case, like, they just would just parachute our guys in.
	It's like, no, no, no, no.
	If you want to actually fix the political system in this country, one of the things that you have to do is make sure that the person is from the place that they're representing.
	That was one of the strengths of Conservative Party local associations.
	That was one of the key strengths that they could, in fact, provide this representation under a political party and build a pretty broad coalition within the Conservative Party that actually did make it for a very long time the natural party of government.
	It was a success in this way.
	It was a genuinely good thing, which is why, you know, it is heartbreaking to see it become what it has become.
	What it is in the modern day, though, is a kind of like rotten borough situation.
	Yes.
	Where it's just like, I mean, like, Farrar shouldn't have been able to just parachute himself into Clacton.
	Correct.
	You know, this is the thing.
	Like, these things are bad for the democratic process.
	Sorry, Karen.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	But this is also happening at a time when the value of any local authority is increasingly just administrative.
	They don't have a say in what they do.
	So they're being forced to sort of provide endless personal transportation budgets for people who claim disability.
	Sorry to interrupt, but this is one of the things that reform when they're like, we've won a bunch of councils, right?
	Zia Youssef's going to go in there and we're going to doge UK this.
	And they realized, oh, no, all of these are set by the government.
	Exactly.
	Central authority has said, you will do these things.
	And they're like, all right, actually, we have to raise taxes by 5%.
	Yep.
	Yeah, you've got no choice.
	Like, these people have got no choice.
	So they have to finance all kinds of taxis to go to school.
	They have to provide.
	This person is complaining because her kid's transport to school costs £18,000 a year.
	I don't know her personal circumstances or his.
	What, you going by train?
	I...
	I don't understand what's going on here.
	Mad.
	But that's mad.
	The idea that this would happen?
	I mean, one child's transport to school was costing £193,000.
	With the previous one, whereabouts in the country were they?
	This is supposedly Birmingham.
	Right, that's probably a deposit on a modest house.
	Yes.
	So get a house closer.
	Like literally get a house so they're in walking distance of the school.
	This is mad.
	This is crazy stuff that's being financed.
	And when you look at how much the actual spending is pre-committed, it's pretty extreme.
	I think I have something.
	Okay, fine.
	Golden era of being an immigrant taxi driver, though, right?
	Yeah.
	It's the school run, boys.
	Absolutely.
	It's that meme of the flipping the.
	So it lights up a disabled child.
	I'm going to put this without sound.
	The actual council budget is a very small contribution because the central government controls everything.
	Five pounds is going to education.
	£5.4 pounds in every £10 is going to education.
	Another £3 out of every 10 is being spent on social work.
	And that's all kinds of welfare and for the elderly and special education and all that.
	Then another 55p in every pound on environment and net zero.
	It's not just environment and net zero.
	It's also infrastructure upkeep and things like this.
	Clearing out the drains and stuff like that.
	So you actually want to council for.
	I assume that that's under roads, which is 31p in every 10.
	No, no, that'll be something different.
	It might be under environment.
	The Swedenborough Council a couple of years ago sent us a big breakdown.
	Basically, 80% of our council tax bill was just redistributive.
	It was to make sure, like for taxis, for disabled people.
	Pretty much.
	Pretty much.
	Very small amounts of it were being spent on dredging rivers and things like this, which actually prevent floods and all the actual upkeep of the country.
	And here you see another example in Scotland as to how the spending is going.
	And you see welfare, education.
	Okay, education is important, but I mean, it is pretty expensive.
	Housing and benefits, another 14p, and then the rest, they have pretty much nothing.
	Yeah, they're pretty actual things.
	So, the actual authority of local authorities has already been gutted.
	Yeah, I mean, you could basically halve this budget.
	Like, I'm sorry, I don't want housing, property, and housing, property, and benefits.
	No, they can't not my problem, right?
	Not my problem.
	I don't want that going social care circuit, not my problem.
	Get a charity, you know.
