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New Culture Forum
Two-Tier Terrorism + Will Burnham Call an Early General Election? + Can Reform Come Back?
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
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B
of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan. Required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms. Hello and wel show. I'm delighted to be joined by Michael Murphy, head of journalism at the Outpost Studios by Peter Barnes, political commentator and strategist, and Jack Hadfield, an independent journalist. And today we're going to be reviewing Andy Burnham's first few days as Prime Minister. How has he performed? How are the public receiving his policies? What are the best and worst things he's done? Is there going to be a general election? Labour's had a boost in the polls. How will reform be able to respond to that? Are things more difficult for the right under Burnham than Starmer? But before all that, we're going to have a look at the issue of terrorism. We've got two tier justice, two tier policing. Do we have two tier terrorism? Because there have been some disturbing attitudes and reactions from our political and media class to recent terrorist attacks, trying to deflect blame in fact over to the right when we've had things such as this weekend in Berlin, an attack at Gay Pride. Obviously we had the murder of Anne Widdicombe and then we had the alleged right wing terror plot against Muslims in suffolk which saw 12 people arrested but nobody charged and all released. But before we do that, on a related note, Michael, you had a very interesting piece in Unherd about the seizure last week of a bomb that the IRA was sending up to Northern Ireland. Caught at the border just a day before Princess Anne was going to visit. Was this an attempt to kill off a member of the Royal family? Ted, can you tell us more about this?
- [01:57]
C
Yes, Raf, I think it was interesting that none of the reporting on the seizure of the bomb made that connection. And if we were to look at the IRA's previous sort of track record on when they will target events and what kind of events, you'll see that, you know, a royal in the country is a very powerful symbolism, but it's seems unlikely that they would not have been aware of. At the very least. There's no direct evidence linking the two together, we should say. But I would say that it's, you know, one, one source that I spoke to described it as a sort of one in a million coincidence. So the, the bomb, according to the intelligence that we have, was meant to go from Dublin to Derry or Londonderry and Princess Anne's visit was in Fermanagh, which is, you know, probably an hour's drive away. The, the case really throws up more questions than answers because, you know, the, the, the most interesting part for me is the identity of the people who have been charged in connection with it. So there is a 25 year old law student called Louise, sorry, Isabella Perry Sullivan, not your typical demographic for an IRA or Continuity IRA paramilitary. And another chap called Simon o' Donovan who worked in the National Museum of Dublin, which is allegedly where the half kilo of Semtex that was found in the car was stored. Another interesting part of this case is that half a kilo of Semtex is very difficult to come by. This is not something that you can easily buy on the open market, on the black market. It's not something you can cross borders with very easily. There were some people I spoke to that suggested that this might be a leftover of the Semtex and other materials supplied by Muammar Gaddafi in the 80s. Bit of chemistry discussion on whether it could hold for that long. But what's clear is that this must have involved quite senior members of the continuity IRA alongside what alleged a 25 year old smuggler. This is a very unusual set of circumstances that I think, you know, might suggest that the more ideologically inclined remnants of the IRA are able to recruit from a more, a broader and a more eclectic talent pool, or if you could call it that, than they, than they previously had access to. And that might be related to some of the sort of glorification and romanticization of republican violence that we see creeping back into the culture with bands like Kneecap and things like that.
- [05:10]
B
And of course the political arm of the IRA is Sinn Fein, another party of the left reminding us that along with Islam, the greatest terror threat we face in this country on the mainland historically has also been from the, from the left in terms of the republican movement. But yes, very interesting if the IRA actually deceived General John de Chastelain, the Canadian general who was charged with the peace accords there and said, who believed them, that they had surrendered all of their military weapons and army arsenal to find out if it is the case that Semtex was being housed in the National Museum of Ireland, of all places. I mean, quite astonishing. So, a story I'm sure we'll come back to, but it leads us onto the broader topic we're discussing of the rise of terrorism, not only in Northern Ireland, on the mainland here and in. In Europe, of course. And we've seen a very disturbing way in which the attack this weekend in Berlin, where an Islamist drove a minivan into a crowd, then launched an attack with a machete, injuring many people, killing somebody, shot dead by police, but immediate. We saw in Germany itself, activists and politicians, one of them said to a whole crowd who applauded, what a shame it wasn't a white man that did this. Remarkable, you know, to get a round of applause for saying something like that. And others trying very quickly to deflect attention onto the right. And then here in this country, the Labor MP Osborne, who. She tweeted that this was all thanks to GB News and Nigel Farage, this Islam attack in Berlin, because of course, Berlin is a great source of center of interest for GB News. It's got a huge following there. I mean, what are we to make about this? What is it about the left that when they see their own kind being attacked, they still can't get beyond this whole idea of be kind to minorities?
- [06:49]
C
Well, I think it's a remarkable cognitive dissonance that we're seeing where, you know, all roads need to lead back to one boogeyman, which is on the right. It should be noted that in Germany, there was a mainstream news anchor who was reporting on the case of the. Of the Islamist attack, who said that, you know, it should be stressed, stress that the main threat to the LGBT community is from the far right. Complete non sequitur given what had just happened. And in Germany, this is actually formalized in how statistics are collated.
