Labour Conference, Diesel Shortage and Far Right Labradors - Off the Fence

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week's Off the Fence with me, Constantine Kissin, my trigonometry co-host, Francis Foster, Winston Marshall of the Winston Marshall Show, and Tom Slater from Spike General, and welcome back. This week's big four stories are Andy Burnham's first conference speech as Prime Minister, in which he announced the return of tax, spend, re-nationalization, and in not so subtle hint, the Brexit is up for re-negotiation with a possible referendum being offered at the next election. Diesel is here over two pounds a litre, and Trump is threatening an export ban, Andrew Neal, who we had on the show, it's coming out tomorrow, argue that this could mean a recession by Christmas, if it happens. Five men were arrested outside, outside RR Fairfoot in a suspected terrorist incident, and now the government says Iran may have been a world, in fact, was involved. And finally, the Green Party has published a list of banned words, including Nutter and Lunatic, presumably, so we can't accurately describe their supporters. With all that, let's get into our first story, which is the Labour Conference. As I mentioned, tax and spend is back, baby, re-nationalization is back. The 40-year consensus, I nearly said Tony Blair would be rolling in this grave. He looks like he isn't one, he hasn't quite got there yet, but this is a tear-up, not only a thaturism, but also a blareism, going back all the way to the 70s, and the potential for a re-negotiation of Brexit and a hell of a lot more in his speech, which was lauded, not only by the left, actually, but I saw lots of right-wing commentators applauding it as well. Tom, what did you make of it? I've got to say, I was taken aback by the gushing that was met this speech on the one hand, because I think there's just an element of, because of how awful the quality of political leaders has been in recent years. Kirsten was like the complete nadir of that. A lot of the commentators very easily impressed, both in terms of his presentation, which again, was a bit chummy of the usual, but nevertheless, not exactly barnstorming by historical standards. And also the content, I mean, what he was talking about in that speech was, it was as if he was living in a parallel universe. I mean, this is the sort of speech a Labour Party leader would give in economic good times, where there might be money to splurge on the Labour Party's kind of pet projects and ideologies. It's a sort of speech that you would give if you had a very solid majority of the country behind you, despite the fact that he's just kind of inherited what was already a pretty weak kind of sandcastle majority from Kirsten and since then the Labour Party's fortunes have plunged. And the things that he was talking about and the things that came out over the course of Labour Party conference, I feel like I am low to make predictions these days, but this could be the point in which Labour really scuppered it for themselves, both in terms of going towards Brexit again, but in terms of the softening up of the position on migration, let alone what sounds like, if he ever actually pulls it off, a much more radical change to the economy, which in the context of incredibly jittery bond market seems like something which he couldn't do even if he wanted to. So yeah, I mean, all party conferences are a bit like staring into a kind of parallel universe, I suppose. They're exclusively talking to the faithful of that particular party. They're saying things which play to their preferences and to their pet projects and whatever, but given the state that the country and the world is in at the moment, this felt like hubris doesn't even cover it. It felt delusional as much as anything else. I'm going to offer a contrarian opinion here, which is going to upset people, particularly Winnie. So you can absolutely go at me with vengeance and hell and fury. I'm going to be honest with you. I think the Labour Party have played an absolute blinder by getting Burnham in charge. Starmer was a sinking ship. The Greens were coming and taking all of the left wing lunatics away from the party. That was really damaging them. Then they had the right of the party were casually flirting with the Lib Dems. Burnham has come in and short things up. Now you can say, oh, right, look, come on, right, but this isn't going to happen. This isn't a permanent thing. And maybe it isn't. And maybe it's like the proverbial drink before you have to face the harsh realities of the morning. And it's only a short term solution. But you know what, boys? As short term solutions go, this is a pretty good one. You can also commit the argument that in life, Tom, we get the politicians that we deserve. And he's what we deserve. What we want is someone to come up there not to say the hard things, not to be like, oh, actually, we're going to need to make drastic cuts. This ship is thinking we need to be brood and we need to be fine that we need to actually think about finances and economics. No, we want someone to be on mate. Look at her, ever expanding terrible habits, gambling, expanding gut and going. You know what, baby? You're beautiful as you are. That's what Burnham is. And he's. I couldn't help noticing, mate. I couldn't really concentrate on what you were saying there because I was just watching Winston's face. Now, he went through a range of emotions there, most worrying, most worrying, he was making notes. Now, that's when you know things are serious. Believe it or not, I take a different view. Actually, I have a higher sense of self-worth. So I don't feel like this is the prime minister I deserve, but Francis may be interested in the prime minister. I was pacing the rub in anger listening to this guy's speech. And also, up again, when I heard all the reactions which Tom alluded to earlier and the sort of forning and hagiographies from the media, the guy, the new statesman said he was crying listening to that rigby at Sky News saying it was sort of you could see her sort of theory and look kind of emotional about it. Everyone thinking this is some sort of amazing moment. I cut to the chase. The most important part of this in my humble opinion is the illusions to proportional representation. He calls it electoral reform. Now, for our American audience, people don't understand this at the moment. In Britain, we have first passed the post, which means that whoever gets the most votes, whether in a constituency and then in Parliament, the most seats, so we have 650 seats. And so whoever gets 326, which is half plus one, they can form a majority, and they can form a party. If you bring in proportional representation, which Andy Barnum has been saying throughout his political career, we will never be able to vote out of our problems again, because as we examined last week, the split of the nation, not just now that we've got like six parties, or there's several more actually, but the right and left are pretty much split 48, 48%, so you would never get to a situation where you could form a coalition of parties to get over that 326 seats, which means we'd be stuck here. And if we're stuck here, there will be other consequences. I really don't think people appreciate how damaging it is. Best case scenario, look at the continent, look at these other countries like Italy, who are just perpetually changing leaders. We'd be stuck. And for that, I don't need to go into all the problems we've got, but that is really the number one problem. There's some other things though. He's talking about expropriation. They're saying they're going to confiscate homes and properties in towns and expropriate them and give them to people who need homes. This is literally Leninist. We're past socialism here. They're taking property. I don't know how, I'm not sure they use the word expropriate. They used to wear seas. These guys make Mambani look like Van Mises. It's mental. It's literally mental. And then people are still forning over this. And sorry, I could run a length and I don't want to sort of hog the airtime. So if anyone wants to push back on any of those things, please, please do. But before I sort of read it. I want to put back for Brexit by imbiting my time. Well, I'll just say a couple other things. This idea that Brexit, and I think we'll probably talk, are we going to talk about Brexit separately? Should I save my Brexit point? Yeah. Yeah. Save your Brexit stuff. I think we'll talk about that. I'll say one more thing about faturism. This whole thing was anchored. His whole sort of worldview is this idea that will after the war, the beverage report, which he cited, and then you have this kind of high time in sort of English prosperity and British prosperity. And we sort of build the country up. I'm sorry. And then that sure, of course, destroys and ruins everything. Firstly, in the 60s, it was 95% tax on top marginal rates. That's a disaster if we went back to that. Not