	And I'll donate to charities.
	You know, I'm more than happy because you make it a tax write-off or whatever.
	I'm happy to donate to a charity.
	Most charitable country in the world per pound spent.
	Oh, wenteresting.
	Because I have to pay so much goddamn tax.
	I don't give anything to charity these days.
	But if I didn't, if you didn't have to pay these taxes, people would be much more inclined to provide charity.
	But when charity becomes centralized and government-funded, it stops being actually charity and it becomes mandatory.
	And it's definitely just an opening for scams.
	Well, the best thing about it being charitable is that you can choose whether someone is worthy or not.
	Whereas if it's the government, then they blanketly say, you know, as many people as possible.
	We can't deny it.
	Because you have local authority and local responsibility, and you know who's in need and who isn't.
	And you know that if you give your money to the town drunk, he's just going to piss it away.
	But you know that John Smith has had a really bad year and his children need help.
	I would actually like to disabled kid.
Local Authority's Dilemma 00:15:37
	Exactly.
	I'm happy to help a disabled kid.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	But when you say, well, I can claim 18K from the taxpayer just for transportation for one child for one year, that's just mad.
	So the actual authority of local authority has been gutted already.
	And local democracy has been gutted already.
	And the structure that is being created is intended to centralize power even further.
	And that's the context in which this police reform is happening.
	Because the intent is to make local police forces, there are currently 43 different police bodies in England, and they are going to be amalgamated into 12 or maybe 14.
	And they will be made to respond to the leaders of these new amalgamated authorities whose connection to the local community has been gutted.
	And that's the context that you should see it in.
	It's going to have a lot more focus on ethnic grievances because the parties involved will have to look at the ethnic voter banks and cities.
	It's going to involve an AI panopticon.
	She's literally decided to build that and she's trying to make it real.
	It was insane, by the way, that she explicitly said that.
	Like, if you think that, keep your mouth shut.
	And to Tony Blair at his institute.
	It couldn't have been his connection to Larry Ellison, whose dream is to be able to watch everyone all the time to make them behave better.
	It just shows absolute lunacy.
	This is the government that's just come out and said, look, we're going to abolish jury trials.
	Yes.
	Again, that's just unthinkable.
	Like, go back 10 years.
	Never think that would come out of a politician's mouth.
	Absolutely.
	Just mad.
	And the Magna Carta apparently supports this.
	Oh, well, no.
	That's what he was claiming, right?
	No, no, Christianity supports it.
	Oh, is that what he said?
	God told him he has to abolish jury trials.
	I don't think Christianity says much about jury trials, actually.
	I'm going to say something, but I'm going to.
	Fine, but certain people shouldn't claim to be speaking to God.
	That's all I'm going to say.
	David Lamy.
	Well, keeping my mouth shut.
	God couldn't have given him the answers in that mastermind episode, couldn't he?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Why wasn't he speaking to you then?
	Sorry.
	It's in this context that Pete North points out that this white paper pretty much completely abolishes local policing and makes it much less responsive to local concerns.
	And this is the main problem: accountability.
	Exactly.
	A group of residents who have been mistreated by the authorities would be able to directly confront at an administrative level the problem.
	Yes.
	But if this is then not my computer, says no, you're going to have to go talk to the guy and head off.
	Okay, where's that?
	Oh, 500 miles away.
	Good luck.
	Good luck getting through the bureaucracy.
	Phone them up and you'll be on hold for a long time.
	Exactly.
	It's like, Jesus, why would you want that?
	Exactly.
	And nobody's talking about this policing change, or it's not being discussed anywhere near enough.
	It's not being discussed anywhere near enough.
	So they're abolishing the police and crime commissioners, which were absolutely useless, but they're replacing them with the mayors and with these new boards that they're establishing through these local councils that are designed to be non-responsive.
	So they tried to make them responsive through this whole elected PCCs.
	It failed.
