Reform Donations Scandal and War with Argentina? - Off the Fence

Hello and welcome back to Off the Fence with myself Constantine Kiss and Frances Foster of course Winston Marshall of the Winston Marshall show and Last but not least Tom Slater from Spike. Welcome back. That's good to have you our four stories for today are War with Argentina potentially. Have you a malaise as Argentina will prevail over declining Britain We've got the reformed donation scandal the Lindsey Clancy case and of course Andy Burnham is back and Better than ever presumably we will find out so let's get into our first story. That is of course having a malaise Saberattling saying that he will prevail or Argentina rather will prevail over poor declining Britain Could we be facing war over the Falklands with Argentina? Well a few quick things introducing the story There may be other dimensions going on here. So President Trump very bitter against the UK's lack of involvement in trying to reopen the Australia from us apparently has signaled that he is prepared to reconsider America's neutrality on this there's some oil considerations which we'll talk about and of course we will discuss Britain's military capacity to actually deal with this problem So first and foremost when how do you feel about Argentina Saberattling over the Falklands? You're going to start with me are you brilliant? Well, I'm extremely pretty good about this issue. I'm sick To death of this what is essentially Latin American Palestinianism The Falklands are British We saw it first Right the first written European sighting is John Davis in 1592 we were the first to set foot there in 1600 No, sorry, I've got that date wrong in 1690 with John Strong right? This is British now it's been British longer than the Argentines Have been Argentinean it is it it was British before Argentina existed not only that. They've been several polls Well 99.9% of the people of the Falklands want to be British They are ethnically British the indigenous people of the Falklands are British not only that We have had considerable blood spilt Because of this continue claimed by the Argentinians of course talking about the Falklands war I was at the Argentina game in the World Cup and I had these Argentines shouting my face about Luzmo Venus and Argentinus nonsense. They're British and it's actually offensive I have friends who have veterans from that war That they're still banging on about this is Just I mean it makes me very angry and I just want to add that there's a few other things that have come up in this story Benjamin Netanyahu's son, which I know you got in a spat with him KK this week Has come out on the side of the Argentinians trying to provoke us because of the British government's response to Israel throughout the the war of Hamaz But it's it's completely contradictory From him his point of view because it is Palestinianism firstly we have the longest claim to the to the island secondly The people there want to be British that this they are British and thirdly like Hamaz Argentina keeps starting wars they can't win and a lot of people die along the way So it's not entirely a joke. So anyway, I'm pretty annoyed about this whole thing and I'd add to it I'm not confident that our Prime Minister Burnham is going to have the balls of Fatsha to stand up to this antagonism Well in addition to lacking the balls, I mean one of the things that I did is I was quite curious because I don't know if you saw there was a story in I think of the telegraph earlier this week About the fact that the British army is now cancelling live fire drills and we're not talking about for reserves This is a a prominent front fighting division The cancelling live fire drills to save money So the preparedness of the British armed forces to do anything about this irrespective of the political will is an interesting question So actually I looked this up on Venice AI and it's a mixed picture The garrison on the Falkland Islands is much much stronger than it was 40 years ago at the time of the Falklands Wars at the time there was only 80 servicemen on the islands today We have somewhere between 1300 and 1700 including helicopters fighter jets etc The problem is the Navy so the 1982 task force had 127 ships There is now only 63 ships in the entire British Navy So we are at half of the task force now and so Britain Realistically Yeah, go for it Just on the 63 ships in the Navy if you actually look at aircraft carriers frigates And destroyers where it's far fewer and it's only two aircraft carriers I think there's only six destroyers and the maybe eight frigates I don't show the exact number of the top of my head Well, it's worse than that so in terms of what we could deploy In terms of what we could deploy now would be a carrier two destroyers and five frigates And the first sea lord general sir Gwen Jenkins I suspect he might be well has stated that the Royal Navy is not ready for war So uh that's one side on the other hand I also got Venice I had to tell me the Argentinian numbers And this is where it gets really comical they basically have nothing they have no name no navy whatsoever And so it'd be like I was thinking what the get you would be like the battle between Stephen Hawking and Hamza Not Hamza use of Abu Hamza the one with the hope We would we would be in the role of Abu Hamza in this situation At least we've got the slightly advantage but but but but it's critical So so irrespective of the political will I just think Tom militarily When have a melee slags us off and says he they're going to try and forward declining Britain It's sort of hard. There's there's part of that where you can't argue with it Yeah, no, absolutely and on the one hand it is kind of not saber-attling like plastic saber-attling Like none really expect something to probably kick off here neither side could actually wage any kind of conflict I've been thinking though in tandem with the story that we're going to talk about next Falklands and and reform Hitting a lot of controversy. It's been a very bad day for gammans in Britain You know and I share in that sadness you know Two very crucial important things there but yes, I mean to see what Have you made me like kind of play on our kind of relative weakness even bringing up the question of migration How we're kind of internally weakened and so on and so forth and one added obviously he has a point The British armed forces not just the navy but in general was long been sort of four bloats the packet quavers There's very little that we could possibly project even that we like to pretend that international summits that were a terribly Important player But it's also a reminder though, isn't it that even though we shouldn't expect any kind of conflagration anytime soon that we're increasingly in the near it in which hard power resources Art of increasing importance and also that there's a lot of players in the world stage who are dropping the pretext of International law and agreements and whatever and just going for the raw assertion of what they seem to be their interests their territorial claims What have you and we're just so fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with that kind of environment So what I don't think it's about to kick off over the Falklands any time soon It's a reminder of the kind of era that we live in and how our politicians are so almost uniquely incapable of reckoning with that and the broaders You say you say you're not convinced it's all about to kick off But I would put it to you with what happened in Venezuela with the fact that Trump is clearly behind the scenes Very pissed off at the UK not providing support for their efforts to reopen the straight And is signaling to have him. I mean we've got a clip of how many may look at this he looks exactly like Vladimir Putin announcing the special in military operation in 2022 Look at this The political story is a matter of survival and for that reason any additional advance over the Malvinan islands It will be considered as a violation of our national security We must act today in the future and Malvinas is the future Not only is it a matter of our past Defend our sovereignty and recover our islands Require to be a politically relevant and economically influential and militarily respectable No other way I will correct myself and say I mean he if you read the subtitles it looks like Vladimir Putin if you look at his hair and and also Spanish Just as not as intimidating as Russian let's be honest. Mm-hmm. Francis. You're a token Latin American famously Finally I get finally I get a chance to speak right about One of the nations from my continent. Oh and by the way Winston is pronounced Malvinas Malvinas Don't you start Anyway, listen, right? This is the problem. I had a video that went viral at the time of the uh so of at the time of the World Cup About the Argentine football team in which I basically said that they were a representative of their nation a terrible country I think the actual quote was a nation of And I stand by that 100% because nobody in the whole of South America likes Argentina They've always always always thought of themselves as above their station They've always thought of themselves as this great power within South America and you can see this by the way that they actually behave. Like, Argentina is a country that has for the vast majority of his existence has been broke. It has been absolutely broke, it has suffered record levels of inflation. Now, Malay has actually done a good job in managing to turn around the ship, but the