Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The Matt Forde Focus Group: Boxing Day Special

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

Top political comedian Matt Forde reconvenes his Focus Group for a Boxing Day special with a Dickensian twist.Recorded in front of a live audience, Matt is joined by journalists, comedians and politicians – including former Cabinet Minister Michael Gove – to review the political state we're in through the lens of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Expect sharp analysis, unexpected confessions, and the year's biggest stories getting visited by the Ghosts of Politics Past, Present and Yet to Come.Appearing as a festive treat in BBC Radio 4's Friday Night Comedy feed, it's a topical comedy that's both genuinely funny and surprisingly insightful – perfect for digesting with the leftover turkey.Written and performed by Matt Forde Additional writing from Karl Minns, Laura Claxton and Richard Garvin Producer: Richard Garvin Executive Producers Jon Thoday and Richard Allen Turner Co-Producers: Daisy Knight and Jules Lom Broadcast Assistant: Sahar Rajabali Sound Design and Editing: David Thomas An Avalon production for BBC Radio 4

Hello and welcome to the Matt Ford Focus Group Christmas Special, the topical comedy show where we examine the political landscape through one particular theme or concept to help us make sense of it. What could be more festive? I'm your host Matt Ford, and today we're looking at politics through the lens of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. A Yuletide story of a friendless, socially awkward, bully who reinvents himself as a kinder jollier soul.

It's a bit like when Ed Bulls did strictly. Originally published in 1843, the year Jacob Rees-Mogg grew's first pub. One of its central themes is that of a reckoning. We like to believe that a Christmas carol is a relevant story we can all learn from. But parts of it are ludicrous. The most unbelievable aspect is the moment Scrooge gives money to a boy to buy him a turkey and the kid actually goes and buys it. If that happened now,

the kid would call Scroo and run off to buy weed. And if it was set today, Scrooge would be an internet troll at Ebenezer, 1843 on X, going, I know for a fact, Tiny Tim's faking it for benefits. I heard he plays five aside and post TikTok dancers the grifting little shit.

The time may be different, but the principles are timeless. Back then, powerful men exploited their staff, forcing them to work long hours in brutal, in humane conditions, wielding their power with impunity, a situation we've seen in modern times on MasterChef. And arguably that was worse. Say what you like about Scrooge as an employer. He never exposed his dickens to Bob Cratchett. An allegation, I'm sure, Greg Wallace denied. I can reassure you that the culture on this show is any marginally less toxic. Please welcome

today's focus group. It's journalist Miranda Green. Spectator editor Michael Gove and comedian Pierre Novelli. Michael, in a Christmas Carol, Scrooge was kept up all night with vivid hallucinations. Have you ever experienced that after a night out in Aberdeen? I certainly have. There are many, many vivid hallucinations that I've had in politics. There are many bad dreams that I've had. There are many ghosts of Christmas past that still come unbidden to the forefront of my mind.

But I think, and you'd expect me to say this, that Scrooge himself is a much maligned character. I think that, you know, Scrooge had an appreciation of the guilt markets and the vital importance of maintaining a balanced budget. And as you pointed out earlier, Scrooge was a believer in welfare reform even before he in Duncan Smith. So I think that Scrooge gets a bit of a bad press. And no, I haven't taken anything before joining you on the show today.

I think Scrooge, marginally to the left of Ian Duncan Smith. Miranda, you're a Lib Dem. What is a Lib Dem Christmas like? Is it just everything in moderation? It's incredibly sensible. Not too much, but just the right amount. No one gets their first choice present, but most people get their second choice.

That's exactly so. There's a proportional distribution of everything under the tree. and everyone goes away unsatisfied but unsatisfied but happy that the group has been coherent around the process Pierre, it's a South African

how do you feel about a white Christmas? We only have rainbow Christmases now. It's all gone just fine and I'm applying for refugee status in Texas on the basis of very little. Okay, let's use. use the lens of a Christmas carol to analyse the ghost of political past

or as it's known to the electorate, the Tory party. Like Scrooge, forced to confront the choices that led him astray, did it all start to go wrong when we elected David Cameron as Prime Minister? Yes. A man who liked Kermit...

