Hello and welcome to page 94.
Do Not Adjust Your Set.
This is a special one-off podcast.
Because of the big news this week, Andy is away because he's preparing
to run for the Manchester mayoral team on a platform known as Hunter Murrays.
More details on that as we get it, but for now, Britain has a
new prime minister in waiting.
Andy Burnham, who won a resounding victory and they Mayfield by-election
and has caused Kirsten Dermot to resign.
I am joined as ever by Adam McQueen in his lap and guest star Matt Mure to
talk over the big events of the week.
Ian, I wanna start with you.
You watched Kirsten ER's resignation speech on a scale of
one to 10, how moved were you?
I was very moved 'cause it was Monday morning, and we
go to press Monday afternoon.
Not only did he time it in time for private eye press, he actually
timed it in the middle of the private eye editorial meeting.
So there was a pause as we all went and watched it on our tele
and then reunited tearfully to say, what the hell are we gonna do now?
we're recording one day in advance of it landing on newsstand.
Did he get the cover?
he did get the cover, but only in the picture of a gilded coach
coming into London with a headline.
Andy Burnham travels to London.
it was a coronation joke, which we were lucky to get.
and then underneath it said Britain shed secure Surely tear.
But it was an incredible thing because I'm still scarred by the day in 2017 that we
went to press on a Monday and Theresa May chose nine o'clock the next morning, the
Tuesday before we, we were even out on the news stands to call a general election.
So, for one thing, I will pay tribute to secure for that one.
Yes.
his inadvertent humour will always win.
he actually said without the slightest pause, he said, I've spoken to the king.
And I thought, Andy
and I couldn't help myself.
and we had a, a long list of a thing that he's achieved and he just wanted
to say, then why are you going?
it didn't make any sense to me.
I thought the best thing that he said was when he went, I've spoken to the
parliamentary party about whether or not they want me to lead them into
the next election, and was it, I've accepted their answer with good grace.
All
400 of them spoke with one voice.
So he said in his speech, the hard work of change was with a singular
purpose, not power for power's sake, but to change Britain for the better.
So the hard work of change was with a purpose, which was change,
which sort of tells you everything about the past two years really,
this, lack of, there's no there.
Fundamentally speaking,
it was a no soup, but I, in the way I think it may be, it was
the best speech he's ever given.
Not at least it was blessedly short.
It had three main points.
Basically, you've all told me to sold off and I'm in fact sodding off.
I would ideally like there to be a contest, not a coronation.
Yes.
He thinks like he won't get that one.
And the other thing was a, it was a, he both did a sort of forward jab Andy
Burnham by saying he essentially was opening nominations for this long period.
Yeah.
But also there was a backwards jab as well at I was the one who
transformed the labour party.
it was, what was it?
Electorally financially and morally.
Morally bankrupt.
Bankrupt.
given that so much of his rhetoric during his time in office has been
about putting party like behind country, First it was a very labour
Yeah.
Speech.
It was, I changed the Labour Party and now maybe labour will
go on and win a second election.
But that was the bit he was good at.
that's, the strange thing about it.
He was a very good leader of the opposition and he did sort out the
party, which was in a terrible state and then he got into power and didn't seem
to know what he wanted to do with it.
I
mean, it's part of the general feeling that I know a lot of the electorate
do seem to have the, political class currently has become addicted to
campaigning rather than governing.
And that sort of been part of his downfall.
Can we have a moment to say the one unifying thing that swept through the
country yesterday as everyone watched that statement, which was annoyance
with presumably Steve Bray playing the Ode to Joy in the background?
Yeah.
Adam, I sense you've got feelings about this.
I had two feelings about it.
One was just shut up.
Just pull his plug out for forgot to sake enough.
We get it.
I know it's the 10th anniversary and everything, but the other one
was, guy's a banger, isn't it?
It's joy.
It's really good.
As Anthems go,
right?
Yeah.
There was Za dot the priest.
Definitely
I would, but that's a very footballing Now I think if people would've
thought that was a, sort of World Cup reference, if they played za
Do the Priest, don't you think?
I think Corona was Zat the priest.
But maybe that's just the song.
Get You I
had it
sung at my wedding.
Aw.
And, so the class hierarchies of the podcast team
are revealed enough, enough handle chat.
It is handle right?
Yeah.
Okay, good.
I had it sung when playing George III in the madness of, but there we go.
Oh,
brilliant.
Effortlessly.
No.
Any advance on that.
Literally no.
Whatsoever you have bringing my upbringing was culturalist.
I had it played the first time I rode to Hounds that No.
Okay.
Got nothing.
Can we get
back to how annoying Steve pray is?
Yes.
it's our irony, right?
Which is that his right to do that is probably protected by some human
rights legislation of the kind in which Kirstan is in favour very strongly.
Yes.
And the right to kind of peaceful protest.
But I did, I had exactly the same visceral reaction as you, which is, I'd actually
like to hear, I felt like the teacher, I'd like to hear what Kial is saying.
Thank you.
It's
not
peaceful protest when you are rattling out, out to joy at several decibels.
I'm sorry,
what's say protesting the concept of silence.
But
this is a bit mean too.