- [07:28]
D
So every
- [07:30]
C
anti Semitic attack, for example, that is unsolved in Germany is automatically recorded as an extreme right act or attack. And this is why you see statistics that then get cited outside of Germany about Germany and say, well, the biggest problem is the extreme right, not Islam. Whereas we know that the attitudes that a lot of the newcomers who would have arrived, especially post 2015, from places like Syria and other Muslim majority countries are deeply anti Semitic. And so a large portion of those attacks, we have to assume or, or crimes are conducted by Islamists and being attributed to the far right.
- [08:15]
B
Yeah.
- [08:15]
A
What's quite funny is that whilst they always do things like that, I think it was the Chief of police in Berlin a few years ago, actually came out and said that if you were gay or Jewish, don't go to these areas. They actually.
- [08:26]
C
I think it was visibly gay or Jewish.
- [08:27]
A
Yeah, visibly gay or Jewish. I was like, well, that's a turn of phrase, but gay and Jewish. Yeah, just move in general. But I know, again, I found it funny that they. The minute this came out, they said it was a German citizen. And I was like, I bet you his name's not Hans. And, you know, again, it's the kind of predictability and the kind of the routine, the way it's all choreographed perfectly and it's replicated again and again and again. And for me, it's literally because they daren't. The left in general would dare not look at the actual devastation that they cause for them. It's now not a fact of ideology. It's about the fact of they can't face the violence that they've inflicted upon many communities, including their own minority communities, who they serve up as kind of cannon fodder these days. I look at the Jewish community. I look at women and girls with the grooming gangs. You've got the gay community. Every single one is part of a kind of just throw. Throw them out, whatever, and then hopefully some of them might live. And then the ones that die there died for the cause of multiculturalism, I'm afraid. And, yeah, again, the one in Berlin in particular was all preventable. This guy was known to authorities that phrase should not exist, as far as I'm concerned. It will be the epitaph of the west, without a doubt. And then, well, he wanted to join Islamic State. He got muddled through the bureaucracy of it. They all said, nope, not a radical anymore, and then sent him on his way. And then literally, he picked his target and drove a van into it.
- [09:49]
C
Well, it's even worse than that. He had a suspended sentence for terrorism offenses in May. So now Germany has come up with the bright idea to review the idea of suspended sentences for terrorists, for terrorism. I mean, you couldn't make this up. This is.
- [10:07]
D
And I think as well, when you mentioned the sort of saying, it's not Islamism, it's the far right. When people say, oh, that's obviously nonsense. The thing what they then pivot to after that is actually this Islamist terrorism actually is far right. That is the far right. Because what they do is they conflate deliberately the fact that these people come from countries which have more socially conservative mores, say, to do with women, the LGBT community, whatever. And then conflict that with sort of rightist positions in the West. So they would say that for me, being critical of trans activism and ideology and saying, I don't want my kids being taught about, like, weird BDSM stuff in schools and there's 100 genders to them is exactly the same as a Muslim who goes, now I want to chuck gay people off a roof, actually.
- [10:59]
C
Well, it's.
- [11:00]
B
It.
- [11:00]
C
Is this indicative of this monomania that basically calling somebody a fascist or far right is really like the ultimate slam dunk? And so the term is lammo. Fascism crept into the culture in the. In the noughties, largely as a result of books like Paul Berman's what Was It? Terror and Liberalism. And he sort of traces this genealogy of, you know, Islamism via Said Qutb all the way back to, you know, a similar origin myth as fascism and. And all the rest of it. And I think that this is misguided because it misses what is sui generis about Islam and, and Islamism. And it's. It's a sort of silly appendage that we just add to things to try to. Try to make them sound worse or more daunting.
- [11:50]
A
Yeah, I think that's right. And the other part of this really is, for me, is the fact that people seem to have this rather bemusing idea that once you get to Calais, you hop on a boat, you might throw your passport to the bottom of the English Channel, but you don't throw your beliefs, you don't throw your culture down to the bottom of the sea when you get here, or you get to Germany or wherever in Western Europe, you bring those values into a nation. And somehow we've decided that it's more impolite to ask people who have come here seeking refuge, apparently, to respect the equal citizenship of the people already here than actually call them out on it. I think it's. I think that is realistically the big problem is that people presumed, you take them out of that place, bring them here, they will start to behave like people who are already here.
- [12:34]
B
And it's because in the Diversity Olympics, the gold medal top trumps always goes to race. And Islam, of course, trumps all other religions and all other considerations, because it's impossible. We know from all the polling that a majority of Muslims in this country believe it should be illegal to be homosexual. There's 52% who believe it should be illegal, but you can probably add another 10, 15% who still have homophobic views despite not wanting to be illegal. So you've got A super majority of Muslims in this country who aren't Islamists. This is just the majority mainstream view, whole views regard being gay as somehow intrinsically evil in some way or another. You can't imagine the Black Lives Matter community tolerating that level of racism amongst the population. But for some reason the gay population will do that. You wonder what will it take for them to actually finally rise up? Because they've had champions, you know, Peter Whistle, you know Ro. Peter Whistle, great, great gay champion. Our good friend Douglas Murray, great champion on all of this. Remember Pim Fortune, of course, one of the first ones assassinated in 2002 by a. By a far left environmentalist who was upset with his attitude towards Islam. Now he wanted to defend. Pim Fortune, wanted to defend gay rights and defend women's rights. He approaches from a liberal perspective. Obviously the far left in this country and in Europe are a lost cause. There's a pathological level of brainwashing they've gone through. But for mainstream liberals in this country, you would think somebody will be raised, raising the, the issue of liberal liberalism. And if you want to preserve the values that we've fought for centuries to achieve, surely this is the rallying point around which they should be coalescing.
