TRASHFUTURE - Matt 117: TF 2019 General Election

Episode Date: December 12, 2019

Content warning: at around 1:10:00, Nate discusses a traumatic experience he had in combat years ago, which doesn’t make for particularly light listening. We just want to make sure you’re not caug...ht unawares if you’d rather avoid hearing it. It’s election day! Please, please, please go vote Labour and help us end this nightmare! Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Nate (@inthesedeserts) and Alice (@AliceAvizandum) discuss the upcoming vote, some stupid articles, and a vision of things being better. *IF YOU CAN HELP GET OUT THE VOTE, PLEASE DO!* This site lets you enter your post code and identifies which marginal seats need your help the most: https://mypollingday.com If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31753429

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Starting point is 00:00:00 A royal farewell for the king of car parks, as Prince Charles, William, Camilla, Sophie Wessex and Shirley Bassey dress in their finery for the memorial service of NCP boss, Sir David Gosling, 90, who left £50 million in his will to buy the royal family a new yacht. This is the most class-cocked country on the face of the fucking planet. I love the idea of just like them, them showing up to their second ever car-themed funeral. So what happened is Sir Donald and his business partner, Ronald Hobson, became Britain's most successful entrepreneur. Wait, Donald and Ronald.
Starting point is 00:00:46 This was a front for the clown, Ronald McDonald. Yeah, just every NCP car park is just a front for McDonald's. So Ronald McDonald became two of Britain's most successful entrepreneurs, setting up a company which became the NCP in 1948 with just £200 between them, which was like £100,000 in today's money. Yeah. Wait, hang on. When was this?
Starting point is 00:01:08 1948. I don't know. I'm not sure that was that much money. Okay. With a plan to turn a wartime bomb site in central London into a car park. So a company that's made everything appreciably much worse. Everyone hates interacting with them. It just is small.
Starting point is 00:01:28 Everything is like in every second street is a giant concrete, rain-slicked slab of despair. If you wanted to see Marx's theory of primitive accumulation basically in real time, then the guy who just claimed a bunch of like bombed out land in central London to buy a second gold boat for the family of Prince Andrew, all every single person running or against Jeremy Corbyn today has looked at that particular, just that series of events and said, ah, can't get rid of that though. Yeah. What if it destabilizes things?
Starting point is 00:02:06 I just love like, well, apart from of course, Gibbo, Ricey, Cheeks, Morty and Josh who are fully on board with getting rid of it. Yeah. I find this one of the things where you just look at it and you're like, I'm just imagining that what the bloke who owned and set up national car parks was like, and I imagine him as this kind of like grubby East End wheeler-dealer type wearing like a number of gold chains who like just the sort of like the Royals having to hang out with him and like respect him because he's giving them the money for a new boat is extremely funny.
Starting point is 00:02:38 It's like cucking the Royals because like for years, you know, they could just like get all their money from just like being the royal family and being like, we own you, but then now they have to like hang out with like Dodgy Ronald and Dodgy Donald because they need they need some of their dirty car park money to finally fund the new fancy boat. What is aristocracy, but Dodgy car park, Ronald plus time. Like this is the Earl of Warwick was just the Dodgy car park guy of his day. In many ways, Richard the third was returned to Dodgy car park. Yes.
Starting point is 00:03:16 Hello, welcome to the election day special of trash future and boy, are my arms tired. It's Riley from voting. Yeah, from, I actually get to vote twice because I've got someone's proxy because Riley is working for his handlers in Moscow. Exactly. I'm also joined by a Milo. Hello, it's me, you boy. I'm emotionally spent.
Starting point is 00:03:51 I have nothing more to give. I know I'm just everything now is just a blur. I'm just looking at things like seeing watching the Labour campaign ads last night and then watching that fucking mess that the Tories did with love actually shit about getting Brexit done. I was just like, how, how is this even a contest? I don't even understand how you could vote for Boris. But I think it's just, you know, there are a lot of people in this country who want
Starting point is 00:04:17 things to get dumber and faster. And in a way, I respect that. And Alice. Yes, what's up? Full desert of the real. I have been feeling like the video for Talking Heads once in a lifetime for the last week, and it's only going to get worse. We're all wearing gigantic suits.
Starting point is 00:04:32 Yes, we're all getting projected on us. And you may find yourself in a beautiful polling station. Personally, I like one of the things I'm really enjoying is that, OK, my theories that every British conservative is exists on a poll or say every male British conservative exists on a poll somewhere between David Brent and Alan Partridge. That's true. That's that's I swear, though, that's kind of like they're both on one end of the spectrum.
Starting point is 00:05:02 Those are two very similar characters you've picked out there. David because David Brent is David Brent is much crueler than Alan Partridge, who's just a coward. But you know what it is, though, the entire we've seen the entire establishment media of this country believe themselves to be either Jeff Newsroom or Malcolm Tucker. And instead, they're all Alan Partridge. Oh, I've got I did want to say that Boris Johnson has finally completed
Starting point is 00:05:34 his transformation into Alan Partridge when he drove a JCB marked getting Brexit done through some boxes marked gridlock AP. That's the only thing. Oh, damn. That might actually be more David Brent. And like Alan, Alan Partridge would be having to commentate on that and pretend it wasn't insane and just going like, oh, yeah, we're having a fantastic day here down at the Kotli village fight.
Starting point is 00:05:57 Fantastic to see. I see that I see Alan Partridge as the as the sort of someone who is both very cynical about every every person he perceives as beneath him, but also extraordinarily insecure to the point that he is. Yes, yes, the insecurity is the common factor between those two characters. They both have the desperate need to be loved. But but Alan Partridge is so cynical about the people around him that he always is way too literal.
Starting point is 00:06:27 Yeah. Well, actually, the most the most tour. I mean, Alan Partridge would absolutely be a touring, would absolutely be a Brexit guy. But I think the thing about Alan Partridge that most sums up like the current incarnation of Tories is there's this scene in the second series where he's having a business meeting in the lounge of his country club, which he's hired purely for the purposes of seeming fancy to business meeting people. And then he notices that there's like a woman in there
Starting point is 00:06:49 with her like a six year old son and he doesn't like the fact that there's a six year old child in the room while he's having this meeting. So he calls over one of the waiters and he goes, I think there's a chap over there in contraversion of the rule about no jeans in the bar. And then the waiter looks over and looks skeptically back at us, goes, chap, about six and then the waiter goes over and like ushers the child and his mother out. And then Alan shouts after them, get you on the old jeans rule, did they?
Starting point is 00:07:17 Nazis, but with excellent facilities as had the Nazis. And I think that sums up like the full gamma of Tory psychopathy in one simple exchange of dialogue. And indeed it does, but I want I want to go back to something Alice said about how go back to things I said, all the we're going right back to it. They're all so correct in this, the chaos configuration of trash future. Indeed, where someone's getting liable by the end of this. Someone already has almost.
Starting point is 00:07:51 Yeah, we just were so many cuts. We're going to sound like the the Homer Simpson hostile interview. Can. Yeah, if you're wondering, if you're wondering who's been liable, it's you. The girl reading this. Yeah, how about this? How about this? We're going to have a new Patreon tier where if you donate per month the amount of money for which you are going to sue us, we will liable you.
Starting point is 00:08:17 Yeah, the Carter Rock tier, delightful. I want to go back to something Alice said, which is that a lot of the political media have imagined themselves to be either like a Jeff newsroom sort of cutting to the bullshit or what have you got damn news. And this is a I want us to remember if we can. February to March of March ish of this year. That's a stretch this week. Oh, boy.
Starting point is 00:08:42 Remember March? No, no, I don't. Lousy Smarch weather. This is from an article written by Jonathan Friedland in The Guardian. Oh, God, not not today. There are endless ways to write off the effort of Change UK to charge many routes that will take it to failure. Yes, none of them convinces me fully despite everything. Well, then you're a fucking idiot.
Starting point is 00:09:03 You Jonathan Friedland of six months ago. And I presume one nine months ago. And I presume still Jonathan Friedland of now, despite everything. The possibility remains that this move by a handful of MPs could amount to something, even something big. Just the vagueness of that particular prediction. What could it be? Something perhaps even something big.
