The Bugle - Britain Votes For Basic Competence

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

The UK has danced with democracy - here's Andy and Mark Steel with their take on a momentous day.This all happens because you, the global public, fund it, support us here: http://thebuglepodcast.comWritten and presented by:Andy ZaltzmanMark SteelAnd produced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4310 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. I am Andy Zoltzman and this is a post UK election snap bugle. It is Friday the 5th of June. Our election was yesterday. The results came in from the 10pm exit poll through to the final concession at 1 minute to 5am and we already have a new Prime Minister. Such is the quick way that we do shit around here uh... when uh... the very rare occasions we put our mind to doing things efficiently joining me to uh... discuss it

is uh... well a veteran of many elections uh... the man who really should have been by rights should have been prime minister for most of the last twenty five to thirty years uh... mark steele welcome mark uh... so let's start with the bald facts. The Labour Party having lost the last four elections, a slightly lost count because they've been kind of... stormed to victory with 412 out of 650 seats

and failed miserably with 33.7% of the overall vote. Explain that to our listeners. Well, I think the first thing, and I think we have to be very measured about this, we have to be very considered about it, and I think that's one of the things, as we get older we're able to do that, is to just accept that probably the main issue before anything else is that on balance getting rid of a bunch of verminous gluttonous misanthropic condescending sneering feudal sociopathic obsequious, nasty, narcissistic, pig-fuck-whit dingbat, bloody, corrupt, disgusting, despicable, bastard, bloody, parsing out PPA contracts to any fucking asshole that they managed to have shagged in the last couple of weeks, telling everybody to stay indoors for God's

sake or you'll be arrested while we go off pissing it up and bloody getting barrels of beer into the back of our shitty little bloody offices and then pretending that it didn't happen and saying that we need an investigation when there's about 7,000 hours of CCT footage showing us bloody shagging each other over the table when we've bloody been telling everybody else to be eight foot apart from everybody else and appointing a Prime Minister who manages to bloody bankrupt the entirety of the country in about an hour and a half after one of the previous Prime Ministers that she f***ing replaced described anybody or appointed anybody who suggested that the library shouldn't be shut down by saying there isn't a magic money tree, there isn't a magic money tree and then finding a magic money tree and handing

it all over to the world's investors so that they could fund the bankrupting of the entire nation because everybody told her this would happen but nobody took any notice. Disgusting, over wealthy prime minister who's richer than the king shitface in wankfest Has gone and on balance I find that positive right? Yes I think that's a very good way of putting it Really? I mean it's Looking at where it went wrong for the conservatives. I guess it would be if you start with

Absolutely everything they've said and done for the last 14 years. That seems to be really the root of their issues at this election when they got absolutely obliterated. The most seat, they lost over 250 seats and only once since 1945 has a party lost over 100 seats in an election and this is, I don't know if it's an all-time record my my the data I found online only went back to about a hundred years but it's by the most seats anyone has lost at an election and they've really earned that they've really earned they have gone

out of their way as you said to do basically it's like they won that election in 2019 with Boris Johnson as leader as leader and so as i said out to they will how can we achieve the most spectacular electoral defeat in british history and they have over you know four-and-a-half years since then they have put the work in not they have really they put the work in and you don't

get result you don't get world records without it. Usain Bolt run 100 meters in 9.58 seconds in Berlin by not dedicating himself morning, noon and night. Of course not. And that's what they and I think that Rishi Sunak is very much the Usain Bolt of modern elections. I think in fact if only the people counting the votes had been a little bit sharper, he would have had to concede at 9.58 seconds after 10. 9.58 seconds is quite a high percentage of Liz Truss's time as prime minister It's funny though, isn't it that there's not a sense of jubilation Yes, a sense of relief and I think that's what I think if there's one word relief

Yes, I think that's what a lot of people have have said. Yeah, and I think it's that it's not there was a jubilation in 97 that there was a whole new world beckoning and there's not that here. Yeah. Which is good I think, sensible because you know what history teaches us is that having high expectations for anything is a recipe for pain and disappointment. Well you know, I know this is risky these days but that's very Jewish. Yeah, well we've been disappointed a lot. I mean 40 years, 40 years in the f***ing desert, Jesus. The manor wasn't even that tasty to be fair. But it's that isn't it, that they've gone and they were so, you know I think this, it that they've gone and they were so, you know, I think this sort of suggests that, you know, I could have heard some people on the left say already, well, Keir Starmer is

going to disappoint people really quickly. And I don't know if that's true because the bar is so low. All he has to do is not be caught lying and being so Dharma in his victory speech, which he gave in the turbine hall of Tate Modern, which seemed kind of appropriate, given the general levels of confusion around. Basically, it's a building where people go to stare at things on walls in a state of absolute bafflement, wondering what on earth does it all mean.

