Comedy of the Week - The Matt Forde Focus Group

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Can political discussion be funny? Er - yes!Top political comedian Matt Forde convenes his focus group in front of a live theatre audience with guests comedian Pierre Novellie, Baroness Ayesha Hazarika and former Director of Communications at Number 10, Guto Harri - to see if a few sparks fly as they examine different ways people are pandered to and whether they have ever done any pandering themselves.Written and performed by Matt Forde Additional writing from Karl Minns, Katie Storey and Richard Garvin Producer: Richard Garvin Co Producers: Daisy Knight and Jules Lom Broadcast Assistant: Jenny Recaldin Sound Design and Editing: David Thomas An Avalon production for BBC Radio 4

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello and welcome to the Matt Ford Focus Group, the new weekly show where we examine the political landscape through one particular theme or concept to help make sense of it. It's a topical discussion show featuring politicians and comedians. That's right, we've thrown together well-informed people who are across the latest international and national issues and added some politicians. I'm your host Matt Ford and this week we're looking at the state we're in through the lens of political pandering. And by pandering I don't mean eating bamboo and refusing to

have sex. I'd never do that. I hate bamboo. Now, I mean bringing into focus that wonderful tradition where politicians suddenly develop a passionate interest in whatever their target voters care about the most. And we all agree that it's demeaning. Unless we're the ones being pandered to. Then it's not pandering. Other people get pandered to, we get a long overdue acknowledgement of our pressing needs. When politicians pander to any group we don't like, we hate it.

David Cameron pander to UKIP by offering an EU referendum. Jeremy Corbyn pander to students by offering to scrap tuition fees. And Liz Trust pander to the voices in our head by crashing the economy. We moan about it, but isn't the reality that pandering gets politicians elected? You tell the voters what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. Then when you get in, you do what you want, not what you said you would. It worked for Trump, it worked for Hitler, to name two completely unconnected despots. Joining me today are two of Britain's finest political minds, plus someone who thought

it was a good idea to work for Boris Johnson. Comedian Pierre Novelli, member of the House of Lords Baroness Ayesha Hazarika, and former Director of Communications at Number 10, Gitto Harry. Ayesha, you're a member of the House of Lords, so you don't need to pander to voters at all. I bet you can't believe your luck. I know. I don't even get to vote at the next general election. You actually lose the vote when you become a member of the House of Lords. God, what a privilege.

Can you put a word in for Pierre Gitto and I? Sounds great. Pierre, as a white South African, isn't it time that your needs were finally pandered to? Yes, I think that's true. I think there needs to be more dried beef available in higher quantities, higher quality. Just more dried beef in general, I think. Greater, more funding for rugby? Woo!

That is an astonishingly high amount of wooing, given that we're in London. You're literally being wooed. You're being pandered to. Gitto, you worked for Boris Johnson and he selflessly pandered to the sexual needs of women. Do you think he deserves more credit for that? I was going to start by saying you're a very handsome man and pandered to your needs. And I think the problem with working for Boris is I grew up thinking white South African

men were about the most unpopular people on the planet, but working for Boris takes you to another level again. The sexual needs of women, I mean, it's mutual, isn't it? You know, it takes two to tango. We'll leave that one there, I think. Okay, let's explore the idea of pandering through the issue of immigration. Keir Starmer says that net migration is too high, which has led to accusations that his choice of words was pandering to racists. We risk becoming

an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together. Island of Strangers sounds less like a far-right dog whistle, more like an ITV3 dating show. 10 Brits, 10 foreigners, only 5 GP appointments, let the hunger games begin. But this is part of the problem. For many, their view on immigration is binary. Good people are in favor of it, bad people are against it.