only that in the 70s. We didn't just have piles of rubbish in the streets. We had dead bodies piled in the streets. We had three day working weeks. We had blackouts. We had inflation going through the roof. We had to be bailed out by the IMF. And this is, that's supposed to be the high time in these guys worldview. Oh, bring back the 70s. Can someone explain it? Can someone, one of you guys explain why they're so obsessed with the 70s and this period, which was clearly like a low point. in our history. What's going on? Well, we had two interviews this week. One of them I mentioned already with Andrew Neal. The other one was with Owen Jones, who literally made the very argument that you are now saying that the '70s was the best time, and then neo-liberalism came along and ruined it. So I hope people go and watch that. Dean, let's show people what Andrew Neal had to say about Burnham and the policies before I get to my controversial take. It's the people who blame. It's British attitudes to blame because the British people think they can have Scandinavian levels of cradle to the grave welfare on kind of mid-Atlantic taxes. And here's the thing you can't. Although if people vote in a way that results in a right of center government that might not deliver on all these things, if the country does vote for the underburdened perspective, that's it. We are a socialist tax and spend future. There's no going back from that. He believes that a bigger state means more growth. I hope he is. He's a way of affairs, but that's his belief. Why don't you think it's going to work? Because I don't see anywhere in the world where it ever has. So a crisis in the bond market is good for us. This government into doing things it doesn't want to do. I think we are heading for some really tough times. So that will be out tomorrow and I wrote an article yesterday in which I only with a very little small portion of my tongue in my cheek argue that Andy Burnham will save Britain. There is a bit of a caveat which is that if there's a fiscal crisis very soon then that might not happen. But if he is allowed to do this, it will destroy the economy so much that that is in my opinion the only way the British public will actually reset their attitudes to all of these things because one of the things I talk about in the article is the British public have a schizophrenic attitude to tax and spend. If you ask people about tax and spend it's actually very unpopular. Only 36% of people in this country say that they're in favor of tax and spend in the general sweep of things. But then when you ask them about individual policies, if you ask them about a wealth tax, if you ask them about a mansion tax, if you ask them about taxing the top 1% more taxing the top 10% more re-nationalizing the water companies, re-nationalizing railways, re-nationalizing your grandma, they're massively, massively, massively in favor of it. And my argument is the British public will remain in favor of all of these things until this world view is utterly discredited by reality which I would argue is what happened in the 70s which is why you then had a period of time when you were able as a country to pursue a different set of policies that actually created the modern economy. As we have it, I am with all respect to our fellow citizens convinced that until that reality manifests itself in disaster, there is no argument to be won anymore. People believe that prosperity is generated by taking more from other people. That is the British attitude to these things as Andrew Neil said. And until we have an economic reality that really hurts people which is something I really, really don't want, it will be absolutely terrible. All four of us are going to be more or less insulated or cushioned from it, certainly more than the ordinary person. And it's because of that that I've spent my entire public life arguing against this world view. But I am, I feel entirely powerless and I feel that better people than all of us have made better arguments than all of us about this. And I don't think the British public care, I think they want to have a go at socialism. And I think the elation that you saw not only in the room at the Labour Party conference but across the media, across social media, from across the political spectrum actually is not because Andy Burnham talked about his dad moving Leo though a lot of people are seduced by the sort of personal narrative. I think the reason this stuff got the reaction that it got is that he's offering a lot of people what they want. Well of course the difficulty here is that how you poll particular questions will produce particular outcomes. Because as you say even though you could look on net what the British public seem to believe about economic policy more broadly, you break it up, you get different responses. I suppose one thing, maybe this is a note of optimism, is that I think the British public where economic matters are concerned are actually more persuadable than it often seems. Like even the quote unquote austerity is, we can argue about whether or not that was meaningfully austerity. That was very popular. And that was a programme for the country which the public felt that was necessary that needed to be implemented to write the public finances. Of course it didn't actually put us in better steady economically in the end but nevertheless that was something that the public were open towards. The thing about Andy Burnham and his economic outlook, I think he's going to be disastrous for the economy for the country but maybe not in the way that you think Constantine, just in the sense that I think he represents the continuation of what Keir Starman was doing, of what the last Conservative government was doing rather than any particular acceleration of it. The weddedness to net zero for instance which I'm sure will come on to in relation to the diesel crisis. The weddedness to the just kind of trundling along rather than engaging in the kind of spending cuts, restructuring of the economy that is necessary. If you listen to that speech quite closely, it's also, there might be proven wrong by future events. There's an element where I think he's just going to go down as a kind of a bit of a left wing prictist or certain extent. He will say things like in that speech we're going to lift the Thatcher Irra ban on nationalisation. Then when it comes to him saying what it is that he actually intends to do, it's more public control which could be everything from having some kind of Ponzi community representative on the board of an energy company just or having the mayor being able to call in bosses of energy companies. It can be something a lot lower than that. I think he is kind of aware of the fact that even when he wasn't leader of the Labour Party, him even just sounding off about the bond markets, moved the bond markets. I think he knows he's actually quite hemmed in. I think he is going to be disastrous for the country, for the economy. I think it could well accelerate the decline in the way that you're slightly tongue-in-cheek hoping for Constantine, but because he's more of the same rather than it being any kind of radical break with the past. But again, I might be eating these words in six months time. You know where I am with this and it's slightly with Constantine, but it's just, I remember when I was doing stand-up and I was regularly and I was saying to the stand-up comedians, as Constantine was, this free speech thing, it's a big thing. Cancel culture is real, it's going to affect you, it's going to affect all of us, it's going to constrain it. You know they called us far right, not see whatever else. And then they went on. Anyway, the other week I was in a comedy club in the green room and there was a group of comedians in a corner and they were talking about how worried they were about cancel culture. They couldn't say this, they couldn't say that. Someone got banned from playing this club for saying this. What happens if you don't fully go on with the pro pali thing? And I looked over there and I was like, welcome to the club boys, you finally got it, didn't you? And that's how I see this. You can only keep repeating the same thing again and again to people. You can only do it so many times, eventually. It's like when you're getting my only other reference being a teacher, you can only say to them to the kids, you know what, do your revision. And if they don't want to do it, you go, well, you're going to fail your exams. And I'm going to be on my summer holiday. What do you want? That's where we are. If the bridge public wants socialism, we're gonna have all those young. I kick it in a way, I sort of hope you're right. And you've given the example of that you're coming after the 70s is a positive example. I'd say it's not the only way it goes. And I agree. So, you know, we've got the example of the 70s, that pre-80s period. We've got all the examples of socialism everywhere in the world, which continue to this day and