reality is his approval ratings are very, very long. They're not where they used to be. He's in real danger of not getting re-elected. So for him, this is a very cunning strategy in order to play to the jingoistic elements of that country of which they're enumerous in order to get him re-elected. I don't think there's anything really in this. I think this is, as Tom said, glorified plastic saber rattling in order to make himself look strong, powerful and relevant and also taking a bash at the English who are always the great nation that the Argentines have always hated. We are the pantomime villain and what better way for him to make himself look strong and powerful than taking a little dig at the English? I think it's the case. Firstly, you're absolutely right that all of South America hates Argentina. I went to the Mexico, England, Mexico game, and all the Mexican fans, we don't mind that you beat us, just beat those bastards from Argentina. Everyone is South America hates Argentina. But the difference, I think, when it comes to this is how weak the British are at the moment as we've already stated. John Healy, who resigned from Starmer's cabinet as defense secretary because they weren't going to meet the 3% of GDP defense spending, has now, as Chancellor Dixchecker, kicked the defense spending commitments down the can for a year, not only that. Trump seems to be more on the Argentines side of this because he's so pissed at us over Iran, not letting them use our airfare for not letting them use Diego Garcia in the Chegos Islands. So we're not in a good position there, he might try and antagonize us more. I think Argentina is in as good a position as they could, they've been since the Falklands War to actually do something here. I guess we'll see, I also note that for them, every time they're in trouble, whoever's in government, they bring up Las Malvinas, as they call it, this is the one thing that unites the whole country. It's a real central point of Argentine nationalism. It's the same sort of thing with the Palestinianism, where you have this grievance at their very core of their identity. And I think that's the same with Falkland Island. It's a grievance that unites the country and is the core of their identity. My worry is that we may be underestimating here, certainly Francis and Tom, the moment we're in in terms of the possibility of this actually becoming much more real. First of all, there's some oil interests involved here and I don't know if you guys call a vice president, vice president, vice conference yesterday. He kept talking about the fact, well, yes, the stray isn't quite as open as we'd like to be, but that's why Venezuela was so important. Actually, 130 miles off the coast of the Falkland Islands to the north is an oil field called sea lion, which has way more oil in it than either of the two major fields in the North Sea. They're due to start production of these fields in the next two years, and one of the things Melae specifically said is they will sanction the British and Israeli oil companies that are set to explore this. My point being is oil control of oil in the Western Hemisphere is clearly something that the United States is very, very heavily focused on at the moment. And combined with the fact that the current administration is willing to tear up conventional norms about who our allies are and who our enemies are, I am concerned that this actually may be something real. And look, I've been saying this for many, many years, probably so many times, France has got bored of hearing it, but there is a very simple rule to geopolitics is if you signal weakness, you invite violence. And we've seen it over and over all over the world. And my worry is, as I said from the beginning, when people like Melae talk about Britain as a declining nation, they're kind of right. And if you are a declining nation, people will start to have a go. They'll start to test you. Absolutely. I mean, it's one of those things which we've been telegraph into the world. I mean, I forget the exact date that Kirstaun put on it when he was still in power, saying that we need to be ready for war by X-date, as if to say, "Hello, Rush, you've got this window in which to exploit." And the fact that, as we've already been talking about, we were in this bizarre situation where we've got this new chancellor who obviously resigned as defense secretary, precisely because Kirstaunmer and the Treasury couldn't stump up the money to reach the 3% of GDP by 2030 target, is now incapable of saying in public, John Healey. He resigned over this issue. And yet now, as chancellor, he cannot tell anyone categorically that we will meet precisely that 3% of GDP target by 2030. And that's even without getting into whether or not these kind of arbitrary targets are actually even going to translate in the kind of capabilities deterrent, which is actually going to be effective. You see, of course, on the NATO countries where a lot of kind of creative accounting takes place, you know, the pensions of military personnel or whatever suddenly starts to take up a outsized proportion of what it is that supposed to be that 3% or ultimately 3.5% of GDP. So we're still playing these quite silly games, kind of rhetorical games. Meanwhile, whether or not it's the faultlands, whether or not it's something else, we're just so clearly not capable of even just creating the impression that we might do something, let alone actually do something, which is a big problem. And I think what's very interesting, sorry, I'll go for it when. There was a story last year about how we'd been, we'd spent billions on Ajax tanks, but tank warfare is just not relevant anymore. And you'll remember also at the beginning of the Aram War, HMS Dragon was sent out a week after our bases in Cyprus were hit. And then we had to come around it and it turned around in the end because it wasn't, it wasn't ready. Our money's being misspent. We don't, it needs to be, we need to have a proper navy, as Constantine said earlier, but we should be investing in drones, we should be investing in actual tech that's useful, tanks aren't useful, and tanks aren't going to be particularly helpful if we're at war with the faultlands. And look, the problem is as well, is as the country will come to this in the fourth story, where we'll talk about Andy Burnham and Parliament reconvening, is that we're broke? We don't have the money to let alone spend, not just to spend on defense, but to spend on our own country, because what we need to do is we really, really need to tackle the deficit that we have. We spend a huge amount on just interest alone on the debts that we owe, and until we actually make those very difficult decisions, which successive generations of politicians have refused to do, we're simply not going to be able to fund our defense in any way that is adequate. Yeah, well, we spend more on welfare than we raise in income tax, so that will tell you quite a lot about the position we're in. We didn't go for a last word before we move on. We're just on your point there, Francis. If we had a proper look at defense spending, actually, you could increase the size of our armed forces in military. It would give employment, and it would win people off the welfare stick. By the way, this is what happened in the Second World War with FDR. I just had James Holland on the show discussing this, but actually you can actually use a proper defense strategy to pull people away from welfare, create employment, and the massive added bonus, as well as having a bloody defense that protect our smaller islands, is that you create national unity. You actually give something for everyone to get behind. So I think it's a frame of mind, not even just financial thing. It's how we look at our defense and how we think about our defense. Well, Francis says we have no money left. You know who has some money? It's reform, because they've got a lot of donations. Great, good transition. But seriously, there's been a story, actually front page story now in all the newspapers, I think, and on the BBC, which is the two senior reform officials have had to step down pending an investigation into their conduct after allegations of unlawful activity in relation to donations. Tom, do you want to tell us more about the story before we get into the debate? Absolutely. I mean, this is the biggest story in town, not least, because it coincides, of course, with reform UK conference, which is kicking off in Birmingham, as we speak. So there was this investigation, which was put together by an organisation called verbatim, which is basically an offshoot of something called the centre for climate reporting. So you can kind of understand where they're coming from politically and channel four. And essentially, the journalist in question, or the campaigner in question, depending on your perspective, posed as the sort of British son of an American businessman who was looking to contribute to reform in any way that they could financially and he's got of this footage, primarily meeting with James or the head of policy at Reform, who's one of those officials who has just stood down pending this investigation, as well as Dan Jute, who for more than the decade has essentially been Nigel Farage's kind of closest aid right-hand man, maybe kind of would-be chief of staff if he ever got into Downing Street. And essentially it boils down to because of the electoral law prohibiting foreign companies from making donations to British political parties, this would be an arrangement in which, and what seems