So that seemed kind of appropriate. But he said, election victories don't fall from the sky. And that is true. And Labour lost last time, albeit they lost with almost the same proportion of the vote and more actual votes than they won with this time. But in terms of election victories not falling from the sky, I think it did help Labour

to extend that analogy. The Conservatives were basically sitting in the election victory hot air balloon catapulting narwhals upwards through the canopy of that balloon. So they were helped by that. But still, you know, as you say, expectation management has been extremely successful for Labour because no one expects a huge amount. So basic competence will seem like what Boris Johnson would have called sunlit upland. I mean, Labour was boosted just before the election by the Sun newspaper, which has traditionally not been a Labour supporting paper, sort of half-heartedly endorsing it. Albeit this was a day before the election when all the polls were saying that the Conservatives had no chance. It was basically like backing the USA in the

space race just as Neil Armstrong was clearing his throat and about to step on basically to say you snooze you lose, Buzzles I'm gonna be first. And the sort of desperation in the Tories campaign was shown when Sunak and one of the last things he did as Prime Minister, he went on the, I think it was the ITV This Morning program, and announced to the nation that he really liked sandwiches. Did he? Yes, whilst being in a studio with a woman claiming to be Britain's most tattooed mum. Oh, that's where the picture went round. Oh, I wondered why. I thought she was the candidate for Kidderminster. I might have done better for the stories. That's not the most dignified moment in prime

ministerial history. Ever. Well, the thing is, in a way, there's not really anything he could have done. Because I often think it's been like we've all been in them situations, if we're standups, where it's just not working. The audience has decided long ago they don't like you. They've then gone past that and decided they're not even interested in whether to work out why they don't like you. And they are all chatting and you're up there and no one's paying any attention. Occasionally someone turns around and goes, oh, shut up, mate, will you? There's nothing you can do. You could come out with the funniest thing in the world. I told you, mate, we're talking here, right? There's nothing. I think Rishi Sunak was in that situation about a

year ago. So there wasn't really anything he could do. And then everything that he does, people just go, what now? Whereas I can imagine, you know, some of the Obama doing a sort of silly little stunt, people liked him. And so that looked like him being cool. Whereas with him, it just looks like pathetic. So I don't So I'm not trying to make excuses for him because he deserves it. Yes. Well, yeah, the way I would describe it, and I can't remember if I've mentioned this on the bugle before, but he's like a golfer. He's got a really tricky shot 250 yards into the green, crosswind, down a slope, there's

a little water feature in front of the green There's trees in the way It's sort of raining a bit and like I said tricky crosswind and He goes up to his ball gets a sledgehammer out of his golf bag and smacks the ball over and over again into the turf Shouting get in the hole and that yeah, it was a really difficult shot, but I don't think he's played it as well as he could have done. I think there was a crocodile coming up the fairway I think there was a sniper in one of the trees that would make golf a hell of a lot of better space a to sport. Oh Peter Alice he would have loved that oh dear dear dear there he goes he's on the

floor oh dear that's him here come the paramedics I think the snipers got him He would have loved that. Oh dear, dear, dear. There he goes. He's on the floor. Oh dear. That's him. Here come the paramedics. I think the sniper's got him. Dear old fellow, dear old fellow. Repeat action. Handgun. Oh, poor old soul. Find it hard to get in from there, from the operating theater. Find it hard to get in from there from the from the operating theater I'd like that and also introducing charge downs like in rugby when you're taking a kick And you know soon as you start your backswing your opponent's allowed to charge you from block I mean, it would be great television. Anyway, we digress They've got the challenge for labor even with these low expectations as well. They can hotwire the sleeping rhinoceros. That is the British economy

It's gonna be a tough job. There is essentially no money to do anything, which fits pretty well with Labour's manifesto of not doing a great deal. So I guess they've done the sums at least. For the rest of this election snap bugle, we are going to take your questions, some of you have sent in questions via the wonders of social media, and Mark and I will now answer those questions. This came from James and indeed others, and the question mark is simply Nigel Farage, what the hell?