communism. We've got the Soviet Union example. We've just got every kind of example. We've got a lot of lies about what the examples of what's going on with social democracy on the continent. My worry is it could also go the example of let's say Mitterrande in France in the 80s where he comes in hard left. It doesn't go well. After a couple of years, he yanks, he goes to the right to save the economy, which means that you kind of carry either carry on with the socialists or, and this is what happened to Starmer, you get a faction who go, you're not going left enough. And so then they form their green party. Basically, the problem, they're ideologues. So, they can't be wrong. So, they just, they'll just, I'm not sure that they'll ever unplug. They'll just go further left. Oh, yeah, yeah. But that's where the bond markets create the correction. That's where the reality snaps back to amplify your pessimism further. I think there's a third way this could go, which is of course a 1930 style situation. If you look at the cultural issues that we've got a tanking economy plus all of that, you could be looking at a far left far right, both rising rapidly at the same time in response to the deterioration of the economy. I want to make it super, super clear. I am not in favor of this. I just think it's the only way things have a chance to get profoundly better in the next 10 years. Otherwise, we will likely get what you're talking about Winston, which is a continuing bumbling along the bottom, continually trying to, well, look, look, we can borrow more money. We can find a way to, I read an argument I think in the telegraphs that we really need to do is restructure the debt so we can borrow more, and then everything will be fine. I think that is the temptation of every politician, actually, is to find a way to pretend we don't have a problem because the moment you stop, you don't have to fix it, and fixing it is going to be bloody awful. There's a practical element to this as well, which is what is actually the situation in Britain right now. If we get to the next election in three years, the right is still split. Labour win either majority or they win in coalition. They bring in proportionate representation, as I mentioned earlier. You're even your example as like the least bad scenario to wait people up. We might be on a path where it's almost moot because we're just going to have so many hellish other problems with a split country, as I've argued before, who don't seem to actually change from right to left, particularly overall, but just change within right and within left. Also, I hope people wake up to the realities of these policies. There is a scenario in which this provided the right gets it act together, which is a very big if, at this point, we've seen some casual violations overnight in which restore, stop reform from gaining a seat, it's a pattern that we're seeing occurring across the country. But if the right while it's act together, I think this could be seen as the moment in which Annie Burnham just completely scuppered Labour's chances at the next election, because what are the two big issues which are affecting society, poll, any poll show they're jostling for position number one and position number two, it's a cost of living in its immigration. On immigration at this conference, Labour have softened up already an incredibly soft set of reforms. They're going to seemingly junk a lot of what they were going to do around indefinite leave to remain, essentially allowing a large chunk of the Boris wave to be able to access benefits, be on a pathway to citizenship. They're opening up these quote and quote, "safe legal routes, how safe, they'll be legal," but they're, so they won't be safe, particularly in relation to Afghanistan and Palestine. They claim it's going to be cats, but as we all saw from that one Palestinian woman who came over and then managed to bring 18 of her family members along effortlessly, I don't think that's going to move the dial at all. People are already making jokes, you know, says he wants growth in every post code, the way things are going, it's going to be a migrant rapist in every post go. I mean, all of these things are, this is the issue of our era and he's on the wrong side of it. Then you look at the economy, even if he doesn't get to the point where he can engage in these grand nostalgic spirit in 1945 kind of visions for what he wants to do to the economy, even just carrying on as we are is going to be disastrous. We are facing another fuel crisis. It is going to look like a particularly painful winter, potentially. What are we talking about maybe just maybe will speed up some of the North Sea, oil and gas licenses without, you know, even actually changing the policy there. Tinkering is what is the kind of medium case scenario, I think, for what Burnham is actually going to do. So give it a bit of time. I think that could be potentially disastrous one, but as I say, this is the requirement in all of this would be that either the right-wing parties or right-wing voters get their heads around this and start kind of sorting into the party that's most likely to win in their constituency or the party that's most likely to win in the country. But looking at where things are at at the moment, obviously, that is such a massive if, it's probably not much to hang your hat on. Well given the negative conversation we've had, I do think it's important to object a little bit of an out of optimism, say that we could in a few years be facing another Brexit referendum, which obviously would be wonderful and delightful for all of us. The first one went fantastically well, really united the country. And that is one of the things that Labour under Burnham are considering. From what I understand, the entire front bench are basically dyed in the wool remainers. And as I think everyone watching this will know, Francis and I voted remain in the referendum, but were absolutely disgusted by the way the remains I tried to overturn the democratic vote. But that is effectively what Burnham is proposing to put in the election manifesto at the next election, which would give us another 10 years of the wonderful shenanigans that we had before. What do we make of this? Well, you know what, I think it's a great idea because I don't think we've divided enough of it. Oh, thank goodness. Thank you. You just try to wind me up. It's not that hard these days, mate. I don't think we're dividing, and we're divided enough. I don't think the left's divided enough. I don't think the right's divided enough whether it's the right way to all the right wing. I think we need more division. Let's have more to argue about. Let's break up more families, more relationships, more interfamiliar relationships. Let's get everybody at each other's throats. Let's bring back the big dogs. Let's get it in the room. Why not? Why not? Everything else is going to shit. Why not throw a links can on the bonfire? You know what? Actually, you make a good point because Burnham started his speech saying enough of the division of the last 10 years of politics before going into an unbelievably divisive speech. What could be more divisive than Brexit? Everyone's finished. No one wants to revisit that. I mean, I know they do all those remainder from Measures. I would say I, by the way, this is going to sound very wet, but I actually sport my ballot for Brexit, although I'm now very, very hard Brexit, and I don't think we need to go much further. I certainly don't want to go. And the reason because I think that is because all the remain lie, all the remain arguments proved to be lies, but that's a conversation for another day. But there is something on this Brexit thing I need to pick up because it's a crazy lie that Labour keeps selling. They keep saying that immigration was, illegal immigration was easier to deal with when we were within the EU. And the argument is, because of the Dublin protocol, the Dublin Agreement, we could send back illegal entrants to wherever they first came from, we're sorry, wherever they first entered in the EU. I've got a question for you guys. It's a pop quiz of the 30,000 requests from the UK to return illegal immigrants from between 2015 and 2020 to other nations in the EU. How many were successful? What do you think? 