The Duran Podcast - Starmer hangs on. Merz collapse

Episode Date: October 12, 2025

Starmer hangs on. Merz collapseThe Duran: Episode 2360

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in the UK. And perhaps we can also touch on the situation in France and the crisis that plagues Emmanuel Macron and how he's trying to buy some time to sort things out. But let's start things off with the UK. The conservatives had their party conference. And is that what it's called? Their party conference. Yes. And the photos that I've seen were pretty amazing in that there was no one there.

It seemed like there was no one there attending this party conference. But reform is rising. The Conservative Party is sinking. But Stammer is still around. And not only is he still around, but he's pushing for digital IDs and all kinds of other things. So what's the situation in the UK of the moment? Stommer is indeed pushing for digital IDs. He's telling everybody that because India has digital IDs, we should have them too, and because

they've been such a huge success in India, that proves what a great and good idea digital IDs is. Now it's very interesting because opinion polls before Stama proposed digital IDs showed that in the abstract, before people understood what they were, there was a majority of people in Britain who rather supported the idea of digital IDs. The moment Stama himself proposed it, support for the idea of digital IDs collapsed and now there is a clear, clear majority of people against it. It demonstrates again the enormous distrust that exists within British society against Kyr Stama. He only has to propose something even when that thing appears to be popular for support

for it to collapse. Of course, it is also true that now that this idea is there on the agenda, and people are beginning to figure out what it actually means and what it is all about, people are becoming worried and increasingly negative about it. But anyway, Stama is there. He continues to administer Britain. I don't say he governs Britain, but he's still there. The next big thing for him is the government's budget, which is due to be announced at the end of October. There is huge uncertainty as to what is going to come from that. Nobody seems to believe that this government, the Stama and his finance minister, Rachel Reeves, are going to be able to come up with any plan that either gets on top of Britain's fiscal crisis

or provides a real program to bring back growth to the British economy. But the big topic at the moment within the political class in Britain is not Starmer for once. It is the Conservative Party. Now, I think I have to say a few things about Britain and the political system in Britain. Remember, Britain has no written constitution. It is a very strange system that we have in Britain, where everything works through understandings and conventions where there are certain institutions like Parliament itself, which exist and operate within the system and which have immense power.

one of the traditional institutions of the British state, going all the way back to the 17th century, a institution that has always existed and which has been immensely powerful, has been the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party is not just a political party in the sense that you have political parties around the world. it has been itself a major political institution in Britain, and it has held power in Britain. Well, not continuously, I mean, held government office, not continuously, but mostly in Britain, since the reign of George III. Far more often than not, if you went to Britain, the Prime Minister was drawn from the Conservative Party and had the support from the various institutions and political blocks that make up the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party was bound up with all of the other institutions that make up British power,

the civil service machine, the system of clubs, for example, that you find in London, which are very much part of the political nation in Britain. And the Conservative Party is collapsing. The party of Churchill, of Disraeli, of Margaret Thatcher is imploding. They've just had their annual conference, as you absolutely rightly said. Hardly anybody turned up. There was no political energy to speak of. The Conservatives spoke to mostly empty halls, the leadership of the Conservative Party,

spoke to mostly empty halls. They are polling at around 15%, which is catastrophic. And it seems that people continue to drift away from them. And in an absolutely surreal thing, which has attracted a huge amount of attention. Whilst the conference was underway, they decided to celebrate Margaret Thatcher's 100th birthday, which is an odd thing to do anyway, in my opinion, for a political party. But one of the ways they did it was that they set up a post box inside the conference where you could write letters to Margaret Thatcher and post them to her,

disregarding the fact that she is, of course, dead. I mean, it was very strange and it reinforced the impression of a party that is completely living in the past and has no real connection with what is happening in Britain today. So they have come up with some ideas. They've suggested lowering taxes on sales of homes. It's an idea. but of course it's an idea that Nigel Farage and Reform, which is eating up the Conservatives for breakfast, they're just going to take it over. They're going to take it over and they're going to be much more convincing about it