Look, I don't think it'll necessarily end up there, but it does seem quite likely, although I don't really believe in an afterlife, but it does seem like a lively possibility. How do you explain the political phenomenon that is Nigel Farage? Well, he has shocked people. I mean, there are a number of people in the Reform Party, which is his party, which is trying to sort of, I suppose, be like one of those European parties that has replaced the traditional right-wing parties like the pens or the F in Germany, that sort of party, the ones you've got in almost every country now. And there was some surprise. Some of the candidates announced that they were shocked and that they were leaving the reform party for the conservative party because sort of footage came out of people in that party sort of making racist and homophobic comments and so on.

I can really understand that because I think that when someone has announced a Brexit campaign that they're running by unveiling a series of hoardings of lines of immigrants with breaking point run underneath it,. They've used their position as someone on the national election debate, as leader of their party, to say that the trouble with our health service is it's being overrun by immigrants who use it to come over here with AIDS. I think it's really, really shocking to find out that someone like that has got a racist side. And I really feel for those people who were taken aback. It just goes to show you never know people, do you?

Yeah. I mean, it was close in some ways because people have been flooding over here to use our health service, but as staff rather than patients. Yeah, exactly. And then they want to live here. They want bloody handouts. What we should do is they should come over here and then as soon as they finish work, go back to Syria or wherever it is they come from and then come back the next morning. But no, they don't want to do that because they don't want to integrate. That's the trouble with them.

That's the trouble. They come over here. It's like, you know, I'm a builder. Right. And the thing is, what your Polish builder does is they'll say, yeah, we're going to come round on a Wednesday. And then what they do is they come round on a Wednesday. I mean, how are we supposed to keep up with that? I mean, what we do about it is us, it's just not making it fair for us. You know what I mean? Coming over and you know what? What Labour's going to do? All them Romanians,

they all come from big, illy countries, they're going to be able to bring a mountain each. That's what's going to happen next. You'll be walking down straight to my road there'll be a bloody great Balkan mountain you have to get over to get to the post office. That's next. Well I mean I personally would welcome more mountains in this country I think it's one of our one of our weak points really certainly down here in the southeast. They're the ones with all the money all the ones in the dinghies. You look around who's got all the money, all the ones in the dinghies. You look around, who's got all the money? Poor Richie Soonat, there's nothing he can do about it, he ain't got no money. There's a bloke, there's a five-year-old clambering out of a dinghy at Folkstone.

Having just bought a Premier League football club. Yeah, exactly. Premier League football club. Yeah, exactly. Aston Villa, he's bought. He's the chair now, isn't he? I mean, how can an all-normal football club compete with a club that's owned by a five-year-old who's been trafficked? Well, this explains why they got 14% of the votes. Well, and Nigel Farage, at his eighth eighth attempt has been elected as an MP, which might, I don't know if he's going to enjoy that. I mean, any sense of form of responsibility doesn't always seem to sit comfortably with him. Well, I guess that's the one thing we've got.

Those of us who are not of the reform persuasion, one of the things we've got that can give us hope is that he probably will is that he's probably already bored of being an MP, having been one now for about half a day, and he probably will just give up. Another comic put something on social media that says the Clacton, which is where he's been elected, that the marvellous thing about living in Clacton now is that you won't see Nigel Farage for another five years. But I guess that's in our favor but we haven't got someone who's quite as efficiently, dedicatedly dangerous as Marine Le Pen or Malinian Italy. If we did have, I suspect

that they would be able to use this to possibly replace the Conservatives. I don't know, that's a big task, but it's not impossible. Is it the start of a new... they got 14% of the vote and we had a very low turnout because nothing is stronger in this country than the deep deep forces of apathy so the eight point five percent of voters all in four million votes but is that the start of a new movement or is it absolutely everyone in the country who would ever consider voting for reform UK and Farage? I don't know I mean It depends how many of the people who still voted conservative would support reform if they thought that they were the right-wing party. I don't know. I guess quite a few of them would. There's still the conservative membership. I had a couple of people going

up saying conservative people,, old type conservative people. Oh, well, at least the remaining MPs are the ones that are much more likely to be sensible and measured and moderate and aren't going to go off on one of these sort of sharabang nonsensical journeys of the likes of Sweller-Bravman. But that doesn't help them because the conservative membership is overwhelmingly the sort of people who, the last time they elected a leader it was Liz Truss, who lost, I mean, well you're a statistician, Andy, what was her defeat in Norfolk? Possibly the biggest ever, one of the biggest ever ever sort of losses from 25,000 majority.