But is it really fair to always compare anyone who suggests limiting immigration to Enoch Powell? This doesn't happen with any other policy area. If you want to make the trains run on time, you don't get compared to Mussolini. If you want to bring down NHS waiting lists, you don't get compared to Harold Shipman. Ayesha, do you think Keir Starmer is pandering to racists? It's really difficult for any Labour leader to ever try and have like a nuanced conversation about immigration. When I worked for Ed Miliband, we were in a real bind because we didn't want to look soft on immigration, we didn't want to look racist so instead we came up with some slightly xenophobic crockery if you remember the infamous immigration mug

and the thing about the immigration mug is everyone hated the immigration mug. It was just so crass, it was like we're about to deport you but would you like a cup of tea? Like it was such a very very British and the thing about the immigration mug is like there was so many of them knocking around Labour HQ at one point and someone had to go to like the head of kind of operations of the kitchen and just say, look, I'm really sorry, nobody likes these immigration mugs. They're taking up loads of space in the cupboard. We're just going to have to send them back, I'm afraid. But how do you feel about the phrase island of strangers?

Do you think it's problematic? I think it was deliberately put in there to be a provocation, to sort of get attention. But I personally think it was slightly not great because it's overshadowed, like the row has actually overshadowed some quite interesting and important policy that was in the white paper. But I think his strategist wanted to do that because it's quite hard to get cut through at the moment on these topics because Nigel Farage has primacy in the speech. So I think it was deliberate,

but it has upset a lot of people who didn't read the full sentence in context. Do you think they'll have been aware of the panel's speech? It's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I would find it extraordinary that a very well-paid speechwriter would not have kind of just done a word search on this speech. Do you think Labour people are less willing to think about immigration

in terms of controls, limits and the types of people we want to come here? I think so, yes, because it is like, it's, you know, if you're on the sort of liberal end of politics, and certainly like for me being the proud daughter of immigrants, it can be a challenging conversation, but I think we have to have the conversation now. I'm glad you brought up your heritage there,

because I didn't feel like it was my place to bring it up, but people will obviously be aware of your heritage. Scottish. What was I going to ask? Do you think Scottish people should be allowed to stay in England? I'm open to it. I mean, let's talk about what types of Scottish people we want. Gitto, as a comms guy, if you were advising Keir Starmer, would you have advised him against using that line? Well, it depends what outcome you want. The idea that it wasn't deliberate is a fantasy.

It was put in there in order to get Nigel Farage to say, well, they're starting to learn from me. But the reality is on small boats, he's not doing anything that will reduce the flow. And some of the things he's trying to do with legitimate legal migration to the UK is insane. The idea that the answer to the problem of an aging population that needs people to look after them is to ban foreigners from being care workers in our care homes. It's mad. And the idea that a party that wants to grow the economy wants to ban migrants is also

mad. If Keir Starmer really wants to be an impactful Prime Minister, he doesn't just pander to Nigel Farage, he says he should have the cajones to stand up and say, if we did not have immigration, we would not have an NHS. We would not have doctors, surgeons, engineers, care workers, bar staff. When was the last time you were served by somebody who was homegrown in the UK? Do you think Boris Johnson realised

that this was storing up a problem, that on the one hand, talking about taking back control and being the prime minister, basically on the back of Brexit, whilst allowing immigration to reach the levels it did, did he ever think at some point he was going to have to deal with that and make the case, or was he just putting it off for the next guy?

He is a politician that has proved over time that he's prepared to argue an unpopular case. I would love to see Boris Johnson pivot. When I stood on a platform, by the way, of reducing immigration, I have to tell you that I have now come to the conclusion that we need a surge in the sheer amount of people coming in. And I actually think that it's good that we have a million people from all around the world coming in. Is that sort of how we'd have done it? Er, well, given time.

Pierre, what did you make of Keir Starmer's speech? As the panel's official immigrant. Yeah, it probably was a provocation, but yeah, is it pandering if you do just finally get around to addressing something that everyone cares about? The UK, I think, is at a crossroads where it can't quite decide if it wants to be a really, really high immigration sort of low-skill country where it's sort of like, yeah, we're just going to, anything we need, bartenders or social care workers just open the floodgates, come in, whatever, if you're into it, we want you. And the wage crash as a result and whatever.