I didn't know Sam was in the audience. David Cameron, a man who, like Kermit in a Muppet Christmas Carol maintained a cheery demeanour while everything around him fell apart, And who, just like Kermit the Frog, is also rumoured to have had it off with a pig. After 14 years of Tory rule, Roth's sleeping more than doubled. NHS weightingless tripled, and we had the slowest growth in earnings since the Industrial Revolution. Things got so bad. People genuinely started to believe that Rory Stewart was a political genius.

The Tories are the most successful political party in history, but now their star has fallen. They're like Man United, a shadow of their former selves and only really supported by people in Surrey. To put things into context, the RSPB has nearly 900,000 more members than the Tories. Although if you do want to see tits and vultures, the Tories still come out top. Michael, what was the...

Michael, what single biggest mistake killed the Tory? and why was it this trust? There are so many. We could have this show going on to Christmas next year and run through everything that went wrong during those 14 years. And of course since I was a minister

in the cabinet for 13 of those 14 years, I have to bear my share of responsibility. I think the problem was entitlement, in a word. I think the problem was a sense that when we saw Jeremy Corby, and leading the Labour Party.

After Nick Clegg had led the Lib Dems into almost single figures, there was a sense that the world was always going to be Tory, and that meant that instead of thinking properly about the country, we turned in on ourselves and we played literal party games. But unlike with charades, where everyone ends up laughing

and the points are shared equally, we had a party game that resulted in Liz Truss, as you say. I worked with Liz at the Department for Education And I enjoyed working with her But she earned a nickname there The Human Hand Grenade And unfortunately that hand grenade exploded the British economy

After just what was it, 40 days Miranda what do you think killed them Well I think there was a sort of concatenation of disasters And in a sense The Liz Trust's episode We can't really call it era, can we? 40 days. But the whole sort of period of Tory rule was an era. It seemed

as if there were a lot of pratfalls and by the end there was a lot of sort of disrespect for being in office I think as well which finally sort of during the COVID years the party gate probably wasn't the whole story but I think the sense of one rule for those in power and one rule for the rest of us during lockdown was a lot of why people wanted to reject Boris Johnson and what came after so strongly and poor Rishi Sunak, you know, just came along at the end.

It was far too much, you know, unmentionable in the Orgyan stables to clean out by that point. Maybe public services played a role. I was educated under a Tory government, and I've got no idea what concatenation means. I could guess, but... One thing banging into another, and it all cumulatively being disastrous.

How about that? It's great. Thank you. Sorry. Every day to school day. Pierre, what do you think killed the Tories? Party gate didn't help if you are someone who presents like Boris Johnson does, which is here's the air of someone who expected to be in charge of some part of India at some point.

It's just sort of waiting for that to happen. And, you know, you've been in the press for a big argument over who's paying for your oligarch style wallpapers. You can't then have a mad, decadent party during the biggest crisis since the Second World War. domestically. It will all come across quite badly. And it doesn't matter that Rishi Sunak was a nice managerial type because he was just the apologetic manager of the restaurant where the previous

guy who served you the food gave you life-threatening diarrhea. Could some of this have gone differently, Michael? Could Boris running the restaurant not have resulted in life-threatening diarrhea? Potentially, people thought that Boris saw through a lot of the

the nonsense, the canton, hypocrisy of politics. And they felt that he was at an ironic distance from a lot of the standard political posturing. And he was their man. But then the switch flicked. And people thought that rather than laughing with Boris at the absurdity of politics and the sense that Boris was on their side,

they felt that the Conservatives and Boris were laughing at them. And the ghost of Christmas past tries to get us to face up to our mistakes. Yes. Do you think the Tory's... Are in any mood to face up to them? Do you think they accept the mistakes they make? Yeah, I think so. I think that's partly because the Conservatives have acknowledged some of the areas where they went wrong.

And I think that on tax, on migration, and on putting the self-interest of the party ahead of the interest of the country, Kemi Bader Noch has articulated that. So I think that we're at the stage, to go back to the Christmas Carol, where the fright administered by the ghosts of Christmas past has been internalised, but we haven't yet sent out to give the electorate the turkey that they're looking for. Miranda, the Lib Dems were part of this story.