Yes, and yeah, I mean she really had to again had to put the legwork in to be young to lose that seat. You pretty much had to ruin the country and she did that to be fair. Yes. So yeah, I mean it was truly truly extraordinary now part They that was so she was so hopeless that she lost one of the safest Tory seats in Britain ever and she managed to lose that but she was elected to be leader by the 95 year old ding bats Who are the members of the Conservative Party and they don't

regret that. They just think, well, that's because she wasn't supported and wasn't backed up in her plan to fill the sea with electric fires to stop immigrants coming over by electrocuting them all. They didn't get backed by the Bank of England because they're all woke. We were stopped by the Wokerati, people such as Gary Lineker and women and men and the Church of England and atheists, those people. If it wasn't for those. So Reform got four seats, which basically one million votes per seat and Labour on 9.6 million votes got 412 I think currently with a couple still to come that's about one every 23,000 votes.

So if we have any mathematicians listening who could possibly explain that to curious children could you write your answers down on a postcard and then shred it because it will be wrong. Let's move on to a question from Morgan. Rishi Sunak seems to have done something called conceding. Could you please give a brief primer on this for us confused Americans that are unfamiliar with this procedure? Yes, well, he did. I mean, that's he did. I mean, I think it just showed a kind of classic British negativity that as soon as they'd actually lost the election, he said

we've lost the election. I mean, that kind of accepting that you've lost when you've lost is the kind of defeatist attitude that has left this nation floundering. Well, I mean, Churchill didn't do that, did he? No. Yeah, Donald Trump, you know, all his friends. Well, he should have, Richard Soonak should have done, he should have, there's so many things he could have done that would have changed his legacy. He could have come out to concede in the pouring rain, or if it wasn't raining, by getting Liz Truss to stand behind him with a watering can over his head. And that would have been, I would have changed his legacy, but no, or he could

have said, it wouldn't have been pretty if he'd come out and said, uh, the election was fiddled, everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. It was, it was literally millions, billions, billions of votes, trillions of votes were found in a ditch somewhere. Someone told me everybody knows it, and then called upon the people of Guildford to storm Parliament. Well, we don't have that in our, you know, we've given up as a nation. Trump, you know, all those bankruptcies, he didn't accept that he was beaten,

he just got out there and kept going bankrupt in different ways, you know, all those bankruptcies, he didn't accept that he was beaten, he just got out there and kept going bankrupt in different ways. You know, he was more determined. Exactly, he put in a bit of effort. Where's Sunak's never... no evidence that he's been with a sex worker or that he paid her off. It's feeble, this is why we never win the World Cup. Yep, exactly. Because we concede elections when we lose them. Whereas in the 60s, no one conceded elections when we won the World Cup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alec Douglas, he's still there. He's still there. He still thinks his prime minister is 163. In Portugal, when the revolution happened, there was that moment when a dictator hands over to another dictator and hopes that they would be able to carry on.

I remember there was a guy called Catano who was then overthrown by the revolution in Portugal. The people around him decided that they wouldn't tell him and they kept him in his office for some time, for weeks and weeks and wouldn't tell him that he'd been deposed as president and every day they would go in and ask him what they should do today and he would give them all these orders and they'd say, certainly Mr. President and then they'd go out and just go, we're going to have to tell him at some point that he's been deposed. And it went on, I think he might have even died thinking he was still the leader, I don't know. Well I think they could have done that with Boris Johnson because really he wanted to think that he was Prime Minister,

but he didn't actually want to be Prime Minister because being Prime Minister is a f***ing difficult job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, if only they'd just indulged him with that fantasy, then... Exactly, then every morning, what's the prime minister, what should we do? Take frogs, I believe there are too many frogs and they need to be bigger and they need to be less and Wiltshire, could we put it in Sussex? Yes, we'll do that, prime minister. And then he just shouted that every day.