If the wages aren't high enough for anyone who's already here, we'll find someone who's going to do it. Screw you. That's fine, that does work. You do need to build a lot more housing, but it does work. Or you can be like Norway or Australia where you say, well, let's just go sort of mad and make the wages for every single job insanely high.

And a pear costs 11 quid, and a pint is 20 quid. But we have a much tighter control on immigration, and we don't have to build a trillion houses to accommodate this new wave of it. Right now, we're doing half of both, and everyone's furious. Yeah, I mean, you're saying this in London where a pair does cost 11 quid. We're trying to do two things at once.

We're trying to ride two horses and you have to make your choice. You can have an international squadron of servants, but you can't be very nice to them. Or you can be nice to the people who you do let in and pairs are going to cost 11 pounds because you live in Norway now. Or we can ride two horses at the same time. LAUGHTER Try and have our cake and eat it. Would you ever worry about being labelled as right wing? Is that something that you ever fear as a comedian?

Well, I'm a white South African, so I know that that door's always open. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Yes, it does worry me, yeah. Because I can't talk honestly about the stuff to do with immigration because, ironically, because a lot of progressive people will go, well, not you, you're not really an immigrant because you're white

and you speak English. You go, who do you sound like now? I think I have as much a right to talk about it as any immigrant, but because of the way I look and the way I sound, it will come across poorly. Do you think comedy audiences in Britain in 2025 can have their views on things like immigration challenged? I'd say everyone is being challenged all the time

if they go to a mixed bill night, but people just go to the tour shows with the people they like. No one's gonna risk an entire evening on someone they're gonna be seething throughout. It's... I don't know, some people who've come to see me have left deeply disappointed and seething.

Isn't comedy the only place you can talk about most things at the moment? You do risk being cancelled in comedy, but generally just if someone has filmed it and put it on YouTube out of context. Live in the room, I've never seen anyone be cancelled. I've seen people be heckled and challenged to a fight in the car park, but that's not cancellation. That's just good old Saturday night fun.

That's for play. Yes, I've gigged in Scotland, yes. Okay let's go to our audience poll on immigration. We asked today's audience, which industry's labour needs should we pander to the most? 16% said coffee shops, 54% said care homes, and an incredible 30% said car washes. It's one of the only examples of deindustrialization. We had car wash machines. We've got rid of the machines, we've gone back to people doing it by hand. Highly skilled shop fronts for people trafficking money.

A very important part of the local economy. Okay, let's talk about one of the most pandit to political constituencies, pensioners. Politicians of all parties over the years have been accused of indulging older voters. The triple lock on pensions, free TV licences, eye tests, bus passes, propping up house prices. The list is longer than the lists they go into the post office with. But Rachel Reeves appeared to think they've had it too good for too long, and was no longer willing to pander to them. She announced she was means testing the winter fuel allowance, which has not gone down well

in certain bingo halls. Pensioners all over the country have been scowling, tutting, and looking annoyed. Then they heard the news about the winter fuel allowance. The reality is that being a pensioner in 2025 is very different to what it was like even 20 years ago. Today's pensioners turned 18 in the 1970s. A lot of them were punks.

This is the generation that sang, no future. Yeah, tell me about it, Nan. I'm never getting on the housing ladder. Successive governments realised that older people vote and started pandering to them. And maybe that explains why, after poor recent election results, the government is now executing a partial U-turn on its one attempt to stem pensioner pandering. But if a government is serious about making the country more prosperous and equal, perhaps it should help younger people instead.

For years, politicians haven't done enough to get younger generations on the housing ladder. To be fair, Boris Johnson did have some limited success, but he only managed to help one 30-something-year-old woman, and she had to marry him. LAUGHTER He only managed to help one 30-something year old woman, and she had to marry him. Gitto, is it too simplistic to say that the Conservatives always have to pander to older people because they're effectively their core vote? I think all parties do it.