	And now they are saying that, again, they're trying to make them more responsive, but the actual reality is that they cannot be because of the way elections are changing.
	It's impossible to achieve that goal with these tools and with these political structures.
	That's what they're trying to do.
	And the whole thing doesn't in any way address the actual problems with policing.
	Now they're going to make Bobbies be forced to have a license to ask you if you have a license.
	Like there's a new license to practice for police officers before they can ask you if you have a license.
	Which is just sort of levels of parody and stupidity that I didn't think were imaginable.
	If I was trying to write a comedy skit, which I wouldn't be able to do because I'm rubbish at that, I couldn't imagine something that stupid.
	But imagine a situation where you get the police and they're asking you for your license, mate, and then there's you call the police on the police to ask them for their license.
	You've got your license license.
	No, you don't.
	Busted.
	Just change papers with people.
	Also, the absurdity of it is that what other police forces exist other than the ones owned by the state where a license is necessary in the sense that conceptually it's this reaction of a civil servant to a problem that they have no understanding of whatsoever.
	That's all that it is.
	Because presumably, if you work for the police, you have been approved of practicing policing because you work for the police.
	You're under arrest.
	Where's your policing license?
	Oh, shit.
	Please rumble me.
	I'm under arrest.
	I'm so stupid.
	You see a chain leading all the way up to the home office of people being under arrest for sort of not renewing their license to license to license.
	It's just, I don't understand how this is happening.
	It's because when you've only got one tool, every problem looks like a nail, right?
	Yeah.
	Like, what else they don't know what else to do?
	Well, just put a license in, obviously.
	A license license.
	So as this guy described it, it said MOT for the police, which is just madness.
	I mean, fine.
	But isn't that something you do internally?
	You have a college of policing and you have endless guidelines.
	And you're adding guidelines and you have an annual review and you're just adding layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy on top of it in a drive for efficiency and cutting costs.
	But it's clearly a political thing because the natural conclusion of this from statements that Starmer has made is to build some kind of national gendarmerie.
	Yeah.
	And is to centralize control of the police in the hands of political authorities and end the idea of any kind of independent police.
	Now, the idea of an independent police has been a bit rubbish because the head of the police union is some guy called Mukund Krishna.
	Probably.
	That's right, yeah.
	And my comment was, is that the guy's name or is it a side dish?
	I don't know the answer to that.
	But apparently, he's the head of the police union and he's on 700K a year.
	Well, I looked this up.
	The police union is actually a member-funded independent body.
	So he's looting his members.
	He is looting his members.
	That's correct.
	So you put the Indian guy on top of British policing federations and the first thing he does is loot them.
	Possibly.
	There's a lesson to be learnt there.
	But of course, Shabana Mahmoud isn't going to internalize that lesson.
	The thing about this, though, this strikes me as the kind of Metisation of British policing, right?
	Yes.
	Because the Met is just a bunch of diversity hires in high-vis jackets at this point.
	Yes.
	Whereas if you think about the local village bobby who lives just around the corner and you'll see patrolling around in his tall hat or whatever and just being normal like police officers used to be, this is the end of that, right?
	This is the increasing administration of the thing to turn into just a universal Met, which I don't want.
	To bring up Old England for a second, that you might be able to cast your mind back.
	But it happened to me just about the sort of tail end of it where an elderly person would see you.
	They would see that you're tall.
	It happened to me a lot.
	And they'd say, oh, you're tall, aren't you?
	Are you ever going to join the police?
	The implication being that you're tall.
	They specifically hired tall men.
	Exactly.
	They hired intimidating men who could keep order.
	That's the whole purpose.
	It's going the opposite way.
	It's small women in tiny high-vis jackets.
	So to sort of hammer your point home, Josh, 65% of police time is spent on non-crime tasks.
	Only a third of police time is actually spent on dealing with crimes.
	Why would a police officer ever interact with a task that wasn't a crime?