Starting point is 00:09:24 We're not going to talk about the polls at all this episode, because I can't. I just won't. Our brains would melt out of our ears. Except for these three polling facts. Angela Smith is down by 35 percent. Chris Leslie is down by 47 percent. And Mike Gapes is down by 54 percent. The thing is, you take your Labour voters
Starting point is 00:09:45 and then your disgruntled independent voters and you mix them together with the milk. The thing is, if my gates was down by 54 percent in real life, he'd be close to resembling a normal human. I was going to say, all right, all right, Jackal and Frayn Reed. So, yeah, all these we changed. We changed it. I mean, the ones that went on and barnacled on to other parties,
Starting point is 00:10:10 like the Lib Dems specifically, you know, they're doing fine. Other ones, like, understood that they're probably their political goose was cooked and it was time to like leave politics. Except Angela Smith, Chris Leslie and Mike Gapes. They were like, yes, some doomed combination of either wanting to keep a few more expenses claims or in Mike Smith's case, based entirely on his Twitter output, like a genuine belief, self-belief,
Starting point is 00:10:41 that he's going to win this thing and that people were sticking around not for the Labour Party in Elford South, but for that Gapes experience. You're the Gapes gang. Damn, the three bluster tears of politics. Like, I feel like in many ways, what changed UK. And I don't know if that is what they saw themselves as, but what they've served to be in the end is there's a kind of like
Starting point is 00:11:00 comic relief from like the unremitting horror that is modern Britain. And finally, story. Yeah. What they are is they're like the drunk night watchman scene in Macbeth, so that in between all the murders, there's like a little chuckle. Like, oh, yeah, well, you know, the Tories are going to institute sort of authoritarian rule and, you know, kill disabled people and whatever.
Starting point is 00:11:19 But like, look at look at these fucking jokers, literal clouds of Congress, shingling miserably across the floor of the House of Commons, calling everyone nuncore and then getting owned mercilessly within nine months. So like, no matter what happens today when this comes out, you know what? Angela Smith and Chris Leslie are going to go need to work for a PR firm. That's true.
Starting point is 00:11:43 We will keep one eye on Ilford South at the count there. That is our promise to you when we live stream this. Yeah, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike Gapes was never seen again. But then there is a lonely, a lonely figure cutting a swath across the Ilford churchyard who can be seen howling and singing mournfully into the night. Oh, it's incredible. But the depressing thing is, of course, that like this isn't the end of these people's careers, it's the end of their career as an MP.
Starting point is 00:12:12 They will now all just be absorbed into our fucking columnist class. And they won't even be the dumbest ones because these people are dumb, but they're not as dumb as most British newspaper columnists, which is like a special level you have to get to. Did you see Angela Smith's video that she put out? Yeah, her outsider are. Because like all of these people bet that they could win without the resources that they were taken for granted from particularly the Labour Party.
Starting point is 00:12:40 And it turns out that the Labour Party is actually quite good at making videos to make people want to vote for it, and Angela Smith isn't. Oh, well, you know what? Hey, you live and you learn. Yeah. Yeah. In this case, yeah, those two. So, you know, good luck to Angela Smith and Chris Leslie and whatever sort of overpaid influence peddling PR job you end up in.
Starting point is 00:13:00 Good luck. They start doing like Herbalife. Good luck to Mike Gapes as a Herbalife assassin. Well, he could go and join Tom Watson on the level two gym instructor course. Good luck to Mike Gapes doing your quest to fitness, like whatever it is that you're going to do. I mean, Mike Gapes is destined to do a very niche kink porn channel. That's all I'm saying.
Starting point is 00:13:23 Yeah, with just for some reason, all the real politic and Trevor Bastard characters subscribing to it. Just a game station. But I would like to move on, of course, to the hospital for a car. Yeah, well, our boy, our special boy, Matt Hancock, was was murdered by a momentum style thug. He was murdered by him by actually he was he was murdered by
Starting point is 00:13:50 a force of momentum elite and Bruce. Exactly. Using gravity hammers. A fucking gender studies lecturer from Goldsmiths University hit him over the back with a folding chair, killing him instantly. No, no, I think actually it was I compromised to a permanent. The the arbiter came down from high charity. And our boy, Matt Hancock's shields were lowered.
Starting point is 00:14:13 Just like Hancock was assaulted with a laser sword is the thing. They cut his hair and made him unable to park or away. So we're we're going to get into what I mean by that shortly. But just to catch everyone up, especially American listeners, a couple of days ago, there was a photo of yesterday. It was yes, it was not even 24 hours. It feels like a million years ago. I'm with you 100 percent.
Starting point is 00:14:36 Yesterday morning, the Yorkshire, the Yorkshire Post or Yorkshire Paper, yeah, the Yorkshire Post released a story about a Leeds General Hospital, the Leeds General Infirmary, where there was so over crowded and so over stretched that like children were having to like sick children couldn't have beds and we're having to like lie on piles of coats while getting treated, which by by everyone's understanding happens all the time, like routinely up and down the country now, especially in winter.
Starting point is 00:15:05 Boris Johnson is confronted about this directly by Joe Pike, a local journalist from the Yorkshire Post, who shows in the picture of this on his phone. Now, as an aside, I'd like to also note and we're going to come back to this later, that the only people who have managed to cover this election with any kind of what you might call an oppositional truth to power journalism have been people lower down the reporting reporter food chain at the big outlets and local journalists from places like the Yorkshire Post or the the main Scottish paper as well.
Starting point is 00:15:37 These are the. What is it, Alice? What is it, Alice? Danny record, the independent or something like this. Well, do you want the national? Do you want the record? National, that's the one. OK, I forgot. And of course, the main Scottish paper is
Starting point is 00:15:53 but it's it's it's better than the Scotsman. I'll say that. Yeah, I don't. Sorry, cancel me for not knowing about Scottish papers. But nonetheless, the story of this has been that regional papers, regional journalists and non-senior journalists have been the ones that are willing to actually challenge Boris Johnson, because that's the thing. Joe Pike and the Yorkshire Post are never going to get access to the Tory Party again ever. No, they're shut out now.
Starting point is 00:16:16 You know, they're. Yeah, and of course, internet weirdos. The only other group who ever hold anyone to account is just like people on the internet. It's amazing, the extent to which like things, which just defy people like Robert Pestin, some guy in his bedroom is able to accomplish just by like putting together publicly available information. But he's like, hmm, this seems pretty fucked up. So looking Dominic Cummings's master plan, like shadowy bot network that to try to spin this and was immediately disarmed
Starting point is 00:16:47 by somebody searching the words very interesting and a pediatric nurse and finding like two dozen different accounts, all tweeting, very interesting. I'm a former pediatric nurse and this doesn't look real to me. You know, sorry, they were just they were doing a Greek chorus thing. Yeah. But or even how like like a friend of the show, Loki Nash, was able to like like out like what three lived MPPCs is just outright dangers. Yes. Like what has nobody at the BBC heard of just searching Twitter. No, citizen journalism is and local journalism are the only kinds left.
Starting point is 00:17:23 Otherwise, you just end up with like access journalism and we have seen where that leads us to. So going back to the timeline of the story here, Boris Johnson's immediate reaction while being interviewed by Joe Pike is to stumble over his words and then pocket the journalist's phone. Yeah, he mugged him basically. Boris Johnson is a confidence trickster. I just need to I just need to make a call to my banker if you could give me a moment.
Starting point is 00:17:50 Yeah, because I think honestly, it's like Boris Johnson has never faced hard questioning before. No, no, he just crumpled from many of his girlfriends, I presume. He falls under the tiniest amount of pressure. Where where was this when he was, for instance, mayor of London for several years and it was just left to like to and I say this with the best will in the world and the best like compliments because they were doing actual journalism cranks with blogs
Starting point is 00:18:19 like named like Boris Watch catching him out and like every day is single lies that he kept telling. But then they they really need reinforcements. Boris couldn't handle this alone. No. And this is where this is why I'm reading this story, because it's to get up to this line. It's being reported that Matt Hancock has been dispatched to lead general infirmary after a picture printed on the front page
Starting point is 00:18:47 of the Daily Mirror showed a four year old boy lying on a ward floor because of a shortage of beds. Matt Hancock is in the drop pod. He is scrapped in on a suborbital velocity. Spartman Matt Spartman 117. I had no last name. He is ready. He is ready to teach that boy to jump over a park bench.
Starting point is 00:19:12 I was like when I saw this, I said like warning, Matt Hancock is no longer contained. Like there's two ways of interpreting this. You can either do spartan Matt 117 or or SCP Matt Hancock, who has escaped his containment. I just I just I feel like Matt Hancock going to the hospital. It's like, Matt, where are you going? Oh, to give the hospital back to.