to have happened, is that a poll would be commissioned, it would be paid for by again the British son of this American businessman, and that this is being presented as a potential breach of electoral law, a kind of way to get around what the letter of the law says in order to enable a donation in kind, if not exactly in form as it were. And it's now naturally turning into a big enormous story. I think there is a couple of things that I'd lay out about this before we get into it, one of which is that I think we do have an increasing problem with scandal-mongering as a kind of political weapon in British politics and British media. And what I mean by that is not to say that in all instances there's no bad smell to a particular story, that there is no story, that there is no potential wrongdoing, it's just that something is taken sort of leapt upon, turned into a kind of totalising unprecedented never before seen kind of story, and then used as a stick with which to be in particular populist upstart off and right-wing parties. Meanwhile, it doesn't take a particularly long memory to remember that after the 2015 election, the Conservatives find more than £70,000 for failing to declare or not properly declaring around like £300,000 worth of donations. There's a whole kind of labour together scandal, which I could bore everyone to tears by explaining, but again, boiling down to a very pro-starmer think tank that people who led it ended up being key parts of the storm of government, again failing to declare large amounts of donations, and then crucially also commissioning an organisation to produce a report to discredit the journalist at some day times, potentially who had produced those allegations and published them in the newspaper. So, I'm not trying to sound like a kind of cynic, everyone's at it, whatever, but at the same time, one will always take these stories. First of all, subject them to scrutiny. This is not yet a kind of cut and dry legal case, most stretch the imagination, also kind of putting it into perspective so that it doesn't allow itself to be too weaponized. The other part of the story, though, of course, is that I think reform have often said, and rightly so, that particularly as they were looking like they were spoiled to potentially win the next election, dropped off and polls a little bit since then, but still have been the kind of preeminent party of government for much of the past year, that the media, that various wings of the establishment were going to throw absolutely everything at them. And in that environment, you've got to be as cautious and as squeaky clean as you possibly can be, you certainly can't invite this kind of thing. And also just sort of, you know, whilst the full details are yet to come out, you do wonder whether the basics of due diligence would have avoided this kind of story from other taking place. So, as ever, I think, as ever with stories like this, there's a lot that we don't know, there's a lot that we'll still find out. There may well be a there there, but whether or not it is the totalising, this proves their rotten to the core, that is something that I think we need to deal with, to take with a huge amount of skepticism, because I think we've seen that story play out over and over again, and it's often not in proportion to the scales of the allegations that have been leveled up. I think one of the things actually that this story has shown, and it's disappointing for a lot of people who support reform and support the issues that reform raises, is the lack of professionalism when it comes to the organisation itself. As I was watching Channel 4's expose, I was thinking to myself, but who was vetting? Why weren't these people properly vetted? And if they were, why weren't they exposed as to who, and I'm talking about the undercover journalists? Why would they allow to go in and just have direct access to Nigel Farage? I really couldn't imagine this happening with the conservatives. I couldn't imagine it happening with Labour. To me, it just shows just how inexperienced and in some ways naive reform actually are, that they're prepared to have these types of conversations which are highly sensitive, possibly legally incriminating, and they're just prepared to have these conversations openly, with people that they barely know or have met a few times. It's really, really, really worrying for reform. And you have to say on the back of the Times expose, which I think looking back on it was a bit of a damp squib possibly. These things are cumulative, and I don't think it's going to hurt reform's base who will always vote for reform, but what I think it will hurt are the floating voters who have been disappointed by 14 years of to put it bluntly inept in incompetent Tory rule and a couple of years of Labour proceeding to essentially throw their opportunity away as well. So it's deeply worrying and potentially, potentially a body blow to reform's chances of getting elected in the next election. Like I said, not because it affects the base. I don't think it will, but those floating voters is another one in the minus column. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see whether it is a body blow. So I think of Trump, particularly in his period out of office between his two terms, and they threw everything at him. They were, you remember, various sort of investigations, and they were going to Mar-a-Lago to sort of investigate things, and they were all sorts, they threw the book at him. And what it did to the American public is actually made them more inclined towards him because they felt like the blue stack was against him. And there is an element of that going on here. Look, so if I were to break this down, I agree with you guys watching the video. It's sloppy from James Orren and Dan Dukes. And they said some things which are not great. I'd also note that it's a heavily edited video, so we don't see everything. I also note that the case of the, so it's a British son of an American father. If this had not been sloppy, there's nothing, I don't think there's anything legally wrong. If the American father had said, right, son, I'm going to give you some money. It's up to you what you do with it. I know you like reform. You can give it to them if you want. It's not my business. And that would have been, I don't think that's illegal. It would have been fine. And so why they didn't just make it as simple as that, if they were going to do that route, it seems a little bit strange to me. So that's one side of it. I also note that the organization, as you say, Tom, it's a center for climate reporting, these are, this is a foreign, these are foreign funded. So it's a, it is a version of foreign interference into British politics about, and they're claiming it's about foreign interference because it's, it's the money side. So there's a kind of hypocrisy here. I'd say that the, it's channel four of, have legitimate sort of verified this work. But it is very much activist. So these are activists working against reform. I see it's part of a, what Dominic Cummings described sort of everyone throwing the book at the reform party or the sort of uniparty trying to destroy them. I think that you mentioned in passing, Tom, that there's examples of this kind of stuff happening with other parties. Yeah, there's been, there's been foreign money coming to the Labour party. For example, there was a Gary Lubner story when there was 6.5 million from Johannesburg to London. And they kind of, you know, he became a UK resident. And although there's a came in Ireland hedge fund who gave four million quid to Labour after their election in 2024. So there's foreign money going to the other parties. And I imagine this kind of stuff happened with the Tories as well. But they kind of left themselves exposed here reform. I would also note, and this is important, the times in the telegraph who published that polling without checking into the source of it, they look bad in this. JL partners, the polling company, look terrible in this. I mean, I think they're finished or they're not finished as heads have got to presumably roll to, if they want to preserve themselves as an entity. So there's a lot of people who look bad in this whole thing. And I'd also say the problem with reform is James Orr, who full disclosure, I'm friendly and friends with. And I actually think he's a very honourable man. And this is this what we see of this story isn't in keeping with the man I know. I think that he's actually key for reform. He is, he brings them a intellectual rigour and robustness that makes reform seem serious. And so to lose him would be significant. There's a report that Lee Anderson has said that, who's the MP for reform, has said that James Orr and Daniels are permanently gone. I'm not sure if that's confirmed. It looks like there's a further investigation into the story. But it is, it's not pretty. My frustration personally is that Britain has got some very, very serious problems. Our current government And we have a new Prime Minister who had his first week sitting and first PMQs this week is under a fraction of the scrutiny of this insurgent party who only have the handful of MPs. We're in serious problems and we're going to come to Burnham later, so we'll cover it then. But the people who actually have power are not getting the scrutiny they deserve. The unipartee, the blob, all of these are focused on reform trying to destroy it because reform are calling out some of the problems our country has and for me, things particularly immigration, I