Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - Catherine Bohart: TL;DR - 5. Are we going to see Robert Jenrick's Brat Summer?

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Confused by candidates? If you're feeling adrift ahead of the Conservative leadership election, TL;DR has done the reading for you.Alex Kealy joins Catherine Bohart to look at the runners and riders. In the sidebar, Russian stand-up Olga Koch looks at why a strong opposition is politically useful, and Financial Times columnist Stephen Bush looks at what it takes for an opposition to get back in the driving seat.Written by Catherine Bohart, with Madeleine Brettingham, Sarah Campbell, and Georgie Flinn.Produced by Victoria LloydRecorded by Merlin Kerr at Monkey Barrel in EdinburghEdited by David ThomasProduction Coordinator - Beverly TaggA Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Welcome to TLDR, Too Long Didn't Read, the show that does for news what Jaeger bombs do for a church picnic. I'm Catherine Beohart and we're coming to you from the Edinburgh Fringe, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo's gay cousin. I haven't seen so many prancing rich kids in cellars since the von Trapp's fled the Nazis. I think my issue with a lot of news media is that it's a bit dry, it's musely when

I want umbongo hosed directly at my face. Remember umbongo? So we're here to help you spice up your current affairs life and what's going on out there this week? Well, in education news, scientists want to add lolly licking to the school curriculum. Licking ice creams and lollies teaches children vital scientific concepts such as heating, cooling and how temperature works, said their new spokesperson, Professor Whippy.

In international news, Hillary Clinton has said it's time for Kamala Harris to break the glass ceiling by becoming America's first female president, showing there's nothing women are better at than pretending to celebrate each other's success. You go, girl. In cultural and literal juggernaut news, this week has seen the final Taylor Swift tour shows at Wembley. Taylor is now leaving the UK,

which we know because she's written three snarky albums about us. Stupid Little Island, Marmite is for perverts, and separate taps, separate lives. The Eres Tour has made Tay Tay a billionaire, most billionaires make their money from oil and gas, but Taylor has tapped into the most potent and renewable energy source on the planet, emotionally unstable women and gays. But this week we're getting the jump on the Tory Party Leadership Contest. It's going to go on for the next few months and I hate when people are gossiping

and I don't know who they're gossiping about. There's also a contest taking place for leadership of the Scottish Tories but they got so badly wiped out of the election, I'm not sure what you get to be leader of. Do you just get an email login and a hebridee? This is the current affairs gig I have been training all my life for.

The Parliamentary Tory Party has been reduced to the size of an Irish small town high school, and this is a popularity contest. And stepping into the role of a sensitive boy who hangs out with the girls at break time, I'm joined by my friend and the most aesthetically Tory boy at this arts festival, it's comedian Alex Keighley, everyone! Alex will be taking his Edinburgh show The Fear on tour soon.

Now Alex, why is it that the same party that called a snap general election is now presiding over a leadership contest where it feels like we've been waiting longer for the outcome than we waited for a reboot of Gilmore Girls, which everyone knows was interminable? Well the process is a bit convoluted. There's a nomination period where to get to the next round the any MP would have to receive the backing of 10 of their fellow Tory MPs which is a bit harder after losing two-thirds of them at the general election. That's a hard numbers game. It used to be like getting a standing ovation in a theatre but now it's more like getting around in a pub. One major

candidate who didn't run was Suella Bravaman, however she claimed that she had the necessary support of 10 MPs if she'd chosen to run. And I've got the quote here, it says, I've got the support of those MPs, it's just those MPs go to a different school, you wouldn't know them. But I've definitely got them, we've held hands at the cinema and everything. Six candidates who ran did get the required nominations though, and Conservative MPs will whittle those down to four via a series of ballots in early September. Is that at the conference?