Starting point is 00:19:42 Just how finishing this app are you that you have to do damage control? And the guy that you send your number one pick is Matt Hancock. Matt Hancock is a reprador. Yeah, your elite force. Yeah, Matt Hancock is having to like bring all these people out of retirement and convince them to resolve their differences, to solve this problem at the hospital. He's like, listen, I know that Amazon, Alexa and Google Home have had their differences in the past, but I think if we can work through that,
Starting point is 00:20:11 we can just about save Leeds, Gemini and Firmary. Well, we're all firing on very different cylinders here. We're doing an Ocean's Eleven thing. Alice is doing an Unleash the Beast thing. Yes. And I'm fully committed to Halo Matt Hancock. I'm Matt Hancock, SCP. He is this strange, unknowable cosmic phenomenon
Starting point is 00:20:31 that just imbues innovation into things. I can actually really buy into like Halo Matt Hancock because I can imagine him being convinced for a photo op to like dress up as Master Chief. Yes, that's true. Because it's like innovative, but he like accidentally buys like a kinky Master Chief costume and it's all like body type latex. And he's just going like, wow, what an interesting costume. I think this would be this would be great for, you know, jumping over a sign or something.
Starting point is 00:20:57 Stupid, sexy Hancock. Stupid, sexy Hancock. We kind of did get that. Oh, yeah. So that's one thing. We're going to run down a few of our favorite Matt moments this election. So mark down your bingo cards and actually write down your favorite Matt moment this election and send it to on a postcard to the Trash Future Studio. Find out the address yourself.
Starting point is 00:21:16 Yeah. Docs us. Send. Yeah. You know Docs us. Send your send a Matt Hancock favorite election moment to a friend or family. Don't give them context. Actually, hang on.
Starting point is 00:21:26 Mail it to Matt Hancock. That'll confuse him. I don't think we're allowed to do that. Should we? He's a public figure. He's got a public. It's not abuse. It's just like this was my favorite.
Starting point is 00:21:37 You're encouraging people to get to send him fan mail. That's the opposite of crime. Yeah, do not do not send him threats. No, there is absolutely no irony. Right. Like we are 100 percent sincere. We want our special boy to get some like plaudits. We want him to know that people appreciate what he's doing.
Starting point is 00:21:58 So look, Milo, do you want to start off with your favorite Matt moment this election? My favorite Matt Hancock moment and I advocate Sunday. I think Sunday, Monday, Sunday, perfectly encapsulates the frustration of a Sunday. No, for me, my favorite. And I think this ranks in like the all time greatest Matt Hancock moments because it really encapsulates the extent to which he is just the dog from Homewood bound put into the machine from the fly with like the body of a government minister. Because he was being interviewed by Kay Burley about his plans to rejuvenate the NHS.
Starting point is 00:22:38 And he said, now it takes a lot to be held to account by Kay Burley. So just strap in. She is very good at interviewing dogs. Sadness and advice. And he says, well, this is happening up and down the country. It's happening from Wigan to Warrington. And then Kay Burley says, those two aren't very far apart, actually. It's about a half hour drive.
Starting point is 00:23:02 And then Matt Hancock, without missing a beat, running from ear to ear, just goes, it's also happening in Cornwall. The three genders, the three genders. It's like he maybe he started in Cornwall. He got a flight up up to like the Northeast. And he was like, as far as I can remember, these are the only West, whatever. These are the only bits of the I actually knew that I did just misspeak. These are the only parts of the country I'm aware of.
Starting point is 00:23:30 I assume I'll learn about some more tomorrow. I love learning. Exactly. He thinks that everyone sounds like Liam Gallagher or a pirate. Those are the only accents he's aware of. So, Alice, what's your favorite Matt moment this election? My favorite Matt Hancock moment this election is a late, late entry. But it's the video that we just saw where the local candidate for, I don't fucking know, somewhere did a like a piece to camera with him.
Starting point is 00:23:58 And for the. It sure was a piece. Oh, I'll say it. And for the whole like two minutes of that clip, he is standing like so close to her. It's very unnerving. She tries to step away from him at one point. And he sort of talks much too loudly and much too quickly. And also is kind of having a visibly nice time.
Starting point is 00:24:24 He's trying to shield her body from potential attack. He's very excited. Yes. And it's got his heart right up in his veins. It is literally like he is like a golden retriever and he looks like he is about to start humping her leg. It's incredible. He is just, this is what on my sort of theory of Tories,
Starting point is 00:24:45 Matt Hancock is actually like a closer to a David Brent than an Alan Partridge, because he has no cynicism to him. No. And he also just has this sort of baseline assumption that people actually do like him and want to be around him. Whereas Alan Partridge knows everyone hates him. He's he's quite a lot like David, Oh, Hanra, Hanra, Han from the day to day. They're just like constantly out of his depth, just constantly wants people to tell him he's doing a good job.
Starting point is 00:25:15 We'll say anything just to stop the line of questioning. So we could actually we could actually make this a four quadrant system. We have Alan Partridge in terms of like of sort of evil cynicism versus evil gormlessness. Yes. Alan Partridge, David Brent. And then on the bottom of incompetence, we have Peter, Oh, Hanra, Hanra, Han. And then what do we have at the top for for competence?
Starting point is 00:25:41 What? What is Malcolm Tucker? They think they're fucking Malcolm Tucker. Like, yeah, like this is the Simon Hedges tweet. This is just like in the thick of it. Yeah. Well, except that, of course, that like Malcolm Tucker is actually competent as a character. Malcolm Tucker, they're all afraid. Malcolm Tucker always wins. That's why they're always afraid of Malcolm Tucker.
Starting point is 00:26:03 You need like a like a shit like Andy Coulson. Sherlock Holmes, because Sherlock Holmes is it's totally unrealistic, but sort of puts him because the whole idea of Sherlock Holmes is that he closes his eyes and then the screenwriters just solve the problem. He's not Sherlock Holmes from the books. So the character is the book. The idea of Laura Koonsburg having like the poles looking bad for labor and then like flapping it away and it coming back in a slightly different font.
Starting point is 00:26:30 Just incredible. Yeah. So they're the TV Sherlock. And it's the TV Sherlock or the TV Peter, Oh, Hanra, Hanra, Han. And every single Tory can be put on that for quadrant access. Yeah. So, for example, Matt Hancock is in the bottom right. Yeah. And then there's Dominic Robb, who's just kind of like the thing from the Fantastic Four.
Starting point is 00:26:53 Dominic Robb is top left. So this is really confused. No, yeah, because he's if only we had some kind of a visual medium to present this. No, no. This is my new grand unified theory. And my favorite Matt moment is when he wrote an article saying we will give every child the best possible start in life by ensuring they get the best possible possible medical care as soon as they enter the world, which doesn't it doesn't mean, of course, you know,
Starting point is 00:27:21 funding like maternal health care, because that's not it's not an app. It's not inventive. It's not technology. It's not fun. Predictive, preventive, preventative and personalized health care. He's got the illiteration and whole genome sequencing and genomics is going to play a huge part in that. So we're going to sequence literally everybody's genome from birth. So that in 70 years, someone will probably make them a predictive cancer medication people with this genome also bought.
Starting point is 00:27:49 Yeah, but we're also going to catch a lot of serial killers. So for sure, impossible to say whether it's bad or not. And like, you know, again, we've talked about the royal family guy. That's bad. We talked about this with with Nick Sernick, right? Where the whole point of like public public a public database that's that's not doesn't identify you necessarily. But a public interest genomic database where you can get your genome sequenced should you want to. It was good.
Starting point is 00:28:15 That's a good thing because things like personalized medicines are very good. Right. I hear what you're saying, but what if we did that? But it was all like under the dome of Jeff Bezos is all encompassing shiny head. Yeah. What if we just put all what if Jeff Bezos was able to transfer his consciousness into the genome computer and then was as intelligent as everyone in England? Then what if we are all Jeff Bezos? We've become the Bezos hive mind.
Starting point is 00:28:44 Oh, we're in a dream. Yeah, so this is Matt Matt and space for some reason. You see, this is the most chaotic arrangements of trash future hosts. Absolutely. We've gone from like fucking trying to describe a graph that one of us invented to full existential crisis. I really want to see. Do you remember? Do you remember that?
Starting point is 00:29:03 Like this is like a fucking old YouTube video now, but of the guy doing the hot, crazy matrix for like dating women where he talks about like the fun zone and the danger zone. And for some reason he's wearing he's wearing a pistol in a holster during this entire presentation as one is. Yeah. Yeah. So I just imagine Riley doing that with a gun for no reason to show you that you're not a threat because you have a gun, but you're not using it. Yeah. It's like all the origin of the handshake.