Yeah we've all been happy. We've got to rename the zebra and every day something like that. Toby asks when will the North when will the Richmond and North Allerton bye-bye election take place? So this is Rishi Sunak's seat Obviously, he's he's stepping down as as Tory leader not immediately. He's going to Hang on for a little while. I think whilst they bag and label everything and do the autopsy But he said he'll stay on for months or even years as local MP But he didn't specify whether those years were earth years and a year on Mercury is only 88 days long so yeah that might be what he's thinking of. Or cat years. Yeah. I think don't you think they've already booked it they've been on they've been online and they've got a flight

booked haven't they? Him and Mrs. Suen. Yeah, I think you might have a... I mean they are wealthy beyond wealthy. I think they could easily afford a body double to just sit in parliament. No, he's not going to say a lot, is he? You know, most MPs don't say a lot in parliament. Just sit there nodding and they'll be off in California somewhere. Yeah. Mightyzin asks, what are all the political satirist and comedian is going to do now that the conservative gravy train has gone off the rails what about you mark but after fourteen years of the same government i am really really looking forward to try to write some jokes about different

different government i agree with more i'm just just the difference the freshness of it is something i I'm quite excited about. Yes. I do enjoy this sort of thing, this line of argument that people make. And they go for two reasons.

First of all, it assumes that we would rather enjoy the luxury of being able to carry on writing similar jokes about the same people rather than have the country not run by a bunch of evil sociopaths. Secondly, it would possibly be a point if we could be confident that the new government was going to do everything really well and make everything lovely. But I think there's a chance that won't happen. Right. There will be stuff to fill the bugle with. I mean, obviously, this is a satirical show. We don't want Keir Starmer to have a 100% success record in everything he does. I think you'll be alright.

Yeah, I think I'll be alright. Yeah. And also the Tories will carry on providing us with entertainment because they're going to have a leadership election where they're going to decide that the problem that they had was that they weren't bat shit enough and they will they will leave no stone unturned to find the bat shittiest person they can get and that bat shit person will then stand for election by the conservative members who are not allowed to be members unless they're bat shit. Also you know what we do with the

different government more puns, so I think I'll be all right. And also, it'll be nice to do something a bit more constructive than merely shouting into a void of despair. So I look forward to that. I think they'll take notice this government. Think he'll go, the first thing we have, we have got a minister of a minister of jokes, and they're going to listen to all the jokes being made about us and we'll all have to go to a meeting and they'll say, well, what do you think we should do? And then we'll have to go into a room with Yvette Cooper and say what we think policy

should be about the fire brigade. That could work. We did have a complaint about the news quiz last year from a conservative MP who complained that the news quiz did more stuff about the government than the opposition. But to be fair, the way to rectify that was not by changing the show, but by his party being eviscerated at the next election. So he's very much achieved his goal. For people who are outside the country, it seems like a very strange business all this, but the Conservatives have gone down from, what was it you said, from 360 to 121 did they end up with. Yes. But isn't it it there's a strange sense that it's slightly disappointing it wasn't even worse for them what two figures that I mean a two-figure score would have been really like extraordinary or even like

yeah I did you have that I just saw of bit of a daydream that what if they go down to like 11 in but it though, I mean the lowest they've had in 1997 they had 165 and that was viewed as a kind of generational cataclysm for them so it's quite a lot worse than that and their vote share then was still over 30% rather than below 24%. So yeah it is but if you add the Tories and the Labour vote that only comes to about 56 percent which is comfortably the lowest ever vote. Anyway Alex asks can you rate the major parties performances and match them to a related performance by a sports team of your choice? That's a

very good question. I think that is very much in the Bugles hitting zone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Politics and sport. While the Labour, sort of a spectacular win, but in quite an unimpressive way. To me, maybe Greece winning the 2004 European Championships, playing the most utterly joyless misery football.