because Nigel Farage will say, well, look, you've come up with this idea, it's a nice idea, but you had 14 years of government until last year. Why didn't you do this then? Why didn't you do this before? What are your other answers and solutions to Britain's problems? So we have a Labour Party that is polling around between 17 and 20% of the vote. We have a Conservative Party that is polling around 15% of the vote. We have other parties on the left or centre left, like the Greens, the Liberals that are polling at a

same sort of level. And then we have reform, which is searching and is eating the votes or the electorates of the other two main parties, Labour and Conservative. It's eating into them. It's winning over working class voters and it's steadily making inroads amongst the suburban middle classes that once upon a time used to be the bedrock of support for the Conservative Party. So this is in Britain now an extraordinary moment and not one that I have ever seen. All right. So what's going on in France? What's Macron up to? It looks like we're not going to get elections. Parliament elections, not presidential elections, but it looks like Parliament elections have also been called off. Well, what Macron is doing, and it is entirely predictable, this is playing for time.

Remember when we discussed him last, we said that, you know, one looked for a time when we had no more tricks and manipulations and dodges and that kind of thing. But of course, with Macron, he lives for that kind of world. It's always about manipulations and tricks and dodges and that kind of thing. So, of course, what he's done, he's Prime Minister Lerkerneau, has told him I can't form a government. I'm resigning. So Macron tells him, well, I'm giving you 48 hours to try and cobble together a coalition. So Le Corneux goes away and then comes back after 48 hours and tells Macron, well, you know, I haven't actually managed it myself.

And maybe I don't really want to be prime minister. And apparently I'm not going to remain prime minister, whatever happens. But I've had some success. I've found some people in the parliament who might be willing to work in a government, in a new government. So why don't you just propose another prime minister, as it the fourth or the fifth, I can't remember now? And we can try this all over again. The problem is that even on the basis of the figures for deputies that Leucoigne is talking about, They're well short of a majority.

Basically, we're talking about Macron's own centrist bloc. The republicans, which is the central right party, which Michel Barnier once belonged to, and a few other groups on the centre and perhaps the socialists. But the national rally and the left are not part of this. And I can't really see why this should be. more successful than all of the other governments or prime ministers that Macron has proposed previously. So we're going to have, and it's entirely what you would expect of Macron, an unending prolongation of this crisis, yet another prime minister, yet more talk. This time

it's going to be different. The prime minister is going to succeed where all of the other Prime ministers have failed. We're going to have the whole dreary business drag on, certainly until the new year and perhaps beyond. And of course, France, in the meantime, is going to sink into deeper crisis and things are just going to go on getting worse in France. By the way, in Germany, things are only a little better. Mouts, of course, has only recently become Chancellor. His massive programme for government debt and spending is about to strike. I mean, we're now going to start getting things moving there.

But already he is becoming increasingly unpopular. The IFDA is now firmly established as the most popular party in Germany, according to the opinion polls, and we're having reports floating around that there are discussions about raising the retirement age in Germany to 73. So this is the same malaise in Britain, in France, and Germany that we are seeing right across Europe. In Germany, there are now cuts being proposed for social security, even as of course the government continues to fund Ukraine to the tune of 9 billion euros a year. Yeah, the bottom line to what's going on here, whether it's Macron in France or Mertz in Germany,

is that they have to remain in power in order to keep the money flowing to project Ukraine in order to keep the European Union on track to get digital IDs and all of that stuff in place. digital currencies, Draghi's plan for the European Union. They can't risk having any other party come into power, whether it be Le Pen, whether it be Aved, and we don't even know how Le Pen is going to be. We've said it many times. Maybe Le Pen is more like an Orban, but maybe, and quite possibly, she's more like a Maloney. But either way, they can't take that risk. So what Macaron is trying to do is he's trying to get everything to 2007. He's going to try to drag this out in 2007.

Who cares if it hurts France? Who cares if it hurts the French citizens? They don't care about that stuff. And Mertz is much of the same. Mertz is going to continue on this course of economic meltdown for Germany and de-industrialization for Germany, while at the same time sending money to Project Ukraine and trying to build up the German military, to turn Germany into a military power because the plan is digital ID, digital currency, project Ukraine, conflict with Russia.