Some of the things you listed were introduced by Gordon Brown. And I think Rachel Reeves is actually doing the right thing because she hasn't abolished it for everyone. She may have got the threshold slightly wrong, certainly according to her own party she has, but I think at some point we cannot carry on carrying 300 billion pounds a year being spent on benefits of some sort.

Nobody says that Boris Johnson gave me a nice lift in my pension. Nobody thanked Rishi Sunak for every single person in this room getting 400 quid towards their winter fuel payment. No, it's all of a twist. Please, sir, can I have some more? So stop doing that. Stop wasting precious taxpayers' money just in handouts today

and start using this very, very precious resource to build a better tomorrow. And was that something you would ever discuss with Boris and say, look, we are going to have to means test some benefits. Why are certain benefits universal? Did you even get close to starting to think the unthinkable on things like welfare? We had big fights, yes. And there was a big fight between him and Rishi Sunak.

Rishi Sunak wanted to get 400 pounds for all of you to enjoy to contribute towards your winter fuel bill. And it was about the amount of money that Boris wanted to invest in eight nuclear power stations, which by the end of this decade, and we're now much closer to that, would have meant that we would never ever again be at the mercy of Middle Eastern oil or Russian gas,

which I think is something worth waiting for. But no, you all got your 400 quid. You all went out and voted Tory and said, thank you Rishi for that 400 quid. So it wasn't politically wise and it was economically stupid and it's left Britain broke. Pierre, you're the youngest member of this panel. Yes. Do you resent the older generations for the help they've been given compared to our generation?

It is funny to hear about how important winter fuel allowance is from the same demographic that says put a jumper on. There's a fun irony there. I'm surprised by how unpopular it's been given that it's means tested. Actually, I'm not sure the level it's means tested at, but I mean one of the complaints that sort of went viral was someone saying that their sort of neighbor was resentful because they used to use the winter fuel allowance for all their Christmas presents, you know. And you sort of think, well, the irony is that the kind of people who are the most in favor of just giving it to everyone are also the kind of people who don't think you should

give handouts to the rich. So you sort of think, well, what is it? It's a very confused issue. The idea of whining about your 400 quid being lost when one in four pensioners in the country is an asset millionaire doesn't go down brilliantly with my generation, no. But we'll see. We don't vote. Well, what could the government do to make you vote? Well, I vote because I'm a massive dork, but I'm in favor of compulsory voting, like Australia or I think Brazil as well has it.

Unless you make it compulsory, people aren't going to do it, and you're never going to get an actual full picture of what people like. But do you think the government should do things to help you get on the housing ladder? The trouble is they always juice the demand and never the supply. So they go, oh, you know what, we're going to help everyone get on the housing ladder. Everyone gets a shmish million pound mortgage. Well, there aren't any more houses. All you've done is make the houses that there are more expensive.

And should Keir Starmer say, we're going to juice the Nimbys and we're going to build stuff around this country, would you happily have tower blocks erected near where you live? Put one in the garden. Go for it. Do it. Do it. Honestly. And there's so much of like greenbelt land is actually just brownfield land in disguise

where you've got it covered in old fridges and sort of crow corpses and things. They go, well, what would we do without this beautiful Eden? Put a house on it. Put a nuclear power plant in the basement. I'll sleep on top of the reactor. It's fine. In fact, some of those areas don't just need a nuclear power plant, they need a nuclear disaster and then we can build some houses on them.

Ayesha, is Rachel Reeves undertaking what maybe on Yes Minister they might describe as a brave strategy? It's very courageous, it is very courageous. The fact that it was like the first announcement really that came from this new Labour government and the fact that the threshold was quite low was the thing that upset a lot of people. I was at a funeral in Paisley, just up in Scotland just before Christmas. And I felt I had 80 very angry pensioners just kind of surround me.