You could see it as that. yeah, that's very good. I mean, I was going to say, and similar lines, if, if South gates, England. Gets a miserable penalty shootout win against Switzerland after an awful nil nil draw in which not a single shot takes place and then wins the semi-final and final with a 10-man defence in which the number of people watching the final, even in England, is seven and it's so miserable and boring. And England win and people still call for Southgate's to resign, that's labour. Yep. The Conservatives, what instantly came to mind for me for the Conservative performance

as a cricket fan was England playing a test match in New Zealand in the 1983-84 winter season, and in the second test New Zealand made 307 and England were bowled out for 82 and 93 to lose by an innings and over a hundred runs and I remember the, I would have been about nine years old, but I remember hearing on the radio the tone of disgust as the reports came through on the radio, it really wasn't just dealing with cricket, it was dealing with a nation that was dying from the inside. That's what it felt like. It felt like it was beyond sport, this was a deep-seated psychological collective traumatic failure. So I'd see that. Or perhaps Windy Wobbler, who is a famous horse that ran the Grand National in 1934 and fell at every single fence and just got up, carried on

going around, ended up an absolute, I mean it didn't actually happen, but you know had it happened then I think that would have been this conservative campaign basically just 30 fences Going down at every single one and finally the top Pauline of mercy comes out just yards from the finish line Yeah, or a game of Monopoly in which one player Go tries to sell off Just takes the water works in the electric company and tries to sell it to their next door neighbors who aren't even playing. And then takes all the money and is told to come back and then does a dump on the board.

I mean, I think that is basically what has happened with this government, the way that they've dealt with public utilities. Reform? What have they done? They've sort of The old there that aren't they a bit leads in the 1970s they just kick and Bring people down a hat people down the referees try to tell them that that's uh, they're not allowed to do that And then they claim that they're being victimized Yep

that could work oraw, who was a tennis player in the 1970s who went on court with a chainsaw. And he never actually won any matches, but he really caused a big rumpus. Violation for sawing the net in half. He had a very tempestuous match with Ili Nastasi one year I believe out on court too. The Green Party were like a team that manages to just stay up like Bradford Ski that year. Everybody likes them in the end. They got I think 6.8% of the vote, nearly 2 million votes again for four seats, which is great for the Green Party, but wildly underrepresented if you are a fan of objective mathematics,

but such as the one as well, electoral system. This question was from Claire says, how does Andy feel about the change in the constituency he grew up in? Well, that was Tombridge Wells. How does andy feel about the change in the constituency he grew up in well stumbridge wells and when i was growing up in thomas world mark in the nineteen eighties you considered a bit of a lefty if you only voted conservative once at an election. conservative since I think around about 18,000 BC when the first evidence of human life in the area was found. They found the remnants of what appears to be a woad covered rosette from around about 18,000 BC and they managed to lose the conservatives. They lost Tombridge Wells by a fairly significant much about 8,000 votes a little Democrats were ahead and

That just makes me question everything about my entire life You know as a as a someone who grew up on the mean streets of Tombridge well mean Sorry private streets of Tombridge Wells It's you know, it's very hard to I feel that all the certainties of my existence have been stripped away from me by the fact that But I feel that all the certainties of my existence have been stripped away from me by the fact that Tamarish Wells did not vote conservative. What the f**k has happened to this world? I suppose that's the opposite side of the coin of Blythe, which for people who don't know Blythe, it's about 12 miles north of Newcastle.

It was a shipbuilding and mining town. It was the very essence of the Labour movement. And at the last election went conservative and I suppose this is the good Lord restoring balance. Is that what it is? Yes, I guess so. Because at Umbridge Wells it's to the conservatives what Blythe was to Labour I guess. Electrical Karma. Electrical Karma, yeah. That's what won it for Buddha, what won it,

but truly there are no certainties in life anymore. If the Tundra is going to lose Tumbridge Wells then anything is possible in both a positive and negative way for our species. That's quite exciting isn't it? Yeah. Claire also asked how many wickets will Jimmy Anderson take in the first test? So the first test of the summer next week England plays West Indies Jimmy Anderson is retiring after that test first played for England in 2003 I Mean, I hope he takes 13 wickets in the match Because that would take him to 1000 in all international 700 in tests so far