Yeah, those four MPs then get to make their case at the conference, which is sort of like the Edinburgh Fringe for people with even worse egomania. Tory MPs then trim those four down to a final two, whose names are then sent out in mid-October to Conservative Party members who paid a 39 pounds annual membership, partly for the privilege of that final pick. It's like a sort of cheap streaming subscription, but why pay to watch Squid Game

when you can help run the Squid Game? Is that my right, thinking that they close the voting on Halloween? Yes, I think it's end of October and then they announce it second of November. That's so considerate, because I presume a lot of the candidates will have other obligations that night,

like scaring small children and stealing their candy. Okay, so maybe this is revealing something deep about my competitive psyche. And bear with me, but why would you choose to be leader of the opposition? Or have some conservatives just sort of developed a recent taste for losing in the last election and then they just want to do it more prominently

Well firstly, I don't think it's ever a good call to bet against the concept of a conservative politician having a secret desire for sadomasochism Being leader of the opposition is sort of a proper constitutional role It's why the full title is leader of his majesty's most loyal opposition There's this idea that opposing the government can actually help governments improve their legislation and sort of avoid calamitous errors. Can I use that when I'm arguing with my girlfriend? Additionally there's a 65,000 pound salary also during Prime Minister's questions the leader of the opposition gets to ask six questions and that's important role in PMQs that shapes political conversation in this country.

Six questions just for context that's the same number of questions Destiny's Child asked in the song Independent Women. And they definitely failed to establish how Charlie's Angels get down like that in that time, so... It's not a lot of questions! No. It's not. Oh my gosh, that's intense. Are there many opposition leaders who become Prime Minister? Yeah so I mean you know Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Keir Starmer, Howard Wilson, David Cameron, these are all people who've gone from leader of the opposition to Prime Minister and to be honest if you want to become Prime

Minister unless someone kind of hands you the keys to the car while you're in office because they've exploded their career you're probably gonna have to win an election as leader of the opposition. Let's talk to our runners and riders for this antagonizer in chief then. Who is going to come out of this with a better parking space outside Westminster and who is going to be hosting a popular politics podcast in a year's time? Well so we've got Kemi Badenoch who was the business and trade secretary and Robert Jenrick who was the former immigration minister there, the sort of front runners according to the bookies. Joining them are Tom Tuggenhat, previously the security minister, ex-Work and Pension Secretary Mel Stride,

as well as Priti Patel and James Cleverley, who've both been Home Secretary. You've got Badenot, Patel and Jenrick, who are on the right of the party, and you've got Cleverley, Tuggenhat and Stride, who are seen as kind of relatively centrist candidates. But do they differ on policy massively? Not really, there aren't big policy disagreements at the moment. In fact, the main news recently was that

Kemi Badenot went on holiday and Robert Jenrick revealed that he'd taken the weight loss drug, Azempic, but said that he hadn't enjoyed it. How few parties have conservatives been to that they're like, that's a party drug, right? Now it's time for the part of the show we are calling Face the Consequences of Your Factions, where we finally learn how to tell the difference between our ERGs and our NRGs.

Well, first up, you have your One Nation conservatives. This faction goes back as far as Benjamin Disraeli, who wanted to unite those famous two nations of rich people and poor people. The meaning of one nation has evolved over the years, and nation has come to represent different things to different people. Sometimes nations refer to the UK itself, sometimes it's meant a kind of benevolent paternalism, and then Margaret Thatcher decided it was about people owning houses. But now one nation conservatism basically means trying to keep the Tory party near the centre.

Which is confusing because most people seem to think the centre is just wherever I'm currently standing. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves about themselves, ah good, another day of being an extremist. I love being an ideological freak, which is what I myself consider myself to be. You're right it's not a morning mantra you're not putting that in the mirror to be fair. So next up we have the European Research Group. Confusingly enough they are not fans of Europe so the ERG are basically the main

Euro skeptics in the party but everyone has slightly moved on now for obvious reasons so the ERG kind of research themselves into irrelevance. Can you do that? I'm asking for a friend who Google's themselves like a lot. And what about the 1922 committee? Are they another faction and if so is their goal to take Britain back to 1922 as part of some sort of back to the future style caper? Not quite although that would be more fun. Yeah, says a man. The 1922 committee is the name for the group of all back bench Conservative MPs. Okay, and I'm guessing the group was founded in... 1923, yes.