don't hear that it's certainly not being dealt seriously with from the Labour Party. So my frustration is if we want to actually sort our problems out, we're in a double fight trying to make the problems clear and having the blob attacking those types of parties in any way they should have camp. Just to tack on to that, because I think it's so clear now that this is essentially one of the sort of weapons in the talk it's trying to do with scandal what the establishment has failed to do electronically or via kind of conventional means, which again is not to suggest that this, you know, the press should go easy on reformed by any stretch of the imagination that they shouldn't be subjected to scrutiny, but in the middle of an immediate maelstrom, it's very easy for a narrative to set hold when the plain facts might not support the level of scandal which is being discussed. Like, as you were saying there, Winston, like, the again, the kind of finding of kind of neat ways in order to make sure that a poll can be paid for, it's the sort of thing which might look a bit, probably might smell a certain way, but the same time in the grand scheme of things is not the kind of image of corruption which it is being presented as. That said, it's not to say that it still can't do damage, that's the unfortunate kind of power of the media in these sorts of situations and also the fact that this could have led to immediately just that those resignations, whether or not they're permanent is a question that we have to wait for. The thing I would add is that whilst, of course, James were slightly more recent recruit to the party and has become very central as you say, Winston, in terms of building out the policy offer, the kind of philosophy of the party, what have you. Dan Duke has been basically by far outside side for more than 10 years and is someone who everyone was particularly surprised to have seen stepping down in the manner that he had and far as then going on LBC this morning and referring to both Duke's and all as contractors of the party. So whilst we wait to hear what is going to happen with this internal investigation and where the dust is going to settle, it's clearly already landed a blow rightly or wrongly onto the party as it goes into this conference. So yes, the political consequences have been pretty significant. This is part of the problem is that in the midst of the medium-elstrom, suddenly you get a narrative that is set, which to a certain extent, the stepping down is played into whether or not that was the intention. Well, see, this is where I've agreed pretty much everything everyone said to this point, but this is where I actually have a different view on it because to me, those two stepping down is a clear indicator. Look, I'm not a legal expert, I can't say what's legal and what's not, but the fact that Nigel Farage, who said to our faces only a month ago, I'm really loyal to the people who are loyal to me when we interview them. The fact that these two men have resigned to me, that's an admission of guilt personally. Just for as an outsider, that to me is what it looks like. The fact that he's been prepared to lose Dan Duke's, who's effectively as right-hand man as people have said, and James Orr, who is as central to reform as we've discussed already. That to me is then basically saying, we've screwed up here and we have to put distance between ourselves and the story by getting rid of these two people who are really big assets in their perspective to their party. So from that perspective, I think it is an admission of guilt, but I also think the context that all of you actually have presented so far is really important because you know what this reminds me of. It's like in Russia, and forgive me, Tom, you mentioned you are not the cynical everyone's at it. I'm not the cynical, partly because of my background and partly just because of what I think the reality is. I actually, one last time I was saying of Winside Pinch to his copy of Michael Crick's biography of Nigel Farage, which is by no means a flattering book to Farage, but Crick repeatedly details how the Tories cheated over and over in bi-election after bi-election when contesting seats with reform. Now, what does or you keep as you can, definitely, you keep as you can, that's right, as, as a them was. My point being is everybody does cheat and this is why I actually never get excited about any of these stories. We had a discussion last night about whether we actually wanted to cover this at all. And I think the thing that actually tipped us over the edge is the resignations because if you take that out of this, what you're looking at is, let's be honest, a fairly trivial story about some behind-the-scenes shenanigans about sourcing a bit of money. And by the way, this is another thing that is actually very disappointing if you are someone who's reform-aligned or reformed curious, you might say, we're talking about tiny amounts of money. Yeah, Americans will be shocked as to how little we're talking about, like, 30 times. I know, look, 20 grams of a lot of money for ordinary people and for all of us. But for a political party that is seeking to become the government of the country, all of this, over 20 grand to do a poll, it just, it seems a level of risk that, forget about the morality of it, there's not remotely commensurate with the potential gains of this. Go ahead, Win. I have more to say about that. Just one point on that. So it's a tiny amount of money in respect to the money for paying for polling. But the head job was expensive in terms of paying for a head job. So they paid 30 grams of the polling. Okay, sorry, I'll let you make the point then. Well, what I was going to say is, so there is this broader context, which is basically everyone's up to it. But I just, I think the thing that you see here is reform a kind of amateurish when it comes to this. And that, it's not a surprise because there are amateur new party. But it's disappointing nonetheless. And then on top of that, we have to talk about the angle of this. It's not a coincidence that the reform party conference is starting today. This is a deliberate hit job by a far left anti net zero, pro net zero activist organization. Channel four had nothing to do with this. These activists did all of this work and then brought it to channel four, who then went, oh yeah, looks decent, let's get it out there. And what you are seeing, as Tom rightly said, I think, is the media class doing what, the electorally, the political opponents of reform couldn't do. That said, you know, if this is properly investigated by the police, given the evidence that we've seen, it would not be surprised me if there are potential prosecutions out of this, because let's be honest, the footage is not a good look at all. Yeah, which also wouldn't be unprecedented as we're saying, which is not to create excuses for anyone. To try and rebuff any accusations of double standards or hypocrisy here. Certainly, if you look at the way that we're spite of covered various of the kind of stories involved in the Conservatives, even the Labour Party, we essentially apply the same level of skepticism to many of these stories, a lot of this scandal mongering, like even when they were going after like Angela Rainer over a stamp duty, we're going after Keir Starmer over Lord Ali, buying his wife dresses for some bizarre reason. Embarrassing there was the hypocrisy, they were running on being whiteer than white on complete polar opposite to a supposedly grubby Boris Johnson, they got caught out. I think whenever you have, you know, beyond clear cut obvious corruption, money being used to influence policy in a nefarious fashion, politicians becoming bought mouthpieces, influence being bought and peddled in a really kind of clearly undemocratic and unseemly way. Of course, everyone's against that, but when you get down to these kind of more fine-grade distinctions around electoral law ethics procedures, what have you? What tends to happen is it tends to empower the law, the state, or some kind of quango at the expense of democracy. It's like what we need is more rules, what we need is more ethics committees that we need is more laws that would bar particular political parties if they overstep the mark in this way or what have you. As ever, outside of clear cut examples of corruption, which everyone is against, when you get into these kind of finer distinctions, loopholes, bit of wheeled dealering, bit of creative accounting in order to get around what might be the spirit of a lot of the regulations, this can very easily be weaponized. I think we need to be on our guard against it regardless of where it's coming from. And if you reform, you need to be on your guard against not falling victim to these sorts of efforts to entrap you when they come along death. And also look, and I think you've made a great point, Tom. This is politics. This is the game of politics. Once you get to a certain level, once people start recognising you as being a legitimate threat to them getting into power, whether it's Labour or Conservative, these shenanigans are going to start. And really now, this is a moment for reform, where they have a choice of whether they go down the similar route that they did, which is sort of the wheeler dealer, let's play at what we're doing here. We can be a little bit woo, a little bit way, a little bit geyseration, we can make our way over the rest of it, or you're going to actually now professionalise and think to yourself, we can't do this anymore. If you want to