This is the last time ki is going to get to command attention and
maybe it was difficult before.
That's quite brutally.
Yes, no, it is.
I did, on the plus side at
least it wasn't yati sacks, which would've provided, a
righteous backdrop to the tears.
Okay.
To one fine piece.
Did we have his list of achievements though?
Okay.
Go.
' cause my other feeling apart from pleasure at the timing sadness at the going was
just if any other prime minister had his current crop of good news to boast about,
he'd still be in, kids going, oh, yes, the boats, they really are, they are down.
net migration figures are down
50% cut since last year.
Yeah.
Which reflects two things, doesn't it?
It reflects the Ukrainian scheme and the Hong Kong scheme working their way
through and the kind of what Boris wave.
Yeah.
Where Boris Johnson government just lost control of visa allocation.
Like they lost control of everything else.
But yes, that is something to boast about.
I think they may have at some point built a house somewhere in the country.
Inflations not looking that bad.
there are things that other, desperate governments, would've
boasted about and survived.
I was watching him thinking.
What, and you are going.
My, my other last thought is just thought, why did you have to go
in such a classic star right way?
Having told everyone you weren't going to.
There was briefings about you fighting on, oh God, it's the last U-turn.
You've resigned.
Finally, he went out as he lived u-turn to down street.
Yeah, I think you are right.
And the other thing I felt when I was writing this up yesterday was the
fact that Liz trust til to her dying day will say that, it's not her fault
everyone was against her, that the mini budget would fail for other reasons.
But I do think there is also the fact that, and this is useful when we're
discussing anti burnum, as we will later, lots of the things that happened to
Stan were genuinely out of his control.
So sickness and disability numbers have been persistently high since COVID,
that is something that he inherited.
He didn't start the war in Iran.
He didn't start the war in Ukraine, both of which caused
energy, price, and inflation.
he didn't start COVID, as far as we know, he has been, he has dealt
with Trump in the White House.
Just an enormous time suck of energy, presumably sorting all of that out.
It was a pretty rum hand.
But Matt, before we get too carried away and fondly remembering him, what do you
think his biggest mistake in office was?
having the entire country hates him, I think was probably quite a big mistake.
Problem.
I think
But why so much?
Why much more than, comparably leaders with worse track records.
I'm gonna base this on a lot of the filth I have to marinade in
by looking at the internet Okay.
For my job.
but if you, look at X as, a fairly representative sway of the Antia style,
I really did not think when you said filth, I thought you were gonna say he
lost the MILFs or something like that.
But yeah.
Okay.
The furry vote is very important, Helen, and we'll talk about
that in a subsequent episode.
I think partly because he, and this is again no fault of is by dint
of his profession, by dint of his, previous role as director of public
prosecutions, he embodies a particular type of establishment politics, which is
anathema to a certain sway the voter now.
And has been since that day, 10 years ago, that we're not gonna talk about.
so there's partly that, I think partly there is something fundamentally
uncharismatic about him as man, which feels unfair and maybe cruel to
say, but it's, also basically true.
never got a sense that he enjoyed the job or really even won.
To be in the job.
It just felt like it had fallen to him.
It was middle management figure, and he, didn't know what he wanted to do with it
and didn't get any joy out of it either.
the political class in this country have, over the course of the past
decade, potentially longer, but let's fix it a decade, become
very, bad at telling the electorate like, things aren't gonna be nice.
Yep.
we have lost the ability to hear as a populace, I think the news that
things are not going to be good and there is nothing that we can do
about it because there are some very good reasons outside of our control.
it's a very hard position for any politician to be in when you also add
in the lack of charisma, the fundamental mistrust of his background, et cetera.
Yeah.
I, there was a, for me, a, defining moment in the by-election when Camp
Bin Face, who is the very brilliant John Harvey was asked what his key
manifesto point was and he turned, the bin to the camera and he promised the
electorate, he said, I'm going to lower your taxes and raise everyone else's.
And I think that is what the electorate wants to hear.
yeah, the austerity of the 2010s protected homeowners who saw the
house prices rise and protected pensioners, thanks for the triple lock.
So George Osborne had got a constituency of people who he was telling them that
we are really cutting back, not on, you.
And I don't think Stama ever achieved that.
We should say we were quite tough, if you remember when he just got in
saying, why are you so miserable?
maybe we should have been easier on him, that he was trying to make the
case that everything was screwed.
Yes.
The problem is, I see it, is that they came in saying, we are not going to
raise national insurance income tax and VAT and therefore they realised
very quickly they needed some money and went for smaller tax rises that annoyed
more people violent and individually like the inheritance tax on farms,
which again, from media relations point of view is, and I appreciate it.
It's very important to stress this.
The failure of Stan as Premiership is not about comms, it's, about politics.
Comms is a very small part of it, but from a media relations point of view, a
load of very small things, they will stack up and they feel worse than one big hit.
Yeah.
you say it's not about comms, but I remember thinking, when he
first brought in the, the farming inheritance tax, if this had been
pitched as, we are going to get Dyson.
That might have been popular.
If you say somehow, oh, it's gonna hit all farmers, then it
becomes very unpopular And so there is a comms issue, isn't there?
