Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - Too Long; Didn't Read: Ep 3. Let's get this party started

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Why does Britain have so many new parties? And why are none of them the fun kind? Catherine Bohart investigates the rising challengers to the two-party system, with the help of Zoe Lyons, Ian Dunt and roving correspondent Sunil Patel.Written by Catherine Bohart, with Madeleine Brettingham, Gareth Gwynn and John Tothill.Producer: Alison Vernon Smith Executive Producers: Lyndsay Fenner & Victoria Lloyd Sound Design: David Thomas Production Co-ordinator: Katie SayerA Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, lovely Friday Night Comedy people, I'm Catherine Bowhart, and I'm here to tell you that if you're in the UK, you can now listen to brand new episodes of my series, Too Long Didn't Read, and all the other Friday Night Comedy shows, first on BBC Sounds, seven days earlier than anywhere else. Just go to BBC Sounds, subscribe to Friday Night Comedy, and I can't stress this enough. Make sure that you have push notifications turned on. That way, you'll get alerted, as soon as new episodes become available. Although, here's a big clue. It's always on Friday. Listen to Friday night comedy first on BBC Sounds.

Welcome to Too Long Didn't Read, the show that makes the news feel young, sexy and exciting again, just like Oasis are currently doing for middle-aged dads everywhere. Nice to see the boot cut out and about again. We're the show that takes a deep dive into the big questions in a nice way, not a, wow, this hinge date is intense way. I'm Catherine Bohart, and I have spent the week reading the news, which is why my eyes have the cold, dead stare of Keir Starmour

every time he's asked to express an opinion about the Middle East. Now, call me self-centered, but my top story of the week is that Tesco have released a birthday cake sandwich just in time for my very own birthday. If you haven't seen it, it's perfect for the girl in the office whose birthday you know it is, but on whom you will not waste one single candle. Here at Too Long

Didn't Read, we take a deep dive into one big news story with the help of comedians and an expert but before that, what else has caught my eye this week? Well, a deal made between Britain and France which aims to exchange illegal migrants with asylum seekers came into force this week

in the most depressing replacement imaginable for the Erasmus scheme. Yvette Cooper would not be drawn on giving any specific numbers saying instead that it would start low and then build, sounding more and more like my friends trying to convince me that techno is real music. The pilot is called one in, one out.

Always good to have a policy that sounds like something Nigel Farage shouts in his sleep. Internships for the civil service will now only be open to working class people. Great news for any middle class kids whose great granddad's great uncles best mate's cousin's finger once lightly grazed a flat cap. Kemi Badenock said that the scheme was rubbish and that we should just be hiring the best for the job Yikes, girl, don't think that one all the way through to its logical conclusion

Deputy First Minister of Scotland Kate Forbes of the SNP has said she'll stand down at the next election to spend more time with her family and best thing of all, you know, because she's a woman you know that that's not just code for whoops, I banged the nanny and now I'm in trouble although it would be hot if she did

Forbes has said that she doesn't want to miss out on the precious early years of family life. Meanwhile, her male colleagues are staying in their jobs because they're desperate to miss out on the precious early years of family life. By the way, I love this woman. I love her. Her kid is three.

You know those precious early years when your child has just started sleeping through the night and is about to start school? A woman who knows what's what. I see you and I salute you. Labor have announced an 88 million pound investment in youth clubs because Kier-Starmer and Lisa Nandy

believe today's young people deserve to learn the crucial skill of buying weed in person instead of on Snapchat like cowards. The move comes over concerns that young people are spending too much time online. They thought about fixing the economy but decided why give them hope when you can

give them ping pong? Labor are investing in youth clubs in a bid to keep young people away from their smartphones. I keep young people away from my smartphone with a little trick I know called Having an Android. The government says it's building on the success of the 20,000 young people

who engaged with the Deliver You program aiming to get kids outside on their bikes and are they talking about the Deliveroo program? The package is intended to give pupils access to art, music, debating, volunteering and if you do all of this, being a virgin until the age of 25. Kier Starmory said that there was a worrying trend

of young people finding themselves isolated at home and disconnected from their communities. Unlike him, a super cool guy with loads of friends. You wouldn't know them, they just go to another government. A new report has warned that chemical pollution is as big a threat as climate change. So, you know, not that big. Hey, this is the BBC, you've had David Attenborough. I'm the balance. Forever chemicals are now so ubiquitous that in many locations, even rainwater contains levels regarded as unsafe to drink.