get into power, if you want to lead this country, then quite frankly, the whole organisation need to start up their game and they need to be far more stringent, they need to start professionalizing and they need to start looking at who the people are that they're interacting with and really, really doing some stringent checks because this can't happen again. This is a massive wake-up call for everyone involved. It's the potential body blow, like I said before, particularly with the floating voters, but I don't think this is the end for reform. This is a chance for them to go right. We can get better, but it means we're going to have to make some very tough decisions and it means we're going to have to take out and eliminate some of the kind of wide-boy antics that you can see in this video. Well, the thing is that while that may all be true, I think, as I mentioned, given the small amounts of money involved, you know, I remember having a conversation with a just randomly bumping into a very senior media executive at a function of some kind. And them saying to me, "Well, the problem for reform is they just can't raise the money that they need." And so you've got these competing things, you say, "Well, they've got to professionalize." We know this from our own experience, running trigonometry. What does professionalize mean? It means you have to hire people who are better than the people that you have that cost money. Where do you get the money from donations? How do you get donations? And then you're back to where we started this entire conversation. To say nothing of the fact, by the way, that, you know, I agree with Winston, we know James personally. James Orr is a very decent and principled and modern man. So if a fan himself abroad in this smacks to me either of desperation or of slip of standards or whatever, I don't know. But my point is I don't think it's as easy as, you know, get a grip and sort it out. Like there are structural issues going on here, which is for a party to be successful. You have to raise a lot of money. And as we've already talked about, you're not competing in the level playing field. Everyone else around you is cheating while not being subjected to the same scrutiny. And this is what I was going to say from my Russian angle. It reminds me a little bit of what happens in Russia, where effectively everyone is guilty. But your guilt is identified and investigated, not when it's sort of the police miraculously discovered that you've been doing something wrong. But rather that when the powers that be decide that now is the time for you to be exposed. And so what you have is the completely unbalanced application of these rules and norms, because I guarantee you, I guarantee you that if independent journalists, which these people were not, these were activists, were spending tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, trying to entrap labor officials and trying to entrap Tory officials and trying to entrap the officials of other political parties and similar schemes, they would all come out with egg on their face. And the only reason you're not seeing that is that those efforts are not being made equally, but rather they're being targeted or wrong because they're seen as the enemy. And also just to add to that the extent to which the rules aren't being applied or the rules of engagement aren't being applied equally. And the rules around and the law around donations, the Labour Party have been trying to change them precisely in response to reform doing quite well in relation to donations. It's one of the many things that Andy Burnham has had to kick into the long grass because he's just got too much to deal with at the moment. And it was a story earlier this week that kind of realised that some of the proposed caps on donations would have potentially affected the Labour Party's coffers in terms of the union. So naturally that to all we've got to rethink this now. But again, not only are the standards not necessarily being applied equally, the government has been trying in real time to change the law so as to scuffle the insurgent threat from reform. So all of that is very, very real. And it's like how you deal with that, how you kind of scale. And also how you do what reform been trying to do, which is genuinely unprecedented in British politics, which is to go from five MPs at one election to potentially being a majority party at the next one. We've never seen that before, and of course that's going to come with a lot of thrills and spills and arguably a bit of corner cutting. That's not to excuse any wrongdoing and any alleged criminality if that is what comes out of it, of course. But that's the context in which all of this has happened. And it's at least worth bearing in mind when we look at the full picture of this. All right. Well, moving on to, I was going to say, let's go to something more like harder, but unfortunately this being a topical news show, it's all downhill. Next story is, of course, the story of Lindsey Clancy, the trial of Lindsey Clancy and Winston is going to bring us to details. So Lindsey Clancy killed her three children in January 2023. And the murder trial has been underway these last weeks. And we have had now another day where the jury are undecided. Neither the prosecution or the defense are disputing that she killed her children, neither the prosecution or defense are disputing that she is mentally unwell. What they are disputing is whether this or how capable she is in knowing and perpetrating the killings. So it's really a question between whether this is first degree murder, secondary degree murder or manslaughter. I don't think it's a question about acquittal, although technically that could be what the jury decides. So it continues to go on. So that's the very core of it. But at the next level, you then have a bunch of people, a bunch of women, not just in America, but here in Britain as far away as Peru, South Korea, Portugal, who are coming to her defense. Millions has been raised to defend her. They were wearing pink and they're outside the courthouse protesting. And they are claiming that she is the victim that the real culpability lies at the feet of the industrial, sorry, the medical institutions that failed her. So it is the case that she had been seeing various professionals for psychiatric help. This isn't just made up post-hoc that she had these illnesses. There is a track record of her having postpartum depression. And it seems that I don't even think postpartum depression is in dispute right now. So what's the disputing is how culpable she is. And then there's another sort of secondary or tertiary offshoot to this story, which is that a lot of men or a lot of women are reporting on social media on Reddit and beyond that their boyfriends or even fiancés are calling off weddings or ending relationships because when asked about the Clancy case, they gave answers dissatisfactory to the boyfriends. So men are now ending relationships because they don't like the answers of the women when it comes to asking their opinion about what should be done and what should be the verdict in this Clancy case. I think that's my summation of what's happened. We get into the debate and I'm keen to hear everyone's opinions before I give mine. I think there are a couple of things that are worth adding factually Winston one. It's not just that she saw different professionals for vericings. So by all accounts, including the testimony of her mother-in-law who believe me as a married man, I can tell you that is an as objective a source and these circumstances, as you're going to get according to the jury, just get her to decide it, yeah, prior to the four months in which her mental health deteriorated. She was a devoted mother, a delivery nurse, I believe, widely respected in her job and so on, had no history of violence towards the children or anyone and was in every way basically a normal decent person who really looked after the kids. She was prescribed 12 different medications, including antidepressants, anti-psychotics, things to treat her and so on. I think benzodiappany, but that doesn't mean by different practitioners, many of whom were not in coordination with each other. And she committed these killings three weeks after coming out of a psychiatric facility. So these just little bits of context on the final one, which will be relevant to my opinion, which I'm happy to give later, is her own ex now ex-husband, whose children it was that she killed, says that she's not evil, she was just ill. I leave it there before for us to get into the discussion. And so just to look at one dimension to it as well, which is the, there's a sort of outpouring of sympathy for Lindsay Clancy and the kind of the growing number of people it seems like who feel that at the very least she wasn't kind of culpable in the same way as one might be if she wasn't suffering from severe mental ill health as they claim. There's also, of course, that kind of conspiratorial fringe, which basically rejects the idea that she killed these children whatsoever. something that even her own defence aren't contesting, completely spurious allegations that the father Patrick who discovered his three children killed and apparently the 911 call which hasn't been allowed to be released but was played in court was so shocking that most of the jurors were in tears, many even the kind of very battle hard and journalist who in the room you know covered a lot of very very grim cases were pretty shocked by the kind of prime screams that they