	Why wouldn't you just have non-police officer administrators to deal with mental health crises, public welfare, whatever, blah, blah, whatever the nonsense is.
	So it's basically the conversion of the police into social welfare.
	Yeah, social workers.
	Into social workers, exactly.
	Into social workers.
	That's actually an area where having women on the force is quite useful because they're normally quite good at dealing with that sort of thing.
	Why have them as police officers?
	Why put them in the front line?
	I agree.
	Just have, you know, this is an administrative body that deals with those particular things that are non-crime tasks.
	police officers deal with crimes you also have um you know community support officers as well which is i've not entirely figured out what they do I don't understand what they do.
	That is also a thought that's been passed on to me by many police officers as well.
	You know what?
	I think it is.
	I think it's all psychological.
	Make you see that they're thinking, yeah, yeah, because they're wearing the high-viz body jacket or whatever.
	You think, oh, okay, okay, so there is a police force around.
	It's like, no, not really.
	No, they aren't.
	They aren't.
	And so she's not actually addressing that in this reform.
	And what she's creating is another British FBI.
	Sorry, can we just keep that on?
	British FBI, I constantly see lefties going, well, we need to de-yankification.
	Sorry, where's your complaint about this?
	Well, not only that, this is the third British FBI in the last 20 years.
	Oh, brilliant.
	And all of them have absolutely failed because they end up involving civil servants in police work.
	This guy cites an example where they had somebody who was in charge of food standards who was given a senior role in the serious crime office.
	And then National Crime Agency happened.
	Nothing improved.
	And now they're trying to do it again, but this time they're attaching to it the Panopticon.
	We keep creating these administrative centralized bodies and things are not getting better.
	Exactly.
	You're going to have to create another one.
	We just don't have enough of it.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	The irony is that she's doing this supposedly to make the whole thing more responsive and align with government, but it's not going to apply to Wales.
	She's giving the Welsh the finger, and I thought that I should include that, you know.
	Farage should just be an honorable mention.
	Every time Labour do something, Farah should make a big press conference out of it.
	And so, no, we're going to undo this and we're going to go further.
	You know, devolve everything.
	You know, no, we're going to, it's like literally just, he should be saying to Kier Starman, Shabana Mahmood, keep going, do whatever you like, because the second we're in, it's all gone.
	Exactly.
	I've got a list, right?
	That's the next thing that's going on there.
	Keep wasting your time.
	Keep wasting everyone's money because I'm just going to tear all this up the second I get in.
	Vote reform.
	That's what you should be doing, man.
	And apparently, this new police agency is going to run into a conflict with MI5 because it's being given responsibility for counter-terrorism, which is typically MI5's beat.
	And usually that's pretty territorial as well.
	Yes.
	All of these bodies are insanely territorial.
	End in tears.
	They've got to justify their own existences, don't they?
	Exactly.
	So this is ridiculous as a reform policy for the policing, especially because it doesn't address issues like the prison system being completely broken and hiring 18-year-old girls to police hardened criminals, which is an insane idea.
	And hiring migrants to work as prison officers, which is another insane idea.
	It doesn't address the problem with the courts and the fact that the judges are giving sentences that can only be explained by genuine enmity to the victims of crime.
	None of this is addressed.
	Instead, Shabana Mahmood is engaged in another bureaucratic exercise that is obviously aimed at reducing accountability at a time when everybody's complaining that the main problem with this government is that, and the previous governments, has been total lack of accountability.
	So this is a horrible idea, but the broader political context matters.
	And it's part of a process of disenfranchisement, dispossession, and abuse that's been going on since Tony Blair came into power.
	Farage should really just get a giant billboard that he wheels out after every press conference.
	Like, right, this is what we're going to get rid of.
	And then the next one, this is what we're going to get rid of.
	And then every time they do something like this, jury trials, no, everyone's getting a jury trial.
	Even David Lamy.
	Even David Lamy when he gets on trial for treason.
	Like, you know, oh, this, we're going to centralize all the police.