which is why I only drink vodka. Fresh, pure and direct from the source. My handbag. Think tanks warned. The Chancellor faces a 51 billion-pound black hole in the public finances. Kier Starmor said that some of the figures are not figures I recognise, which is how I feel when I shop for a dress at Zara. Rachel Reeves is on track to immediately break the rules that she imposed upon herself.

That is maybe the only relatable thing she has ever done. Well, that and cry at work, but... But this week's goss is all about summer parties. Not the kind you're thinking. In the heat and dust of summer, we've seen more political parties than ever vying for British voters' attention. The next leader's debate is going to look like the weakest link,

15 people in the lineup, all of whom have about two seconds to panic and say something stupid. My real concern for the Brits, though, is that there are now so many parties you're running out of colours. In his career, Nigel Farage has used up purple and two shades of turquoise.

Lawrence Nguelen Bowen called. He wants his vibe back. There's the Greens, Reform, Lib Dem, Advanced UK, the S&P, Alba, your party. Plight Cumry. Some are new, some are like Jennifer Coolidge and the White Lotus. Yes, they've been around for ages, but they're having a moment. And then there's Corbin and Sultanis Party, which doesn't even have a name but needs to be quick because the only colours left to claim are pickle green and highlighter orange. So what's going on?

And can the new parties in town get anywhere? People keep saying the days of two parties are over, but British people hate coalitions. in Ireland where we say hello on the street and have coalitions all the time we watched open mouths while you all asked if Parliament was hung in 2010 then we googled what that meant and it actually wasn't as wild as we thought it was

but it's still pretty still wild that a lib-demtory coalition would be so foreign to our neighbours so can Britain have changed that fast? Well, with me to try to figure out what's going on as a woman who welcomes an identity crisis, it's the comedian Zoe Lines everybody!

Hello, how are you? Good, how are you doing? I'm good, thank you. Zoe, my party, your party, his party, her party, their party, you brackets, group party. Crisis, a lot of it about now, isn't there? There are a lot of parties about, Catherine. And it seems like, rather surprisingly,

the ones very politically traditional UK loves more parties than P. Diddy. Mind you to put that in proper context, Farage doesn't require 1,000 litres of baby oil to look greasy, and our most notable freak-off was when Liz Trost was ousted out of office. But it does seem that our two-party system is pretty much dead and buried

and arguably because of massive acts of self-harm by both Conservatives and the Labour Party because the Conservatives, traditionally, the party of business, have been marred by endless scandals, not least during the pandemic, when they did the business of handing out massive inappropriate PPE deals, notably to a bra mogul,

which turned out to be an enormous booby. Have you been dying to say that all day yet? Just the word booby. I know, it's fun, isn't it? You know, it just rolls off the tongue. I do know, yeah. And of course, we've all watched it. Labor is floundering.

Starmer has done the most remarkable thing of coming across as both dry as ancient parchment. and as wet as a well-used family flannel at the same time. So they don't know who they are, they don't know who they represent. They're the party of the people, I guess, as long as those people aren't farmers,

old people, cold old people, cold old farmers, people with kids, cold people with kids, people with disabilities, or anybody striving to get ahead in business while struggling to cover national insurance costs. So anybody apart from that? Labor, of course, they did win. with a massive landslide.