15. I'm sure about that time frame, remember it was something like 500 a year or something, in that whole pile. Yeah, basically, 1800 in that total time. And not only that, we had to take in more from EU countries wanting to send them back to us. So this idea that it was somehow easier to deal with illegal immigration is a total lie. It's so exaggerated. I think we're stupid, especially to try and sustain that now, is fascinating. Because as you said, that stuff about the Dublin accord is just complete bollocks and anyone who looks into it for five seconds will realize that. Also the fact that we've had all of this non-EU migration since Brexit, first of all, we know why because Boris Johnson decided to loosen up the visa rules. But also, you saw that in various European countries, they were all desperately trying to plug these gaps in the labour market off to COVID and the lockdowns and everything. And then also, if you think about that the EU would be rejoining, an EU in which this lunatic Pedro Sanchez has just granted us asylum to an amnesty rather, to a million illegal migrants. So as soon as they get Spanish citizenship, it could be on their way to Britain. Yeah, or 60,000 people crossing the border in two hours or two days or whatever it was in Fouetta. Exactly. Well, pronounce there. The France has been giving less, I've been working on that for a while. Exactly. That invasion is what the future of the EU looks like. They've always struggled to control their own external border. We've been lumping ourselves back into it again. And it's like going back to this point about how Labour live in Fancyland. The remainers within Labour and the rest of the politics are completely in Fancyland. They're the most low information people when it comes to the issue of the European Union and migration. The only way the rejoin case can be sustained is if you do not pay attention at all to what is going on within the European Union. They act like it's a land of economic, milk and honey. Well, meanwhile France is like teetering on the edge of a sovereign debt crisis in Germany. The former industrial powerhouse is it de-industrialising at a rate of knots. They talk about it as if it's this kind of haven of like political centre left, centrist stability. Meanwhile, again, in France and Germany, they're spoiling to elect parties that make reform like the Lib Dems, but it doesn't make any sense. - Any sense, if you ask. - It makes sense in one way, Tom. It makes sense in one way, I think, which, and I think this is the reason that they think this might be a time to do this, because if you poll the British public at a very superficial level, there are a lot of people who quote unquote regret Brexit. And I think that what's happening there is my theory, and maybe wrong about this is, people don't think about the cause of relationship very carefully. So they say, well, we had Brexit in 2016, then we had five years of ticking around about Brexit, which was, as Frances salutes, who quite divisive. Then we got whatever Brexit got. We didn't get reduction in immigration, but what we've also got is falling living standards. And people go, well, we got Brexit, then we got falling living standards, therefore Brexit caused living standards, 'cause they don't know that the European Union is actually growing far slower than the UK, even though our growth is anemic. There's is even more in him. I don't know what the right adjective would be for worse than anemic, like deleted dead, I guess is right. They're not growing at all, basically. They got like sickle cells, you know? - Yeah, sickle cells. Yeah, the economy is at sickle cell levels. So what we got was two months after-- - Sorry. - Yeah, yeah. So I think what's happening is British people go, we had Brexit fit. It's that prop to whatever the, I can't remember the Latin expression, but something happened there for the thing that followed that happened because of it. And that's what we've got with this, where people go, Brexit happened, things have not got better, therefore Brexit was bad. And they're not looking at the facts that you were talking about, which is on the two major issues in this country, which is the economy and immigration, the European Union and its key countries, Germany, Italy and France are actually in Spain. I actually doing even worse than we are. And so to go back into that at great cost and great turmoil to the country, even as someone who thought the remain argument, not the ones that were lies, but the other remain arguments were strong. I just, this doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. And by the way, we talked about this with Andrew Neil and his argument was that actually, Labour haven't thought this through because that superficial Brexit regret, when it becomes converted into actual campaigning when people start to become aware of the economic realities of the EU and other things that are going on. This may prove, if they go for this, this may prove to be their downfall. Yeah, and I completely agree on that score because also rejoining the EU, the case for that is so much tougher than remaining within the EU. Like, remain, we know what the status quo looks like. You know, that's something which is quite clear. But as soon as that campaign gets underway, talking about the euro, talking about freedom movement, that rebate, we're never getting back, all of these arguments are ones that strengthen the leave, or in this case, the remain out, if you like. Of course, but I just don't see it. Again, immigration, I think, with a bit of, it won't take much explaining to say that, again, rejoining the EU at this point is going to be a very, very bad idea. So I think, be careful what they wish for, really. I mean, I, again, don't like to make predictions too much, but it seems like a slam dunk if we ever got to another referendum. But it's sort of thing that I don't think there is much appetite for it in the country because you can superficially poll people and say, "Directing, we should rejoining the EU, "directing the EU regret it." But again, as soon as you get a bit more granular, do you think we should be in the euro? No, do you think that we should have freedom of movement? No, even if you ask people, do you think we should have our own trade policy? They're like, of course, we should. So, again, it won't take much, I think, for this fancy decline with reality. I am amazed they're going back towards it. I think it's just because it's like an identity question for these politicians as much as it is anything else now. They were so wounded by that vote going the wrong way 10 years ago, even ones who were in the Labour Party or in politics, who weren't that bothered about the EU have suddenly become their entire personality. But it's definitely not going to survive contact with reality. And also, as well, Andrew made a very good point when Andrew knew in our interview when he said, "Look, there's all to the practical realities of, "And as a politician, you're a human being, "you've got limited bandwidth, "you've got a limited amount of hours, "you've got a limited amount of energy. "You can only dedicate and devote yourself "to so many issues and causes and problems and whatever else. "You're going to add this to it. "This is going to take up so many man hours, "it's going to take up a huge amount of time, effort and energy. "We've got huge problems elsewhere that, "I don't think it's hyperbolic to describe them as existential "and this is what you want to do with, do you know what I mean?" We're like, you know, a guy who's basically house is falling apart, the wife's about to leave him, the kids are hanging him and he's like, you know what? I think it's time to get the band back together, innit? - Yeah. - What do we need to do? Are you going, oh, mate, I think you need to put the fire out. That's where we are. So realistically, I don't can't see it happening. Purely from just a logistical point of view on the labor side. - When final work-- - We actually have to do, it's the opposite of what we actually have to do, which is we have to leave the European Convention of Human Rights, which we're bound to with the Human Rights Act, which is what is stopping us from actually dealing with a lot of our legal immigration problems. He is going in literally the wrong direction. We need more Brexit. There we go, more Brexit. Easy sell, no doubt, to the country. Now, let's move on to another issue, which I actually think could be extraordinarily impactful on the country, and it is, of course, the potential diesel ban from the US, the US is currently providing about a third of the diesel we have in this country, France has taken away. - Okay, so Trump has threatened to ban diesel exports from the US, and so just for a little bit of info for people who don't know what diesel is useful, it's used for heavy transportation, industry, agriculture, but also this is important for emergency backup systems for hospitals. This is very, very, very important stuff. He's worried about the rising price of diesels with the midterms coming up, and he wants Europe to use their diesel reserves to flood the market and therefore lower prices. And obviously, the rise in diesel prices due to the war in Iran and a Russian ban on diesel exports because of the Ukraine war. And this has, a lot of this pressure has been put on him by Republicans in agricultural heartland. I'm really worried about the backlash from the midterms. France, Italy, and Germany have about 900 days of diesel combined. We're in the UK because we're retarded. We have 42 because we're idiots. Now, I've got a different stat to UK, because in the telegraph, they said we