	No, we're going to decentralize the police and self-regulate and actually be good rather than useless.
	And he should just have this list.
	So every time he is ever on camera, you see the list of things he's going to undo.
	Just like literally all of these really unpopular maneuvers that the Liberal government doing, that they don't have a mandate for.
	No, I'm going to undo all of this.
	And every time he's on camera, they'll see it.
	Every time you look out the window, there'll be a police officer truncheoning a criminal.
	It's going to be beautiful.
	I mean, that would be brilliant.
	That would definitely improve life.
	That would be great.
	Anyway, let's have a look at the comments here.
	Yeah.
	Go on.
	Casa Duen says, Wets don't understand that short-term suffering must be in effect of fixing our current problem, whether it's getting legals out by force or depriving disabled children of taxis.
	Yeah.
	And yeah, we can't expect Giles Corrin's opinions to change.
	But have we got video comments today, Samson?
	I'll read something from the website.
	Cumbrian Kulak says, solve for reform and Farage.
	Zahawi joining was an absolute, absolutely fatal man of biblical evil, pushing the mark of the beast.
	Yeah, I know.
	Forget very quickly that he was completely for the lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and vaccine passports.
	Uh, just what are you doing, Nige?
	I mean, were you for lockdowns?
	I kind of remember.
	Was Nigel France for lockdowns?
	I know he was clapping for the NHS, but well, he was a bit quiet about it, really, wasn't he?
	Yeah, yeah, I think so.
	Uh, Binary says, uh, Farage will not break the wheel, but instead be lashed to it.
	So, yeah, that's what's gonna happen.
	Um, sorry, did we have video comments, Samson?
	Yeah, Richard says, uh, the most the history of the most recent converts to reform rather than pushing them over the line.
	Uh, I know we'll rather condemn them into the seven circles of hell.
	Farage is revealing that he has nothing, he has become the monster he swore to slaughter.
	Uh, I was never under any illusions, student of history, I paid attention to all my life, but I know who said what and did nothing.
	It's a long list, and Farage has been on it for years.
	Well, I mean, yeah, but at least he did get Brexit, right?
	Like, so there is, you can see, and that was a 20, 30-year campaign at the United Gate, which is worthy of respect, exactly.
	So, you could see from like a voter's perspective, you're like, oh, right, well, he campaigned for, I remember him going for years about Brexit.
	So, if he's now like, yeah, okay, I need to fix the British government or fix Britain.
Maybe Guy's Gambit 00:04:51
	Well, okay, maybe he is the guy to do it, right?
	I mean, he was persistent enough and pugnacious enough in the previous issue, and he won.
	So, maybe, maybe this is the guy.
	And so, why would you get all of these losers?
	Yeah.
	I just don't.
	Hector says, Nigel keeps injecting himself with Venom, hoping he'll become immune, whilst everyone else sees Reform's flesh necrotizing.
	Yeah.
	Well, honestly, that's a good image, but it's kind of true.
	He's taking the Mithridates angle.
	And it's like, okay, man, but you would already won.
	You know, you're undermining your own victory here.
	Alex says, Farage is engaged in a kind of cargo cult politics, trying to recreate Blairism, not knowing that Blairism is only made possible by centralized media control.
	So spin and headlines dictate public opinion.
	You know what's really weird?
	I'm listening to an audiobook of Alistair Campbell's diaries from 1997 to like 2001 or whatever it was, right?
	And aside from the insane, heady ego fluffing where he thinks that Princess Diana was flirting with him in front of his wife.
	Alistair, I'm sure she was.
	I'm sure she's like, wow, he's so handsome.
	She was just meant to be an interpersonally nice person from what I and he is.
	Yeah, that's what I've heard.
	And he's taking it as raw flirting because of his animal magnetism.
	But he keeps going on about how good the press was for them.
	They kept getting banger press and they couldn't believe their luck.