Don't fight it, just... Okay. But it was named because the Conservatives had like a cracking election result in 1922 and therefore all these new MPs basically needed a buddy system to teach them how to do their jobs and sort of coordinate all these new back benches and that's a role it's had ever since. The Parliamentary Labour Party or PLP performs a similar role for Labour and I think the smoking area of the nearest Wetherspoons does it for reform.

And the Lib Dems? That's just a water sports rental facility in Torquay. Next up, it's our sidebar. And who better to guide us through this period of cutthroat political jostling than Russian standup, Olga Koch everybody. Hello, my name is Olga Koch. I'm originally from Russia and I need to start every set like that because I know that

they're listening. When Catherine called me to do a piece on a British party leadership election, I thought, what do I know? I'm Russian. But then she told me it was the Tory party leadership election, and I thought, oh, we've helped out with those before. That's one of ours. Last time Vladimir Putin commented on the Tory party leadership election was in 2019.

He called it strange, suggesting that it's strange that the leader of an entire country could be selected only by party members and not, as is the Russian tradition, by the leader himself. As of 2022, conservative party members were overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, and overwhelmingly 54 years old.

Which sounds a lot like my dad, and that's a demographic I do not trust. And the Russian in me can't understand how that demo ever got all the power in this country in the first place because they're so weak and so feeble. I mean, have you ever seen Hugh Grant in any movie? He can't even get to an end of a sentence. He's always just like, ever so sorry, pardon me, oh god, oh no, I couldn't possibly...

The Russian in me is just standing there going, you eat quail egg cause chicken egg too big for little man. Some of you might be thinking, Olga, who cares who becomes leader of the conservative party? Every time I think about the existence of Mel Stride, a part of me dies. Hey, I get it, me too. But as a Russian, I'm here to tell you, you should care because every country needs a functioning opposition. What do you call a country

without a functioning opposition? Russia. Just one example of a joke I would not be able to make in Russia. And if any conservatives are listening, try not to think of being in the opposition as a defeat. You're the underdog now. You can finally be cool. You're the alternative, but cool alternative,

like music, not horrible alternative like meat. The most we've got in the way of scrutiny in Russia is an annual end-of-year TV phone-in where Putin sits for four hours answering tough questions like, did it hurt when you fell from heaven? end of your TV phone in where Putin sits for four hours answering tough questions like, did it hurt when you fell from heaven? And how do you smell so good through the TV? Plus having a functioning opposition means

there's someone to say sassy home trues like, hey you, maybe don't start a war with Ukraine. Of course, it hasn't always been the case that Russia has no real opposition. During the revolution the opposition was arguably too good. It set the bar too high. I mean how many other violent uprisings can claim the kind of banging soundtrack that accompanied the film Anastasia? Plus the opposition have such a sexy title. When you hear cabinet, you think functional, everyday, IKEA. When you hear shadow cabinet, you think super villains, evil puppet masters, IKEA, but it's

after closing time and somehow you're still there and you can pretend you just live in all those tiny fake rooms for real. Britain, it's important not to take what you have as a country for granted. In his first speech after losing the election, Rishi Sunak congratulated Keir Stommer on his decisive election victory and noted that he was now, at the age of 44, an elder statesman. And I don't mind saying that,

seeing that brought a tear to my eye. Russians don't often see an opposition leader make it to that ripe old age. So I'm thankful that even when they were in power, the conservative understood the danger of a one-party state. So I wish all the conservative when they were in power, the conservative understood the danger of a one party state. So I wish all the conservative leadership candidates the best of luck.

Your country needs you. It's not the same as wants you, but it's still important. All the talk everyone. If you liked that, check out Olga's show, OK Computer on BBC Sounds. Alex, this is a complex topic, and I still feel as out of my depth as Rishi Sunak at the shallow end of the kiddies pool. So it's time for this week's expert. Please welcome Stephen Bush.