import about 55% of our diesel from the US. So I don't know who's right. That's what the-- - Dino, can you look it up with Venice AI? What is the percentage of our diesel that comes from the US at the moment, but carry out, Francis, we'll look it up and we'll get the stats up. - Yeah, and I've got some other good news, guys. So our biggest refinery is set to shut down for 10 weeks due to maintenance. So the biggest refinery that we have is about to close down because we need to maintain it. So on top of that, that's an extra fuckery. But don't worry, the government came out and said we have a diverse-- they love that word, don't they? Doesn't matter what we are, we're diverse and resilient supply. And as Cate Kay said, we're about to hit-- or we've just gone through the £2.0L threshold. And this is really, really, really worrying because if this happens, this plunges an already fragile economy into a recession. We are not robust. We cannot withstand this type of economic shock. It is a major concern, not only for Europe, but particularly for us as we simply do not have the reserves to cope with this. And I guess the question is, do we think this is going to happen? This is simply Trump posturing? Will the Europeans capitulate? And does it matter that we're diverse? - Well, one of the things we should separate is Europeans from us, actually, in many ways, we just talked about the fact that it would not be made. - Of course, we need more Brexit. But the one area in which the Europeans have actually, in this instant, done much better, is they have not pursued the net zero suicide in this part of it with the same figure that we have. So they all have about a year's worth of diesel supply. We have a month's worth of diesel supply just over. And so this puts us in a completely different position. Andy Burnham is going to have to get on all fours and get very, very grateful with Donald Trump to get any concessions out of him, maybe, well, it's an image that we'd all enjoy. So in that situation, we would have to basically go crawling to the White House. And no, I don't know what Trump would demand, but he does not strike me as someone who gives things away without asking for something in return. And so if Britain was to find a way to secure an exemption from this export ban which may well happen, then we will have to give up something very valuable in exchange. Now let's come back to why this is all happening. This is obviously all the consequences of the Iran war and what President Trump is trying to do is to ameliorate some of the pain that that war is causing domestically because you see that with prices rising and the pump and don't forget diesel is obviously what fuels all agriculture effectively. So a lot of the American agricultural states and a lot of the American ordinary consumers gas prices are one of the key metrics for whether the presidency is going well in the United States. With the mid-times looming, this is not a good look. When we interviewed Senator Ted Cruz at the outset of this war, he said if this conflict is still ongoing at the time of the midterms, we have failed, I believe was his exact language or something to that effect. The reality is they have failed and what they're trying to do now is to get Europe to open up its reserves and take their reserves down to zero as quickly as possible to suppress diesel prices in order to help the Republicans win the midterms and Britain is stuck in the middle because of net zero and the lunacy that we've had shutting down. Francis says we've got our biggest refineries down for maintenance for 10 weeks, but we've shut down a whole number of refineries and then yes it's also true by the way that the war in Ukraine ironically it's actually Ukraine's recent successes that are making this problem worse because one of the things the Ukrainians have been doing and very successfully is targeting Russia's refinery refining capacity with drones and missile strikes and they've been so effective at it that Russia, a huge producer of oil and gas obviously which used to refine a significant portion of it itself is now importing petroleum products from countries like India because so much of its refining capacity has been damaged. So it's a giant mess and President Trump will do whatever he believes is in the interest of the Republican Party, I was going to say the American people but in this instance I think it's fair to say it's the Republican Party and the consequence for Europe if he continues to press that will be absolutely disastrous, Europe is more resilient, we are absolutely screwed if this happens. And the consequences are not just purely economic, I mean when the fuel runs out that's when the unrest starts, I mean this is something and also when the just when the price is rocket is when the unrest starts, I mean Alistair Campbell said that actually the biggest crisis he ever had to deal with during the new labor years was not the Fallout for 9/11, it wasn't the Iraq war which he of course played his role in lying all the way into, it was the 2000s fuel price process where you had a bunch of lorry drivers blockading depots and basically bringing the country to a standstill, the NHS came within a like a pairs breadth of running out of fuel and this is something which can readily happen, it's what you're seeing countries across the world suddenly trying to placate their kind of restive populations and that's something that you're not just going to see in the developing country, you could easily see it in this country and it's entirely, if not entirely then largely self-inflicted, obviously we did have this sort of fantasy, this end of history fantasy that conflict was a thing of the past that war was something that only really happened over there, it didn't really have knock on effects for what happens at home, obviously the combination of Ukraine, Winston's favourite war the war in Iran and all the other ones have brought that crashing down around us, but at the same time you can make yourself more resilient against these kinds of things, I mean there was a good piece in Sunday times about this, we're currently, I think it's all of our road diesel accounts, we're importing 55% and that's some of that from America, some from elsewhere, it was as low as 14% in the early 2000s, over that time I think we've got from nine refineries to four, last year alone we closed two refineries which would account for 25% of our capacity to refine oil, so this is something which has been actively pursued by successive government and has left us of course international crises happen, we are dealing with global markets but you leave yourself so much more exposed to this by the decisions that you make in this country, it's the combination of the sort of net zero ideology writ largest you've been saying constantly and also this sort of just in time model of running your economy where you have very meager reserves because that's the way because it's cheaper to do so effectively and everything's running fine most of the time and you know all it takes is a pandemic and a couple of wars to make you realise that that's probably a bad way to plan going forward, so again the risk of just echoing everything you've said this is a real recipe for disaster and it's one that will show up I think not just in terms of price at the pump and things get very tough for people out there but potentially serious unrest as well if it's not going to top up, just to interject to this point, Venice AI says about 17% of the diesel use in the UK comes from the US KK so it turns out neither of us is right anyway, well I would say I was directionally more accurate than you, so I don't I don't want to offend your loyalties to the itola, so we had in the 80s 17 oil refineries, sorry 18 oil refineries and now we have four, this is this is about Britain and it's KK everything you said about net zero folly the fact that we're not still properly not properly doing oil expeditions into the into the North Sea and and still importing oil from the Norwegians from the same bloody fields that we own that are ours and this is sort of across the field there's some various net zero folly that we should we should do a long conversation about one day but until we have energy security we're going to be a failing country in this new world order. Yeah well look you make a good point and without standing up for the great iatola I think it's fair to say that the UK has pursued suicidal policy that we've all spoken about in this area not least because we do have access to our own oil and gas which we should be producing as quickly as we can in addition to we should be fracking steel being fracking is still legal and what we should also have been doing there is of course that famous clip of Nick Clegg saying about 15 years ago that we shouldn't build nuclear reactors because it would take 15 years here we are big users of nuclear reactors right all of those things should have been done that does not take away from