- [14:09]
A
I think it's the confusion between legal equality and on the street equality. I think people think that just because we've got things like gay rights and gay marriage and all these kind of things, everything's a. Okay for the LGBT community. I think there is the, the kind of the. I don't think it's deliberate really for a lot of people. I think it's well organized. They don't realize that certain gay people will not go to areas of London because it isn't. They adapt their behavior. You know, I call it the visibility tax in a way, something that gay people have to give away all the time to just make sure that they are remain safe. Particularly here in London. I think it's a private zone. Birmingham is another one. Bradford, you know these places. Isn't it funny what kind of links all those three cities together? But you know, the idea that, you know, Clapham or Soho is a gay enclave, it's not. It's a refuge. Realistically, it's now, are you safe via postcodes? That's what it's like now. But because, you know, people always champion things like gay rights, you've got gay people all over to the media and all the rest of it. I think people just presume that everything is okay now and it's really not And I think that's why people don't necessarily have the kind of outpouring of support for gay rights that they probably used to. It's not that they don't care, it's that they're not aware of the different types of homophobia that now exists.
- [15:19]
C
I think if you were to peel this pathology back as well, it's a fundamental difference in how the left and the right see groups. So, for example, you know, Douglas Murray is, is, is not exactly a disco gay. You probably won't see him at Gay Pride. He's. I don't think he would claim to be a member of the LGBTQ community even if they would. Maybe, maybe they wouldn't claim.
- [15:41]
B
I doubt.
- [15:43]
C
And, and so I think, you know what part of why they're unable to accept this is because it's, they, they view, they view gays as a kind of monolith, and it's a monolith that can be instrumentalized for their own political purposes. They don't see, you know, you see this with people being excommunicated from the gay or the black community. You know, they say that this or that person is no longer gay or black. Yeah. And so it's. This is, this is something, this is an identity that is, is to them pretty monochrome, despite the, the increasing multi chrome flags that we see popping up.
- [16:23]
B
And what about this? Sorry, so just to move things on, what about this alleged far right threat in Suffolk that mysteriously came to light just days after Anne Widdicombe's murder? When questions began to be raised, of course, there you had the police saying, no, no, no reason to suggest there was political motivation here. And then a day later, well, we've given this to counter terrorism. We're now looking into political motivation. And then just at this time, as questions were beginning to be raised, suddenly the police and the political class that refused to discuss the political motivation for Anne Widdcom's murder, suddenly, on the basis of almost no evidence, apparently were hailing this great achievement of the police that saved all the lives of these Muslims who were going to be murdered by afar.
- [17:05]
D
Right.
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B
12 people arrested, all of them released without charges relating to this alleged attack. What do we think has been going on there?
- [17:11]
D
Well, there's something interesting with, if you look at sort of so called far right terrorism and Islamist terrorism, if you actually look at the cases of how many people have actually been killed by far right attackers, I mean, you probably give the example of Jo Cox, they could argue that was more schizophrenic. Thing. But the people who've been arrested on far right terrorism in Britain, how many people have they actually killed? I'm pretty sure it's almost none, maybe a handful here and there. But if you look at the people who are getting arrested on terrorism charges of the far right persuasion, it seems to be that these, these are the people who are getting done because they are talking in telegram chats fantasizing about violent revolutions, saying, oh, I would love to kill X, Y and Z. Or they've said something and they've been arrested once and they found a copy of Yannick's cookbook in their bedroom, for example. And it seems to me all the sort of far right terrorist cases have never really been actual plots or really ready to go. Like they're just 24 hours from actually about to kill someone. From what I can tell, what I've just seen, like in the papers, when you read about this is all just people who would, who are fantasizing about it, who are laughing about it, maybe do have weapons at home, but are just, they seem to just enjoy more typing in their, in their violent extremist groups about how, how soon the revolution will come and blood will be on the streets and we'll be able to kill everyone, but they aren't actually doing it. Whereas the Islamist terrorists actually do go out and kill people on a regular basis. And so I think they still have the same two violent ideologies, but one is clearly putting into practice a hell of a lot more than the other.
- [18:55]
A
That's a very good point. I hadn't really thought of it that way, actually, when you think about it. Yeah, but I think on, particularly with this, what is suffer, I, I think the problem is we are so quick to dismiss a kind of nefarious, kind of greater ideological battle, particularly when it comes to the left is. Particularly when it comes to their own side, because they think they're the better people. You know, they think, they've always believed that their ideology has, leads them to be more moral. So therefore it's just not as bad. It can't be as bad because if they believe what I believe, then I would never do such a thing. I think that's a big factor of it. And I think it's the pity that they look at the right with, you know, the old joke, we always think that they're stupid, we think they think we're a threat, that kind of thing. But yeah, the handling of the Anne Widdicombe situation by the authorities was catastrophic from day one. I mean, how Anybody still has a job is the question I would like to know. Because that first press conference should never have happened. That's what really set the kind of, the bar on that and what really kind of set the levels of, you can't say this, you can't say that, all that kind of stuff. And the moment as like any investigation moves forward after one day, of course new evidence is going to come to light that could radically undermine what you've just said. They were so quick to shut down any gossip or any kind of speculation, that stupid word. I mean, what did they think was going to happen? They're trying to manage social media more than investigate cases now, and that's what they keep getting wrong.