Their share of the vote, however, was the lowest ever for a government with a parliamentary majority. And it's very much reminded me, Catherine, at the time that I won Celebrity Mastermind. I did. I did. I managed to walk away with a rather lovely glass trophy

with a winning score of 13. Such a low winning score only served to highlight the level of ability. on display on that particular record and I think it's the same in politics you're only as fast as your slow as runner and on the day that I did mastermind a few of my fellow contestants

were struggling to tie up their own shoelaces but as Labour would say a win's a win also the Conservative recorded their worst performance ever and trust in politicians has gone through the floor the public are fed up and disillusioned

and so what politicians have thought is well to solve that we obviously need more parties and it's like people saying they think the best solution to a hangover is a drink, which of course, it's not. The best solution to a hangover is never getting sober.

It takes a lot of confidence to start a new party. Do they really think they can win? Well, let's look at the two insurgents, Salwish. So fresh out of the blocks, we have the young and up-and-coming politician Jeremy Corbyn, who has set up a new left-wing party with Zara Sultan. Some might argue that brand awareness is essential

when you're setting up a new party. however they've got 700,000 followers signed up in support already despite the fact that they still haven't decided on an official name but they have a rather catchy holding name of your party what Jeremy is rather cleverly done is encouraged people to send in suggestions for the name of the new party and you think oh mate don't ask the public anything we can't be trusted haven't we learned anything from Brexit

and Booty McBoatface I mean if you ask me and they haven't, I think they should call it Jeremy's allotment army. If they do, I predict that if they did win, it would be with a marrow majority. This woman loved that. To be fair, I clapped myself when I wrote that.

I mean, the thing is, they're not likely to win, but polling from more in common suggests they could pick up 10% of the vote, which is enough to cause a fuss. It's a bit like a birthday party in a restaurant, Not enough to get the whole floor, but it'll ruin everybody else's evening.

And it's not just the Labour Party that could lose seats out to Colvin's New Party. There's also the Greens, the Lib Dems, S&P, Plied Cunry. Now Wales is having a vote next year. And it's been estimated that 28% of people in Wales will vote for a reform. So suddenly, Farage's back and forth to Wales

like Matthew Horne and Gavin and Stacey. I am Irish, but I was actually born in Wales. So I thought I've got something in common. with my people and I fall into that age bracket that is more likely to vote for reform so I thought well I'll go onto their website and see if I can work out what the appeal is and Catherine I think I've cracked it really yeah they've got a really clear font yeah honestly it just pops it pops I didn't even have to change my glasses to read it and I think that's why It's attracting the older voter.

Give it up, everyone, for Zoe Lyons. Well, luck who's late to the party. It's our sidebar superstar, Sunil Patel. Thank you. Thank you. So, Catherine, big news. I'm starting my own political party. Of course you are. That's right.

I've looked at Nigel Farage's media career and decided this is the only way I'm ever going to get on BBC One. And if I have to pretend to care about this country to get more airtime than Josh Whitacom, so be it. Great. So how far have you got? Not that far. It turns out setting up a political party

involves a lot of admin. And I feel about admin the same way Kier Starrma feels about the left of his party. Yuck. Okay? So I was kind of hoping you guys could help. Are you up for that? Woo!

Woo! The people have spoken. Some people have spoken, and I have pretended to listen, just like I will do when I'm in power. Beautiful. What's the first step? Well, first I need a name. I did consider the Sunil for King party.

The Sunil is a legend party. The Sunil Side Up party. You got a voter. And of course, the... Look what you lost, Sophie. I'm Prime Minister now, and I'm thriving, party. But I decided all of those were a bit. Me, me, me.

So to get elected, I need a name so bland and inoffensive. It could be a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing without so much as snogging a dancer. Go on. So the nice cup of tea party. The beers, beers, beers, beers party. The never going to give you up is a banger party. Friends is a good show,

and I don't normally love American comedy party. It's nice to see the sun, isn't it? But sometimes you just need the range. You know what I mean? party. Okay, wow. Well, just, I mean, shout out your favourites.

Okay, yeah, lovely. Thank you very much. So, the Sunil down bitches party, it is, but only because of the man on the front row insisted. He said, sorry. Now, we need a logo. I'm no artist, but I'm thinking something like this. The sassy devil emoji?