Stephen Bush is an associate editor and columnist at the Financial Times. He writes a daily newsletter Inside Politics charting the course of politics and policy in the United Kingdom. Hi Stephen, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm good thanks, thanks for having me on. Stephen, are the conservatives shifting to the right or are they going towards the center? Are they Brat or are they Demure is what I'm asking. In some ways like Brat and Demure it's a bit more complicated than that because like arguably you could say that you know Brat it's like libertarian, it's like free market capitalism, Demure, it's kind of like, I don't know, like socially conserved.

So you could argue both of those that would be in a way moving to the right. And as you know, someone said earlier, like no one ever wants to present themselves as the extremist candidate. So, you know, Robert Jenrick, for example, his argument is despite the fact that everything he says is really right,

when he's lost a lot of weight and he's got a sharp haircut. So he really... I know that sounds like I'm doing a joke, but actually like that actually just basically is the text of his pitch. It's really hard to say at this point. We haven't had very many polls of the race. The only one we've had has shown James cleverly beating all of his other rivals among the party membership. But the party membership hasn't had a very good look at the candidates yet, so we don't yet

know where they will land. And usually in the first term of an opposition, they do move further from the center, whether to the left if it's the Labour Party or the right if it's the Conservatives. Why is that? I think it's because if you've just lost, right, broadly speaking it is your fault, right? It's not like the Conservative Party got 121 seats by accident. And so kind of changing yourself to win requires you to have a really painful conversation with yourself. And so it's much more comforting for a political party to go, oh well we lost because

we lost touch with our own values. We weren't enough like ourselves because that doesn't require anyone involved in the party to put their hands up and go, actually yeah it was me. Okay, wow. But I too have had difficult breakups where I didn't want to self-reflect and I get it. I really get it. So tell me if I've misunderstood democracy, but what do the voters want and why don't they just do that? Well the problem is the voters are a bit like cats aren't they, right? They want a number of things and they give a number of signals, not all of which can be obviously reconciled with each other, like the most obvious one in the last election being everyone is understandably

really angry about the fact that if you call the police, no one's going to turn up. If you call an ambulance, 50-50 chance someone's going to turn up. And if the ambulance arrives, there'll be loads and loads of potholes. And as you're being escorted to the hospital, you will see loads of people sleeping rough. But they are also really angry about the fact that taxes have gone up. So if you're a political party, they're going, OK, guys, what do you actually want from me here? Well, you're going to find out, I guess, in a couple of

months whether or not the Labour Party thinks that the thing people really want from it is for it to put more money into the public services and break some of its promises. Or if they think that actually what people really care about is the Labour Party keeping to the spirit of its promises on tax, even if that means less money for the public services. Are we getting ahead of ourselves insofar as, are they trying to appease an electorate or are they simply trying to appease a membership? No, so this is one of the things

which is really difficult for any would-be party leader. You know, it's a bit like Star Wars, right? The average voter is someone who like turns up, watches the films, and then the average party member is someone who has like really strong opinions about the color of Luke Skywalker's lightsaber and why it changed color between the films and would happily watch another TV show about the story of Luke's lightsaber changing color. And if you're a party leader, what you want to do in your leadership election is find a way to appeal to the party members in a way that doesn't when you then turn around to

the country and start appealing to them make you look like a fraud or lead you with hostages to fortune and some come some cases if you're Liz Press what you do is you just say all the things the party members want to do and then actually do them and then everyone gets really angry with you and you've blown up the economy. Wow, that is the worst case scenario. To what degree do you think that they have been spooked by reform?

Because it seems like they are at a bit of a crossroads, right? Either they try to capture those reform votes or they try to capture centrist votes, maybe from Labour, maybe from Lib Dem. The most influential politician in this leadership election in lots of ways is Nigel Farage because if you could assume that every single reform voter was a conservative who got lost on the way to the polling booth, then there is an idea that the Conservative party would get

back into office without having to do anything grubby like move to the left or the center. And so for some people in the party, reform is just very appealing because it's an easy answer for how they'll get back into power. But for other people, reform is very scary because they look at their own result and they go, well, if I lose 61 more votes to reform, then Labour will win the seat or the Liberal Democrats will win the seat. So for reasons of both high politics and their own local self-interest, everyone in this contest has kind of got Lib Dem blindness, which again contributes to the likely rightward drift of the party both in and after this contest.