There is a comms element to it and it would be really interesting to see whether
in Stan's probable departing honours list,
he said previously he wasn't gonna have a resignation honour.
number 10, this morning were, I believe a little bit more ambivalent
about the possibility of whether or not that's gonna happen.
To be fair, it's a bit like Joe Biden pardoning and everyone on the way out.
It's Yolo whatcha are you gonna do not vote for me again?
So I look forward to seeing, some Morgan McSweeney, in the aftermath of all of
this.
I also do think there's a name that has to come up here, which is he who should
not be named, which is, Mandelson.
Yeah.
Which I just think was the most enormous and avoidable screw up.
Yeah.
I mean it was really like, why appoint someone that so many people
dislike so intensely to a job?
You don't need to appoint anyone to, you had a perfectly good ambassador who
got on really, well with Trump anyway.
Why put that bomb in there and wait for it to explode?
It's like with Boris Johnson, everyone forgets that what he resigned over
actually was Chris Pincher because Party Gate became the defining thing
of him and the way he had to go.
And I think it was amongst it parliamentary party.
It was, I think with Ki Mandelson was exactly the same thing.
I think from that drip of more and more bits, bits of evidence coming
out and paperwork and text messages.
I think that was what was inevitably gonna do for many,
you're right, it's the scandal that validates the critique that people
already intuitively felt to be true.
And in Boris Johnson's case, it was, you don't pay attention to this.
You are, you don't have the same morality as everybody else, right?
You just don't think you should play by the rules of little people, which both
Chris Pincher and Party Gate represented.
And I think you're right.
In the case of Stama, it was you decide things with a little cabal,
you don't really trust people, include them in your decisions and you're
supposed to be Mr Process, but you bend the rules when you want to.
and I really felt that Sue Grey is, was a harbinger of that, which was
when he was leader of the opposition.
she went from being the neutral civil servant investigating party
gate to his chief of staff in charge of preparing for government.
Que, all the relevant authorities signed off on it in the end, but
it, the Tori's complained about it, and I think not unreasonably yeah.
But, and then she was dumped on from a great height saying, sure.
She hasn't done any preparation for government.
Yeah.
But it's okay because Andy Burnham has about three and a half
hours to prepare for government.
we're not gonna repeat that mistake this time.
I had to drop, a joke from the last issue, which I thought was slightly
poor taste, which was, the man who pushed Auburn under the bus all those
years ago, finally being caught out.
And it was Starber Poor old Sue Grey was the one.
as we wrap this section up, we're going to take, a chance to be
nice, say, is everybody ready?
Brace yourself.
I know it doesn't come naturally.
Can we, in the interest of balance, name one good thing that
to come out of the Stama era, Adam, would you like to go first?
I think you would have to, you would say Ukraine generally and sticking by Ukraine.
But I'd also say particularly that moment after, president Zelensky was
horribly bullied in the, Oval Office by, by, JD Vance and President Trump.
And there was a very, good bit of sort of soft diplomacy after that, where he
was brought immediately over to London.
I think on the way back before he'd even, he'd even gone home and there
was an embrace in Downing Street from Kiss arm, and then he was sent
around to have tea with the king.
Do you remember?
And I just thought at that point, that's, there's a, there's some class
in that, so that, that bit impressed me.
Okay.
Ian?
I would agree with that.
I quite the idea of him being foreign secretary, but I, don't suppose
that's gonna happen immediately.
that bit was okay.
And I quite liked the, his response to the riots on two occasions.
He proved that.
When he was DPP, he had learned how to do this.
We had the right, he banged people up.
The sentences were long in they went.
and that's a bit, of a Tory response.
enormously
popular.
He did it, country.
And so it proved that he was capable of doing things.
But the overall failure is I think, one of nerve.
It's not saying, we are bust, but I will do the best I can in the circumstances.
It's not saying, why on earth would I point mantle?
It's, not taking any of the bolder decisions.
hang a minute, you're you're about to be mean about that again.
I was gonna say last long.
Oh, yeah.
And in conclusion, oh yeah.
Sorry.
Matt,
this is a little bit of a, still a negative one, but harking back to right
at the beginning of his prime ministerial career, if you will cast your minds
back to the, the scandal about all the freebies that you were getting.
Remember, freebie
care, this, also mean
Yeah, But the thing is,
but you think he looked snappy.
you know what?
The duds were beautiful.
but no, I think it was a good thing because it once again, shone the spotlight
on donations to political figures and the possible benefits they connote.
And when we were talking about this earlier, had a very amazingly said,
the Dermot Wart so Farage could run.
and, whilst obviously the 5 billion crypto donation story would've been one anyway,
you do think that possibly there is, did
you say 5 billion?
That is a story That's interesting.
Yeah.
Sorry, just to be very clear, it was, one level of magnitude
less than that, A mere million.
I'm gonna give him credit for driving antisemitism out of the Labour Party and
also really purging what I'd see as a kind of crank tendency of the kind of people
who do Facebook posts about false flags.
he set that as a moral mission.
He said it one of the things that he didn't reverse when he was
saying that during his campaign for leader in 2021, that he thought
that Corbin had messed up on that.