heard. There's this kind of group of people online which you now see whenever you have a high profile case like this it's a kind of weird mix of kind of post-COVID conspiratorialism and sort of true crime fandom which has created this level of uber cynicism in relation to cases like this. They've just been openly claiming that he did it and using his proof of the fact that he remarried relatively quickly after the horrors in which he's suffered as proof of that. So there's that dimension to it. The one thing that kind of struck me is even if we parked that because there's always going to be some nutters out there and the thing about nutters in 21st century is that they all have social media accounts and more of a platform than they used to have is that even the kind of outside's level of sympathy for her or identification with her is to me quite striking in a little bit troubling. Like it'd be one thing to say this is an absolute if you take as red her defense which is that she was suffering from this postpartum psychosis and as a consequence of that it wasn't the same as if she was completely within her well-minded just decided to do this out of evil or what have you. Even if you take that as red the extent to which there are quite a large number of women primarily obviously who see their struggle in her story who see this as part and parcel of a society which doesn't take mental health sufficiently seriously. I think it's a little bit off is a little bit strange it would be a bit like when we had that killer in Nottingham a few years ago. Valdo Callican who's a paranoid schizophrenic murdered three people in the midst of a very heightened episode again there were various missed opportunities to stop him one of which was the fact that he was black and the local authorities were concerned about putting too many black people in that form of kind of medical eyes confinement but nevertheless it would be if one thing to say that's a horrific story and of course he was not a well man when it happened but to say we're all Valdo Callican and to say that isn't this a damning indictment of the way in which our mental health services are failing people I think we would see as an odd response and it is something that you see nowadays growing when there is a kind of vaguely woke political script that one could apply to it so it's mental health in this case you even saw a little bit bit of it in the wake of arenas of Rootsca's horrific murder on that bus in Charlotte where you had the local kind of democratic mayor come out and suggest that basically everyone including the killer was a victim in this because of the failure to take mental health seriously because it was also clearly quite a depraved man so even if we we recognize the kind of the ambiguity the complicated nature of this I think that level of kind of full-throated identification with Lindsay Clancy I think is a little bit strange there's a slight kind of blessed are the murderers tendency which seems to kick in what provided that there is a kind of political script that can be folded into i.e. mental health and how that's supposedly not taken seriously by society supposedly in this instance I think one of the reasons why this case has captured the imagination beyond the obvious is because what it really talks about and Thomas used the words mental health when actually mental health is a casual term which doesn't really mean anything what we're actually talking about here is mental illness and there's someone who believe it or not has mental illness in their family and I've seen my cousin have suffered from severe schizophrenic episodes in fact I saw her essentially break down and develop schizophrenia pretty much in front of my eyes you what it talks to is responsibility when somebody is having these types of severe episodes which the condition that Lindsay Clancy is alleged to suffer from can cause that sparks a debate of responsibility how much to responsibility does the individual have how much of it is caused by an illness how much of it is society's fault for not intervening sooner how much of this responsibility is belongs to the medical authorities how much do these drugs for instance that the medical authorities the doctors that are prescribed actually work how much of it do they exacerbate the condition and how much of it is simply that we don't like to talk about these conditions and when people are suffering from these type of severe mental illnesses do we just push the people to one side because we just simply don't want to deal with it and I think that's a lot of what is happening here and why people are reacting so strongly to it of course as the obvious the three horrific killings etc because these are issues that we are wrestling with as a society in real time Winston you never gave your take on it so why don't you give your take yeah so I'll say something that goes against a lot of the right-wing commentary here who seem to be very shocked that this deliberation is taking so long I'm actually not shocked that this deliberation is taking so long I think seeing is what it's not being disputed is that she's being killed what's being disputed is the impact of conditions on her for me it's this is bloody complicated and so I I'm not actually surprised this is taking so long I think it's quite difficult if you're going to make force me to come off the fence on on this one it's certainly not an easy one to call and I would prefer to do it with more information and have been in the court case before coming off the fence on this one which shows how tricky an issue it is but I also think regardless of what they decide her capabilities she should be in prison for a long long time because as a society we need such crimes must be punished properly and so whatever they decide whether that's some sort of mental institution or serious prison for me that's for them to decide but she should be locked away I she cannot be free I that's where I come off the fence hmm well the one thing we haven't addressed so far which is actually to me by the way tragic as the story is I actually don't think this should this should be a new story at all the only reason I've had any opinion on it whatsoever is the commentary around it which both you know Tom and Winston you've both alluded to which is this first of all this idea that women are quote unquote defending her I'm sure a bunch of nutters who are defending her but broadly speaking what I see is a lot of people saying there's not enough understanding of what it's like for women postpartum and some of the hormonal and mental changes I give you very small example it's got nothing to do with murdering children but nonetheless is important like my wife is breastfeeding at the moment we have a four-month old she we I remember literally the other day we were sitting having breakfast having a chat about our plans for the week and then the moment the the little one latches on she goes baby I literally can't think right now and I can literally it's like you know one of those scenes in a movie where someone in a big like a server room or a big hanger presses all the lights which is you could just see the brain just like the lights going off that's what it looks like so I think part of the thing that people are trying to explain to people who may be done understand this is the the female brain in these situations in particular nursing postpartum pregnancy etc. undergoes extreme hormonal changes and in those situations things occasionally can clearly go very very badly wrong then there's a lot of evidence I remember reading a very long article about the potential for the links between mass shootings in America and the prescription and certain anti-psychotic medications so when you give somebody 12 different medications are all different kinds in a very short period of time complex combined with sleep deprivation combined with postpartum problems combined with hormonal changes all of that together you may in some individual cases get this kind of thing and this is why I brought up the factual stuff about her previous conduct in history like I really think about whenever we think about stories like this about trying to put myself myself in the shoes of some of the people involved where I can relate if I put myself in the shoes of her husband and I go my wife who's up to this point been the model mother and everything perfect I come home I find out she strangled our children and tried to commit suicide a thing we didn't mention in our factual introduction I can totally understand why he says she's not evil she she was just sick because if that was to happen to me I'd obviously be horrified and devastated but I'd be like going this is completely out of character so whoever did this is not my wife as I understand her something has happened in that situation and I know that people like very much to make these comparisons with you know the guy who stabbed arena as a root score the paranoid schizophrenic who stabbed people but I think we also have to recognize that your prior conduct really matters both of those if I remember correctly had a long and extensive deranged criminal history so we're talking about people who have a consistent [BLANK_AUDIO] pattern of behavior that was not dealt with because of various concerns, fears, the way the criminal justice system works, etc. It's not the case here. You're talking about somebody who went from being effectively a model citizen to suddenly strangling her three children in some kind of fit. And I think these are very different things. And so