For five years, they were in a coalition government that delivered austerity. So are the Lib Dems the Jacob Marley to the Tory's Ebenezer Scrooge? What you think that Ed Davies should be doing his water-based stunts, also with clanking chains that would probably sink him

in a few minutes. I think that they took a long time to get over being punished by the electorate so severely in 2015 and that was a sort of near-death experience for the Lib Dems, I think. In a sense, it's quite difficult for Ed Davia's Lib Dem leader

because I suspect he's quite proud of some of the things he did as a minister in cabinet but the coalition is slightly the unmentionable. It's very true. It is a ghost of their... recent past for sure. And do you think Pierre, the public, are mature enough to see something like that,

say, okay, I understand that Ed Davy is to the left of the Tories, he had to go into coalition, I can basically forgive him and not pin everything on that, or do you think they're still tainted? I think they're tainted for my generation where I was at university

during Cleggmania, where the Lib Dems were topping the polls by, what we would now think of as reform margins. And everyone was very excited, and then it kind of disappeared like snow after about a week. And, yeah, I think Ed Davy wears the student debt he forged in life and is clanking about burdened by it.

So my generation are particularly skeptical of them. Do you think the stories have faced up to their mistakes yet? One of the reasons as well, I think, that they got the kicking that they did is because if you get in with the majority, you get, let's say, 400 MPs. There are, what, 280 ministerial positions to fill? There's not that many good people out there. But eventually you get to the point where you go, right, who hasn't had a go at mucking things up then? Michael!

That was my role, yes. So eventually you get to the point where the lady who did the mad speech about cheese and pork gets to run the economy and destroys everyone's mortgage. The Tory brand, of course it's been tarnished. But the bit of the Tory brand that is least tarnished, notwithstanding this trust, is the idea that if there are tough economic times and you want someone to make those, very unpalatable decisions, that the tories will steal themselves to do so.

If the other parts of the legacy are properly addressed, that could lead, if not to redemption, then certainly to the return of respect. Okay, we asked our audience, what mistake haunts you most? Someone said, immigrating to the UK. But it's good to have you here, Pierre. Someone else says, voting for Brexit.

Find the unbeliever. Exactly. Someone else says, believing in the competence of Keir Starmer. That's worse treating in the audience. Okay, let's use a Christmas carol to analyse the ghost of political present our current Labour government.

The ghost of political present reveals uncomfortable realities, not how you wish things were, but how they actually are. Kirstarmer began his premiership by going full scrooge. We're taking the winter fuel payment away from 10 million reform voters, sorry, pensioners. We need to decrease the surplus population.

He asked about workhouses. Of course I understand workhouses. My dad was a toolmaker. He then you turned on that. And changes to PIP, a grooming gang's inquiry, income tax, constantly changing position, has not helped Stama's approval rating,

which is currently at minus 54. To put that into perspective, that's the temperature of Pretty Patel's blood. On top of all that, just like Scrooge, personal conduct has come back to haunt the Labour Party. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rainer was forced to resign after underpaying stamp duty on a second property.

As soon as he found out the news, Kirstama sprang, into action and did nothing for a week. Raina quit and said she'd be spending more time at homes with her family. Pierre, Labour come in with a huge majority and an element of goodwill, but how little of that element is left and

is it visible to the naked eye? I think you'd have to go to a sort of scientific facility in the Swiss Alps to find a microscope big enough to find the goodwill remaining. I thought if you've got a majority like that, you've got to come in and smash up the furniture with a bat, you know, you can do whatever you want. And then we've got the Prime Minister talking about how he pulls levers that aren't attached to anything and nothing happens.

If I'm on a flight, the last thing I want is the pilot coming back and going, I don't think anything's plugged in up here, you know. I've been trying to land for an hour. I'm as upset as you guys. It's not reassuring. The thought of Keir Stomras, an airline pilot is terrifying. I'm sorry, I've only just discovered that we've actually got a left wing. I should probably tilt towards it.

Do you think that's been part of the problem, Miranda? Do you think Labour have been too timid? I think they have been a bit timid. I mean, to be fair, I think to take on Michael's lovely Christmas family games metaphor, it's been a bit like awful past the parcel the last few years in politics. And, you know, the music stopped. They've opened the parcel and there's some really difficult problems inside it. And all of it, whilst being quite a downbeat character with a downbeat, as you said, lack of narrative.

And I think it just doesn't connect with the people. Also, I have to say, one thing that's been really distressing over these sort of months of labour and power has been the amount of verbiage and jargon and terrible kind of managerial language, that they seem incapable to connect with people about what needs to change and what they're doing to fix it. Michael, it's not just that it's not going to plan. it seems that there isn't even a plan, you know. You ever won a majority and then ended up without a plan? Is that anything you've got? Well, this is, yes.