It is interesting, isn't it? Because the two-party system first past the post doesn't look like it's being challenged anytime soon. So within that game, surely Lib Dem is the strategic chase for votes? Because of how our electoral system works, some votes do just count more. The Lib Dems won 60 seats off the Tories, without which they can't win a majority government. But again, that involves all of those kind of difficult conversations that the conservative party doesn't want to talk about. They look at reform and they go,

oh, well, what you want is for me to be more like myself. Speaking of someone who's stayed in terrible relationships, shouldn't the Tories just let the reform voters go and focus on either Labour voters or the healthier option, dating themselves for a bit? Oh, yeah, I mean, they definitely should focus a bit on dating themselves. In the... Steven, you're such a good friend!

The big picture problem for everyone in British politics is in 2008 we had the financial crisis which made us much poorer and we still haven't recovered from. Sorry, could be a downer. And then in 2016 we had Brexit, which again has made us poorer and we haven't yet recovered from. And it's not really clear what a party of the right, like the conservatives, should do in a situation where it's becoming increasingly a party of, in the nicest possible way, subsidized elderly people, right?

What is the point of a conservative party where its core is not a professional with a nice car who earns quite a lot of money and is instead someone who is retired and is receiving quite a lot of government spending. So in some ways the big thing that they should probably focus on first is going, guys, what type of government do we want to be and what type of voters would we need in order to be that type of voters would we need in order to be that type of government. Broadly speaking, every day in all of their seats, a reformed voter dies, and then a middle-class couple who, like,

voted Lib Dem or Labour last time moves in. What do you reckon the Conservatives should do to be an effective opposition to this Labour Party? Like, how do you oppose a government who are still acting like they're in opposition? There's a reason why most first term opposition becomes second term opposition because like the reason why the government is acting like very little of what goes on is not its fault, it's very little of what goes on is its fault. And broadly speaking parties recover when

they realise that they did something wrong and they need to demonstrate both and they are sorry about it and that they changed. And sometimes, you know, if you are Margaret Thatcher in 1974 and you immediately go, that was a mistake, here's how we've changed, you can get back in a single term. But what parties mostly do is they kind of go like, I think actually maybe the voters will realize that we were right all along. And so I guess my unsolicited advice for them is that it is actually just possible to skip ahead tomorrow to having a new candidate who says, yeah, we've changed, who puts the youngest, freshest, least contaminated by the past people in the shadow cabinet and just goes, we are a new conservative party and fights the Labour party on the territory that the Labour party fought and won the election,

i.e. improving public services, rather than going down some weird blind alley. It's great advice, Stephen, but surely, even if they did that, how could the Tories ever stand up to the wild, unchained lion that is Keir Starmer? Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, given his untrammeled charisma and an oratorical style

it would be difficult for anyone but they have an opportunity in November to get that one job right and so yeah, I guess we'll see if they take it on. Stephen, while we have you on the line, now it's time for the audience to ask questions. Please don't be shy. The worst that can happen is you humiliate yourself on national radio, become a laughing stock and have to move abroad to escape the shame where you die alone, miserable and unloved. So, you know, relax. Who's got a question? Hello, what's your name?

Hi, I'm David. Hi, David. Is there a chance that the Lib Dems can become the opposition? Fantastic question. Yeah, it is really possible. Yeah, we shouldn't forget that they did come quite close this time. They don't have as many obvious targets, but there are still a bunch of places where if the Conservative Party goes into the next election as disliked or more than they were at the last election, people will know now what the lever they need to pull to get rid of their Tory MP is. And the Lib Dems in particular, their problem is they find it very hard to get an MP elected.

But once they are, it's historically hard to get rid of them unless something very big happens, like them going into coalition or whatever. Exciting. How fun. Nice to have a fun third element in the room. That's exciting. And I'm talking about politics. So, does anybody else have a question? Hello, what's your name? Hello, Harold. Hi, Harold. What have a question? Hello, what's your name? Hello, Harold. Hi, Harold. What's your question?

