Ben (30:38)
We can do it in private. But also I think the other thing is like, my sort of, like, take on the whole reform thing in terms of, like, what it represents on a sort of political level is that, like, what Nigel Farage has basically done has. Well, what his big realization is that, like, you can build an entire political movement around being a cunt. And by that I mean, like, you know, you can sort of take, you know, things that we talked about on this show for many, many years, a lot of the time where it's just like, well, you know, for a long time, like, the sort of consensus in British politics is that, like, things cannot materially get better, things can only get worse. And the sort of, you know, the bit of rope that other parties will give you is like, okay, things might get worse for you, but there'll be someone else below you and will make their lives even worse. Right? And you can take great joy in the fact that the people that you don't like for, like, whatever reason are really, really struggling. And you know, in your mind, you can be like, oh, it's their fault and stuff like that, but, like, ultimately everyone way of life kind of is just getting sort of worse and harder to finance and so on and so on. What Farage, I think has realized will realize was that, yeah, like, you can sort of build a political movement around not just being miserable, but making other people's lives miserable. And there will be lots of people who will just kind of simply enjoy watching suffering, right? And in the way that, like, you know, he sort of brushed off his kind of like, you know, the sort of racist things he did in school. Not even by way of sort of even saying that, yeah, like, you know, this happened and I was young and I'm sorry. And like, the political environment, like, is one that, like, you know, I actually like my political movement rejects and, like, wholeheartedly. Because also to say that you reject it is to kind of be like, well, you're rejecting, like, your MP who just a few weeks ago went on TV to say that there were too many, like, non white people in advertisements and then had, like, members of the third party defending her, right? Including, like, runners in the press being like, yeah, actually, like, she was right. And what she actually meant was that, like, you know, DEI has sort of like, taken over everything and become too woke. It's like, no, she said very directly what she means. You don't need to sort of like. But address it in anything, you know, kind of like, you know, you don't need to try add new to it. She said what she meant very, very directly. And I think his big gamble is this very much like, you can kind of, you know, you can take people's anger and you can take people's frustration, but you can also take this kind of like the sort of broader political sense consensus that he emerges out from, where he's like, you don't actually have to make anything better. No one's asking you. No one's asking the Reform Party to do that. They are actually, if anything, the most fervent reform supporters just want other people's lives to be worse. They're obsessed with mass deportations. They're obsessed with cutting whatever benefits are left. They're obsessed with getting rid of public transport. All these things that will demonstrably make people's lives worse. That's what they're for. And his movement, in many ways, is the easiest vehicle in order to establish that. So, yeah, there is absolutely a through line that goes from his childhood up to now. But I feel like the way in which other media outlets haven't quite recognized what's going on is going to be like. I mean, this has sort of been the case for a long time. And so in many ways this is like a continuation. What I think is interesting is, like, maybe, like, 20 years ago, this could have been something that would have been a real, like, you know, it could have done some real damage to him. And the fact that, like, it's kind of been a bit of a squib. I'm not saying that it hasn't had any impact at all, but I do think that, like, the impact that, like, you know, the Labour Party believe it will have will be so minimal. And that's not even really because of, like, Farage's charisma or anything or the fact. Fact that people really like reform. It's just the fact that the environment in which Farage thrives in is one in which the Labour Party and the Tories and basically every party except for the Greens and maybe the Lib Dems are very much kind of like, they very much have a desire to maintain that.