But I think you're absolutely right. I once in the House of Commons was debating against Kea Starmer, and I was a bit rude. What I said, that he has less substance than a vacuum. He's someone who makes a hole in the air seem substantial. And he came up to me afterwards. Did you really mean that?

Because he seemed quite hurt. And I thought, oh gosh, I'm over the top. But actually, the truth is that he got elected because of what he wasn't. He wasn't Jeremy Corbyn. He wasn't a Blairite. He wasn't in the government when Blair and Brown had all of these feuds. So people projected on him whatever they wanted.

And then he became Prime Minister because he wasn't a Tory. And then he's even now saying vote for me because I'm not Nigel Farage. It is not the case that there's, you know, deep wells of hatred. It's just what's the bleeding point? We're constantly told that the public are allergic to income tax rises. But Pierre, do you think Labour unnecessarily box themselves in during an election campaign that probably would have won anyway

by saying they weren't going to raise taxes on working people? I think they box themselves in unnecessarily, especially given that anyone could have looked and seen that you are going to have to. In this one case, I think the public are mature enough to understand that a one-point rise on income tax is the same as hiding that one-point rise in a bunch of other taxes that you just don't call income tax. All of the country's problems are downstream of the fact that no one can build anything. It's like living in a listed building.

We're just trapped. It's like, can I have double glazing? No, actually, it would really ruin the aesthetic of the country. I was hoping for some kind of sweeping Victorian you don't live here now, it's a tunnel, you know. And if the tunnel has to go through where I live, well then as long as there's a sufficient compensation package, I'll move.

Yes, but what if you're a bat? Then you're a millionaire. Okay, well we've blamed the public. Let's see what the public have said. To the question, what uncomfortable truth do you struggle to face? Someone's thought, I was once a conservative counsellor.

In local government, I'm guessing, not the psychological sector. Someone else has said that I've never done anything interesting. You've come here tonight. No, they're standing by it. Someone else says that I'm a straight white male. Well, that can be changed. Although let's not get into that debate. So, finally, let's meet the ghosts of politics yet to come,

the specter of Reform UK and the Green Party, because it's traditional to have nuts at Christmas. For Dickens, this was the most terrifying ghost. Imagine that first cabinet, Nigel Farage, as Prime Minister, an AI Bernard Manning hologram as Culture Secretary. Bonnie Blue as Chief Whip. Come on, she knows how to get blokes in line. Globally, Prime Minister Farage

would align us completely with Trump by then starting his third term as American president. We're going to make big changes. I don't want to sound like a wise guy, but the Grimsby Riviera, it's going to ring to it. But we don't just face a future fright from the rights. We now have a populist oddball offer from the left thanks to the new leader of the Greens, Zach Pallanski.

A politician with all the vibes of an estate agent who dabbles in tantric massage. Palatsky has shifted the Greens from being a part of the environment to being a party of the hard left and identity politics. They're less trains, more trans, less global warming, more global intifada. Despite surging to 16% in the poll,

it is unlikely that Polanski will ever be Prime Minister. But then again, Matt Hancock had two women on the go, so literally anything is possible. Miranda, how petrified should reasonable, sensible, good people like me, be of a reformed government? I think it's pretty scary, not least because Nigel Farage has... This is obviously his latest party. it's the first time he's probably had to think,

oh my goodness, I could actually be in charge of those levers of power that Keir Stamps aren't attached to anything and to have to sort of come up with something that could be a programme for government. And what would that government really look like? You know, this is probably populism red in tooth and claw of the sort that we've not really had to deal with as a serious threat in the UK

because our politics has always been so sort of cosy. We're not used to this, right? It's a completely new phenomenon. Michael, a reasonable, sensible, good people like Miranda and me, overly catastrophizing about what a reform government would actually be like. I'm not going to try to shill for Nigel Farage or to try to suggest that it would be a good thing if you were Prime Minister. But I do think this is Britain.