Plus a load in what one day isn in a few in t20s I think I mean we're losing some of the greatest sports people of modern British times at the moment Mark Andy Murray is bowing out of tennis at a very emotional I know you've you've followed his career with great yes I've tried to adopt him several times but I don't know there's all sorts of officialdom that's just beyond me. Yeah, but I don't know what we're going to do without these... basically I think Jimmy Anderson and Andy Murray have pretty much been holding this country together for almost 20 years. Both of them going almost

simultaneously. Well, Ronnie O'Sullivan's keeping going. He's one of the sort of growing crowd of sporting political activists. Yes. But he didn't endorse Labour this time. No, in fact, not only did he not endorse Labour, but Pfizer Shaheen, who was sacked by the Labour Party as the candidate, even though she produced one of the best results, one of the sixth best result for Labour at the last election, she was sacked by Labour this time as a candidate, stood then as an independent against Labour. And as a result of there being two Labour candidates

in effect, the official one and the unofficial one, they both got 12,000 votes and Ian Duncan Smith won the seat with 18,000 votes. For anyone abroad, this system must seem so bonkers, but that's how it works. It must seem like something you read about that took place in 1237 until the Barons went. Such tomfoolery with mathematics cannot be permitted. It was put right, but no, we're still waiting for it to be put right. Ronnie O'Sullivan backfires this year. He was a very gutsy thing for him to do really as a sort of superstar sportsman. Yeah. And Linnecker and all sorts of people, Gary Neville and Murray and his mum.

Andy, can I just start on Jimmy Anderson? Jimmy made his test debut in the Blair government. Yes. And there are no test crick under the in the Blair government. Yes. And there are no test cricketers in the England team who survived Brown. The, the next, the next longest serving cricketer is a best though, who is now dropped, who is a Cameron one. Right. So we only have a handful of Cameron era international test cricketers left. That's how long it has been since we have had a Labour

government. That puts everything in a kind of perspective that I can understand. When did Root start? He made his debut in late 2012 in the fourth test in India. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that. In fact, being a rocket scientist, you'd probably know other things of considerably more importance and use. But that's, yeah, so he was a Cameron. Finally, this comes from Filske.

In the pantheon of photos of losing ministers standing dejectedly on a stage at a provincial leisure centre next to someone dressed in a ridiculous outfit, where do you rank Jacob Rees-Mogg, stood next to Bake Bean Balaclava man? Where does that sit on your Portillo index? So 1997, Michael Portillo, cabinet minister, lost his seat in the, I mean, that was really the sort of the the most memorable moment of that particular Tory catastrophe. But Jacob Rees-Mogg, and if you don't know about him, we have talked about him quite a bit on the show over the years, lost his seat and was standing next to a man with a baked bean balaclava on.

And well, that's the great thing with British politics. And we had Rishi Sunak standing there with Count Binface in his constituency, or Binfache, I think, is he Italian? I forget. And I mean, that's, you know, it does bring a bit of humility to the, you know, the arrogance of politics. Do you think he got cross, Bruce Morgub? This impertinence is simply bringing an entire democratic process into disrepute. One does not wear a balaclava in such somber occasions. It is impudent. And then he said it all in lattice, Vassilis visilis balaclavia baitbenius. As anyone would know, but no doubt you were an attendant

of Harrow rather than one of the superior schools and therefore not concomitant with that which is democratic within our own constitution. You're f***ing lost, mate. They don't have this in any other country, do they? No, I think they've all grown up. Would you think that Hitler would ever have risen to power if in the 1928 election, and I was returning officer for Munich West, Hitler, a Nazi party, hair pedal bin. Eek bin, I'm pedal bin! Oh God, how can anyone take Hitler seriously when he stood next to a man with a pedal bin on his head? Well, on that note, I think we should leave this election. We will cover the aftermath in future Bugles, the next of which will be in about 10 days time. Thanks enormously to you, Buglers,

for your questions. Thanks to Mark Steele. As always Mark, anything to plug? Oh not really. Well Mark Steele's in town, it's on BBC Sounds these days and so there's a sort of longer version of the show where I go around a town all the time and then I'm all rude about it but I don't mean to be and there's um so that's out there's a new series of that the first two have been out and they're going out by the time you hear this maybe the third one will have been out and uh your podcast which oh and podcast what the f is going on yeah yeah which you're on which I'm on there there's an election special this week where we're talking about the election yes and people abroad must be absolutely fascinated they must be like please please tell us more about the about the absurdities and the iniquities of the British electoral

system well there you go buglers don't forget to buy your tickets to my tour show which begins in November details at andyzoltzman. Don't forget to buy your tickets to my tour show, which begins in November. Details at andyzaltzman.co.uk. To join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme, to help keep the show free, flourishing and independent, and to get access to the global exclusive monthly Ask Andy show, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button. Until next time, goodbye!