And I was like, this is a thing. So-called, they turned it into a cremation. But I think- Sorry if you lost someone close to the road. Some people would say, look, if you're going to do a U-turn, just do it quickly. And it doesn't save like a huge amount of money given the sort of political pain that it's caused. And apparently this is something that Treasury officials would always put in front of chancellors and it was something that most chancellors, I mean even Kwazi Kwating told me that he worked out that this was not very

polite and if Kwazi Kwating... And if Keir Starmer came to you and said Ayesha I would love you to, I would pretty need your advice, how to run the government, how to deal with not just the common policy as well. What advice can you give me on the spot? I would say this is a really difficult election cycle because it's not about the two big parties anymore. We are moving into a situation where we've really got five political parties vying now. Reform is first in some of the polls, Liberal Democrats are still taking votes off more one-nation Tories, the Greens will

definitely be taking votes off you know more left-wing Labour Party people, the SNP is doing very well in Scotland, like Humrey is doing well in Wales. So my strong advice would be not to try and pander to one group or the other group in terms of focus groups. I don't think he should try and do like a calculated move. Put the country first, and I think the party will do well for it. Advice so good, it is certain to be ignored. Let's see what our audience thought about pandering to different demographics.

We asked our audience, what demographic would you rather the government pander to? 23% said old people. 60% said young people. Well done. 17% almost one in five people said, just me, sod literally everyone else. Quite low for a London crowd. Okay let's go on to our final topic. Politicians always get accused of pandering to the press, but last week the White House held a series of briefings not for pandering to the press, but last week the White House

held a series of briefings not for the accredited press corps, but for Trump-supporting influencers. Critics accused the influencers of asking softball questions, like what's the scoring system and how exactly is it different from baseball? While opponents of Trump are outraged, is pandering to influencers really a problem? Are they any less partisan or trustworthy than traditional media outlets? I mean what's the difference between some influencer YouTubing from his mother's basement and Fox News? One's completely partisan and unregulated peddling wild conspiracy theories and the other's an influencer.

We all knew it was coming. And who's to say that influencers are any less qualified than so-called professional journalists? Say what you like about Joe Wicks but unlike Piers Morgan he never published fake photos of British war crimes in Iraq. Although his 20-minute waterboarding workout did cross a line. Pierre youA., you've got an Instagram account. Surely you're in favor of influencers being pandered to. The problem is that, again, we're in a world where this stuff is so new it's not really regulated.

There's all sorts of rules if you're a broadcaster, but if you're a Twitch streamer or if you're just going on TikTok Live or something like that, there's nothing really. You have no real legal obligation to be particularly fair, balanced, to have any idea what you're doing or talking about. And those people are much more powerful than any traditional media really. I mean just to give you an idea of how different the world is now,

I have some friends who have a very successful comedy podcast, they got offered the chance to make a TV series of it by a TV channel. The amount that they were offered for the entire budget for the year for six episodes was less than the podcast made in a month. So they said, no thanks, we're going to keep doing this from our basement. And are they prepared to approach other comedians?

New media is fast and it's reactive and they've cut out all the middlemen, they can say outrageous things because they can't be fired because they're their own boss, they're in their own basement. Some of the adverts that won Trump the election, they look like clips from podcasts. They're not, but they look like they are. Everyone in there is wearing chunky headphones and slightly more obvious mics than you would ever have on a proper news channel,

and they're sat in gaming chairs, and they're cutting to clips in a slightly crude way. I thought it was from a real podcast. You've got a podcast with Phil Wang. I mean, if number 10 said, Pierre and Phil come to a number 10 briefing and ask Keir Starmer some questions, would you gracefully say, this isn't our arena? Or would you seize the opportunity?

