The Bugle - Bugle 292 – A career defining election

Episode Date: May 8, 2015

What have you done Britain? What have you done? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dancelaguard fans, you will be thrilled to know a book is coming out if you fund it via Unbound. We are publishing the Dancelaguard Reader by Alice Fraser and Dancelaguard, a glorious insight into the world of Dancelaguard, self-published romance maven, and online bestseller. If you would like to find out how to support it, go to thebugelpodcast.com. If we get enough support, we will publish the book. That's a real thing that's going to happen. Thebugelpodcast.com to a real thing that's going to happen. TheBuglePodcast.com to support the Danciler Guard Reader. This is a podcast from TheBuglePodcast.com. The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, we're Uglars and welcome to Bugle Issue 292. I am Andy Zoltzman reporting live and exclusively for the Bugle from the post-electural mayhem of London where the British electorate has chewed up its ballot papers, spat them out and made them into a giant paper mache middle finger aimed directly at the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats and joining me from his political refuge in America where he's hunkering down for the bleak years ahead. It's the man who's the part different Britain has sport what has now said to be ten years of Tory rule. It's the 21st century Margaret Fadger himself.

John Oliver. Hello Andy. Hello, Hughglers. Andy, what the f*** just happened over there? What the f*** did you just do? I have never, ever been happier not to be there. I could not be, except I still feel too close. I could be an astronaut in space looking down and thinking, oh shit that looks bleak. I mean obviously it's a majestic glow but that little bit over there looks

fucking bleak. It's been a interesting night for British politics certainly. This is bugle 292 coincidentally, that's the number of party leaders who have resigned in the last three hours as we record. Also, the 292, the expected number of decades, it'll take the Liberal Democrats to recover from their five-year fausty unpack with government. Also, 292, the percentage of the British population who will never believe an opinion poll again. And I think John, this is the one thing that has truly, truly emerged from this election. Is that whatever else we lose in Britain and you know, we may not truly know what we are as a nation, any more in a rapidly changing world, we may be unsure of what we are politically,

ethically, spiritually. But we always know we are the best nation in the world at lying to opinion pollsters. There was absolutely nothing we will not do to tell an opinion pollster that we're going to vote in a way that we have absolutely no intention of doing. The world is the world. And this is for the weekend, and in Friday, the 8th of May 2015. Very interesting anniversary.

This one is zero years exactly since the day that British politics went stark raving bonkers. A quick section. There have been a commemorative audio pull-out of the most used phrases of last night's election nights one. I'm not prepared to speculate. Two is too early to comment. Three, these things have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Four, yes, it is starting to appear that way. Five, shit, shit, holy shit, and six, s***, seriously s***, that section in the bin. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music I'm sorry this week UK election news seriously. What the f*** just happened? What the f***? I mean, what the f***?

But it cause you were, it's what the f***. And what the f***? If you live anywhere on earth that is not the United Kingdom, then frankly, congratulations in a significant lasting way, because I'm guessing that the UK is a pretty depressing place to wake up this morning, unless, of course, you're an asshole, but then, assholes always wake up happy, Andy, after all, they are assholes.

I would sincerely hope that many unexpectedly many people in Britain woke up this morning with an emotional hangover thinking, oh no, what did I do yesterday? Only to look at a stubby pencil on their pillow and scream, oh shit, please say a little conservative, I'll please say, not again, not again, Lord. After a five week campaign of shallow, cynical fear mongering, the UK managed pretty effectively to exhibit many of the worst facets of the human condition. It really was a tasting menu of tWatery on all sides.

And the election was by all, literally all polls expected a result in a hung parliament, and hugging the truest sense in that democracy was supposed to attach a noose around its neck and attempt to kick the chair out from underneath its switching feet. But either the polls were all wrong, or there was a last minute swing to the Tories.