- [20:21]
B
And of course, if you look in America, the attempts on Trump have been by the far left, of course, Pim Fortune, as I've mentioned, he was assassinated by a white activist upset with his views on Islam.
- [20:33]
C
Charlie Kirk.
- [20:34]
B
We had Charlie Kirk as well. And of course, people now think that eco terrorism is going to be an even bigger threat to the mainland, where you're going to see real acts of terrorism against power plants, but maybe against the people who run CEOs of oil companies and so forth. We've already seen in America, you know, the assassination of the head of a medical health service, didn't we, by a chap who then became glorified by the left. It's far left terrorism, it seems to me, which is at least an equal threat to anything on the right, if not bigger, which has been completely ignored by the mainstream media.
- [21:06]
C
I think there's a key distinction as well with the response to these events, which is that after Charlie Kirk you saw, and indeed this guy who, who murdered the health executive. What's his name again? Something. Anyway, after these instances, you see this, this wave of equivocation at best, sometimes it's, it's actual celebration, like after Charlie Kirk. But, you know, there was jeers in the European Parliament, of all places, to hold a minute, silence for Charlie Kirk. There were, there seemed to be some kind of shouting match in the, in the House, in America as well. And if, you know, when you see it on the other side, when a, you know, a far right actor does kill somebody, there is virtually no equivocation from any serious voices. And so I, I do think that is a, a very worrying trend of the normalization of political violence amongst credible people or accredited people that you would expect better of. And I think there is a bit of an asymmetry with that.
- [22:12]
A
I think you're right, though. And I use Charlie Kirk's assassination as a perfect example because the number of people in the mainstream that immediately just labeled him far right. It was the immediate. It wasn't just the fringes anymore. It was literally like mainstream TV presenters and newsreaders and journalists. It was just automatic. They didn't see the problem in what, what they were doing. But I do think though it's interesting, when you looked at the death of Joe, when Jo Cox was murdered, it was all of the right was to blame anybody who voted Brexit. That was the narrative that everybody who sat on the right or had a problem with immigration, you bore the responsibility for it. When it is somebody from the left that causes violence, that is a lone wolf, that is an individual that is not part of the group. I think that is an interesting event that happens again and again is when it is for the far right, it is everybody, even remotely who sits on the right who has to take and then also has to somehow publicly always say, well apart from this or you know, it's that kind. I really hate it how we have to say, well, not everybody is a. My favorite phrase at the moment is not all forms of hate. Whenever we dare mention antisemitism, you have to say and other forms of hate immediately after you say anything. And I think that is part of the kind of the way that the left controls the narrative is that it confines the right in very, very well because obviously they have control over most of the media.
- [23:30]
D
Yeah.
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C
And unless we sound too self pitying here, I think that has changed over the last decade. We've got a lot of parallel media structures as we're sitting in one right now. And so I think we've been. Whilst the right 15 years ago was really at the mercy of terrestrial broadcasters and mainstream outlets, I do think that that has led to a kind of. The spell has been broken, I think from uncensored social media and these sorts of outlets.
- [23:59]
A
Yeah, I think social media has definitely helped break the spell, but I think it's going in the opposite direction in a way. In fact that anything that is seen as not establishment now is trusted, probably less so than establishment media. And I think that's because of the automatic rise of the kind of the alternative voices, if I'm being honest. I think a lot of people are kind of leaning more now to established sources purely because everybody seems to have an opinion on social media again.
- [24:29]
C
But there's probably an interplay where the alternative media is helping to keep the establishment voices more honest.
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A
Yes.
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C
Because they can't get away with something for very long without it being outed on Twitter and them having egg on their face.
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A
I think that's true, yes, without a doubt.
- [24:42]
B
Right, well, we shall move on to the next topic now, which is, of course, our new Prime Minister. What do we think about his first. Well, he's in his second week now as Prime Minister. In this short period of time, he's released more policies than perh Keir Starmer did in two years, if not the Tories in 14 years. We've had a pledge to end homelessness, we've had a pledge to have a social care system to rival the National Health Service. We've had scrapping of VAT on domestic electricity, two pound bus fares to be capped at that. We've had 20% business rates cut for pubs, planned early release of prisoners and number 10 in the North. Is this all theater? Could this all be campaigning before a general election? What do we think about what he's doing and how has he performed and how is the public, do you think, responding to him?
- [25:31]
A
Well, for me, I call it policy speedrunning. He's literally just announcing and announcing and announcing. Blair did it perfectly, just, you know, to kind of make John Major and all the other parties look slow. Made them look behind, made them look like they're not wanting to change the country. None of it has really been implemented yet, but yet it feels like change is coming for a lot of the country. And I think that is what. That's what I think is really going to be the motivation for a general election. I think it is undeniable when you look at these policies as a group, it is the perfect manifesto to put to the country at the moment. He's identified cost of living over other issues as the single biggest factor, which I think he is correct on, if I'm being honest. And I think a lot of this stuff is not promising, kind of radical. You've got to save hundreds and hundreds of pounds. He said it in his very first speech outside Downing Street. I've got to give you breathing room that really realistically has just been able to frame everything of, yes, it's not huge amounts of change, but it's going to make a little bit of change to a lot of people. And I think just the way it's all been put together, it feels like we will get to probably conference season. That'll be the big speech he'll give and then after that he'll announce a general election.