the fact that this global crisis is a result of the war in Iran and President Trump's ban or potential ban that is being mooted and his attempts to get Europeans to run down their reserves to lower diesel and gas prices for American consumers effectively is his way of trying to mitigate the consequences of this conflict now Tom and you are absolutely right i mean how these morons did not learn the lessons of the pandemic to me the biggest lesson of the pandemic yeah sure they covered up the fact that the virus was originated in the lab in china almost certainly through gain of function research almost certainly sponsored by western western institutions fine okay you cover that up and Chinese and Chinese okay fine but to me you know you don't necessarily control that exactly what we did control is the sudden realization which these people you know just randomly had in this moment that when push comes to shove surprise surprise countries are going to try and do what's in their national interest now you we can blame President Trump or you can blame the Chinese or whatever the reality is if you don't produce your own steel if you don't produce your own medication if you don't produce your own oil and gas if you don't produce your own energy if you don't grow your own food you are going to be vulnerable and i think in the last yeah i don't know five or six years we could all see that the world has changed right i mean look at the the number of wars that are going on that are affecting all food if fertiliser agriculture oil gas all of these things how the decision has not been made to do a complete handbrake turn and go oh my god we have been so foolish fine okay we've made mistakes let's ramp up up reduction capacity let's ramp up our refining capacity by the way these things create jobs you know these things create economic growth something we seem to be sure on at the moment if we were actually doing all of that we'd be taking a lot of the boxes that our country needs but instead you just have med millitoire just pursuing all of this stuff first as energy secretary now as foreign secretary and we've got this continuous ideology that has absolutely no relation to reality and there doesn't seem to be any change but you know that image of Andy Burnham on all fours in the Oval Office will give me the moral satisfaction the trumps all of that but again you use the word ideology this is what it comes back to it is an ideology because you look at what is the inevitable outcome of the set of beliefs and it's disastrous if you look at the bottom line and go is it going to make the lives of people better once you get down to it it just simply isn't it's going to make us weaker it's going to make us more vulnerable it's going to mean that other countries are going to be able to bully us far more effectively which is what the Americans and Donald Trump is doing they're bullying us and we simply can't stand up to them because we've got So basically over a month of diesel in how can I put it in the back pocket. So what can we do apart from go over there, you know, get on all fours and go give it to me daddy? Which is the position. I think if anyone should do that job, Andy Burnham is incredibly well placed to do it. I hope he does. What are you going to say me mate? So thanks for that. No, I think Andy Burnham should do it. I'm up for it. He's got the soft touch to handle it. With all of that said, speaking of the great Ayatollah Winston, it turns out he's been up to a few things in our backyard. Tell us about that. Yes, this it's a bit of a tragic comedy this and we have the film four lions play out in real life. Rubber dingy rapids and all. So this is last weekend. I mean it's it's it's absolutely you're going to hear it and you can't satirize this. It's it's it's it starts with one of a bunch of guys going in white vans to R.A.F. Fairford. Which has been used during the Iran War for American air forces to bomb Iran and these men five of whom have now been arrested but they've been reports that up to eight or ten by a local witness. Here you can see this in this asset you can see. I think it's three or four of the lads have been arrested. One of them called the police on themselves about midnight last saturday before like an hour later a local female farmer also reported she saw these white vans with these lads then scurrying off into the into the forest to hide. The police don't clear the area until eight in the morning. The thing slowly escalates and escalates it turns out that these are four guys from London they've been they get arrested Trump comes out as well as Rubio saying it's Iran backed. Burnham also says it seems to be Iran backed this a terrible it seems to be a terror plot to do something R.A.F. Fairford. Later in the week there is actually an Iranian Brit who is arrested on links to this this thing and it turns out that before the plot Netanyahu Benjamin Netanyahu had just given warning that this was going to happen. Before he and Israel were then sanctioned by Ed Miliband so this is kind of this tiny thing which is kind of a joke in our country has become a sort of geopolitical joke and it's a joke because these guys have all been given bail. So we have these terrorists who the President of the United States the Secretary of State various other partners in the world have said these are Iranians our Prime Minister says they are it's an Iranian breast terror plot but now they're sort of free to knock about they live in Westminster my studio is in Westminster so what's going on here the double the reason why this actually been offensive to a lot of people is because at the same time. Danny Tomoe who was arrested last week was this week charged for criminal damage to a dinghy so they got your rubber dinghy rapids the dinghy as far as I can can make out but either belongs to one of the illegal immigrants or belongs to one of the illegal immigrants smugglers his other charges that he didn't give over his pinco. So the rid of the offensive thing is he's not been given bail so he's going to have to wait until March for his court case so this is a not it's kind of everything in one story for me it's too to justice it's too to Britain it is the idea that we don't know whether there is limits exactly or whether they're you know for a nation and it's no huge point in speculating but either way or whichever way is we should be making as hostile in. As possible for people doing these sort of criminal acts we're not we're a joke country anyway I've been extremely triggered by this this whole story and if you think I've got it wrong I'm all is. I was going to say no go ahead no you go for me I was just going to take the piss out of Winston I think I've done that enough this episode there'll be other opportunities no I think this whole thing has been absolutely fast I can't work out whether it's an episode of homeland or like an evil in comedy this whole thing as we've been going for it the fact that it seemed to have taken just a plucky farmer returning home from a party at one o'clock in the morning who spotted these men in balaclava's. Who then dashed into the was the fact that she was the one who raises the alarm is far so cool I mean this RF base is fallen test purposes like a US Air Force base and has been for a very long time the fact that it was that easy to get that close they knew that an attack was coming their stories in the area of people being stopped by American military police and checked on the roads in the days running up to this clearly they were. Nervy something is going to happen by didn't of trying to protect themselves against that they just did things like put a tractor in front of one of the gates you would have thought it was slightly more sophisticated than that in terms of how they might defend themselves without going on. Don't mess with us we've got exactly you struggle to drive through the sun I mean that's just we've got the run out of diesel and have never been the band. They were driving it up and then it ran out it helpful in front of the gate but and then this happens and then you're expected to believe that the story has shifted so many times and we were just constantly being told off for daring to speculate about it but you thought you know clearly there was something on towards going on it. Whether or not this is as Nigel Farage suggested some kind of dummy run for something more serious whether or not this is something that you're seeing the Iranians doing much more increasingly which is that rather than this being someone who's been dispatched from Tehran to go and build up a cell and do something that you just sort of on the dark where find kind of local petty criminals and pay the money to do something even if they're not entirely sure what it's for them what the actual point is all of these questions are important but like for a while we were expected to believe that we shouldn't speculate and that maybe it was just a stagdo that got our hand or something I mean it