And he really followed that through to the extent of expelling Corbin from the
party, which is an extraordinary thing to do to your immediate predecessor was
incredibly popular within the party.
And he did it efficiently, and he did it quickly as well.
that was essentially what Neil Kinnick's job was over sort of 10 years in
George, the Labour Party was getting rid of militant, and the trots and the
tanky and, all that kind of element.
They came back in and, were, were purged to use the phrase very,
quickly by and effectively by starer.
So there we go.
Stama good on Ukraine.
Good on Iran.
Snappy dresser.
So that's our roundup of ki Starer, praise paint phrase.
You're not, gonna get more comprehensive than that.
Adam, before we move on to the sunlit uplands of Burnham, I want
to spend a minute just talking about the Maker Field by-election.
So a couple of days out from it Now, couple of things stood out to me.
Let's talk about Restore first.
So this is Rupert Lowe's hard right far right party, anti-immigrant party.
They, given that they only existed for how many, it's a year.
A year.
They've,
they've been bubbling around in
corporate a year now based on Rip Low, having a tiff with Nigel
Farra and falling out and so
many have before him.
Yeah, exactly.
But none of them have managed to get, parlay the Tiff into a party
that took 6.8%, putting them third
In that viol election.
Admittedly, some of the other parties really ran paper
candidates didn't campaign.
Were you surprised by that?
Do you think that's had enough attention?
in a way, I was relieved by that result.
'cause I think the worst possible result for Andy Burnham would've been
if the combined reform and restore vote had been above what he got.
And it was comprehensively below it was 13 points below, that, that combined vote.
'cause the story was about
right.
He didn't squeaker win.
Farra didn't get to say, oh, we would've got it if it wasn't for
these upstarts on, coming in, on the, on even further right win.
It was a very definitive victory for, Andy Burnham.
Yeah, it's not great.
I had a look at the statistics on this.
6.8% seems like enormous amount.
We would obviously prefer there not to be that many people voting
for us, outrightly, racist party.
But, I was looking at make afield in 2010, which is kinda height of
the BNP under Nick Gryphon, being up there, 7.4% at that point.
So if anything, geez, that, that kind of element has gone down a bit.
And certainly some of the big, scares, of the, so the 1990s, there's not directly
comparable, these are cancel elections.
But there was a point in 1993 where A BMP counsellor got in Millwall in
the east end with 33.9% of the vote, again in, barking, which famously,
but barking in Dham cancelled in 2006 before the big fight back, led by some
Margaret Hodge, which West Streeting was also very involved in, 17.2% there.
And that made them the official opposition on that council.
So again, not directly comparable parties, not directly comparable situations, but we
have been in situations like this before where, the extreme right as opposed to
just the right wing, come in and take a substantial proportion of the vote.
but it's not, to say it isn't concerning,
I was really interested in for another reason, which is you had a plausible
reform victory in that seat, at least on, on paper as it, as you say,
it turns out that Burnham won very convincingly, but that there were
6.8% of the electorate who didn't care about getting a reform candidate in.
They, wanted so strongly to register their protest about the, direction they
feel the country's going, that they were prepared to do that at the expense of
getting a right wing anti-immigration candidate against somebody who's
seen as being relatively now the soft left, left of the Labour Party.
That's quite, we wanna burn things down more than Nigel Farage who sells himself
as Mr. Burn things down drain the swamp.
I think this is where it makes, it really does make it Nigel's problem.
That was very obvious in one of his many petulant videos
that he's put out recently.
But the one direct obvious, he said, what more do you want from me?
I'm the right wing.
Hope you have to vote for me.
The one in the field.
That
one, yes,
that one,
yes.
yeah.
but I think in a lot of ways the worst thing that could possibly ever have
happened to Nigel Ra was getting elected to Parliament on his eighth attempt.
because that and the various scandals that have blown up around him, we
keep coming back to the 5 million pound donation, which he is still
to this day, saying he was under no obligation to declare and he could
have spent it on anything he wanted to.
And it's none of anyone else's business.
That and all of the outside jobs that he now has to put
in the register of interest.
So we're aware of just how much time he's spending on everything else and
how much money he's raking in from crypto and cameo and all of these kind
of dodgy side gigs that he's doing.
All of these things serve to make him look like an establishment politician.
In the eyes of people who have decided, as you were saying, Matt, that's the ongoing
narrative at the moment as we don't like establishment politicians anymore.
that's interesting 'cause my view is always what a terrific spiv he is.
Yes.
He's quite clearly a man who's trying to sell you nylons and say, hello, lady,
I've got some of this up my sleeve.
and suddenly your view is, oh no.
For most people he's just bang in the middle of the establishment now.
And I'm thinking, but Oh,
I think, no, I think it was that, but I think that appealed to a
lot of people because he felt like he was the outsider and he was
coming in and giving a bloody nose.
all those speeches he used to give when he was an MEP where he was incredibly
rude to various sort of Belgian, figures.
Yeah.
And, which were then clipped up mean he was very early on.
We'll talk about this in a bit, but for YouTube and for social media,
that was, his kind of appeal.
That he was this upstart coming in and he hasn't got that appeal.