I totally understand why there's a big campaign about sympathy for her, but more broadly, understanding mental illness in relation to these things. And the other thing is, well, we've got to be honest, there is a massive difference between the pattern of male violence and female violence. And I think that's relevant in the situation as well. I think on that just quickly, because what's interesting is that a lot of the nuance around essentially culpability, where serious mental illnesses concerned, when people want to suspend that discussion depends on the politics and the optics of the situation. So go back to the sort of Valdo Calakain example who wasn't, who might understand it kind of deteriorated over a period of years, wasn't unlike the kind of arenas of a situation wasn't kind of down on that criminal, per se, but was a student and was had a series of episodes which were violent and weren't dealt with. In that situation, there were a lot of people on the right who were kind of reflexively saying, I don't care about these mental health claims, he shouldn't be in a medical facility, he should be in prison. When it was quite clear that he was in the midst of very deep paranoid schizophrenia, it was convinced that the state were spying on him that all of these things were really kind of textbook and clearly guided his behavior. Then you get the, some of the commentary, something on the right around the Clancy trial seems to be because of the response to and the commentary around the case has been just sort of so easily folded into a sort of narrative around toxic femininity and the idea like, while all these women seeing themselves in them, that therefore again, she should not only be locked up, but potentially that she should be potentially, you know, actually killed as a consequence of what she has committed there. So again, I think it's one of those things where it's just become another feature of the culture or not particularly useful fashion. I suppose where I find it a bit strange though is again that level of identification with and that level of sympathy for because we can recognize that someone does something absolutely horrific when being quite literally out of their mind, but at the same time to see one's own struggle in that person, I think is a little bit strange. And also we kind of see this conflation go back to a point that Francis was making earlier of the kind of forms of, should we say, mental health issues, if we're going to use that phrase around how it's part and whatever thing, what used to be called the baby blues, you know, the very, very common experiences of women after having children with this most extreme example we could possibly think about. And I think it does get to grips with an issue that we've had for so long in our public discussions around this is that we talk so much about mental health and the idea of it being in its most minor forms often, you know, barely diagnosable and definable issues is something which we talk about endlessly. Meanwhile, very clear cut mental illness and the way in which it completely can destroy a person's psyche, leave them a danger to themselves and others is something which is oddly speaking, a less sexy and interesting issue, even though it's much more consequential in serious cases like this. So being able to disaggregate those two things, I think is really important if we're ever going to get clear hide sense of not just cases like this, but how we think about this issue in general. Well, and it's also as well, Tom, we simply don't know how to deal with this issue. We don't know how to deal with serious mental illness. We don't know how to deal with these people when they're when they're a danger to themselves or to others. And in particular, in the States, this is true. I mean, go around any city in the United States in the city center and you will see people who are profoundly mentally unwell unable to take care of themselves posing a danger to themselves and maybe to other people as well. Do you mean maybe terrifying walking around a lot of these places? It's terrifying. No, I'm saying but they may be posing a danger to other people or to themselves or I'm saying it's not there's not maybe about it. They routinely attack other people and because they are in that state. And it's because, by the way, I don't know if you know this, but I suspect you do. It's because, you know, there was a point there was a big anti institutionalization movement in America, which basically said that the way to help people who by the way, in those days, often were held in institutions where they were badly treated and those institutions were, you know, I'm not up to the standards that we would want them to be. The way to deal with that is to let these people out onto the streets because that's freedom. And that's, you know, that's it's liberating them from the constraints of institutions. That's why you have the zombie hordes that you do see in the centers of major American cities. No, absolutely. So, and then, but that speaks to, to a wider problem, which is nobody as of yet has a solution to this very, very important issue that actually affects a lot of people and you, and is actually it's kind of damning indictment about our society as a whole, because if you're not going to look after people and of the risk of sounding well, who are actually truly vulnerable and can't support themselves and are a danger to themselves or others, then we've gone, we've gone wrong somewhere. Well, I don't know if that kind of works on this, but it's, it's a bit, so if you like, take somewhere like California, billions is being spent trying to deal with this problem of what is mental illness, but on the surface level, homelessness and drug addiction. The, the, it's not a question of a desire to try and do something about it is that they, the ideology around the problem is so twisted that they, that they actually are making things worse, because they're incentivizing the bad behavior. This is something that I know you've had Michael Schoenberger on your show. He's been on my show a couple of times and he's exposed this and, and really shown this. So, I think that the society does actually want to help this, but progressive ideology in particular, in places like California is exacerbating the problem. Well, this is why I brought up the D institutional, D institutionalization movement, because actually I do think there is an answer to this, which is if someone is a danger to themselves and or other people, then they have to be in the facility where yes, they are deprived of their liberty for a period of time until we can be certain that they're not longer in danger to themselves or others. Those are unpleasant tradeoffs of this terrible reality, the mental illnesses of things that exist, but throwing these people out into the street to, to smoke fentanyl and be the victims of the most horrific life circumstances is not the solution. I feel that that in short history of, of the fence that has been the most on the fence segment that we've had actually trying to be nuanced about it, but look, I think we, we live in this era of slopplism where every issue is presented as a sort of black and white good versus evil debate between, you know, the men who are correct to dump all their girlfriends and the women who have gone, all of them have gone mental over this. I really don't think that if you're splitting up with your girlfriend because she has a slightly more sympathetic understanding of someone who had a terrible mental episode, you're probably an idiot. Anyway, there's me. It's a new Brexit constant. It's a new Brexit, exactly. Final story of, of the week is of course Andy Burnham is back, Francis. He's back, back again, tell a friend. So, I actually think this is possibly the most important story of the previous week or rather this week that wasn't really covered, but actually speaks to a very real problem that our country has and is going to dominate conversation either directly or indirectly. And that is Andy Burnham refusing to rule out tax increases in the new budget. So he refused to rule out tax rises. He was also promised by 2030 to increase the defense spending to 3% of GDP. So he's already promised to spend more money there. Cost of government borrowing has risen to its highest level in 18 years. We have a 100% debt to GDP ratio. Debt interests cost us around 120 billion a year. Some economists say a little bit lower or some say higher, but that's pretty much the average figure. And our debt now is double what it was after the financial crisis in 2008. And when Andy Burnham, and this is where it gets really interesting, when he was asked, when he was blaming essentially the reasons for our current financial woes, do you know what he blamed it on? Let's play left wing bingo gents. Come on. What did he blame that on? Thatcher, Brexit, the far right, who else is that? He's got to be this trust. No, it's Brexit. It's Brexit. It is, it is a factur. There's one more. It's not this trust, is it? No, come on. It's the beginning with a, the billionaire austerity. austerity. There you go. Well, thatcher is a funny one, isn't it? Because thatcher was, of course, became prime minister before any of us were born. And sadly, we're no longer that young. So it's incredible. I was going to mention, oh yes, the reason I brought up this trust, of course, is we all remember how she crashed the British economy famously, according to all the media. Well, unbeknownst to the media class who promoted that story as vigorously as they