The thing that really strikes me about reform is how camp it is. When I see them, I don't think of black shirts and, you know, extremists. I think of Dick Emery, Sid James and Benny Hill. It is the party of daytime TV and nudge, nudge, wink, wink in a way. And for anyone who doubts that, the standout moment from the Reform Party conference was Andrea Jenkins, the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire

coming on stage in a sequent cat suit singing a song of her own composition called Insomnia. Now, part of the reform vote is British Nostalgia, for the sort of comedy that we grew up with. Part of it... We? I watched it live. You watched it on Dave.

But, you know, my sense is that the British people, even when they're at their angriest, aren't nasty. And I think the same thing applies to the Greens as well. So, you know, a lot of the things that Zach Polanski says, you know, the abolition of landlords and so on, seem ridiculous and quasi-Marxist. But I actually think that the reality of the type of person

who's elected as a Green MP is they're probably like Richard Breyer's in the good life. Yes, they're going to be naive, you know, the economy might tank, but it's not the case. It's not the case that Zach Polanski is not a sort of UK Yasserarifat. could have that confirmed that's going to be my next question Pierre you're young ish

is Zach Polanski inspiring you he's inspired a few people I know but they are generally actors and I think that that's Bad ones They're good actors And that's why it worries me when someone political inspires them

I think it means that someone is being inspiring but not in a way that leads to long detailed documents being submitted correctly but in a theatrical way and yeah I don't like dull managerialism but I will always go for dull managerialism over what if we never used fuel again or whatever no that's see that worries me

over the next few years there's more than enough time for the Green Party and reform to go through the natural cycle of parties that don't have an established way of finding talent and lose support through a sort of fortnight Fortnightly nutter reveal. Every two weeks another local counsellor is found interfering with a fox or something else.

Fortnightly nutter reveal was what I originally wanted to call the show. BBC wouldn't let me. Miranda, are we in danger of being a bit too snooty about the Greens and about Polanski and sort of joking about him? I mean, this is clearly a political novice, but highly skilled. Is it, do you think that Labour need to learn from someone like that or for parties that could conceivably form governments? Are the rules just different?

I think the rules are different. And one of the things that we're seeing that's so interesting is Farage's team realizing that they might have to play under slightly different rules if they look as if they could be a contender for power. So they are going to have to make things add up, for example, which the Greens will never have to. But yeah, I mean, I think there are lessons to be learned, for sure.

One of them, sadly, is that people do like the performance of authenticity. I'm a big critic of this idea that people just need to be themselves and the public will love them. Actually, if you think about... Didn't work for me. Oh, Michael. And how wrong we all were.

Can I just challenge Michael's idea that this is all some sort of cozy musical act, though? Because I do think that if, you know, history's taught us anything, it's just because people are slightly ridiculous, it doesn't mean they're not dangerous as well. Michael, you are still a major player in right-wing circles. You edit the spectator.

So if you were asked to serve in a Nigel Farage cabinet, would you, and what role would you want? I don't think I would. I certainly don't think he would want me to do so. But what if he says, look, it's going to be a bit like Benny Hill. Yes. Stick this swimsuit on, and I'll chase you around the park. Yachty Sachs playing in the background.

It does sound good. Okay, we asked our audience, if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? And someone said, The Past. This is really bleak. Someone else said,

Stop accidentally calling my boss, Mum. Well, that concludes this festive special of the Matt Ford Focus Group. Huge thanks to my panel, Michael Gove, Miranda Green and Pierre Novelli. To quote from a Christmas Carol,

Marley was dead, as dead as a doorknail. That may be so, but no woman, no cry, is still a banger. On that cheery note, Merry Christmas. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next year. The Matt Ford Focus Group was written and presented by Matt Ford, with additional material by Carmins, Laura Claxton and Richard Garvey. It was produced by Richard Barvey.

Garvin, and it's an Avalon production for BBC Radio 4. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me. We are the comedy show that takes history seriously, and then we laugh at it. And in our latest series, we've covered lots of global history. We've done the American War of Independence. We've done Empress Matilda and the medieval anarchy. We've done Alexandra Dumas, the French writer, the Kellogg brothers, and their health farm. We looked at the lives of Viking women, Renaissance era beauty tips. We jumped to 18th century India and also to ancient Alexandria. We looked at the life of Hannibal of Carthage, who fought the Romans,

and we've done Marianne to Annette, and a big birthday special for Jane Austen. Plus, there's 140 episodes in our back catalogue, so if you want to laugh while you learn, the show's called You're Dead to Me, and you can find us first on BBC Sounds.