You kind of touched on what do the Tories have to say in order to win another election. But does that kind of acknowledge that a party isn't going to win by doing what they believe is right? They have to just lie in order to gain power? Whoa, Harold. Huge first principles question.

Do we think politics exists to appease to what they suspect to be the wishes of the electorate or should they act with conscience? Stephen? It's a bit of both, isn't it? If we think about the election we've just had, where we can all see that the United Kingdom has an aging population, public services in a huge state. If you want to be the government, you are actually going to have to fix those problems, because otherwise you're going to oversee anarchy, people getting very angry at you.

And one of the reasons why political parties that are doing well politically tend to sound the same about most of what they say is that they are trying to win power in the same country. But really where political parties when they are healthy disagree is about means. So like the water companies they obviously aren't doing that well. You can argue that means we should nationalize them. You can argue that means we should regulate them better. Well, you can argue that means we should nationalize them. You can argue that means we should regulate them better. But my point is, what the parties need to do is, is identify real problems and come up with solutions to those real problems,

rather than what they often tend to do when they're in a bad state, which is identify their preferred hobby horses and reach for the solutions that make them feel comfortable. Any last questions? What's your name? Victoria. Hi, Victoria, what's your question?

My question is, you mentioned that some parties can manage to turn it around within one term, Labour, I think, two or three. What do you think swung it for them? I think a couple of things turned it around for the Labour Party. I think firstly, in some ways, things just got a lot easier because the state of the public service has got a lot worse. In 2010,

the Labour Party had said, okay, yeah, guys, you might be angry with us about the financial crisis, but remember then you can get a GP appointment the day you phone R. People would have gone, yeah, who cares? So some of the things that the Conservative Party now talk about will become more politically powerful over time. But the other thing that they did is that they looked at what had beaten them in 2019. Boris Johnson did change the party to see off the threat of Labour. But so it was also easier for Keir Starmer because he was having to move the party less of a long way than he would have had to if he'd been leader in 2015. But he essentially went, look, so they've made these promises on schools, hospitals,

police and tax and I am going to mimic those strengths as best as I can. They were lucky that their preferred solutions were coming back into vogue, but they also did steal the clothes of the people who'd beaten them last time. Hey folks, can we please give it up for the incredible Stephen Bush? Thank you so much Stephen. So Alex, at the end of this story, what have we learned? Do you have any predictions? Well, the silence from the people who make Azempik is pretty deafening.

I feel like a lawsuit from Nova Nordisk might be about to land on Robert Jenrick's desk, tying him into a lengthy and expensive legal battle with Big Pharma over whether AzempPick is in fact enjoyable Okay, and what is the next spin-off of the franchise? Well at the rate they tend to occur I'd say it's probably the 2025 conservative leadership election And whose insta should we be lurking on? I reckon it's conservative MSP Stephen Kerr who had to apologize after he called the campaign of the guy He was supporting for Scottish leader Murdo Fraser awful in a private WhatsApp message which he accidentally posted as a status update

So I'd say social channels are the most likely to be pretty spicy Can't wait, we'll lurk Wow, this has been TLDR, the show that's newsy but fun like Fiona Bruce on a log flume TLDR was written and hosted by Catherine Boehart with Alex Healy, Olga Koch and Stephen Bush. It was also written by Madeline Bratingham, Georgie Flynn and Sarah Campbell. The producer was Victoria Lloyd.

It was a mighty funny production of BBC Radio 4. Hi, I'm India Rackerson and I want to tell you a story. It's the story of you. In our series, Child, from BBC Radio 4, I'm going to be exploring how a fetus develops and is influenced by the world from the very get-go. Then, in the middle of the series, we take a deep look at the mechanics and politics of birth, turning a light on our struggling maternity services and exploring how the impact of birth on a mother affects us all.

Then we're going to look at the incredible feat of human growth and learning in the first 12 months of life. Whatever shape the journey takes, this is a story that helps us know our world. Listen on BBC Sounds.