was absolutely absurd and that that's that's responding to them that doesn't always have which is do not speculate this has nothing to do we're trying to protect any investigation this is nothing to do we're trying to make sure things are done in the right way it's just a way of telling people to shut up and it's not the don't speculate it's bullshit because they say don't speculate on this but when it's Danny Tom a Burnham is prepared to say oh yeah he's definitely racist so it's it's it's always the same bloody story it's that don't speculate about what's going on at the Axel Rudek Banner and then kids from a comes out and goes oh yeah everyone protesting this is far right you're speculating it's always the speculation is one way it's two-tier speculation it's and it's it's this one gets irritated by this it's it's through every part of our society this two-tier system well and it's not just two-tier speculation it's two-tier commentaries so for example Shabana Mahmoud the home secretary will go on TV and say we will deal with the Dover protesters to the fullest extent of the law when asked about other cases she will say we don't comment on individual cases there's so much of this going on you almost get tired of pointing out the hypocrisy yeah and i think you when you say you get tired of pointing out the hypocrisy actually that's a really profound point because when something is just so obvious and you see it wherever you go and you point it out and you say what about this and what about that and what about this and what about that eventually what it happens is you become demoralized because what is becoming more and more obvious to you is you're living in a society where there's one set of rules for one people and there's another set for others and i don't remember that being the case in our society not in my life time now you could use certain examples and you know there was racism there was quite severe racism particularly in the 80s and the 70s when i was grow up there was unfairness but we address that we talked about that but with what's happening now there just seems to be a disinterest in it which i find baffling because what that means is that we are going to erode the respect for the rule of law and justice and the justice system in this country and what people seem to fail to realize is all of these things they're done because we agree to that this works we agree that this system this culture and this society works for us but it seems like we're getting to a place where we don't think it works for us and that is really really really dangerous and again this to me is just another example of this type of behaviour really well don't worry frances the good thing is the green party have come up with a way of dealing with all of these challenges which Tom you've written an article in the telegraph this week about week about the solution is to ban words. Tell us more about this. Yes, surprise, surprise. The Greens have still completely lost it, where woke matters are concerned. And this inclusive language guide is yet another example. So there's a head of their conference which is getting underway in Brighton. And the telegraph got their hands on this guide, which points out to the members of the Green Party that there are certain words that they should avoid, not talk about the end word, but not talk about various slurs, although I suppose various anti-Semitic slurs, they probably could be do being told not to use quite so openly in what's that. But it's words like mother and father, elderly, which is a quite a new one to me. Homosexual is also out because it's insufficiently inclusive of non-binary people, the people who identify as plurals and all that. What can we say in Stake? I can say benders. Exactly, benders, shirt, lifters. I presume that's fine. Maybe that's more inclusive. We can do this. I am surprised at the offensive language you're choosing to use in this instance given that you yourself came out as non-binary on Brexit, mate. Spoiling the battle is basically trans. Let's be honest. Yeah, exactly. It is. So I can't, I'm trying to think of a slow, we can use for Winston's fence sitting on that particular question. But no, this is, I mean, obviously it's nuts. Everyone knows that. Funny details that they've also included the words nutter and lunatic as things that you shouldn't say, which is you rightly pointed out Constance is just robbing us of our words that we can use to describe them, presumably they're worried about alienating the nutter or lunatic communities, but if you look at the green party these days and the kind of island of misfit toys that it has become under that plan to his leadership, I don't think he should be worried about alienating those people. The thing that's striking about two things to me, one of which is that we have a lot of, in recent years, we attempted to believe that work was over or at least that it had been pushed back sufficiently to that even left wing parties knew that it wasn't a good idea to go down the road. This is another example amongst many of that not being the case. There are whole sections of progressive politics. We'll talk about Labour parties well in a second because they've come out some howlers this week, which are entirely untouched by the sort of return to common sense that much of the rest of society we're enjoying. They're like this kind of Amazonian tribe that's been undisturbed for its entire existence or like a the proverbial Japanese soldier in the jungle with his pronoun badge on still like they just haven't noticed. The world has moved on but they haven't. So I guess that's an example of this. The other thing where the green party is concerned is not only is woke not dead, it's also gotten quite a lot darker. So they've kept all of this kind of fussy speech policing, which was sort of embarrassing student union stick. But then they've bolted on to it the Islamist apologism, the Israelophobia, the going by the people who've washed up in their membership and even some of their parliamentary candidates outright anti-semitism. You know, the work thing to chart from a festival stage a few years ago was trans women are women now it's death death to the idea. Like in the space of quite a short amount of time, not only is woke not gone away, it's mutated into something much more explicitly sort of third world is quite grim and not only is it just extending this kind of paternalistic posture towards its like favored minorities. It's also treating those disfavored minorities I Jews with a level of sort of sulfurous scorn that you thought had disappeared from British politics frankly. So it is a slightly silly example. But I think it's probably a way into this whole question of you know, woke one, woke two, some people talk about it, and if it ever really went away to begin with. Well, you see this now. I don't know if you saw this yesterday. So Ella Bravenman was on question time and it feels like there was a moment when just calling everyone racist for expressing an opinion that kind of stopped for a while and I think that was maybe the moment in which we were all like, oh, woke is on the decline. But it has now come back and now you've got basically the spectacle of a bunch of white people calling a brown woman in Solla Bravenman. These white people have spent the last 10 years saying we must listen to ethnic minorities when they speak and white people need to shut up. Now there's a bunch of white people basically doing a struggle session with a British Asian woman and calling everything she says racist because she says she's not English. And it just feels like this whole thing is back with the vengeance. Yeah, I think you got for it. You got for it. I remembered in school, sorry, not in school in when I still have the band with Mumford being in a band meeting. And I said, let's brainstorm this. And someone said, mind shower, you can't say brainstorm, that's a microaggression. And because it's a fence, it's offensive to people with who have, what's those attacks were you? No, yeah, no, I mean, yeah, I just in the States, and there's this story that's been going while there about this lesbian bar in Massachusetts. It was it was totally failing as a bar. The woman who one of the lesbians who started it had to sleep in her truck because she couldn't afford to keep the thing going. Her partners had quit. One of them was to become a clown, the other to become a drag queen. And then they wanted to have one day of the week where they didn't have to wear a mask. So they wanted to start today. So on Saturdays, we don't have to wear a mask, which then just became this huge drama between them with the owner being accused of racism for crying in the Zoom meeting and for centering it and making it about her. Someone suggested they put Lady Gaga on. They said, no, no, Lady Gaga's cancelled. She's a Zionist. And it's escalated so far now that Holly would want to make a movie about it. But watching that story, I was thinking, AOC