Essentially the polls suggested that basically people had said to pollsters they would not punch themselves in the balls, they would absolutely not do that. Then they went into the polling booth, and two minutes later came out icing their genitals. That's in a nutshell what has happened. Because the end result is that the conservatives have won the election and David Cameron is once more head boy of the country. Head boy is back. Yeah, yeah.

Now I found it pretty depressing to watch from thousands of miles away, Andy. How did it look at point blank range? Well, I mean, he's talking now. He's talking now. He's talking now. He's talking now. and it's almost worse with the sound down. Well, he's a really happy face. He's moving. You don't hate it when it's quite smooth. So I'm guessing you're not happy with the results there. Well, obviously he's a safe pair of hands to guide the country off the cliff. That's right.

They don't want to finish the job of finishing the country. That's all they've asked for and all they've got. As you say, it is the lunchtime after the morning, after the night before, which in turn followed the day, the previous morning, five weeks of almost exclusively infantile campaigning, and five years of government that has put Britain back on track or sent Britain careering towards long-term disaster or both, depending on your viewer Britain tracks and disasters. And it took me a lot that swing in the ballot box. And I think this was the key factor. I think it will become to be known as the Miller Band swing.

And I reckon that was worth a good five or six percent, maybe even 50 or 60 percent, caused by people in polling stations, getting their pencils of democratic destiny in their hand, looking at their ballot papers, thinking about the kind of future they want for the country, for their children, the kind of role they want Britain to have in the world, the kind of ethics they want to have at the heart of our society. And then picturing Ed Milliband walking out of the door of 10 Downing Street or sitting

down at a G8 summit and thinking to themselves, no, definitely, definitely no. And I think that has been the single crucial factor. David Cameron had asked in a build up to the election. He said this, when you're in the polling booth, ask yourself on the things that matter in life, who do you really trust, suggesting that the answer was him, which it clearly isn't. I mean, well, I'm thinking about the things that truly matter in life i can't do that in a polling booth john because i cannot vote for wisdom crooked as all men i can my mother wasn't standing but it certainly was not david camera but i think what what happened is it was david camera not necessarily a positive way

but in a negative way that it was less not him that it was definitely not ed milliband and he's uh... he's resigned just about an hour before he started recording officially resigned uh... about five banned and he's resigned just about an hour before we started recording officially resigned About five days after he basically resigned when he unfailed an eight-foot-high stone With six labor pledges on it. It was like a fucking gravestone with a preemptive epitaph of his inevitably broken dreams and Resignations flattened a Nick Clegg is resigned Nigel Farage as as I'm hearing rumors that the Queen might have just got a bit carried away with it all

and the excitement of the occasion. But it's hard to see what Miliband was thinking when he to be. I don't know if you might not have seen it, but you haven't been following this election closely. It was an eight-foot-high concrete slab, basically, with six incredibly nebulously-worded, pointless promises on it, signed by Ed Miliband, carved into the stone, in handwriting that look he missed a couple of years of crucial education, with a gap at the bottom as if they'd got six policies down and thought,

oh, what the f**k, no one's gonna read this far. Let's leave some space for the inevitable graffiti telling us to go f**k ourselves. And it's hard to think what he was thinking, John, as if Millibar was thinking there and he had a bit of a bump in the poles and he was doing alright, he was neck and neck. As if he thought to himself, maybe I was just getting bored of the novelty of appearing even vaguely electable and decided to get back to Ed Millibar's basics. To do something, that would make people look at him, then think about Downing Street and

once again say, no, definitely, definitely no. And the way you stood in front of this ed stone, you were expecting to say, dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the sad passing of microdability and of the Labour Party as an election-winning force snatched away from us after a long and painful illness. As we were called now, David Cameron has just left his audience with the Queen and I would think that even she would see him walking the door, give a deep sigh of matter, oh f**k it's you again for another five years. I honestly don't know if I can f**king do this. Charles, you're up.

I'm out. I can't look at his face. It's just off putting the round. Many analysts are saying this is a fundamental shift in the landscape of the UK. And I guess specifically that that landscape is gonna shift from rolling green hills to a mountain of festering shit.