Starting point is 00:29:31 Yeah. Arming John McDonnell is last year. Arming Riley is this year. I want to go back to, I want to go back to the story here. John McDonnell just in the back gloves with the fiber wire. I want to go back. I want to go. I'm going back to the story. I'm going back to the story. Because then there was a punch. All of us back on top.
Starting point is 00:29:46 That's it. Back to Winnipeg. And we're going back to the Winnipeg of what I have then written down in the notes. So then there was the punch and then Laura Koonsburg, Robert Peston, the rest of them all immediately tweeted they heard from a senior Tory source, quote unquote, that a labor protester at the hospital had punched one of Hancock's aides. These claims flew everywhere. Headlines were written, articles were rapidly penned and so on. It's been an MS-13 style attack by an Antifa thug.
Starting point is 00:30:10 So then it emerged, and this is another headline, aides initially briefed that Hancock's adviser had been punched in the face and tried to point the finger at a labor thug, but a video that emerged 20 minutes later appeared to show the adviser walking into a protester's arm. Not even the arm, a finger, like an outstretched finger of a sort of older gentleman. So when they said a momentum-based attack, what they meant was he was a victim of his own momentum as he was propelled into a protester's arm.
Starting point is 00:30:41 That's their defence, is that when they were texting Laura, they meant they said they said the small M momentum. What's amazing about the video when you watch it is that the guy has his arm out during the whole video pointing, his arm doesn't move. And the guy walks into a fluorescent jacket. Yeah. And the guy walks into it face first, like it doesn't back into it. Like it's at eye level and he just walks straight. It's amazing. Oh, he was trying to do a false flag attack on himself.
Starting point is 00:31:08 I'm just going to run headlong into whatever outstretched labor arm I can find. And the thing is right, like the story here for a media that wasn't completely beyond repair would be where the country is based, where they're trying, they're a senior Tory people who are trying to lie to the country through us. But all they did was apologize, say, oops, another oopsie, whoopsie doodle. Yet again, ah, they got me. Well, it's too bad that the Conservative Party has yet again painted a gigantic black like circle on the side of a cliff.
Starting point is 00:31:41 And I, Laura Kuhnsberg, have sprinted straight into it. Well, like I forget which Wiley Kuhns got her date. The journalists said it, but they had an explanation for this. It was sort of like a lot of people seem to think that what journalists say on Twitter should be like held to the same standard as their editorial output. Whereas a lot of journalists tend to think of it as just being like a notepad where you can dash off half formed thoughts. A notepad that like thousands upon thousands of people read, like a normal notepad.
Starting point is 00:32:15 And for some reason, all of the things that I keep putting into this notepad keep turning out to be Tory smears. I never do like a labor thing by accident that I'm just while I'm just lackadaisically like dashing these things off. Well, that's how we find out that they're Tory smears is that Laura Kuhnsberg puts them on their notepad and then people say, oh, that's a Tory smear. And then Laura Kuhnsberg is like, thank you for your output. I won't be writing that one down again.
Starting point is 00:32:42 If only if only there was some kind of an app on phones that let you take notes. No, only Twitter. That's the other thing, right? Is the other defense of them that are constantly making this doing this is, oh, well, let's see you do that job. And it's like, no, I see. OK, OK. There are people doing that job and they're not doing client journalism. And they're getting mugged by the Prime Minister.
Starting point is 00:33:05 This fucking phone stealing thug. When will leaders of the conservative community all be mugged by the Prime Minister? So we also get right, you know, the I'm going to skip over a few things here, right, because I don't want to focus on the hospital thing too much because it has been done to death by every other source, like just by sheer persistence and luck as well, which it should have been. Like what I mean is an important story. But what I mean, yeah, what I mean is it's by luck
Starting point is 00:33:34 that there was video of that incident that shows that they were lying. Otherwise, we would have no idea. It was by luck that someone decided to check on the Facebook story that was circulating afterward that says the whole thing with the boy on the coats was a lie. It was by luck that someone did that. And then the BBC later, like a day later, picked up that it was a lie. And a lie connected to Matt Hancock, by the way. Oh, yeah, because he's like Facebook friends
Starting point is 00:33:58 would like the originator of the story. Just, of course, in 2019, fake news and like elections and election interference would come down to Facebook drama. And just fucking Matt Hancock writing on our collective wall at three in the morning. At least I raise my kids. Yeah. I accept everyone's friends request, but only to encourage them to connect with me on LinkedIn, where I feel much more important networking is done. Well, right, like what I don't want to belabor this segment too much.
Starting point is 00:34:26 But what it shows to me is that like the BBC is I used to think that it's good that we have a public service broadcaster. There are some problems with it that it needs to overhaul how what its relationship is with the government, perhaps. But like it's basically salvageable. Yeah, fully no longer believe that the BBC is irreparable. I had the same experience a couple of years ago because during the referendum, I was fully laughing at Scottish nationalists
Starting point is 00:34:52 being zoomers and being like, ah, Evan Davis and the entire audience of Question Time are all individual plants controlled by MI5. But no, it turns out it actually is that bad. It's perhaps not as cartoonish as they imagined it. But no, they were right. I was wrong. The BBC is just irredeemable. And I think also it's like it's not even as it's not even as competent as that.
Starting point is 00:35:20 It's not. I don't think that, like, I don't think the BBC is even really like running cover from the Tories. They just like swallow. They just swallow a Tory narrative. Like they just like they accept them as the kind of like natural rulers and like what they say is being like professionally produced spin at the very least. And so then they just kind of unthinkingly parrot the things that they say in quotation marks or otherwise without like proper like applying critical thoughts
Starting point is 00:35:46 and being like, well, Boris Johnson said this, well, I don't know. Make of it what you will, townsfolk. That there was kind of there are a couple of people, I think, who like are more knowing and who do get these sources and who presumably are going to be fine anyway, because even if the BBC decides that they don't want them to be working for them, they're just going to fucking go and be PRs for the Tories anyway. But yeah, I think there is like an inherent sympathy in like the upper ranks of broadcast journalism to the Tories.
Starting point is 00:36:16 And you just you can't really do anything about that. Well, I mean, it's ever there's everything going on there. I think, Milo, you're more or less right in that as well. Like there is there's deference because, you know, you need to be deferential to the government if you want to keep getting access to them. By the way, Labour does manage to pull off a government, probably in coalition with the SNP today. Imagine Laura Kuhnsberg trying to get access to that particular number 10.
Starting point is 00:36:41 That's a pleasant thought. Yes, very pleasant. Let that carry you to the polling station. But also think about think like think about just the fact that the BBC, because it's funded by licensed fee payers and is it's it knows that it's sort of in competition with the other network. So it knows it needs to be sensational. It knows equally that like it needs to maintain access
Starting point is 00:37:06 or other people are going to beat it to the punch and so on. And so what Boris says is what is news. And then now and immediately after their claim was Boris lies, like Boris lies about this punch or Matt Hancock lies about this punch. And then Labour claims the Tories lied. And so anything Labour says is Labour claims. And I think it is just psychotic. It's not a conspiracy.
Starting point is 00:37:29 It's psychotic levels of deference that are built into the way the organization is structured and there is no saving it. Yeah. And also, though, a lot of people made very good points about this, which is like the right has been very effective in doing and like exploiting like people's conceptions of what balance reporting is to just get like barefaced lies reported as like one side of the debate. When in fact, like the job of any reasonable journalist is not the job of a town crier. Right. But that's how they see their role.
Starting point is 00:37:58 It's just going like here's what fucking Nigel Farage says or whatever. Like, no, your job is to like assimilate the information and apply like critique to it and present it in a form that's digestible to ordinary people. It's like, well, we've fact-checked that and that's a lie. That checks out. That doesn't like that. That's what you're supposed to be like. Well, here's the two sides of the debate. One of them says racism is good.
Starting point is 00:38:18 So I guess that's a valid position now. Yeah. It's like, well, you decide. And it's like, no, no, no, don't do that. I'm just thinking of the idea that the BBC are as has long been, they've been long accused of all secretly Marxists, but they're secretly Marxists in the way that they have internalized so deeply that their role as part of the mass media is to be the superstructure and to like deliver this ideology that they're like, yes, let's just do that.
Starting point is 00:38:45 That's that's that's that. Yeah, fuck, that's that's our job. That's our role really, really quick. As we get off this segment, I want to sort of point out two more things. Another failure of the BBC is to say that they wrote it. They wrote a story about falsehoods in election ads. Eighty eight percent of Tori, eighty eight percent of Tori ads. This election are misleading or outright lies.