Rupert Lowe has stolen not only a significant proportion of the people
voting for him, but his clothes as well, effectively, that he is now coming in.
Again, this is extraordinary how he's done this.
'cause Ru Lowe is your classic kind of red trouser kind of Tory he has stolen
his
clothes.
Country.
Country man.
True.
but he really has taken the whole shtick and turned it into someone who is not only
further to the right, but more, feels like more of an anti-establishment outsider.
And Farage has gotta find a way of polling that.
He's got probably less, there is a Snap general election court, which
I think is probably very unlikely.
He's got another three or four years to get through this as that man in
Westminster who has somehow still got to convince us all that he is an outsider.
You are right.
Though.
There was a sense that he was a kind of English folkloric character who
could be played by David Jason, right?
Yeah.
He could have been Del Boy.
Yeah.
He could have been Paul Larkin.
Yeah.
George
Cole
keeping things off the books a bit.
But, Wheeler dealer geezer kind of stuff and being in Parliament
has diminished that slightly.
'cause he ki it's toned down some of his wheeler dealer ishness
and he's not very good in parliament.
No, but he's never there.
he also looks I that
could help.
Yeah.
but they, pick on the other boys pick on him a bit in Parliament, but, I thought
that Lib Dems had a very effective ad post Brexit, now 10 years on, which was
the, he the head headline about, I got the 5 million for as a reward for Brexit.
And it said something like, Nigel Ra has had a really good 10 years financially.
Have you?
Yeah.
Which is the same thing that the Democrats are trying to run in the midterms against
Donald Trump, which is the Trump family has had a really great Trump presidency.
Have you?
Yeah.
And in both cases, you contrast the personal wealth and cash inness
of the ruling person versus the fact that normal people's living
standards have been really crunched.
Let's talk, money in the sense of digital campaigning.
Yeah.
So Politico influence had a really interesting story about the fact that
basically the reform campaign just pulled.
Their money out in of, digital platforms in the last couple of weeks.
They just really weren't spending a lot of money at all.
the, there's, a couple of things.
So firstly, yes, reform, spent significantly less than labour who
outspent everybody, as you can imagine, because, they have a lot of vested
interest in winning that seats.
but reform have got a lot of cash on hand
reform have got a lot of cash on hand, but it's also worth remembering that they
spent, a genuinely huge amount of money in the runup to the local elections.
Ah, okay.
the council elections, it's also worth remembering that, there, there
is a, the cap on local election spent on a, by election spend, sorry,
it's 180 k, like it's not a lot.
And that's everything.
And that includes advertising.
So that's hard to
money.
I had to write up for the Atlantic for the American readers and I was
just like, these, I'm gonna mention some sums of money, which you are
just going to find insultingly small.
It was like he spent 500 pounds pushing Robert Kenyon's advert on Facebook.
So for comparison, there was a special election to the Wisconsin Supreme
Court last year that Elon Musk got involved in Elon Musk, put in 20 million
overall people put in 90 million.
And I was like, meanwhile we are going, oh, they, they only
spent 250 pounds on Facebook.
Makes be rather proud.
I know like the bit when Andy Burnham had to receipt, like you hear the
count between count bin face and a guy to the for dressed as a fox.
I thought yes, it was stupid.
camp bin Face told me personally, good thing I chose the letter B 'cause it meant
the camera would be on me and Burnham.
Ah, it's very good.
You're gonna account trashcan.
It'd have been impro, but, so yeah.
So so was it just that they decided they'd spent their money in the
locals where they did really well and they, and then presumably they
realised that they weren't winning it?
There's a few things.
I think their internal polling would've told them that it was very unlikely that
they were going to win the seats, so there's no point committing the cash.
secondly, they had a candidate who had become toxic, as a result
of social media posts and his fundamentally appalling performances
in a variety of broadcast situations.
Like he didn't do himself any favours.
That didn't help.
And then the Farage brand, which is obviously what you would be
using traditionally for this as well, has also suffered something,
wait, suffered, 5 million hits.
it turns out crypto shaped costs.
Although I think what is interesting and what's important to look at is
the Restore spent a lot of money.
Restored, were almost up there with the Labour party.
Do you mean Boulogne parks?
we're talking, they spent about 30 grand in the last, in the last month
or so, which is, it's, only about 20 shy of what labour spent, and I think
the other thing that's worth bearing in mind about the way in which all this
works now is that firstly you don't have to spend a lot of money for additional
advertising to be incredibly effective.
There's a reason these companies make a lot of money.
It's 'cause the ads are really good and they work and you can reach targeted
people with 500 pounds, et cetera.
But the other thing is that because this is all done by AI now,
basically the way you do ads these days, if you use meta platforms,
picking the targeting of, people not drawing up the ads themselves.
frankly, you can literally just chuck a website at it and it'll, and tell
it, make me a bunch of ads that reflect this website and it'll do that for
you and it'll pun 'em out and it'll do the targeting for you, et cetera.