- [26:36]
D
Well, I don't think he necessarily will. I think maybe he Would like to. But in order to call a general election, you're gonna have to need to be so far ahead in the polls, I think, for a significant period of time. Obviously, he is announcing these things right now because he can just write in. But of course, the budget is coming up in October. He'll actually have to say, oh, this is the amount of money we're going to spend. We're going to be taxing you more or spending more here. And the rubber will hit the road on that. If we look at the burn and bounce so far, even with these lovely policies that he's been announcing, the business rate on pubs, the energy stuff they use, social care in the north. There's only been a few polls now. One poll put them ahead of Reform by four points, another put them ahead by one. There's quite a few that still haven't tied or even reformed, still just in front. And all the current polls of polls as of now have them going down to about 260, 270 seats. If I were Andy Burnham, I would not want to throw away three years of government and a massive majority just to potentially screw over reform. If I were Burnham, I would surely I would think, well, I've got three years. I've got three years to run the country in the way that I can do. And surely because I believe in my agenda, after three years the country will be much better, ergo, I would call it then, rather than risk losing power, I think he's going to need a month of good polls where he's at 30 points or above and the gap is like 7, 8%, because he's going to need to have to keep it. Like, why would you throw away your majority?
- [28:16]
A
Well, he might throw it away, but he's already said he's willing to do deals with the Greens of the Liberal Democrats. We're going to look at a rainbow coalition, he said. I think it was just the other day he's in open talks with Ed Davy already. He's already offered to speak at a Green Party event. This guy, he's preparing for coalition. He's already making certain moves and making certain announcements. Look at compulsory voting, for example. I bet proportional representation isn't far behind. Which two parties would love proportional representation to be a thing? The Lib Dems and the Greens. What I will say is, I don't think he needs to be that high in the polls. What he needs everybody else to be me is the same. And Reform, realistically dropping down so much like they have done that even now, they might be winning in certain polls but they're not getting the majority. And the idea of the Tories and reform coming together seems very, very unlikely despite everything. So I don't think he really needs to have the 30%. I think he needs to have something like 26 and then the rest of them cobble together.
- [29:11]
B
You both present very good arguments for an election and not enough for an election. This is the point. But I would wonder what is the purpose of throwing away such a big major to have a coalition when you do have three years left? Why not go for that coalition in three years time? That's what I don't really understand. You do need to have 31% to guarantee you get some sort of.
- [29:30]
D
Your MP is gonna have to vote for it. You're going to tell what half of your MPs that oh don't worry, you know, we'll be leading a coalition afterwards and 50% of you will lose your seats.
- [29:39]
B
And so many majorities are wafer thin as well. Right.
- [29:43]
A
But what's more important that are stopping reforms.
- [29:45]
B
Reform.
- [29:46]
A
Don't forget that ideological mission. To do anything to prevent reform becoming the government is something the left will routinely sacrifice because they're very good at working together to stop the right. The right is unfortunately a little childish when it comes to stuff like this.
- [30:01]
B
But of course reform's problem is that they regarded the Conservative Party as a busted flush. Well, Kemi's brought them right back. They're at 20% now in the polls and the Tories need to be in single digits if reformers have any chance of of forming a government. So I think reform is currently out of play. You could say in this equation I agree. Lend yourself to why would you have a general election and also why would he want to have. You know traditionally if you're. If you are one of the establishment parties of government, you don't want to have proportional representation because you'll destroy your chances of forming a majority government again. So I don't see what the incentive is for Burnham to do that. I think having compulsory voting is also quite dangerous because youth are going to vote for the Green Party.
- [30:39]
A
Not at the moment. Most of it has actually seen the collapse of the Green Party. Polling is realistically because Burnham has become the vehicle to stop reform. The Makerfield by election proves that he's able to turn around a red wall seat that trended reform and he'd be able to increase the majority. That's a very powerful narrative. They've got to go into the Greater Manchester Mayor situation They'll win that again. It gives them momentum, it gives them that kind of forward push. And what I do think. Think again. Even if Reform win this collective by election that's coming up, the stain that's on Farage now, most people in the country believe he's sleazy. Most people think reform is sleazy. That is very difficult to turn around. And then if he sort of calls a snap election, you've got the unfavorability rated. That will work against reform. So I do think you have that kind of a moment here for Burnham where they might not be able to get back if Reform bounced back.
- [31:32]
B
Michael, what's your view?
- [31:33]
C
Yeah, I suspect if there is a general election before his term is up, that it will be due to factors out of his control. I think that he doesn't have a mandate to do what he's promising. He has not faced a general election. Probably the least prime minister with the least democratic legitimacy in this century, if not since in the last hundred years. And I think that, yeah, it's going to be circumstantial. It's very difficult to say, well, we're going to do like some people in Reform are saying, that they expect it to be in May 2027. It's very, you know, if a week is a long time in politics, I don't know how they have that level of prescience. I think, yeah, that Burnham is also hemmed in by a lot of other factors as well. Like. Like he's got this unwieldy parliamentary Labour Party who may turn on him. He's got this honeymoon period, it seems, where his biggest asset is that he's not kema, but that may run out of road at some point. He's also got the problems with the guilt markets, if he spooks them too much, and various other sort of limiting factors on what he's able to do. And he may feel eventually that he does need the mandate to go to the country and that the. Maybe if there's a time where there is clement weather and the attacks on Reform keep coming as thick and fast as they have been, one suspects that this isn't the last that we've seen of those sorts of stories.