Starting point is 00:39:04 None of Labour's were found to be lies, but they framed it as general election. Adverts are dishonest across the spectrum. Yeah. On average, forty four percent of all parties ads are lies. And you don't know when you when you think about like if you think about what people who defend the BBC say, they say, well, everyone on the right thinks it's biased to the left
Starting point is 00:39:25 and everyone on the left thinks it's biased to the right. It must be doing something right. No, shut up. You have the brain of a canary. Fuck you. Get like literally you have you have no ability to interpret content and you have the brain full of wet pudding. You do not belong in media criticism. You should, in fact, a good, you know what? A compassionate and labor run state will take care of you,
Starting point is 00:39:47 but you should not have a job of any kind because you are you do. You simply cannot interpret the world around you in anything except relational terms. You be I for those people. That's the way for those fucking dumbasses. Here's the other thing, right? You know, the the Sun published a left of hard left infiltrators in Britain, sourced from something that was even like all of Jeremy Corbyn's staff, everyone from Momentum and everyone from Novara sourced from a group called
Starting point is 00:40:15 Aryan Nation, and it was like a normal bunch of lads was not just not just Aryan Nation, but also something called the Millennium Report, which is fully like on board with like one world Jewish government conspiracy theory shit, too. It's weird because out of the two, you would think Aryan Nation sound worse. You really would like out of like, you know, Millennium, whatever the fuck they're called. I mean, that just sounds like a sort of like charities out by Robbie Williams.
Starting point is 00:40:41 But like Aryan Nation definitely is ringing a lot of bells. But yeah, remember those broadcasting rules that we all thought helped get our upswing in 2017? Yeah, still waiting for those to kick in. Yeah, it's cool that we can just kind of decide that those don't matter. And I suppose the only reason it seemed like they mattered last time was I guess we forget so quickly that our manifesto was leaked and it was then broadcast by everyone all at once to hurt us because they didn't realize it will be popular.
Starting point is 00:41:12 Hmm. So more fool us for expecting that that would be meaningful. They just they just did the first paragraph of a spectator article, but with the whole labor manifesto. Oh, I suppose you think that, you know, racism is bad and, you know, the disabled should have dignity. Well, the lame am I right? Oh, fuck. Oh, shit. So this is the thing, right? And this is going to close out this section.
Starting point is 00:41:36 Whatever we have achieved this election, any result tomorrow, any any number at all of votes, we have achieved not just without but despite the press. And the most important lesson we can possibly take from this is regardless of who's forming a government on Friday, the left's first job should be building more and better and more broadly consumed media outposts because fucking without more of that, they're literally we will never be able
Starting point is 00:42:02 to stop Tom Newton Dunn from like being like, hmm, that top 10, the top 10 socialists who put this socialism back in national socialism or articles of this nature. You'd love to say it. Mutual aid, mutual aid, podcasting is mutual aid. And also, can I say very briefly before we close this out that I was so disappointed that they had this fucking Nazi kill list and none of us were on it. I have very bad anxiety. I'm not disappointed. I was not on it. I was disappointed.
Starting point is 00:42:33 There was there was this gap next to Navarra that's like, hmm, all of these cultural Marxists at Navarra talked to all of these cultural Marxists from all of these other places. And then there's a weird trash, future-shaped gap on the chart. Put us on the chart. I'm going to write to the Nazis and get them to put us on the chart. Put us on the chart. I just imagine like put us on the chart.
Starting point is 00:42:54 Alice's ultimate fantasy, like like end of a diehard film style, like Alice is lying in hospital after the Aryan terrorist attack is over. And then they're like, and they're like, mom, are you OK? You were a shot. And it's like, it's OK, son, they only hit me in the dick. I'm trying to finesse this. Yeah, yeah, I'm just doing a matrix dot. It's a certain part of yourself into the path of the bullet. Just absorbing, absorbing all of the gunfire, dick first.
Starting point is 00:43:23 Yeah. So yeah. Oh, but also by the time this episode will have come out, GYDS, gettingyourdicksuck.com will have launched. So if you want some alternative left media all up in this bitch, send your pitches to GYDS.com. We finally did it. We finally launched it. I want to end our final episode of our 2019 general election series
Starting point is 00:43:44 with a reading that looks to the future and returns to the beginning of our episode. That's right. Friedland's back, Friedland's section. Oh, no. We're talking about Jonathan Friedland again. And he has written an article that's wondering about labor's future. Jesus Christ. And he has credit to him. It has nothing to do with trying to read tea leaves as to what's going to happen today.
Starting point is 00:44:07 It is about how labor reconciles its future as a party of two constituencies. Let's find a tale of two cities, if you will. Let's find out what he's saying. There's a fault line running through labor. Can it ever be healed? Whatever happens on Thursday, an act of reconciliation will be necessary, not between the winning and losing parties, but within one of them. The divide I have in mind is among the millions of people who either used to
Starting point is 00:44:31 or still do identify themselves with labor. It's been just now, the next paragraph is essential reading to understand the content of of this article. But I it is one of the single worst pieces of writing I have ever ever come across in my entire life. So try to follow along. We're also all of our brains have been thoroughly melted by the past month of electioneering.
Starting point is 00:44:56 So like we're none of us in the right cognitive function level to understand this. OK, so check this out. Yeah, hit us. It's been discussed often, but it's rare to see it in a single room. That's what I witnessed this week in the marginal seat of Dagenham and Rainham. For the second time in a matter of days, what did he witness? It. Yeah. Oh, it's it.
Starting point is 00:45:17 He's at it like four times. That's what he was witnessing. He's been trying to clear wise the clown. That was what. Yeah, I get it. For the second time in a matter of days, I was eavesdropping on a focus group of voters this time brought together, especially for the eavesdropping makes it sound like he wasn't invited in the trees opposite with binoculars. It's so strict.
Starting point is 00:45:35 He just it does like he's an awful writer. Like every single sentence just drags on forever. And you have no idea what he's talking about. Anyway, let's go get paid again. Oh, that's a lot. He has to go get UBI as well. In fact, it was the two groups, the first made up of levers, the next remainers sitting around talking politics for the facilitator
Starting point is 00:45:52 in sessions of 90 minutes each, but it wasn't the Brexit referendum that they were discussing. You could guess before anyone opened their mouths, which group was which? All but one of the levers were white and all but one of the remainers were young. Oh, the two genders. Yeah, those two white, white and young. The two races of the two ages, you know, when you're you're born young
Starting point is 00:46:13 and you grow up to be white, you really do. And I haven't really edited out much in the next two paragraphs. Because good, because you want us to suffer. This is the core of I think most of Friedland's beliefs and why he has gotten the idea of where the future of the Labour Party is completely wrong. The first group, older, whiter and more working class, you know, those rich. As you get older, you become whiter and working class, which I presume Johnson Friedland judges based on accents and flat caps alone and nothing else.
Starting point is 00:46:46 Size of flat cap is the key determining metric. As you get older, the brim of the flat cap stretches out before you. Number of greyhounds owned. Also, welcome to Nate, who has arrived in studio. Hi. Yeah, the overground was delayed today. Sorry, I've been having a bit of a day. So we're going to start nationalizing that would be bad. The first year of grounds already nationalized.
Starting point is 00:47:08 The first group, older, whiter and more working class, like Boris Johnson, or at least ready to indulge him, but they couldn't stand Jeremy Corbyn finding him weak and decisive in old fashioned. Old, old, we read Boris Johnson's book and it's a collection of the finest slurs of the 1890s. Also, in the Tory manifesto, they promised to restrict ground rate raises to a peppercorn. The man's fucking old fashioned.
Starting point is 00:47:33 But here's even though Jeremy Corbyn is older and whiter than most of them. Here's the here's the here's the quote that Friedland takes. If he was a TV program, he'd be dad's army. Where would he go on holiday? Born myth by coach. These people fucking love dad's army. It's very weird for them to be like, oh, I don't like he'd be dad's army. Whereas like dad's army is the most Brexit program ever. It's like wouldn't the better thing to be like
Starting point is 00:47:59 citizen Smith or something like that to make fun of him for being some like corny 70s revolutionary. I have no idea. I think he's just trying to say, oh, he's he's not cool in 90s. He's old school in 90s. What is dad's army? If not a bunch of old white British dudes like marching around pretending they're doing something basically doing paintball
Starting point is 00:48:17 and like pretending they're going to win a war with the continent. I think what they mean is he's not an exciting American Americanized TV show with action and stunts. He's so he's sort of milk toast, which is I get what what is it? It's very strange. But again, remember, Friedland is an idiot by contrast. Yes, I do not forget that at any point by contrast. The second group, younger, more diverse and often with a degree
Starting point is 00:48:40 were full of praise for the Labour leader, seeing him as a man of principle. Working class, if you're diverse or you have a degree. No, if you're like every fucking job wants a degree now. Yeah, it's actually not a job. It's what you're doing is if you work for like a communications company as a team leader, you're actually taking aristocratic rent from that company. The only working class job is in the Dick sucking factory. I literally thought if your company is offshore, the Dick sucking factory.