Which means that the idea of locally mandated spending and things that
specifically from it, like you can run all your ads through the national
campaign if the eye decides that it's gonna show them to people in maker afield.
need to be less targeted than you used to be because the AI will
naturally deliver the content to places where it is performing best,
which are likely to be places where elections taking place, for example.
and you've made this point that this is just a way round for very rich people to
spend as much money as they like and say, no, the electoral rules do not apply.
my, my favourite one currently is the, other shadow media
ecosystem that exists around this.
And the other reason that reform may be think they don't have to
spend quite as big on advertising generally is because so much of
the organic stuff is done for them.
But then there's
explain,
firstly, there's the entire right wing media ecosystem on X, which is
fundamentally a place now where the only views where you'll ever get
any traction are ones that broadly align with those of the, yeah.
Elon Musk has put his thumb on that scale.
there is an algorithmic scale and he is holding it down.
so you get a lot of free stuff from that.
obviously as we all know, over the course of the past 15 years, we've
learned that the outrage economy does very well on social media for
a variety of different reasons.
And then there's the other thing now, which is obviously the new wave of, we
used to call the citizen journalists, but they now have a new name for themselves.
They call themselves auditors.
are you, aware of this happened?
You've come across this haven,
you Yeah, I know.
As soon as people really start getting those bloody meta sunglasses
constantly that we're all like, life as we know it is over.
Oh, it'll just be people filming you all the time
constantly.
We have so much to look forward to coming down the line.
but so basically, briefly speaking, this is a kind of type of content production
that gained prominence and popularity coming off the back of, Charlie Kirk and
his Turning Point organisation in the US where Kirk was, made himself famous by
going to campuses and debating people on issues of cultural war flashpoints.
right.
So the classic thing is you go to say a Gaza protest and you say something
like, how do you define sexually?
And they go, I'm gay.
And they go, how do you think that will go on in Gaza?
And they go Ooh.
'cause they haven't really thought of it.
And it's a, amazing gotcha clip.
Yeah.
Rack up the views.
Everybody goes home for, tea and money from TikTok.
Exactly that.
And the same playbook is being run here.
So you have a bunch of right-wing people going, doing very similar stunts.
If you look at a lot of the footage that was captured around the, I was gonna
say protest, but we can call them riots, can't we, in Southampton and Belfast?
as long as we're not Beverly Turner, who seemed quite incapable
of spotting a riot, who told Matt Stalin that there were no riots,
so yes, if you look at the footage from Southampton and Belfast, there are an
awful lot of people there who are filming this because they're doing it for content.
they're not necessarily filming unrest.
They're filming interviews with people who have strong feelings about immigration.
And this content, again, goes far and wide and a lot of people make money from it.
And then I
think my favourite bit of this was Tommy Robinson, Steven y actually
then, and egging on some of this from Moscow, slightly tipping the hand
where he was with Elon Musk, Errol, because everyone knows everyone.
But you
also, in the week when our prime minister, who is still prime minister, is
revealed to have been attacked by Russia.
Yeah.
By Russia.
Yeah.
I know.
It's an absolute extraordinary, and there's an incident in the channel
of a Russian warship, and yet there's a vast group of patriotic
people online saying hurrah.
for Tommy Robinson and his views on Russia,
we share a lot of, important Christian values with Russia.
I think you'll find is the argument there.
Ian, delve into that however you like.
Yeah.
Anti-feminist, anti LGBT,
right?
Yes, exactly.
can I just, read you out?
Great.
You, mentioned, Nigel Fra.
He was curiously absent from this campaign.
we had a great number crunch in the magazine that's, currently on shelves.
press conference is Nigel Fage held January to April this year.
Wanna guess?
those are million
three
20. Very good.
Very good.
Alarmingly good.
I love him.
Press conferences held in the seven weeks after it was revealed.
He took 5 million pounds from Christopher Harbin.
two.
So he's, really dropped down the frequency of the press conferences
and I think as the media round this week shows he's not really managed to
live with a kind of great glacially, shrugging off the 5 million pounds.
He said he's going for what I would refer to as a kind of classic Jeremy Corbin
Touchiness level about it, where he's just angry that someone's raised this
brilliant, I'm a defining moment in the taxi.
when I was obviously talking about Nigel Raj, and he said, he got a
hard time on Julia Hartley brewer.
And I thought, unlikely it's over then.
yeah.
And a hard time from Nick Ferrari as well.
So people who would normally, think would be very sort
of, it's alright, he's got Bev Turner, he can fall back on.
She will definitely give him a, give him, an easy go.
I think it's really interesting that the press conference thing is just come back
to what you were saying about parties being permanently on campaign mode.
because that effectively, that was a thing that that reform and forage took
from the Trump playbook, wasn't it?
It's basically these aren't just press conferences, it like rallies and there
were fireworks going off and the bus was in the hall and all this kind of thing.
And then suddenly that what there are a lot less keen on is actual press
conferences where sort of difficult questions might get asked about topics
you are a bit embarrassed about.
And, and, might have to answer.
there's a genuine sense that possibly for the first time actually, and, I'm
trying to think back over the course of the past decade or longer that
I've had to be aware of that man's existence, but possibly the first
time it feels like he's been wounded.
Yeah.
But mean, which I don't remember from previous, rounds of this Ill to
be more generous and say it's a sense of guilt.
No, I don't think that's true.