In fact, there seems to be a sense that the UK, as we know it, may not be much longer for this earth. The United Kingdom may have to put the United part of its name in inverted commas, because if the election results at any guise, the UK is about to carve itself up like a self-harming turkey. I think basically, the UK is probably finished, isn't it? As you say, the Labour Party was beaten more heavily than expected. And the liberal Democrats are covering like the Northern White's rhinoceros, and they're not technically extinct yet, but they probably need to be taken into captivity

and bred very carefully over several decades if generations of the future are to see them in the wild again. Absolutely, the S&P was not so much a curveball in this election. Well, well, it was a curveball that basically swung inviciously to smack the batter firmly in the nut sack before turning out not to be a ball but a hand grenade. And it as as you say thrown everything into a

state of almost total electoral chaos. So we have a situation where the SNP have won I think 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland. Labour have one, conservatives have one, David Cameron proudly said, we held on in Scotland. Well, well fucking done. Tories, you fucking love that country so much. You kept the one, the one seat that Scotland dain't to give you. I suppose it's like if you've made a man wearing nothing but a pair of underpants. And then you meet him again five years later and he's still wearing the same underpants you could either think he's got to be disappointed with that or you could think that I could have been worse

particularly if he's in a fashion contest that afternoon against someone he really doesn't like who five years ago is wearing a decent quality lounge suit with a neutral, I'm not really neutral, but he made this glorious slip of the tongue. They really kind of left us in no doubt as to what this election was all about. He said just a few days before, the vote, he said this is a career defining, sorry, country defining election. And John, for me, that is the most Freudian slip, a career politician like Cameron can make. It couldn't have been any more

of a Freudian slip. If you just put on a pair of tight fitting underpants with a picture of his mother on, boom, I'm not sure there's enough Freudian slip joke. Or okay, let's go with the second Freudian slip joke. It couldn't have been any more of a Freudian slip. If you'd asked a 20th century British painter renowned for his fleshy nudes to play cricket and field next to the wicket keeper. For our American listeners, slip is the position next to the wicket keeper and Freud was a painter who painted big nudes.

Thanks very much, that joke really kept me going through the dark night. Apparently, Cameron has referred to this as his sweetest victory, and is there any more alarming canary in the coal mine as his face being happy, Andy. When he's happy, something absolutely unspeakable has just happened. And in the speech that he was just wrapped up, he said, this is a country with unrivaled skills and creativeness.

And yeah, as you say, Andy, seemingly outlying to bolsters. What happened? What the fuck just happened, Andy? Why does say something? So are you allowing about our democracy? That's the conservatives have been returned with a small majority, but they are a party that people are too embarrassed

to admit that they're planning to vote for in a completely anonymous poll. They're to to vote for in a completely anonymous poll. They're to even a total anonymity. They cannot bring themselves to say to another living, breathing, human being. I'm going, hey, that's extraordinary. And it's a really, really bizarre situation that Cameron, previously the partially elected Prime Minister, has served back into Downing Street on a tidal ripple of moderate public acceptance as the least irritating option available. With an underwhelming democratic mandate, you got 36% of the vote. That's basically exactly the same as last time on a fairly pissball 66% turn out. So he's basically got around about a quarter of the possible vote he could have gone. Good have got just over 50% of the seats.

So basically he's just as popular stroke unpopper as he was in 2010, just a bit luckier with the system. It's not exactly a ringing endorsement, more, just about all audibly tinkling endorsement, which is considerably better than anyone expected. And I think he's real, the key thing he did in this campaign, the absolutely crucial match winning gambit he did was having Ed Miliband as the Labour leader, who I'm sure I've said it on this podcast before, not so much an iron fist and a velvet glove as a shit fist in a toilet paper glove. So what was it that that really made people vote in this way? Well a lot of people said it's

you know it's been a great great election for the British skirmongering industry. It's show we're still right at the top of the global game when it comes to that go team GB. But I'm not sure it's so much that the British public voted against the fear, particularly the spectacularly mungered fear of the Scottish National Party, essentially charging South covered in woad, burning York to the ground and asking for William Wallace's

testicles back. Must stop reading British newspapers. But I think there's more, run the threat of Scotland shattering the union and destroying the entire planet as we've been told they definitely wanted to do. It was more the threat, John, if there was a really indecisive result of having to have another election just months away.