Starting point is 00:49:09 And now you work in data entry for the fucking like data center for the Dick sucking factory network. You're not working class. I hate it when I'm trying to get my dick sucked, but I get put through to a call center in Mumbai. I mean, apropos of nothing, I recently saw an article discussing factory and precision manufacturing jobs in the United States, which apparently even working, you know, the fucking machinery on the shop
Starting point is 00:49:31 floor, the factory floor requires a college degree. Yeah, because it's a variety of things where they're like, no, we don't want employees who haven't gone through university education. So Friedland doesn't know this because he doesn't care. Because Friedland's he's he's just basically a big concern troll from the Guardian, but like huge shock that he, you know, this is the conclusion he comes to. Well, we're going to we're going to get to we're going to get to the big
Starting point is 00:49:53 money sentence of this article at a moment. But these the young, the young, diverse, non-working class people with their aristocratic jobs, they were full of praise for the labor leader, seeing as a man of principle. Well, Johnson was a racist. Again, I wonder why you could see him that way. But again, it's not like he wrote a whole book. About how racist he is.
Starting point is 00:50:14 No, it's honestly like, regardless of like what people's misgivings might be about Jeremy Corbyn, like I had my misgivings about Jeremy Corbyn initially back in the day. Over time, the more you look at Jeremy Corbyn, the more he just seems like a guy who means the shit that he says, and that terrifies people. But how, how people are still like playing peekaboo with what Boris Johnson clearly fucking is, amazes me. Like, literally Boris Johnson is wandering around with his pants around
Starting point is 00:50:42 his ankles with a huge sign saying, I'm a big fat, dumb, wet racist. And people are going like, this guy, you know, he's, he's mysterious. He's an enigma wrapped up in a, but I think, you know, business could get behind this guy. He watches the first scene of Die Hard 3 on repeat because he thinks he loves the costume. Everyone saw him. We've all seen him doing it.
Starting point is 00:51:05 There is video of him just stealing a guy's phone. Because he didn't like what was on it. He was proving that white people also take phones. He was doing anti-racism. I'm sorry, but the thing with Jonathan Friedland, I mean, I'm just going to say this, Jonathan Friedland has a selective thing that he gets upset about it, anything involving Jeremy Corbyn. And literally the conservative is dedicated to Nazi statue and not
Starting point is 00:51:25 a peep from Jonathan Friedland. He did, however, libel a fucking counselor from Birmingham because he mixed up the two people who had the same name and couldn't do the most basic due diligence. So I really have zero, just zero fucks to give what he thinks about whether or not racism is bad or whether racism is good or whether you have to be racist to appeal to working class people who apparently it doesn't matter how much they earn or what they do for a living.
Starting point is 00:51:46 They just have to have dressed like Rupert the fucking bear and wear a flat cap like I just don't care. Oh, pole-knuttle. Here, we're building to the money sentence. It's one more sentence till we're there. The former were skeptical of labor's manifesto promises, worried there was no quote magic money tree and they were going to end up footing the bill via their taxes.
Starting point is 00:52:03 The latter liked free broadband and free tuition fees. It sounds like you talk to it like you talk to a room full of fucking idiots and then a room full of normal people. Here's the revealing sentence. Most revealing was the difference in attitude towards the two railway stations serving the area. Dave, a former trade unionist with memories of the old Ford plant in Dagenham, joked that the area's biggest problem was an influx of Europeans.
Starting point is 00:52:26 I'm not sure that's a joke. A former trade unionist with memories of the Ford plant in Dagenham. What's he doing now, Jonathan? Is he a landlord or a small business owner, perhaps? In fairness, the union was the BUF. I'm joking, but barely. Didn't the BNP run candidates in Barking and Dagenham? Yeah, they're frequent.
Starting point is 00:52:50 They had a lot of counsellors in the 2000s. And Oswald mostly actually opposed the British union of fascists because he was hoping just to keep fascists on lower wages. They banded together and demanded better working hours. Jesus. Yeah, and he worried the area was becoming too crowded and new stations would only make it busier still. Meanwhile, David, a team leader in a communications company, was glad they
Starting point is 00:53:13 were coming. They'd bring money and jobs into the area by making London closer. So that's the thing, right? David, we know what job he does and he does a job. But Dave is just, well, we know he's a working class person because of his connection with the working class in the 1970s. He has these these cultural signifiers. If this were in the States, he would have a truck, a truck that would cost two hundred thousand dollars and destroy every small child near it with fucking
Starting point is 00:53:40 like a rolling call to the point where he's contributing to like an entire state like an Australian politician on campaign. Yeah, I mean, this is like this mad thing as well, where they just like they they critique Labour's policies as though they should appeal to morons. Like they're just like, well, this policy that you've got, that's a good policy. Here's the thing, some dumb people think that it does the opposite of that. And they actually think that Barry Shippey's by to let landlord has some serious reservations.
Starting point is 00:54:14 Well, who gives a fuck? And he thinks and he thinks the country can't afford it, even though like one hundred and seventy of the country's leading economists say that we absolutely fucking can. Barry Dickhead from Wankton actually has worked it out on the back of a fag packet, and he's convinced that the jam grandad can't make it work. It's like, well, sorry, Barry, but I didn't give a fuck what you think. And neither should any respectable journalist. Well, that's the biggest thing.
Starting point is 00:54:37 The biggest thing here, Jonathan Friedland wants a sock puppet working class person that agrees with his weird like insecurities about being two upper middle class as a guardian fucking columnist. And so as a result, like he's created the situation in which obviously this guy, like you said, probably is a by to let landlord who purchased fucking the assets of the great state sell off in the 1980s and now has a ton of money. Like those people who were burning the effigy of Grenfell and fucking like where where the was not in Croydon.
Starting point is 00:55:06 It was between Croydon and Central London. It was one of those towns, I think. Yeah, it was like somewhere in South London. Yeah. And, you know, that those people like, oh, look, how working class these people are, they're all millionaires because they are the they they're the beneficiaries of the first neoliberal sell off in Britain. The kind of people that can afford to build a 10 for effigy. And if Jonathan Friedland had any actual politics besides this weird need
Starting point is 00:55:29 to fucking undermine anything that he thinks isn't authentically racist in 1970s enough, like he'd understand how stupid of an argument this is. Well, so here's the thing. He does actually go into this. And this is why I wanted to read this article because again, no matter what happens today, Labour has to understand what it's going to be tomorrow. Either either in in whatever scenario and and we have to make sure we're inoculated against the nonsense of Jonathan Friedland, where he he then continues.
Starting point is 00:55:56 Some have argued that despite its name, Labour should all but write off its old white working class base in the once industrial town and organize itself around younger socially liberal graduates in major cities. Who don't work, of course, that work is and it's the thing. Jonathan Friedland has spent the entire last three years writing about how Corbyn needs to come out and unambiguously back remain. So what is it now that he's like basically remain enough to be make Labour the party of Remainers, Friedland has miraculously found that he needs
Starting point is 00:56:26 to pivot the other way and become the party of Leavers. Yeah, he needs to appeal to fucking like working class dog murderers, like fucking. Yeah, if you don't have a whip, it's tied up on a string outside the pub, then you're no longer of a like a social relevance. Listen, son, where I'm from, you're either racing dogs or you're murdering them. OK, anything else in Europe. He says he says that's a crude summary, yet this approach grates on every progressive instinct that the party of the left should be the party of working
Starting point is 00:56:59 people, not just modernity's winners, but that requires public investment. How much of a winner do you feel like if you have a degree and you owe a hundred grand on it? And furthermore, he writes, for myself, I cling to the view that Labour could have stuck to a Remain stance and still retain the support of Leavers. How he may ask, up could actually be down. Why are you doing more of a racist scenario in my head? But no, none of it. He says, but it would have required something like a rerun of Tony Blair's
Starting point is 00:57:28 2005 massacism strategy. The massacism strategy is when Tony Blair put him. That's my culture, not a costume. Hang on, it would require a hundred thousand dead Iraqis for some reason. When he put himself in front of hostile audiences who lacerated him for the Iraq war, absorbing all their invective and gaining grudging credit for facing his critics and sticking to his convictions. Tony Blair is Jesus now.