Oh, I'd be right in there. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm a huge dork again. But yeah, of course. Gitto, how do you feel about the White House giving an entire briefing over to influencers. I'm worried about the concept that anything goes and there's no such thing as objective truth. And that's not just the problem with the press. That's been a problem with political correctness, the woke agenda, that the truth is whatever I feel it is. I could tell you I was a different skin tone or gender and you're meant to accept that. That's mad for me. And so I do encourage people to turn to trusted news sources

and to question what they are viewing, reading, and listening to. But at the same time, it is quite healthy. Nobody has a monopoly on opinion. And I think it's quite right to engage people who have a following and bring them in to the White House. The very thing that an influencer needs is to be original, to be different, to say something that everybody else is not saying.

And I think that's healthy. Ayesha, just think about podcasts, because it strikes me there's a difference between political podcasts in America and political podcasts here. In America, they seem to be done by outsiders like Joe Rogan. Here, the big ones are done by insiders, people like George Osborne and Alastair Campbell. Do you think that will change? I hope it does change because I do think it is interesting to get sort of different perspectives on politics. I actually think how politicians are kind of behaving is changing a lot as well.

I think one of the reasons why the conservatives and the Labour Party is quite struggling in the media arena is that they're playing it quite safe, they're playing it quite old school. Meanwhile, you've got sort of Ed Davey, who's like the poster boy for Thorpe Park and you know, on his like like on his like winter or I would say arguably the greatest political influencer of recent modern

British political history Nigel Farage I mean Nigel Farage just brilliantly on on TikTok he doesn't behave like a mainstream politician he behaves like a political influencer and so maybe that's what our politicians need to do a bit more of maybe they need to try and break out the mold I mean I think that the person who stands out to me who'd be a brilliant political influencer would be Angela Rayner I mean Angela Rayner is like she's like the love child of like Rizzo from Greece and Barbara Castle do you know I mean like you just want to see her with her Instagram account with her own brand of vodka,

collagen powder, hen cruises to Ibiza. Like, this is the Angela Reyna we want to see unleashed. I can see Nick Robinson and Angela Reyna doing that now. And that brings us towards the end, Angela. It's been a fantastic hour. Is there anything you'd like to add? Follow me on TikTok for a discount on me vape. LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE Let's go to our audience poll on influencers. We asked our audience which media platform should politicians pander to. 22% said the broadsheets. 43% said the broadsheets, 43% said the BBC, 35% over one in three of our audience said OnlyFans. The other 50% of the audience, men, saying to their wives, I've never heard of it.

Well, that concludes this first session of the Matt Ford Focus Group. Huge thanks to my panel, Aisha Has has a recur Gitto Harry and Pia Novelli to sum up pandering what better than the old political rule Campaign promises are like babies easy to make hard to deliver and Boris made hundreds of them Thanks for listening. Goodbye The Matt Ford focus group was written and hosted by Matt Ford with additional material from Carl Minns, Katie Storey and Richard Garvin. It was produced by

Richard Garvin and is an Avalon production for BBC Radio 4. From BBC Radio 4 this is What Seriously? I'm Dara O'Briain and I'm Izzy Suttie and in our new series we're bringing you short stories and tall tales is What Seriously? I'm Dara O'Brien. And I'm Izzy Suttie. And in our new series we're bringing you short stories and tall tales. What Seriously? is packed with real life strange but true stories that make you go What Seriously? and provide you with excellent social ammo to impress your friends. The twist is we don't know how each story unfolds and we'll have to figure it out one fragment at a time with our special guests who each have a mysterious connection to the

tale. That's right. I am your spy expert. And I don't really want to bring you back to the real facts of the story because you're making me laugh so much but I feel like I should. We're the only country in the world that eats the animal on our criss like. And I never know whether to feel terrible or brilliant about that. All these engineers trying desperately to reduce the amount of dust in space and you get Izzy taking up a balloon full of glycerin.

Wow. You're welcome. You come up with all the stuff you want. I know right. It's like I'm reading from a sheet or something but no I am. and you get Izzy taking up a balloon full of glycerine. Wow! You're welcome. You come up with all the stuff you want. I know, right? It's like I'm reading from a sheet or something, but no I haven't. Join us for What Seriously? from BBC Radio 4, available now on BBC Sounds.