It's fresh, it's modern, and most importantly, I've already scrawled it on the back of every toilet. door in London next to my phone number. Okay. It's been a long summer. Mm-hmm. Okay, well, what exactly your policy's gonna be? Yeah, that'll be great.

You go, no, you've got nothing to worry about there, Catherine. I'm a nice guy, and I love my wife and kids. You don't have a wife and kids. What I'm saying is, I'm for the people. I have no plans. I have no plans to use this party as a Trojan horse party is a Trojan horse to install me as an all-powerful monarch ruling from the Tower of London where I'll roast beef eaters on a spit.

That's good to know and weirdly specific. And all my policies will be very popular. So banning TikTok on buses, the death penalty for landlords, automatic exile to the Isle of Shepi for anyone who puts their dog in a onesie. Huge fines for guys called Tom. That's who Sophie left me for. No ordering cocktails in a pub after 7pm This woman just this lovely woman in the front just went

I know I didn't know how to react I didn't know how to react to that I don't think selfie's real It's okay He's never had love Go on Married to the game Alright

The game is Dungeons and Dragons Go on It's to keep in touch with the lads, that's what it is. Yeah. All right. No ordering cocktails in a pub after 7pm. Adults cannot buy sticker books grow up. And anyone can park on a double yellow line for a bit.

Also, if the person in front of you in a Sainsbury doesn't have a nectar card, you get their points. Audience would both run. That's a good response. Wow, huge support for that. Okay, a good response, but aren't you worried about the opposition? No, no, no, no. I'll deal with that by sowing division and turning the voters against each other.

Let me give you a demonstration. Does anyone here drive an automatic car? Yes. I'll say it now. You are the scum of the earth and everything that is wrong with British society. All right, manual drivers, are you with me? Woo!

Oh. See? If I can turn the audience of Too Long Didn't Read into the beginnings of obeying moths, imagine what I can do with the audience of Gardner's Question Time her blood will flow. Wow, this has been upsetting. So is that all?

Almost. All I need to finish setting up my party is a leader, me, obviously. Party treasurer, that'll be you, and a nominating officer. Any volunteers? That's fine. The nominating officer, thank you. And finally, I just need 150 quid for the registration fee, Catherine.

Oh, dude, I'm not giving you any money. No, no, no. We're on the BBC for all I know, you're being paid more than I am. Right, well, okay. All right, well, anyone in the audience, anyone in the audience fancy chipping in? There's a peerage in it. And if it's in cash, I'll give you one of the silly aisles.

Britain's next leader there, everyone. Sineal Patel. It's a fascinating time and I'm eager to learn more about why all this fracturing is happening so let's break with British political tendencies and speak to an expert, shall we? Please welcome Ian Dunt, everybody.

Ian spent years covering politics from the heart of Westminster and is now a columnist, author and broadcaster. Now look, a lot of parties about it. Is there something in the water? What's going on? Why are there so many of them? It's supply and demand, really. It used to be a lot easier.

I mean, so in the 70s, people really did sort of vote according to their class and according to their parents as well. Most of the time, you would just vote however your parents voted. Especially if you're working class, you tended to vote Labor. If you were middle class, you tended to vote for the Conservatives. Over the last 50 years, that has broken down quite significantly. And over the last 20 years, and especially the last 10 after Brexit, when politics becomes much more about culture than it does about economics, those tribes

have started to shatter. And now people are willing to explore. and experiment with smaller parties in the way that they weren't before. The last election, we had under 60% of people voting for the top two parties. That's basically unheard of in British politics. It means that people's sense of loyalty has crumbled altogether. And it means the results that you're likely to get from an election are very, very hard to predict. And, okay, so the hopeful part of me wants to think that that's because people actually are more

politically engaged. They expect more representation than they've been given. Is that a possibility? If by engaged, you mean really, really angry. angry, then they're extremely engaged right now. Okay, wow, okay. And then also the thing is people just look at the country and they just think when nothing works.