I think it was the thought of another four weeks of bleats and counterbleetes that made people think I've just got a vote in whatever way makes that not happen. That's, that is my only duty to this country, vote to stop any more elections happening. And one thing I would like to say to Mr Cameron is, I don't know if you follow this election closely, John, but at every available opportunity, he has rolled his sleeves up for no discernible reason. And I'm not going to tell Cameron how to do his job. But please, if I may issue one message from the bugle to the new government, it's, roll

your fucking sleeves down. I know it's probably been run through a focus group that said that rolling your sleeves up makes you look business like bullshit. It might make it, maybe you've been told by the posters that if you're only sleeved up eight people in Northampton are slightly less likely to vote Labour, but it makes you look like you and any moment you're expecting to be called away to a farm to deliver a fall or slay an Eater Lobster in front of your old mates from school, either or probably, but almost certainly, the latter. And also John, more importantly, if at any point in your career as prime minister of the United Kingdom, you find yourself having to roll your sleeves up, you are doing

your job wrong, you are definitely the only situation in which that would happen is if you're having to clear up after a botched hit on someone. That should not happen, you should have people to do that for you. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa swear now, when do you swear? What are you waiting for? I'm f**king... A camera that is barefaced balls remain as barefaced and ballsy as ever before, claiming that the result was a positive response to a positive campaign rather than a kind of neutral response to a negative campaign. And he said his party can now offer quotes real hope to people in our country. John, the led is still hot on the ballot papers. The corpses of his rivals are still warm on their

career slabs and already the morning off the election offering hope to the people of our country. It is a humiliating political U-turn, John, absolutely humiliating. There was a huge amount of tactical voting, it seems, because of our curious electoral system, but basically renders most votes, not so much an expression of democratic opinion, as practice at accurately writing an X in a small box, which I'm very useful life-gilded have. There's been quite a lot of votes swapping, people going online and swapping votes with people in other constituents, you say if they vote, you know, part of the common in their constituency, they find someone who's in a

similar situation, they swap each other's votes. So they have vote kind of counts. And I did this, John, I couldn't decide between the parties, they all seem to be in favor of good stuff and against bad stuff, and I couldn't be after the small prince. But I'm hugely opposed to Islamic state. So I went online and found the guy in Mosul. And so he is going to vote against Islamic states in the next election in which he can try and vote them out.

But he's a massive, massive fan of Nick Clegg. So I voted Liberal Democrat for him. Huge fan. For Labour, John, it's a total an utter catastrophe. Ed Miliband appeared to be a frankly baffling choice at the time. Now, baffling is looking extremely generous away from putting it. But it was a quite remarkably high tariff feet of political gymnastics, John for Labour, in which they managed to basically do worse

than they did under Gordon Brown in terms of seats, and only very slightly better in terms of vote share. And this was worse than when they went to the polls with one of the least popular prime ministers of all time, probably in any country, in the aftermath of a catastrophic economic downturn following 13 years of increasingly unpopular government, to have matched that or even worsted it that you have to admire the effort and application that has gone into making themselves as unelectable as humanly possible. Tristram Hunt, the Labour MP, said these remarkable words, Ed Miliband has exceeded expectations.

I guess could feasibly be true if your expectations were that you would dress up in a pansemaim lending outfit and book the Queen and family a one-way ticket to Siberia, which would be to be what some of the newspapers seem to be. For me, Miliband was as bad as convincing as a political leader as Dracula would be as a vegan. It just didn't ring true. In fact, scientists, I'm just reading today, scientists from a high-tech lab have claimed that they've done some research and found that if Labour had elected a vat of cabbage soup instead of Miliband, they would have only got three fewer seats and would in fact have received 140,000 more votes nationally.