- [33:15]
A
There'll be a very big draw at the BBC March Night of Farage, and they'll just keep pulling a new story out and a new one and a new one. This is what really irritates me about a lot of this stuff, is it's
- [33:25]
C
all predictable, which is something that I find quite interesting, is that they all. They all sort of came around the same time and mostly to the same newspaper.
- [33:34]
D
Yeah.
- [33:35]
B
And there were stories that had been known about for quite some time, in many cases.
- [33:38]
C
Yes. And in one case in particular, there was a story about an investigation into George Cottrell by the nca where the Times journalist was able to say definitively that the NCAA could not trace the source of funds that were allegedly funneled via George Cottrell or via this entity associated with George Cottrell to reform. Now, in order for a new a news journalist to know that, they would have had to have had a source either in the NCAA or very high up in the home office, which is, you know, I don't know if any of your listeners or viewers will have watched Dominic Cummings interview with Michael Gove on the Spectator, where he predicted that what he calls the deep state would go into full system overdrive and to try and stop Nigel Farage from reform and would not balk at the idea, for example, of going into bank records or health records. So this is speculative and we don't want to be too conspiratorial about it, but I think the timing and the quantity of those stories is quite interesting.
- [34:55]
A
That's very true. But then, and I'd say for the last two years, I think we've all been saying the establishment will come for reform. So where was the firewall? Where was the institution of reform to protect itself? It didn't. It allowed the establishment to basically railroad it and continually do this again and again and again.
- [35:12]
C
They couldn't even look at Robert Kenyon's tweets about Carol Hordeman. They couldn't even. You know, there are services now where you can. Where you can delete your tweets. Complete amateur hour on some of the
- [35:23]
D
stuff that they've been doing.
- [35:24]
A
A lot of it, really, because you look at the 5 million. Investigate, quit investigation. Like, again, they had months and weeks to get a media strategy together, so that the minute it did really hit the headlines, they had a single line to go down. I think Farage gave four different reasons in three different interviews.
- [35:39]
D
And there is why he had the money.
- [35:41]
C
There is no suggestion of impropriety on Farage's behalf. And so one wonders because sort of boggles the mind why he wouldn't have just declared that.
- [35:49]
A
Agreed. That is somewhat of the 64,000. £64,000 question, really, isn't it? It's just, why wouldn't you just give the receipts? I mean, what you could have done is we had some first journalists to Knock on the front door saying, oh, by the way, what's this? You hand everything over. You could have actually weaponized the entire situation against other political parties. It says, we've got our house in order, why haven't they? It was the perfect kind of establishment, anti establishment argument that reform thrives on and yet it just doesn't seem to have happened. And the only thing I could think of is, is they just, either they were incredibly lazy or they just didn't see the bear trap.
- [36:26]
B
Jack, you're a reform supporter. How damaging do you think this has been for reform?
- [36:30]
D
Are you? Obviously there has been obviously that sort of idea of the sleaze that surrounds it, but I think they were right strategically with Nigel to call the Clapton by election when he did. Because I think what's gonna happen is now that none of the parties, none of the major parties have stood against him, he'll come back in Clacton with something like 70 plus percent of the vote above. It will be a significant well over majority and he'll be returned into Parliament. And it'll be likely the case that the Parliamentary Standards Commission will force another by election again because of course that's the only thing that you can do as an actual punishment to an MP who fails these things. But then of course, well then they'll go, well, hang on, we know exactly what the outcome of this is going to be. Well, I've had 75% the vote last month. You think I'm not going to get that again, so what's the point of this? So we know that you're doing this again. And so the reframing of this, then instead of, if they'd waited for Parliament to call a by election, the entire narrative would, instead of being focused on completely on the sleaze, the £5 million. But now it then has been flipped onto the by election itself. The fact that the other parties aren't standing, forcing a second, wasting the time and saying you're not respecting the inevitable will of the people of Clacton. And so I think that's probably the best thing that they could have done in this situation to reframe the narrative and again put it as establishment, anti establishment and said, look at how all of the mainstream parties have refused to stand because they know they can't win. Obviously there's the idea that they're, you know, they were calling it a fake by election. Kemi was saying this, Labour was saying this like, well, there wouldn't have been a need for a second by election if you defeated Nigel, there is no such thing as a fake by election. If any of them thought they could have beaten him, they would have stood
- [38:31]
A
and so built a show on that.
- [38:33]
D
Well, if you were to take out Nigel, why wouldn't you?