They look at it in terms of the roads, they look at it in terms of the health service, they look at it in terms of education. If you start playing out the last few years from the financial crash where you see a significant impact on people's quality of life, that was like well over a decade ago. It's a really long time going through it and then being hit by Brexit, by COVID, by inflation,

by the impact of the war in Ukraine. So after a while, people, in almost any political system, if things keep on not working for you, people will always start asking questions. So what are the other options here? Like, I don't need to keep on sticking to the original brands if they're not providing me what I need. And that's the kind of dynamic,

the kind of thought process that we're seeing out there right now. Is this a passion that has happened before? Or is it... You know what, actually, in the 70s, it wasn't too dissimilar to this. You had stagflation. You had the same sort of thing, you know, trying all these economic levers. None of them are working.

And also we had a breakdown of, I'm going to say the words, you're going to hate this right now and you're going to lose half of your audience, first past the post. Okay, I was worried you would say it, yes. It's incredibly dull, but it does feel relevant. First past the post works for two-party politics.

As soon as people start thinking, well, actually I like about five different parties, as soon as they're picking between parties, like the Greens on one hand, and reform on the other, and the liberal Democrats in the middle, as well as the two main parties. And that, by the way, is an underestimate

of the number of parties that are going to be going in front of voters in a few years' time. The system can't really handle it, It starts to buckle underneath the strain. And so you get results that are very, very unpredictable. Does that mean that any of these small parties can actually threaten a win? It's possible.

Is it possible, like, is possible I could start my modelling career at 38? Or is it like possible, but not going to happen? Or is it actually possible? It's actually possible. Oh. It doesn't mean that it's likely or probable, but it's definitely possible. Okay. Like, first part of the post, punishes small parties.

really badly. What happens is you're a small point, let's say you're the Greens. And you get roughly about a million votes each election. There's a lot of votes, right? But they're never, they're never the winner in an individual seat for a long, long time. They just weren't concentrating their support in one area. So it took like over 800,000 votes for the Greens to get one MP. Parties that are concentrated in an area have a much easier time. They can win the constituency. They can win the seat. So Labor did well in cities. Tories did well in the countryside. They have like a regional focus of their political support. That works for a long time.

And then eventually, once the sort of the support for those main parties starts to crumble and spreads out, once you get this sort of real momentum behind a party, of the sort that reform might have right now, it's possible that the first pass-the-post system starts to actually help that party, that they cross over that border to actually become one of the dominant parties.

Okay. Doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to happen. You can also start to create a base for a party in parliament. Like right now, you know, with over 70 MPs, the Lib Dems are a completely different political force to what they were before the last election. With five MPs, you can see the same thing for the Greens. There is a purpose in voting people,

even though they're not going to form a government. So lots of people who want to vote Green, you know, might want to vote for a Jeremy Corbyn's party. We'll be forced to think, okay, how much do I want to do that versus how much do I want to take the risk of Nigra Farage becoming Prime Minister? And that dynamic right there, 42% of this country says that he would be a terrible PM

compared to 10% to say he'd be a great PM. Nigel Farage is disliked much more, more than you would have thought when you just read an average newspaper. All right, so reform and Greens, they're the same number of MPs, which is mad to me because it feels like reform getting an awful lot more coverage. Is that because the Greens are just inherently boring? Who gets coverage and why? Journalists have a sense of narrative, which doesn't really have anything to do with the amount

of votes that a party gets or how much support they have. Like around the world, the storyline right now is right-wing populism is ascendant. So it's Donald Trump in the US. it's Marine Le Pen in France it's Victor Orban in Hungary and that's just the storyline and so what happens is you just find what Nigel Farage fits our storyline

we want to do lots of coverage of that when it comes to the Liberal Democrats we find it's like lots of journalists just sort of thing like we don't really want to write stories about people being terribly reasonable and going to water parks we just want to write

people saying horrible things about immigrants because that is basically where the narrative is right now and on that basis you kind of get stuck into it Nigel Farage really succeeds by virtue of his ability to ride a media narrative. You want to think that British politics would be more civilised than like a night bus where it's whoever screams loudest

gets to determine who we all talk about on the way home. I would love if Westminster was as civilised as a night bus. At least they'd all be heading the same direction. That's so disappointing, though. Is that not a horrible indictment of your industry? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Well, it's your turn to ask the question.