	And it's like, yeah, isn't it interesting how they like he frames everything as a we're outsiders.
	We're going to come in fighting, you know, we're the underdogs and we get to the top.
	But he finds it all very oiled, right?
	The way forward is very oiled.
	There's very little friction to get them there.
	And literally, like the day after Diana dies, like Tony Blair has the media completely on side, but they were already on side.
	So what should have been a really difficult day is actually quite an easy day.
	You know, the whole thing, like even getting into government, very positive press coverage and everything is just slick.
	And at no point does Alistair Campbell like reflect on this.
	He doesn't think about it at all.
	Someone of his strong suits.
	No.
	Anyway, Warlord Wutu Tai says, normally reform voters have insane double think about this.
	They will gloat about reform making taking the best of the Tories while simultaneously rallying against every traitor who got us into the state of affairs.
	I'm not, I don't, I mean, I just, you would, why would you take Nadine Daris?
	Why would you take Nadine Dah?
	I suppose he can raise money.
	Okay, fair enough.
	Don't make him the Chancellor then.
	Yeah.
	Like, don't make him, you know, put him as an advisor.
	You know, why give any of these people real power?
	Um, Oliver though says, I'm McCarthy.
	Sweller is great for reform.
	Jemrik, less so, but the other guy is a complete fail.
	Well, I like Sweller because she at least has a consistent history of being quite a hardline right-winger, right?
	So she has a believable narrative on this, but Jemrix is a lot less believable.
	This kind of saw-like, you know, road to Damascus conversion, where it's like, oh, yes, I saw the light two years ago smuggling Afghans.
	If his story is about the conservatives being nasty to him for things that he said are true, maybe it might be genuine.
	But I have zero trust in the guy.
	Yeah, I just generally inspires zero confidence.
	The way that he speaks, everything about him does not inspire confidence.
	If you've ever had a blue rosette on you, you shouldn't be trusted.
	That's as simple as it should be taken, really.
	I don't think Farrar should have let any former Tories in at all.
	And he would have been in a much stronger position.
	I think so.
	I mean, he was.
	Because it used to be.
	Like, eight months ago, he was saying, I'll never take Liz Truss or Sweller Braveman or any of them because I don't want them damaging our brand was literally his words.
	And what was he?
	35% of the polls.
	Like, consistently on average.
	And so it's just like, why are you letting them damage the brand now?
	Ian says, Corinne's perspective is a perfect representation of TDS.
	It's like they're all programmed with a bullying subroutine that makes them do and say insane things if there's the slightest chance that Trump is involved.
	And yes, honestly, that's basically it.
	That's basically the case.
	It is literally, if it is pro-Trump, or you know, like Trump is somehow the commander of the thing, then the thing has to be bad.
	It is reactive, entirely reactive.
	Yep.
	Derek says, second segment, this is what happens when you've been molly-coddled your entire life and believe you're the main character of your story and you believe everything that's been told to you by the big box, the television.
	The day of reckoning cannot come fast enough.
	Yeah, I know.
	And Alex Ptolemy says, the never-been-punched in the face thing is true.
Reactive Bullies React 00:03:14
	After Renee Good was shot, her wife screamed, why were you using a real bullet?
	Because it's a gun.
	Like, what a question.
	How do you run him over?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah, the guy had internal bleeding.
	He didn't know that you weren't trying to kill him.
	You know, you hit him with your car.
	Then they spoiled children who can't imagine consequences ever being inflicted on them.
	Yeah, it's because they've always been insulated by them.
	And it's the same with you know, with all of them.
	And it's just like, well, you know, Anon Emmy says, Giles could see slaves in front of him in Omar, but he would pay it no mind.
	It's what happens when people go to China.
	They ignore the beggar gangs that are right in front of them.
	Yeah, it's mad, isn't it?
	Jordy Swordsman says, posh southerners are coming to Northumberland.
	I can hear my Reaver ancestors asking how much ransom I can get for him.