- [38:36]
A
Because you make Nigel Farage stand on a stage in front of 30 with 34 other candidates and a man wearing a bin, and that's how he spent his summer. Because, yes, they get the narrative. What they also have to do is spend money. Money, spend time and resources, which they have had to divert from the Greater Manchester Mayor election into Clacton. Then they'll have to do it again, which these things aren't cheap. So then throw in the threat of a very close general election. That's a lot of money in a short amount of time. And if they suddenly shut off the kind of. The cryptocurrency line reforms, suddenly have an even smaller donation base. That's the thing they're doing. They're actually, in a weird way, they're doing what the Iranians are doing to the American Americans to try to wear them down. Wear them down out of resources at eventual time. But I will say I understand why he called it. I do get the point he was trying to do, but I do not think they predicted none of the other parties would stand. I don't think they saw that coming, if I'm being honest, which is remarkable
- [39:30]
B
because that's what happened when David Davis wasn't that long ago not to consider that might be a possibility.
- [39:36]
D
Yeah. And that was a previous record of the number of candidates on one election. And now.
- [39:41]
C
Now It's.
- [39:42]
D
That was 20 something, late 20s, and now it's 34, 35. Yeah, yeah. This one.
- [39:49]
B
Yeah.
- [39:49]
A
It's amazing, really.
- [39:50]
B
Is there. Is that. Do you know if Reform has any idea what figure they're going to be happy with in terms of majority?
- [39:57]
D
I mean, I have no idea, but I'm sure there would be, you know, they'd want. They'd obviously want a. A proper majority, not just a plurality. And again, I would be surprised if the idol doesn't get over 50%. I mean, he got about just under in 2024, when Reform were polling around 14, 15%. And of course they're now polling 10 points higher than that or so. So there's no way. It would be a shock, a massive shock if he got under 50%. And again, I think you can see the support that he has in Clacton. I mean, I can imagine 60s, 70s, even, there would be a bunch of that together. And especially now where you have obviously Count Binface was sort of the, was, was sort of propped up as being the anti farage person. But now there are so many different candidates now on the right and. But on the left also, where I don't think, you know, Bin Face is even going to come, he will probably likely be the second, he'll probably likely get second place. But to be honest, with the amount of votes that will be split across, he still might not even keep his deposit, which would be quite funny.
- [41:02]
B
Well, Bin Face is the establishment candidate, isn't he? Jon Harvey is an establishment lovey. Right. Anyone who's written the thick of it have I got news for you. And espouses Green Party labor policies. I mean he's going to, he may even get a bigger share of the vote than labor or the Green Party got in the last in the general election. We never know. Which could of course be quite embarrassing all round for every party involved there. Going back to Andy Burnham there, what one policy do you most like that he's come out with in the last few days?
- [41:32]
C
North Sea oil. Yeah, but that I, I think there has been some Green shoots with his cabinet picks, especially for the leading officers of state. John Healey was obviously the most surprising pick and the most consequential, which signals that he's taking defense seriously. I think this does suggest that he's got an eye on what the Americans are particularly concerned with because the two big gripes that they have with Britain are defense spending, drilling in North Sea oil. And so those two are certainly an overture to America, whether that was intended or not. And I think that side lighting Ed Miliband in a nice shiny role but ultimately inconsequential role in the Foreign Office is also.
- [42:26]
B
Although wasn't very good for transatlantic relationships nevertheless.
- [42:31]
C
Yeah but I think as long as we're drilling, baby drill, I think that will be a secondary concern.
- [42:37]
D
No, it's a good one. But for me I'm a train enjoyer so I'm glad he's put HS2 back up to Manchester again. I think the half cancelling of the project by Sunak was completely shortsighted and yeah, I think we think we do need to build one. Certainly we needed space on the network. Having lived in Manchester for a couple of years, the amount of time it took to get down to London on the west coast network was just, it was horrendous and getting it used to be was also awful. So that was something that did need to be fixed and I'm glad he's Put that back up. Of course, HS2. The only reason that costs so much money is because we just spend it on completely frivolous things. Everyone's like, oh, we can't build anything because it costs so much. No, the money is going on, I think, on the back tunnels, the Axle Tunnel. The most insane thing I saw on HS2 was there was like asking communities like black and Asian communities in London about how they're being affected by this. And this was like hundreds of thousands of pounds being spent on consultations of people who weren't even where the route was going. So I think we can actually build things and most of the money is just being spent on ridiculous.
- [43:54]
B
I think it cost us eight or nine times more per mile of track compared to the French because we put everything into tunnels because of NIMBYism, which again is largely a Tory phenomenon as well. With NIMBYism, I think you're right about Healey as Chancellor. I keep wanting to say Dennis Healey as Chancellor, but at the same time I also think one of the reasons was he didn't want somebody who wanted to be Chancellor, the Exchequer, because I think he wants to run the economy from number 10. And I think he's got in John Healey somebody who's a party loyalist, who won't actually be Gordon Brown to his Blair. There won't be the friction there.
- [44:28]
D
And we must number 10 or number 10 not or number 10 north.