So, before you ask your question, If you want to tell us your best policy suggestion, we'd love to hear it. Does anyone have a question? Don't be shy. Hello. Hello. What's your name? Francesca. Hi, Francesca.

Do you have a policy that you would definitely vote for? I would allow for increased taxes if I could designate where my money went to. Oh, I like that a lot. You can have my taxes if I can say where you spend them. I love it. Francesca, what's your question? The S&P obviously lost a lot of votes in the last election. There hasn't been much discussion about it.

Do we think that could rise again? with the next election potentially? Yeah, definitely. You know, it was like a difficult time for them basically having a very long period of governance where people were starting to ask questions about their performance. When Labour is actually the government in the UK, it actually paradoxically becomes a bit easier for the SMP

as the alternative form of a kind of left-wing voice. So on that, as long as you get good leadership again, we would probably expect an improved performance from them. Good question. Thank you, Francesca. Any others? Hello, what's your name? Mary. Hi, Mary. My question is, what do you think will happen?

if you stop reporting what Trump and Farage are doing and start reporting good news stories. I don't know what that would really involve. I mean, would it just sort of involve saying, here are all the planes that landed safely, and here are all the car accidents that didn't happen. I think that would be difficult for us. The idea of whether it's sort of good or bad news, I can't do that.

I'm a very naturally depressive person. I think I'd have to leave the career if I thought I had to do good news all the time. Truly, British media. I love it. Guys, what wonderful questions. Thank you so very much. Ian Dunn, everyone. Okay, so Zoe,

after all you're listening and learning and research, do you have a hero of the week? Yes, one did pop out at me, Catherine, and it is Labour MP Mark Seward. I don't know whether you heard of him, but you might now, because he's worked along a startup AI firm to create a virtual representation of himself, allowing people to ask him up for help

on local issues and policy queries, and he said this would make him more connected to the people. He's basically turned himself into a bot, and if you are a politician, I mean, ex-Torrie, Deputy Chief Whip, Chris Pincher will tell you it's better to turn into a bot than get caught touching one. Thank you. I'm trying to decide if it would make any difference

if most MPs were just robots. No, no. Okay, well, what do you think the next spin-off in the franchise of this story is? I don't think it's going to be long before there's another party coming along, because as we all know, all the best parties end up in the kitchen, don't they? Yeah? But what do you

do if you've been booted out of the kitchen? Well, hold my spatula. Because I bet it's not long before we are faced with a very real threat of the Greg Wallace party. Yeah, they'll be speaking up for misunderstood neurodivergent men of a certain age who like to film

themselves in nipple revealing vestibor Okay. Wow, what a harrowing thought. I'm certainly not hungry. I think it's a good choice. Thank you very much, Zoe Lyons. This has been Too Long Didn't Read, the show that's fun but newsy, like reading the journal entries of fellow commuters over their shoulders. Not that I would do that. But if Stephen in Reading is listening, leave her. And thank you at home for listening. See you next week. Goodbye. Too Long Didn't Read was written and hosted by Catherine Bowhart with Zoe Lyons, Sinell Patel and Ian Dundt. It was also written by Gareth Gwynne, Madeline Bressingham and John Totwell.

The producer was Alison Vernon Smith. It was a Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robinance, and we're back for a new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage. We have our 201st extravaganza, where we're going to talk about how animals emote went around trains and tunnels or something like that. I'm not entirely sure.

We're doing one on potatoes. Of course we're doing one on potatoes. You love potatoes. I know, but... Yeah, you love chips, you love mash. I'll only enjoy it if it's got curry sauce on it. We've got techno fossils, moths versus butterflies, and a history of light.

That'll do, won't it? Listen first on BBC Sounds.