	Well, and that's another thing that annoyed me about it as well.
	Oh, I can't go to America.
	I'll go to Northumberland.
	Northumberland's beautiful.
	What are you talking about?
	The countryside is gorgeous in Northumberland.
	Like, you know, the Northeast is still like pristine England.
	Like, I hate these people so much, man.
	I hate the middle class.
	Just despicable.
	Well, I'm middle class and I hate them.
	There are some good ones, I presume.
	Yeah, I know us, but that's because we're essentially class traitors in this way.
	Well, seriously, if you want to rub their faces in reality, you are a class traitor.
	These are sort of new middle class.
	You know how there's new money and old money?
	They're sort of old middle class and then there's new middle class.
	The old middle class tends to be a bit more comfortable in their position and therefore they're okay going against some of the orthodoxies.
	I think that rubbing their faces in reality is good.
	It's fun.
	Do it more.
	Omar says, I feel like I've become much more cynical about these things in recent years.
	If a council is wasting absurd sums on anything, if a council is wasting absurd sums on anything, I wonder what the uncle or cousin owns the business being contracted to carry it out.
	Well, that's the thing, isn't it?
	You know, these taxi drivers are just like brilliant.
	You know, just brilliant.
	And how many of these are even valid as well?
	Like, how many of these are real?
	So, oh, my disabled son needs money to go to the thing.
	It's like, well, the government's just going to give out that money.
	And then, like with Somalias, these are child daycare centers.
	Yeah, they will just develop disabilities, man.
	Develop all kinds of things.
	They'll develop disabilities, but will they still get the taxi to pick them up?
	Or will it just be a split?
	Yeah.
	Here's a kickback, right?
	As in, I won't go to work.
	The government will pay me and I'll give you some money.
	And then we'll just keep on this grift forever.
	Who knows?
	And I'm totally with Omar.
	I'm a bit cynical about this.
	I'm sorry.
	Yep.
	Daniel says, knew someone who worked in the call center, police call center, when they were talking about combining the Wiltshire and Oxfordshire call centers.
	As if that makes sense.
	She knew a little of Swindon, but nothing of Salisbury.
	So how is she meant to help if I phone from Salisbury?
	This was back before COVID, so centralization of police was not just a labor thing.
	Oh, almost none of these things are just labor things.
	The Tories, like I said that at the beginning, the Tories are just as guilty of it, and they've been doing it for a while.
	The Online Safety Act, Nadine Dorries literally wrote it.
	She's literally in reform.
	And Nigel Frost, yeah, that's terrible.
	I'm going to get rid of that.
The Tories' Guilty Plea 00:00:45
	She's literally standing there.
	The Online Safety Act is too intelligently tyrannical for Nadine Dorries to have written it.
	I'm not saying a lawyer or something didn't write in the back.
	Yeah.
	You put a name to it, perhaps.
	Yeah.
	I've got Americans in the comments going, yeah, okay, you are correct about the American Civil War and even in the American Revolution about the quality of American soldiery.
	I'm sorry, it was just the fact that America wasn't a continent full of professional European militaries that had spent hundreds of years beating the living daylights out of each other.
	You know, it's just the nature of the beast.
	Anyway, we're out of time.
	So thank you for joining us, folks.
	If you'd like to see more, go to listies.com, of course.
	You probably listened to this there.
	Sign up, helps out, and we'll see you in the next tomorrow, I suppose.
	Tomorrow.
	No, I thought it was Friday.

Chapters

00:00:02 Is Reform's Tide Turning?
00:14:33 Reform Voters Leading
00:30:23 The Conservative Bet Matters
00:33:05 Donald's Decent Place Comment
00:47:47 Oman's Hidden Horror
00:53:14 Rural Education Parachute
01:08:24 Local Authority's Dilemma
01:24:01 Maybe Guy's Gambit
01:28:53 Reactive Bullies React
01:32:07 The Tories' Guilty Plea