That's a lie, but the point does basically stand. I guess the only positives for Labour is that other parties did very badly as well, as we've mentioned the Liberal Democrats, but basically Nick Lakers turned out to be pretty much like Leica, the Cosmodog, when he did the day that he joined the Coalition. That was very much like us sitting in the cockpit thinking, well,

this is my one chance, but realistically, it's not going to end well. And long term, they're probably aren't going to be many dogs in space. Other parties have been, there was a very just point of result in Bermancy for the Republican Socialist Party, only 20 votes, both George W. Bush and Joseph Stalin reported to be very disappointed with the result. And UKIP, the great UKIP revolution did not come to pass

in terms of seats. There were only one seat Nigel Farage, their leader, also resigned having not won his seat, but they did score about 12% of the votes. For one seat, John, the Greens, I think, heading for about 4%, is that, right Chris, you've got the latest result there. So between them 16% of the votes. For one seat, John, the Greens, I think, heading from about 4%, is that, right, Chris, you got the latest result there. So between them 16% of the votes, two fucking seats.

What, I don't like UKIP, I fundamentally disagree with them on everything, partly because, yeah, I like the idea of immigration and I cannot trace my bloodline back to before the Romans came, so I'm not a really a true Brit. But it is, I mean, that's about 3,3,5,5,5, which is the equivalent of half of London or three quarters of Scotland or greater Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff and Tombridge Wells combined. But they might be disappointed. I think part of the reason they didn't do as well as maybe they hoped was

because basically over the last four weeks, if the day ended in the syllable day, you could be pretty sure that you could just have to suspend someone for saying something absolutely f***ing dreadful. And recently, that guy in the Hampshire Northeast constituency who said and he was up against an Asian Tory candidate called Jai Wardener. And the UK was filmed on a hidden camera saying that if this guy became Britain's first Asian Prime Minister, he would personally put a bullet between his eyes. It's very hard to spin that in a positive way politically.

And Jai Wardenner said he was shocked that someone with Mr Blaise views could be selected as a UKIP candidate. How can you possibly be shocked by that? I thought you could have done over recent. That's why being shocked when your toast pops out of the toaster. I'll know the funny machine by the bread been made a scary noise help help help help. Just some more results coming in now the conservatives says a lot of few results are conservatives of hell tumbridge world that's the first result from the 2020 election. LAUGHTER BELL RINGS That speuglers is all from this week's election special,

but I think we both need to go and have a bit of a lie down and think about what we've done or not done. It's just terrible, it's terrible. It's just terrible. It's just very bad. But the recovery, John. They're recovery. We've had, I mean, no one's noticed it. Apart from people who are already rich enough not to have noticed anything they need to recover from, but it's still, it's recover. The newspaper, all those newspapers,

with all their foreign billionaire Tycoon owners, I can't all possibly be wrong, can they? Oh God, it's bad. Yeah. I mean, it's just really bad. Yeah, our newspapers have really, really disgrace themselves in this election. I think the concept of journalistic objectivity is that that can now be put in the British museum with all the other shit we stole from overseas. It's hard to limbo under a bar that low as well.

Managed it. they're increasingly surprisingly flexible Anyway, buglers Happy happy election If if if if that's your bag. I mean we all love democracy. Yeah, so oh dear out here Thank you for listening, Buglers, until the bright new dawn next week when it turns out that the whole thing was a forgery, all faked in a studio in Texas, and you can see the flags

moving in the background. Until then, goodbye to keep your emails coming into info at theBugelPodcast.com. Don't forget to look at our SoundCloud page, SoundCloud.com slash the hyphen Bugel. Until next time, goodbye. Farewell. See you in Berlin. you