Starting point is 00:57:55 That's the thing. Like Tony Blair died for our sins, right? That's the thing there. I want to check something really fast. So, so, so banter on because I just had a thought just crossed my mind. And that is really, really relevant about the 2005 general election in the United Kingdom. So, give me a second, I'll carry on and we can go back to this. No, it's important.
Starting point is 00:58:13 Actually, I've got it right up here because there's because this figure will come up very quickly and I think, yeah, yeah, that's right. I'm not wrong. Guess what turnout was in the 2017 general election in the United Kingdom? What, for total electorate? Total electorate. Like 16, 17. It was like a hair under 69%.
Starting point is 00:58:31 Yeah, that's what it was in 2005. What was it? 61%. In 2001, it was 59%. Tony Blair lost 48 seats in 2005. The thing about it is here is this, what he's basically saying, like Labour had the ability to maintain its Scottish seats and therefore, like it didn't really matter if they suffered those kinds of losses.
Starting point is 00:58:52 It's like, how is this a winning strategy? If Jeremy Corbyn loses 48 seats today when this comes out, Jonathan Friedland is going to be like purge everyone on the left, go back to Blairism. But he's also saying go back to Blairism when they basically still lost. Yes, they stayed in power, but if we lose 48 seats, that's a failure. Well, this was in the salad days of Scottish Labour's winning electoral strategy of there's nothing you can do, peasants. What are you going to do?
Starting point is 00:59:19 Vote for the nationalists. I mean, because look at this. In 2017, Labour had a little over, correct me, I have the wrong figures there. In 2017, Labour got 12.8, almost 12.9 million votes. Total turnout was almost 69% once again. Nice. In 2005, Labour had 9.5 million votes. Got 35% of the vote share. It's lost 48 seats.
Starting point is 00:59:46 The vote swung down 5.5%. See, Nate, what you've just done is even a little bit of cursory research that questions some of your core assumptions. And Jonathan Friedland doesn't have time for that. No, he's too busy doing big ideas. Yes, if Scotland hadn't swung completely to the fucking nationalists, then yes, we could probably do some losing ass strategies and still hold on the Labour government, but we can't because it doesn't fucking happen anymore.
Starting point is 01:00:09 Like it's just not the same country. And I just don't understand why they always have to defer to Blair. It's like, you know what? There are a million things that just don't work anymore. Like, Hove used to be a conservative seat, used to be a really strong conservative seat. Now it's a really safe Labour seat. Do you know why? Because shit fucking changes. Like the idea that it's always this thing you go back to, it's like, well,
Starting point is 01:00:30 I don't fucking know what should America run on the New Deal Coalition, AKA like socialism for white people and literal segregation for everyone else. That's what FDR did. Like it just doesn't work anymore because it's a different world. And like, I wish I could get paid a fucking $200,000 to be this much of a fucking moron at the Guardian and never worry about losing my job. Even would be like Nick Cohen and like write the same fucking column every week for four years, but I can't.
Starting point is 01:00:57 And guess what? Blairism is never coming back. Do you know why? Look at Change UK. There it was right in front of you, the perfect fucking sensible party with a charismatic leader. And guess what? They're getting fucking zero percent of the vote. Well, Nate's rant. Yeah, mark that on your bingo card. The rare corner spin.
Starting point is 01:01:14 You might have to add that square to your bingo card. Yeah, it really does not like the overground, guys. Add a square to your bingo card for a Nate rant. I've been really stressed about the election. I'm going campaigning tomorrow because otherwise I'm going to fucking tear my own hair out like and I don't have a lot of hair to tear out. You know, it's getting lost. We need to keep an eye on Nate's head, folks.
Starting point is 01:01:32 Post-race with this in different ways. For me, it's total like desert of the real. I'm just going to be drunk for the next week and just total psychotic breakdown. Yeah, my ability to keep an ironic distance from all of this has been completely shredded. It's gone. I'm fully crying at labor adverts right now.
Starting point is 01:01:56 Like I have I have there's no distance between me and this. I'm I it's the I'm sorry. The podcast is going to be bad now. I forgot how to do irony. Yeah, tomorrow I'll be doing like something beautifully pointless in a way that makes sense for a podcaster in that I'm like, like spend the day taking my mom shopping and then we're both going to go and vote. And my mom's been very coy about who she's going to vote for,
Starting point is 01:02:16 which means she's almost certainly going to shit the bed and vote Tory. So like I'll be literally making a pointless trip to the polling station as we put in one vote for labor and one vote for the Tories in a labor Tory marginal seat. Exactly. Yeah, so so well. Yeah, I honestly this this. I don't I don't even want to finish this Friedland article.
Starting point is 01:02:36 He just he probably says some shit about how like, you know, blue lives matter in the end. He's like, he's like, you know, the one thing that you know, Dave is definitely a cop if he's not a landlord, like he concludes on the thing where it's like, you know, we can be a cop. We have to remember players. He actually goes back to Blair. He said, remember Blair's phrase that united everyone across Labour's political
Starting point is 01:02:55 spectrum. You know how Blair united the left in the centre with the phrase tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. I thought it was education, education, education. I thought that was the big Blair phrase. Fucking it's all the all that. He loved the phrases. Just that all that all those like those just could have been produced in a Democratic Party focus group phrases that Blair just said.
Starting point is 01:03:15 It didn't really mean being tough on crime. Did you know that under new Labour, the percentage of British prisoners were black women doubled? Why? I don't know. You just did. Well, I mean, for some reason, they must have driven all those black women to crime by just being in government. You know, you can.
Starting point is 01:03:28 I mean, that's the thing, right? You can one of the major things that new Labour did was it invented the ASBO, which criminalized being black and standing around, essentially. To be fair, a crime, for sure. Absolutely, for sure. Well, too long has that not been a crime. So and and right. So it's like, you know, it's like, that's that's really what they're saying,
Starting point is 01:03:48 right, is that, oh, you know, you want to get tough on knife crime. And so it's like, well, we just why don't you make Labour a white supremacist party again? Yeah. And it's also like, fuck off. Like, none of these people who are that obsessed with crime ever live in areas that have crime. They always live in the village of Little Sutton, Pissington. And like, they've never seen crime.
Starting point is 01:04:07 They've never seen Wayne Crimes. They've never met him. What if there were to be an acid attack in Frome and I, Tori Vosa, were to be horribly mangled by it? Will Jeremy Corbyn condemn this? Well, Willie or Willie, just go and meet with the IRA again. That's the question. Or stop. But the other thing is, right?
Starting point is 01:04:28 When these people, they they hark back even to that fucking Blair phrase of tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. It's like, well, fucking OK, then. What are the causes of crime? Oh, yeah. Poverty. Number one. Yeah, the one cause they want to do nothing about. Yeah, they're people.
Starting point is 01:04:44 They have piss for brains. They can't. They are. Why does anyone let them talk? It's maddening. Oh, why do all these people keep committing all these crimes? Oh, I don't know. Maybe because everything's fucking shit. They literally believe in phrenology.
Starting point is 01:05:00 They believe that certain people are born to just commit crimes. And the best thing you can do is just euthanize them. Like, that is what they think. And they can't bring themselves to imagine that maybe the world that they have created drives the people it marginalizes to crime because they don't have another choice because they've got to keep paying like
Starting point is 01:05:21 fat Terry landlord lard ass that might the rent every month on the shit fucking flat they live in, in fucking Croydon. Why'd Reginald got a new job? Yeah, we're all we're all illegalists now. We're just complete. We've been made just so regular by this election. I'm feeling regular.
Starting point is 01:05:41 Like by this point, we're less a podcast and more a gang. We're the Gapes gang. It's us in real politics. We're the real Gapes gang. No, the provisional Gapes gang. Oh, my God. Yeah, you've really we listen to this on your way to the polling station.
Starting point is 01:06:02 We will be. Life's not. Not too hard. You can't damage your ballot. No, yeah. Yeah, no, no, just to the right amount of pressure applied to the pencil, please, please make no spoiling of ballots. Do not spoil your ballot.
Starting point is 01:06:17 Fuck me. I'd remember when the leave campaign were like, oh, make sure you bring a pen to the ballot station because they probably tried to falsify a ballot paper. So remember, remember, remember when we used to talk about gadgets and stuff? No, I don't remember anything anymore. I remember I remember being like, hey, there's a scale that's like $400 and it tells your boss how fat you are.
Starting point is 01:06:42 We were all so young when we started this podcast. We were, we were, those were the days. Those were the days. I don't know. I don't know what work after this election is like, what what the fuck's our Tuesday episode going to look like? It's going to look like all I've got an idea. Yeah, it's it's going to look like we have to cut about an hour out of the start.