Yeah, I mean, that is exactly what it is. It's the same in Britain too. I mean, whether Stama stays or goes, there's not going to be an election in Britain anytime soon because the Labor Party has a very big majority. It may be deeply unpopular, but it will cling on, because it's got to implement the same policy in Britain. However unpopular it is, however much trouble for Britain, for the people of Britain, it causes. And the extraordinary thing is that they're prepared to do that despite the fact that their political movements, their own political movements, are being destroyed in the process. You would have thought that the Labour Party would be seeing what has happened to the Conservative Party, and would we say, well, for heaven's sake, let's not

go there. Let's chart a change of course. But no, they will continue on the same course that has brought the Conservatives in Britain to the point of destruction. You know, just a final thought. Who cares if this destroys their own political movements or their own political parties, if it destroys labor or the conservatives, or if it destroys the CDU or Macon? or anything like that. Because they may be thinking at the end of the day, if we can get this to 2027 and beyond, and we can implement our globalist agendas, everything that we have planned.

There's no need for political parties. There's no need for proper elections. We've got everything locked down. And we're going to take everyone into a conflict with Russia. So, you know, for them, the goal is to just get to that point in time when they can lock everything down and then get into some sort of a conflict with Russia. This is exactly the plan. This is exactly what it is what they're wanting to do. Of course, what it is causing is the hollowing out of Europe. We've discussed this in program after program, but that is a exactly what they are going to do. They still control the levers of power in all of the major countries and they will still, and they will press on with the agenda, this agenda. You remember

Annalina Behrbach saying it doesn't matter whether people protest? You know, she's going to stick with this. Regardless, that is exactly what they're going to do. Ultimately, it will create a crisis which even they won't be able to control, but by then the damage that they will have done to the fabric of Europe and the economies and societies of Europe could very well be irreparable. But there it is. That is the direction of travel in which Europe is going. Now, just a final point and we'll wrap up the video. As Ursula is undergoing this confidence vote, two confidence votes in the EU Parliament. I mean, there's people in the EU Parliament who are speaking out against Ursula.

And they're saying you have to go, Ursula. No one wants you here. You've lost the trust of everybody in Europe. You have these message corruption scandals, these court cases against you. and all of these things, not to mention your failed policy towards Russia. But you know, the camera every now and then it pans towards Ursula's reactions to what people are telling her in the parliament. And you can tell she doesn't give two Fs. Absolutely, because she knows she couldn't care less.

She couldn't get less, exactly. She's not interested. She's not listening. I mean, as far as she's concerned, she just goes through the motions because she knows ultimately that she's got the major, the major, the major forces behind her and she's going to win. So, you're absolutely right. I mean, they don't care about the rubble that they're leaving behind them because ultimately they believe that they're creating a wonderful new digital structure

which they will control and which they will be on top of. But they don't see, they're not interested in the realities, the substantive realities, that are playing out around them. For one thing, it's not as if they engage very much with people outside the political class. I mean, they don't go much to factories. They don't visit people in their homes. They certainly don't have the kind of conveyor belts that provided information to the leadership, which, for example, the Conservative Party in Britain used to do.

I mean, the Conservative Party was all over Britain. I mean, it had links and connections at every single level of society. So you would have people who would come in from all across Britain. They would attend conferences. I remember how it used to happen in Margaret Thatcher's Day, for example, since they're talking about Thatcher. And you would have the debates that happened in conference, which in the Conservative Party were never very interesting, unless Thatcher herself spoke. But all of the discussions and the debates would take place on the fringes and interplay of things and people would come and they would discuss. Nothing like that happens today.

There is nothing like that anywhere in Europe. There's a little more of it still. In Germany, I mean, some of the regional chapters of the CDU apparently still continue to show flickers of life. But it's only a question of time before those go still. as well. And as I said, we have a small bubble of people, very pleased with themselves, very contemptuous of people outside their bubble, convinced in their own right to rule, and they will continue to rule Europe until the whole thing collapses around them. But that may be a long time off, and in the meantime, the damage was up been done.

All right, we will end the video there, the durand.orgas.com. We are on X in Telegram and Rumble and go to Durancheon. I'll pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update. Take care.