They are still, I mean they are still, we should say this is in the
shadow of them still being very much at the top of Paul's nationally.
Yeah.
So
to go back to the restore point very briefly, which, Adam was talking about
earlier, I, want to make this point very, strongly because I still don't
think anybody's really looking at this.
so Tommy Robinson, sorry, Steven Yaxley Lenon, over the weekend in the wake
of, , a whole bunch of posts about the grooming gangs and Rupert Lowe's
inquiry into it and the results thereof.
He posted something, over the weekend which featured , an image of, men who
looked like they were of, south Asian origin, all basically hanging from nooses
with, the caption Pakistani rope gangs.
And that has now reached obviously millions and millions of people
now, Tommy Robinson, Stephen, the Axe Lenon has a verified ex
account that is monetizable content.
He's going to get paid for that.
This feels like something that there should, it is, it should be within the
gift of legislation to perhaps address
we know this is Elon Musk's devotion to freedom of speech.
'cause he just sued a European broadcaster for saying something
about him, which I thought, the irony on so would absolutely break.
you are in charge of X, which contains the most disgusting untruths and
inflammatory remarks about everyone yet something about yourself.
Not acceptable.
Yeah, just metas shutting up Sarai, Wynn Williams 'cause of her book about
Facebook, we're a free speech platform.
We can't be held responsible for anything, but we have very
strong opinions about other people
So finally the Andy Burnham.
I don't say Rike.
That sounds necessarily restorative.
Can we call it the Burn Renaissance?
The Be Renaissance is about to happen.
Matt.
Brilliant.
What are you most excited about in the Burn Renaissance?
I'm excited about his eyelashes.
Do you know what he wants?
Was called the Minister for Mascara by the Daily Mail.
Honestly, I, after question, time, appearance, and he had to clarify that
he does not in fact wear eye makeup up.
what I'm most looking forward to is everyone realising that he's
just another Blairite politician.
is Blairite and Brownout, which is a kind of impressive,
and for a while, Corbin, he's
fairly carbonite for
me.
I don't see the problem here.
He covers all the bases.
Yeah.
I agree with you.
And that's my one.
He's gonna
unite the party
in hatred against him like Ki Starer did.
That's my worry is that Ki Starer also thought he was above
labour factionism as he put it.
But what you call labour factionism is often different ideological tendencies.
And it, you have an approach to seeing the world.
I'm not confident at the moment that I know which Andy Burnham we're gonna get.
this is the argument at the moment.
They're saying someone should stand against him and it
shouldn't be a coronation.
But they're not, Wes treating dropped out almost immediately.
Didn't he said he wasn't gonna stand.
Angela Rena seems to have exited the field, anyway, so we assume
she's gonna get offered some major job in a, Burnham cabinet.
so far we've got, Al Kanes who's making it very clear that, that he
is the hard man of labour who, who keeps putting out these videos.
Not just the, jogging is now compulsory of your political account.
You have to be, videoed, jogging.
But he's, he's, videoing himself whilst jogging and talking to camera just
to prove he's not even out of breath.
And did you see the one with the fireman, he's
not jogging fast enough for then.
Exactly.
Did you see the one with the fireman though?
He
goes into a fire station and starts doing chin up, competing
with a farm and it's we get it.
Love you.
Really, Butch.
It's okay.
You are in the Army.
Does he go down the pole?
No, they don't know.
He
doesn't go.
They
don't have to.
Why don't they?
Surely you want one thing, that's all you'd want do in the fire
station is Can I go down the pole?
Come on Al.
Even he isn't gonna do, I'm going down the pole.
Yes.
Just before an election.
Cut on he climb up the poll.
Maybe that would be the,
but he seems to be very much positioning himself as a, candidate.
The problem I have with Al Ks is I feel like I lived through this before
with Dan Jarvis, if you remember.
They were like, he's a soldier.
Do you know he's, he probably kills people with his thumbs.
It does feel like every political cycle needs one hard man who has set proudly.
I will take a bullet for my country.
I miss Steve Baker, the hard man.
So he'll be doing videoing himself.
Having a fight with Al Kane soon.
They won't be able to resist it.
And what is the rationale?
We need a debate in the Labour Party.
have you not noticed?
They're quite good at it.
The debate largely is, should I be leader or should you they're doing that bit.
That's the thing.
I wouldn't mind if it were a debate between the labour, The kind of, where
Streeting and is ease with privatisation or Shabana Mahmud and her ease with quite
draconian, immigration restrictions versus the soft left or versus the hard left.
But at the moment, we're just going to have an argument that there has no real
substance to it, as far as I can see.
But
do you think he's sewn it all up?
So Shaba mood is clearly gonna stay his home secretary.
I think he'll ha I think he will shuffle.
he's, he seems to be playing it quite well in that he's dangling a lot of,
the chancellorship in front of quite a few people as it seems at the moment.
and I think that is interesting.
The right wing papers to come back to your point, have seemed to regard
the idea of Ed Milliband as transfer as basically full communism now.
Yeah.
When again, he served under Brown, he's not Yeah.
Of the outskirts of British politics by any, means at all.
So that will be really interesting.
but I was personally convinced that street's immediate, no, let me lay
my coat of this puddle for you.