said, well, one was crazy. Well, they've skipped two and three and they've just gone straight to four. This is, it's not gone anywhere. These people, they've dug in their heels. They've just got new faces. And somebody's getting quite sophisticated. You know, Mamdani is pretty sophisticated. This woke for this. There's this new guy out in Michigan as well. And there, there's a, there's a silly version, which is Zack Polanski and the green party. But there's an intelligent version there as well, which, which is more robust and a lot more of a threat. Well, absolutely. And because woke is a type of misextremism and a lot of ex you can be a person who is extreme, but that doesn't mean you're unintelligent. It's a temperament. There are people who are highly intelligent extremists, just like there are people who are not very bright and quite moderate. So the people you, you should be worried about are the people who are highly intelligent and have that temperament or that world view or that outlook. Well, then stop talking about Zack Polanski. We shouldn't worry about it. Yeah. Well, I don't actually want to stop talking about Zack Polanski because I think something very interesting is happening with Zack Polanski in that he is running in the by-election in St. Pancras and Holborn by-election to be precise, to be, which was Kissed Amos form a seat, to be a MP in our parliament. And he's running against labor. And to me, this is the litmus test for the greens. Burnham has come in. He has absolutely given the greens a body blow. And this, like I said, this is a real test for the greens. If they're going to do anything, if they had their brief moment in 2025 and early 2026, or was that a flourish, a flash in the pan, and politically, their day and the sun is over? We're going to see. We are indeed. Frankie. Frankie, I was going to bring in the Labrador's, but we can definitely get to that, but just on the by-election. So they, the labor are running a hijabi girl of Somali refugee heritage background. So they're trying to flank the greens. So it is actually worth keeping an eye on this. And it's a big part of Burnham's re-shifting and repositioning of the Labour Party. And it might, exact plancy, can't win that seat. We might actually see the kind of end of this green party moment that they had. It could be a bit of a high-water might be hope. But I suppose looking at Labour conference this week, though, which is where the Labrador has come in, is clear that this tendency still is very much in the present set. I think we've got this clip of, this is the Labour nature minister who was speaking at a fringe meeting and had some pretty striking things to say about the countryside and fascism. I think we've got that somewhere for us to all enjoy. I do believe that the next election is going to be fought on the backline of nature and raw affairs, and that be the far right to signing and determining what that looks like. And it will be a vision, an astounding vision, an vision that never really existed. That we have won a Black Lava Dool while you're feeding a carpet, doesn't exist. And it will be a variant that will be with symbols and the fox hunting all around them. And it will be a very far right, nostalgic vision of Britain that we don't want to have. Never really existed. There we go. This is Black Lab. What are they talking about? What can I just say? Black Labs matter. And this is Black Lab denial. Black Lab does a real thing. This, they have rights and the values and by the way, I should say for our American viewers, a fringe meeting of a party conference is is not where you get all the loot. it's in your party to get together and say the most stupid things they can think of is just like a side meeting at the conference and it's interesting she says the next election will be fought on rural affairs which seems to me quite a stretch in and of itself but the idea that pubs labra doors and warm ale never existed that is quite something. It's I've done about you guys I'm struck by how much this is cut through as well like it feels like the more rural version of Emily Thornbury's tweet from the Rochester and Street by election with the England flag outside of the 70s attached house with the white van outside it's kind of sneering attitude towards white working class patriotism. This feels like the equivalent with the kind of rural life which people from those communities are obviously pretty affronted by the idea that the way in which that they go about things the way in which people in rural England have been going about things for a very long time that sense of continuity which exists there which certainly doesn't exist in many of our towns and cities anymore is something which is the farious suspicious neo-fascistic. It's particularly funny because this nature minister Jenny Radell Carpenter she's from rural Suffolk that didn't take long for the tabloids to dig up pictures of her enjoying pint surveil in country pubs with a dog so there's this element of this which is just sheer performance I think but at the same time it does tap into this strain which really exists in the Labour Party the moment that Deferr is currently as a matter of government policy thinks the countryside is too white that's not just like a kind of BBC news talking point they've put out their commission reports from various organisations say what can we possibly do to make the countryside less hostile to people from ethnic minority backgrounds because and the underlying assumption there being that the problem with the countryside is it's full of English people doing English things and we're going to do something about it. So this is not just a Freud you know some kind of slip or some kind of brain fart it is a kind of tendency which exists and you think that what me myself I'm sort of an inventor at town he never really lived outside of the city of the suburbs this is still something which people who live in the countryside if you know if you grew up in rural sorry or rural Hampshire or whatever that sense of kind of not only just liking it for the landscape because it is beautiful but the sense that there's a kind of connection to a history and a tradition you know the English tradition of pastoral poetry and the rural idol and all of that is quite important to people I think even increasingly because of the way things are going a bit south in many of our cities even people who people wanting to escape to the countryside or liking the fact that it's there because it's a reminder that some kind of quintessential Englishness persists so to see that kind of painted as something that is yeah proto-nancy I you know I was kind of surprised by how out there it was at the moment it's a total mask slip I think that this this ideology sure it's she's not sort of hugely prominent but this is a widely held of view and they it's a classic far left view and that is now a part of the Labour Party I'm saying the last bit that we see in the end of the Green Party we're not seen the end of the ideology it's just getting swallowed up into the Labour Party these people hate us and I resent that what they they have any power and they they have direct they choose the direction of this country why why govern over a country if you if you hate it well so you can destroy it because you want to change your remake in you know remake in your image but this does feel like sort of agents of Saruman destroying the shy while claiming it never existed in the first place because when I think of England and particularly ruling that I mean that's kind of what the shire is based on it's a it's a people living in a peaceful and somewhat isolated and perhaps somewhat inward looking life but nonetheless the the comforts that come with that and one thing you didn't mention there Tom that I think someone who does live outside of the big cities and by choice that people do enjoy outside of the cities in a way that people who do live in them don't quite have at all is community and the sense that there is a pub that everyone in the village goes to that's where one has a drink they meet etc yeah exactly and and the thing is that actually is something that is incredibly valuable and is not available in the cities and and so the people who live in these transient non-communities in the centres of towns they're not only done appreciated but to them it's it it's an inherently suspicious thing that you know this is what these these people get together and they they know each other and they and the knowing of each other instead of moving flat every three months and not knowing their neighbours that's when the darkness sets in right that that's their idea and that's why you know they clearly just hate that part the country as Winston says anyway ladies and gentlemen what enough uplifting episode it has been yet again on off the fence this week we are Francis and I are back tomorrow with Andrew Neil we are back with the guys next Friday for off the fence again we will see you then