Starting point is 01:07:06 Um, it's either going to be extremely exuberant or extremely infuriated. And either way, we're going to libel so many people. Yeah, physically threaten, encourage other people to threaten. We will do that. We will not do that. No, it's fine because when if the Tories win, they'll be nauseating.
Starting point is 01:07:29 And if the Tories lose, they will melt down like you can guarantee your kind of Julia Hartley Brewers are going to be losing their fucking mind. The thing is, this election is the rare case where it is sort of it's become extremely difficult to have the usual 2019 thing where everything continues as normal, but worse. Something has to give here. Even if it's like no overall majority in a hung parliament again, even though that would seem like normal, but slightly worse,
Starting point is 01:08:04 it's going to drive all of the worst people insane. Oh, yeah, because like that's like, right, like the the Torah, like the no matter what happens, like the conservatives, they they need a majority because they have no one other than Johnson. There is no one. There's they have no bench. What are they going to have? Michael Gove.
Starting point is 01:08:22 Yeah, Michael Gove, Andrea Ledson, Matt Hancock, like they have nobody other than Hancock for leader. Finally, who could possibly be even, who could possibly be minimally popular in this world? Michael Gove coming through is like that video of the speed skater just coming in last and winning as everyone else in front of him wipes out on the last corner. A weird government of Torah unity formed of like Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, Matt Hancock and Pretty Patel.
Starting point is 01:08:53 God, well, look, don't you dare lay the heaven that no, I mean, what I don't. None of us know what's going to happen today, stroke tomorrow. Tune in on Twitch. We'll link the Twitch in the episode description. We are going to consume substances about this and talk about things. Yeah, don't don't tune in if you're going to like notice libel, though, because it is live if you're a fucking snitch. Don't you know what we'll do?
Starting point is 01:09:21 We'll give me a button and I can just bleep things. That'll be good. I will definitely not use this for comedic purposes. But look, I want to leave us on a slightly because just because of the nature of how I think about things. I'd like to leave us on an upbeat note, which is that Jonathan Friedland has basically written a column that says, well, of course, labor has to go back to Blair as into reunite its old roots
Starting point is 01:09:47 and get tough on crime and, you know, fund schools. But, you know, assume that everything is more or less fine. And that is an argument he's making to himself. Yeah, it's over. It's all done. All bad right now. All bad writing is what has in common is that the writer has not understood how to step out outside themselves and talk to someone else. Jonathan Friedland, just as Boris Johnson, is talking to himself
Starting point is 01:10:12 and working through his own anxieties about the fact that there is a robust electoral force in politics. And I was thinking about this today as well. The one of the main differences, aside from policy, between the Obama coalition in 2000, 2008 and 2012 in America. And what we have here is that Barack Obama was a once in a generation orator, a rhetorician and a genius politician who had dog shit policies. There was no movement behind him.
Starting point is 01:10:40 There was no momentum. There was no regional organization to get him elected. But there wasn't anything in terms of politics. Exactly. There was no there was no political movement other than just getting him elected and then dispersing back out into the PMC suburbs. Famously, Obama for America didn't share its data with the Hillary campaign because it literally was it just vanished. It didn't become the DNC in any capacity.
Starting point is 01:11:02 And that is no matter what happens today. The left in this country is not going anywhere. The left in this country is here to fucking stay. Because it's not just about electoralism. Whether we win or lose, we're still going to keep building those networks of mutual aid that see us sending the same 20 bucks around each other's paypal to pay rent every week. Yeah, or possibly possibly things that are more efficient than that.
Starting point is 01:11:28 But I don't know, but we're going to fucking do something. Can I can I jump in? Yeah, please. Because I missed a bunch of this episode because I've been freaking out and I was trying to get shit done before I came here and then I got delayed on the train. But I'll tell a little bit of a story. So, you know, 10 years ago today, I was an army officer in Afghanistan. And I was in a situation in which a suicide bomber detonated a bomb
Starting point is 01:11:50 about 400 meters from where I was. I was inside a base. It was out in the city center and the ensuing bomb, the disaster, basically. I mean, I believe about 12 people died. I didn't make it to the side of the bomb because we got we started taking fire so much as we were walking towards it that I was like me and a couple of my soldiers, we were just this detachment. And I was like, it's not fucking worth us going out there
Starting point is 01:12:14 and and getting killed. So we held back, we reported, we did what we were supposed to do. And then I thought it was done. I was like, sweet, we got our we got our combat awards because, you know, I just been in a firefight kind of I wasn't shooting back. And then they brought a kid to the gate who had been wounded. And he's probably about 14 or 15. And the whole back of his head was blown off and they put a bandage on it.
Starting point is 01:12:35 But he was unresponsive. His eyes were moving left to right. He was kind of groaning and mumbling, but he was unresponsive. And I made a mistake in the sense that I should have lied when I called a medevac for him and just said that he had, you know, a bandage on his head. But because I saw his brain, I said, I reported this and I got told, hey, if he's getting exposed, brand that he's expected, he's going to die. You can't do anything.
Starting point is 01:12:57 Now, we had we had bed space in our hospital in Toronto. We had another bed in Oregon, or other hospital in Oregon. They could have airlifted him. They probably could have saved him. I don't know what kind of quality of life he would have had. I've thought about this every day of my life since then. But he died because they refused the medevac. And I had to argue and get told, told, no, stand down.
Starting point is 01:13:13 You can't do it. And yeah, you know, you win some, you lose some. And it sucked. It was the worst day of my life because I, I joined the military thinking I was going to make a difference, thinking that literally if I put myself in like the front line of things that I would be in a position to affect something in such a way that that, you know, I could make a difference. And it's a naive thing to believe and it's a stupid decision.
Starting point is 01:13:30 I shouldn't have joined and no one should join, but I did it anyway. And then I was disabused of any idealism I might have had by that experience. It was like it was tailor made to destroy my idealism and I'll never forget that. And that was 10 years ago today. And I'm actually in a position to be able to support something that I believe in wholeheartedly and I have no idea what's going to happen. And I'm bracing myself for the possibility that we're going to lose. Because like I said, you win some, you lose some.
Starting point is 01:13:57 Sometimes you absolutely cannot do anything, no matter what you're just fucked. And you go into it and you say, I'm not stopping. I'm going to do everything I possibly can. I've never run so hard in my life as I ran from that LZ back to the operation center to try to send up Medevac on the text chat to get this kid saved. And I failed, but I tried and I'm going to try tomorrow and I'm going out and I'll be a little late getting on the live stream, but I'm going to be there because I believe in this.
Starting point is 01:14:24 I've never believed in anything like this ever in my lifetime. And I'm never going back and no fucking, they can purge me from the party if they want, but no amount of bullshit is going to make me go back on what I've seen with the level of the people coming out, taking time, spending money, doing things they don't have to do because they believe in this. This is what I believe in. This is what we believe in and it's meaningful. So that's, that's it.
Starting point is 01:14:47 That's why I'm, I'm insane. That's if you've ever wondered why I'm the kind of person I am, but that's just the best way I can phrase it. Never give up and fucking fight to the very end. And that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, it is, it is socialism or barbarism. It's either you have, on the one hand, a movement that has some kind of understanding of or respect for human life and human dignity that believes
Starting point is 01:15:17 that you have value, that we all have value, that we're all going to get free of whatever it is together, or you have just this band of opportunists and thieves and liars and thugs and bullies and scumbags. And whether they win or not in that loose sense, there's still not any kind of a moral victory that they can win. And with that, I think it's time we close out the last episode of this general election cycle. Thank you for being here with us throughout the entire thing.
Starting point is 01:16:00 And we're all we're all going to drag ourselves and each other through this together, because this is rough psychologically, right? Yeah, who boy? And I guess I mean, as weird as it is to say, we look forward to seeing you later, yes, and seeing you tomorrow in what we hope is a better world that we might want, we might have reason to want to live in. Yes, and you have to be you have to be OK, because we need all of you. Not just for some like, narrow party political point scoring sort of thing,
Starting point is 01:16:39 but because this is what a socialist movement is about, is about your life having meaning and value beyond just shitty numbers and demographics and all of that. So you have to take care of yourself. And you have to, like, do your best to try to weather the fucking psychic onslaught of all of this cruelty. And just imagine a black gloved hand of John MacDonald solemnly taking taking the treasury box and letting it in the air and saying, now you're in trouble, lads, but yeah, we'll see you tonight.
Starting point is 01:17:20 Vote Labour, bitches. Vote Labour. Get out there. All right, later.

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