King was his kind of straight, the job please.
He straight over the
traps.
That, that felt like an obviously sycophantic move
designed to secure a position.
But,
but in, in the coverage, the thing I never understand is it was this, now these
people are gonna be offered top jobs.
They've already got top jobs, all of them.
they're not
very good.
They've got
all the jobs he
left is, but
yeah, I did wonder that about Angela Rainin.
She has already been Deputy Prime Minister once.
Now that is a non job to some extent.
So maybe she's holding out for one of the great offices state, but
she was also housing and local communities, wasn't she where it did
feel like she was one of the people who did actually have a kind of plan
and was, pushing ahead with things.
So maybe she's gonna come back and, complete that brief.
Who knows?
And there is a point to having Ed Miller Band's chancellor, which is
again, he does have an ideology, right?
Yeah.
He has, I've got a specific critique of what's wrong and it
is quite hot today
and it
just saying, and
there's never been, and he's
not here, but
I know I
make that point for him.
I did have that, I did have that thought as I looked at the temperature this
week, I thought, we don't have to hear about those bloody climate change Deni.
They've shut the up, haven't they?
Although I would say, I mean of course Bakerfield wasn't the only
by-election last week, and we did have the one up in Aberdeen as well,
where to give Kemi beno, her due
came Renaissance happened.
Yes, it did indeed didn't it?
In one specific constituency and a very specific constituency, isn't it Ian?
It is, it's it is an oil city.
Yeah, it absolutely is.
Which
is built on oil and the people there largely work in oil and
would like to carry on working.
drill, baby drill, it's probably the one city in Britain.
Yes.
You, it may not be representative of the entire nation's feelings about Net Zero.
But that is the, I mean that, that's really the argument of ans he was red
ed when he was labour leader, wasn't he?
But now he's net zero ed.
The ruin a drive to net zero was as the male is obliged sort of auto correct
suit every time they type net zero.
And we should also point out there was a, bi-election also another one in Scotland.
Yeah.
Which was held by the SMP despite their travails.
Peter Merrill is probably being sentenced as we speak.
He,
this morning it was, four years if I'm
five years, I think five years.
Five years.
Five years and a few months.
Yeah.
So clearly that was not really dented at the SMP and A and gonna completely
hold them below the waterline.
The one thing I did wanna say is, did you don't
miss the opportunity to say Brondby Ferry, go on.
It's the one time you'll get it Ti Ferry.
No, I still, I once said Aldi instead of Kodi on b BBC and I still
wake up in a sweat thinking about, Andrew Neil corrected me, which is
not something you wanna have to No.
On a Sunday morning.
So I, stay well away from those things.
anything that any of you're particularly looking forward to in the Benet songs?
Can I say, I hope that he just, this is a very odd thing to say.
I hope that he immediately puts up income tax, which sounds like the weirdest thing
to say in the world, but I just think,
while you can,
none of the sums currently as they stand add up, I would just prefer them to
go, sorry, this is gonna hurt, but it's gonna hurt all of you and it's gonna
hurt people in the higher tax bands.
More.
Let's just, I need some money.
You've gotta pay me some money.
If you, if he gets a honeymoon, which I'm not sure he will, again,
we ran a piece this week demanding that he resign as Prime Minister
even before he's got the job.
'cause he's clearly not up to it.
He was a spoof, but that will appear quite soon.
So he's got a very brief window and, as nearly everybody seems to keep suggesting,
if in that brief window you put up tax, you might get away with it long term.
That's all there is.
I mean there's another potential, honeymoon indicator, which is, I
think the current reports are that he would attain the attain supremacy on
the 17th of July, which is two days before a potential World Cup final
appearance for the England football team.
And honestly, if England win the
Hot Burnham
Summer Action, England win the World Cup,
think how short declare shorts are gonna be if we win the final,
he declares a bank holiday.
Yeah.
Man is in office forever.
Yeah.
Harry Kain Day is declared and that's it.
He has actually got the best opportunity that anyone has had in a very long time
to put up income tax at this point, which is to say he's doing it for defence,
which is what all of the other parties, even the Lib Dems are arguing that we
have to, I mean we, we lost to, a cabinet minister And, and the blessed Al Kas
that we've been talking about a couple of weeks ago because, ki didn't meet
those defence targets that they wanted.
all the other parties are arguing for it.
It's a fairly unarguable one, isn't it?
Yeah.
Is we gotta put up income taxes, stop being invaded by Russia.
Yeah.
both politically and and nationally, he's got the opportunity if
that's what he wanted to do.
there we go.
That's, that's our advice to Andy Burnham, if you're listening Andy,
it'll probably go really well.
like all the other tax.
It's a popular
move.
Yeah.
Everyone, loves more tax.
that's all for us for now, but if you want more private eye content, the new
issue is now on shelves 'cause we're doing this in the incorrect week.
So you will be able to pick up a crisp, fresh, new copy of private Eye or you
can subscribe@privatehypheni.co uk.
That's all for now.
Remains to say thank you to Adam, Ian and Matt and to me really the
l VP of this while Andy's away.
Hello Andy on your Sun Lounger.
Bye.