did, bond yields this week are higher than they were at the peak of the list trust crashing of the economy. Now, it's not to say the list trusted everything perfectly, certainly not, but I think this is just this general financial illiteracy in the media class and increasingly in the political class that comes with it as well, which is why we're having this conversation process. Now, absolutely, and this is a conversation that we're going to continue to have because the path and the trajectory that we are on is quite simply unsustainable for this country. And we are going to have to make some decisions and we're going to have to make some very difficult decisions and these are decisions which are going to make the current political party and the leader unpopular. Now, where Andy Burnham is is I would argue that he's at the peak of popularity because he hasn't had to make any decisions yet, but unfortunately for him and he is going to have to get an I quote off the fence at some point and actually make some political decisions, particularly fiscal ones, if we are going to progress and turn the sinking ship that is the UK economy around. Now, I think it's quite rare situation in which the substance of the Prime Minister we have and the scale of the problems we face are so mismatched, the same was true at the start, but we're kind of expected to be even pleasantly surprised that Andy Burnham can string a sentence together. You've got bordering on bankruptcy, as you say, Francis, the borders are still broken. I've got this glorified bus conductor who has managed to find his way into number 10. It's a really dispiriting spectacle. And part of the reason that obviously the markets are so skittish is because Andy Burnham was Mr, I don't want to be in hot to the bond markets, not too long ago. And this is the problem, you might not want to be in hot to the bond markets, but we are in hot to the bond markets. You can lament the fact that we have allowed ourselves to become so exposed that that is the case and you could put in place policies to bring down the debt over time in a significant way to pursue the kind of policies which would not only be good in terms of easing market tensions, but would also be good for society getting on top of the welfare bill ending the kind of social tragedy that is so many people being put out to pasture and all of these sort of downstream fiscal effects of that. But you can't just wish it away and it seems what we're the problem with Andy Burnham I think that we're going to end up with is that partly because it doesn't have his own mandate. And therefore even if he wanted to have some sort of drastic break with starmerism or factorism or any kind of isn't we kind of couldn't. But also because of the just inability to get anything vaguely sensible for the labour back benches these days who have become kind of captured by what is often euphemistically called the soft left, but it's basically the most vibe is based on a principle we just we're labour and we do nice things kind of section of the party. We're just going to have loads of trundling along like it's just going to be walking of a kind of tight road not wanting to do anything that would seem unfair to this section of society or unkind towards those who supposedly need to be in receipt of the enormous state largest which is now laid on towards them. So we're going to it's just going to be more of the same I dare say and I think whilst that might change you for an early election comes our way or what have you we're kind of doomed to continuity starmerism where this is concerned which is not anything that anyone should be excited about. It's a really interesting point you make particularly about the fact that you know a burn on famously said he doesn't want to be in hawk to the bond markets is Britain is like that position is like a bit like a 35 year old who still lives with his parents and borrows money from them every month going I don't want to be in hawk to my parents well. If you keep borrowing money from people you will be in hawk to them and for the reasons the Francis laid out beautifully we are now extremely in hawk to them. In fact you know one of the things we talked about the bond yields Britain is paying a premium I don't know if you know this we were all similar age I think certainly in in my 20s and early 30s the basket case countries of the world of Europe were Greece and Italy we now have higher bond yields than both Greece and Italy in this country. Because our economic policies our governments policies have created a situation where we are less trusted to repay our debts than Greece and Italy that is the reality. And you know the point about this is the biggest problem with all of this is none of it will be solved by the policies that are being advocated for or pursued because raising taxes is not going to solve this problem because you cannot tax even more to pay for all the spending that we can afford. We spend more and welfare now as we said earlier in this conversation then we raise in income tax this is insane this is insane and by the way it's not all scroungers it's not all people who've been you know abusing the system a lot of it is people who simply don't have jobs because of the economic policies that our government pursued. And a lot of it by the way is because we have an aging population of pensioners who continue to vote for policies that protect and support them at the expense of their children and grandchildren and that is another massive problem that no one wants to talk about. And it's also so many problems that unique this country like just very quickly sorry wisdom is that things like the growth in sickness benefits and outwork benefits amongst the young which is you know the idea that the young would become a particular area of interest for the welfare state just grades against what the whole point of it was to look after the old and the sick and so on you know and the destitute rather than knows who actually should have a bit of get up and go that's often blamed as a kind of post covid thing whether that relates to mental health or long covid or some kind of politics like that you look at other European countries. You do not see that pattern repeated so there have been particular decisions that we have made in this country which have made the issue so much worse and there's there's a kind of refusal to grapple with that it's just a constant kind of gesture to how terrible it is across the piece and what have you and the fact that these are factors almost entirely out of the government's control that's just not good enough there's things that you can do you can act and you can try and deal with and clean up the mess of a lot of what has happened in the quite recent past that would start to amend this. You don't have to have a reckoning with 40 years of failed policies Andy Burnham might see it to get us back on the right track even in the near term I think. Just to add even more detail 30 abonials are now the highest they've been since 1998 the problem we've got is that there's looming tax increases without serious talks about decreases or sorry without decrease elsewhere or welfare decreases. And they just so I'm not to be contrarian here or I'm not actually against some certain tax increases if they're offset with decreases elsewhere. What Burnham is doing is so the other big thing and this is a guy I keep an eye on called Lord Jim Neil he's famous because he he's a labor grandeur he took coin the turn bricks and he was a JP Morgan and it was room there was some rumors that Gary Stevenson was going to be the economics advisor for Burnham which was all nonsense but it was more true that Jim O'Neal was and he and Jim turned it down because and he said he didn't want to. Give up his business businesses and dealings but he's someone really worth keeping an arm because he would have given Burnham a seriousness in government because he's someone who does understand the bond markets and does understand how to work a budget in a way that would keep the markets and the city settled. He has said this week that capital gains tax increases are looming now I don't want capital gains tax because it's going to be tax on me but I'm in theory not against capital gains tax if there's massive reduction in income tax and actually you have you create incentive for people to work what we're seeing is just more tax and no real decrease in welfare so things can only get worse. But the most defensive thing to me of all of this is watching Andy Burnham's PMQ's and his various videos from cabinet meetings and the amount of times he says uh or um. He puts the uh in Burnham that Burnham as a word starts with an uh and end of an arm because those are the two sounds I basically only hear from that man it is so offensive to me that he talks like that it's so frustrating to hear can he not does he not have convictions can he not just speak shoot from the hip what does it what do you think man. That thing drives me more insane than the tax talk uh by orders of magnitude so we don't see what the fans the big issues. I was going to say welcome to Off the thanks where we give things that true a measure of priority. That's a daily world in my life, exactly, exactly. Well, gentlemen, that I think is us for the week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for watching and listening. Make sure you subscribe to Trigonometry, The Winston Marshall Show, and of course, Spike. And share this with a friend. Share this with everybody. And we will see you same time next week.