- [44:31]
A
Yeah. I think the relationship between Healey and Burnham will be more Brown and Darling. That kind of one will actually be doing the job. The other is kind of the figurehead for it. But for me, I actually think John Healey was an excellent appointment because he is somewhat of an acceptable face for the markets. He's not a radical, he's someone he's seen as sensible. He's seasoned in politics and in cabinets, so he does rather calm everything down a little bit. And also, also, for a want of a better phrase, he seems a little bit more of a grown up. Do you know what I mean? I think that kind of. Because Burnham is seen as quite green, he's quite inexperienced in a lot of things. That kind of older figure. It's kind of like the Biden to Obama kind of mentality where you bring somebody in just to make sure that the country doesn't feel like, you know, the children are running around. Though it does feel like that most of the time. The best policy is obviously the North Sea oil, but for me, I think the one that's massively under, kind of undervalued in a campaign from a campaign perspective. Perspective is number 10 north. Number 10 north is about identity. It's not really about running the country from number 10 from the north of England. It's about the idea of moving power out of London and giving people who do not feel that they have control in their lives giving it back. That's one thing. I think Andy has rightly identified that the kind of the take back control narrative nicked it off the right and is starting to use it for its own benefits. With number 10 north it's be interesting to see if it gets any actual power or does it have to keep running back to number 10 south? That's the test.
- [45:58]
D
Well, it does seem like most of the highest that are being advertised now for number 10 north are social media activities. So yeah, I mean you can say, well, you know, surely this is actually just a way to divert government money into labor campaigning activities. But just one thing on Andy and then the fact that he is green now is kind of why, why people like him. Because when you're a mayor, when you're a metropolitan mayor, you can just do nice things and you don't have to raise all the tax and do all the hard stuff and you can be nice and popular. And he has that now and he has this sort of Manchesterism vibe and I think it's going back to Makefield. You mentioned earlier we were on the show just before the by election and I think there are a few things where that I identified before as probably one reason why I may have win one of the anti reform tactical back voting. And then there was give Andy a chance and that's why people were like, okay, he's a popular guy, let's give him a go. The third one was the reason why I think he got so much as much votes he did was that it was vote, vote Andy, get Starmer out because Starmer was so unpopular. And I think a lot of people who were going to vote reform that election said to people on the doors, I'm going to vote for Andy now because I want Starmer gone. I think because Andy's actually started quite popular, relatively light. But when the rubber hits the road I think he's going to fall a hell of a lot harder than Starmer. People are going to be disappointed in him because they were never disappointed in Starmer because he was out. He was like a robot. Yeah, he had that from the beginning. The expectations were low. So now that Burnham has promised to do things differently and I don't think because he will never do the actual policies that will need to fix actual Jane in this country. People are going to hate. Hate him even more harder than they hated Starmer by a mile. And I think he will plummet much further down the pole, have that betrayal.
- [47:47]
B
He's going to have a much. He's going to have a very short honeymoon. He hasn't been tested yet, he hasn't been grilled yet. He hasn't done PMQS yet as well. I think also another part of. I. I think it's a complete gimmick for him to go every Friday or every Thursday afternoon up there. But of course, he wants to win back the Red Wall as well. Right. The Red Wall lent their vote to Boris Johnson. That vote was betrayed. They've now fallen in behind Reform and Restore. But their voters can still be taken back if they see that leveling up, that was why they gave Boris Johnson their vote, was to level up their communities. And they haven't. We're short on time. Very quickly, one minute each. What is the worst policy Burnham has announced?
- [48:24]
C
I'd say, well, there's. In a crowded field, I think that. That the one policy that I thought was quite telling, at least of his naivety and possibly insincerity, was the announcement at the door of number 10 that he was going to, I think he said, deliver his first order, which was to end homelessness. As if you could make a. As if this is how the levers of government work. And I thought this was interesting for several reasons. One is that he. He made the same pledge in Manchester in 2024. Sorry, in 2016. And homelessness levels are now back to their 2016 levels. And so he's failed to do it in Manchester and now he's got. He's promised to do it for the entire country. I think that is indicative of, like, a lack of humility and a lack of sort of realistic understanding of how. How government works.
- [49:26]
B
Jack.
- [49:26]
D
I think for me, well, looking at the last Labour government, the thing that needed to go through were Shabana Mahmoud's ILR reforms. And looking at what Burnham has said about this, he said it's quite possible
- [49:36]
A
that they would take indefinite leave to remain.
- [49:37]
D
Indefinite leave to remain. They would take the social care visas out of those reforms, so they would be allowed to return as normal. Now with the Boris wave, a lot of the people who came into the country who actually were causing problems here and bringing all their families, they were doing it on the social care visas. So if they halved that away from the reforms, and allowed these people to stay in the same way. I think that would be extremely damaging. Extremely damaging for the country.
- [50:07]
B
Peter.
- [50:08]
A
Yeah, like you say, it's a very crowded feel, but for me, the VAT cut on electricity bills, I think that one because it just screams gimmick when you actually break it down into the numbers. The actual lack of saving for people. I think think again, it just. It screams of the kind of. The insincerity of him and the kind of that it is all show that it is all social media and spin. For me it sounds nice but it's going to make very little difference. But like you say, it's a very crowded feel. I do agree that the. The ending homelessness one was a ridiculous comment to make. Utterly ridiculous. Anybody who just does a basic Google and Burnham and homelessness will show that he has no grip on that issue at all. So yeah, again, a very credit field but I'll go V18.
- [50:53]
B
Right, well, thanks, gentlemen. We're only in the second week. I think Andy will be the gift that keeps on giving. So plenty more content for the weeks ahead. That's your lot, unless you're a member, of course, because we're going to have some member content recorded onto our Patreon channel. If you aren't a member, do go to our website and subscribe for a good range of perks and benefits fits. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.
- [51:16]
A
Thank you.