The Duran Podcast - Sunak faces election wipe out. Russia sanctions sink UK economy

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Sunak faces election wipe out. Russia sanctions sink UK economy

All right, Alexander, let's talk about UK politics. And it looks like the conservatives under the leadership of Rishi Sunak are going to get demolished in the next elections. Of course, that means Prime Minister Kier Stahber, right? It does indeed. Now, I have to tell you, there's been an opinion poll in Britain. I don't think this is just an opinion poll. It's been a bit, let's call it an opinion survey.

which has come out recently, which is what people basically think about the current Conservative government. And it suggests that support for it has halved since 2019 and that it is now facing an electoral wipeout on a scale that no British government has experienced. I think since the start of the 20th century. that bad. I mean, if you believe this opinion, Paul, and I, by the way, generally do. I mean, this would eclipse the collapse that, you know, the Conservative government suffered in 1997, the events of the Labour Nanslide of 1945, what happened previously. I mean, it would be a total electoral implosion. Now, given that this is, you know, this is.

is how British people feel about the Conservatives. It's very difficult to see how we're going to end up with any outcome at the end of this year, which does not have Kirstama as the new British Prime Minister. But there is a fundamental problem, because when you look at Kirstama, and you compare him with Rishi Sunak, they sound the same. Their politics are essentially the same. Their policies are barely different from each other. Whenever Rishi-Soon Act takes a particular policy line, Kirstama quickly adapts and starts to mirror it. And so we will get a new government at the end of this year, perhaps the beginning of next year, on the basis of a electoral collapse. of the Conservatives, which is committed to pursuing essentially the same policies that led to the electoral collapse of the Conservatives.

It is an appalling situation. And there was actually a really, for once, a really good article about all of this. I think either David Frost or Peter Frost, a former Conservative cabinet minister, and he was saying that the mood in Britain is becoming increasingly insurrectionary. The reality is that the British are completely unimpressed. They're not unimpressed. They actually actively dislike the alternatives that are being presented to them. And this is becoming an increasingly dangerous situation. Because we are seeing a conservative collapse coming without any real enthusiasm or attraction for the labour alternative.

And this is unsustainable, and sooner or later, it is going to lead to a major change, a revolution in the political system. But let's put all that aside, because that's with the future. Let's ask ourselves, why are the Conservatives doing so badly? Because remember, in 2019, the Conservatives won a big majority. They got 80 seats. The Conservatives won 44% of the vote. they seem to be riding high. And they went on riding high well into the summer of 2021. What changed, what created everything to change. It's not difficult. It is Ukraine. It is British policy with respect to Ukraine.

It led to a major inflation crisis in Britain. The British call it a cost of living crisis. This is not abated, by the way. It's seen a big surge. in interest rates. It's seen an economy that is absolutely stagnant. But even though the connection between our problems and British policy in Ukraine is obvious to me and I know to quite a few people, no important British commentator is prepared to go out onto mainstream media. and say it. They all pretend that it's, you know, they always say, you know, they list of various things that they say are responsible for this Brexit, you know, whatever view you'd want to take about Brexit, Brexit, the uncertainties of things in the United States, they're then lump in

Putin's war in Ukraine. I said, this is a minor thing. And then they just move on. They never address the fundamental fact that the biggest single change in global economic relationships was the economic war that the Western powers launched in February 2022 against the world's biggest commodity producer. The biggest producer of oil, the biggest export of gas, the biggest food supplier, the biggest supplier. the biggest supplier of every conceivable thing that you can imagine, a major player in the European energy system. They never addressed this. So, because of course, it's forbidden to talk about it.

And Stama, of course, is committed to continuing all of the same thing. If the Conservatives lose as badly, as is now almost certain, it will be the Zelensky curse again at work and the Starmer administration which will replace the Sunak administration is setting itself up to be the next victim of the Zelensky curse after that. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the collective West media, they can't say that this is Project Ukraine because they'll be labeled immediately as a Putin apologist. So that's the last thing that they want to be labeled. So they keep this charade going on.

Even though the rest of Europe seems to be one step ahead of the UK as far as the Zelensky curse is concerned, I mean protests in Germany taking place. We've had protests all across Europe. It seems, I mean, you have this trucker, you have this blockade in Poland with Ukraine. Germany is contracting, the economy is contracting, this is all a direct result of being defeated by Russia in the economic war. And that's what happened. The collective West was defeated by Russia in their economic sanctions war. Period. Full stop. That's what happened. And they just can't admit it. So why is the UK, why does the UK seem to be a step behind, say, other European countries

when it comes to the protesting and the anger? And even the economic result. I mean, I've read various analysis, which says that the UK economy is set to boom in 2024. It's well positioned to rise in 2024. What's going on here? Yeah, this is, of course, what they're saying. I don't think anybody who really lives in Britain seriously believes that we're in a boom. And in fact, on the contrary, we had a few weeks ago, another report from the Bank of England, say that we're looking at a situation of unending stagnation.

And bear in mind, government debt is a very bad situation. And to give an example of, again, of the effect of the Zelensky curse, the city of London, you know, the world's most important financial centre within a relatively short time ago. It's now contracting. I think it's now from being, you know, first, you know, the first, you know, the first, you know, first in the world and then it became the third in the world. I think it's now the 18th in the world or something. I mean, it's an implosion. And why has that happened? Because instead of being

open for business, which is what the city always was, as I remember, you know, I worked on the margins of it, it's now closing for business because we are busy engaging in sanctions wars. We've undermined our position as a global financial centre, but we're not giving insurance, for example, to oil tankers because we worry that they might be, you know, carrying Russian oil, trading at more than $60 a pound. I mean, you know, we're doing that kind of thing to ourselves. So, why are we doing this?

Why aren't people talking about it? I think the important thing to understand, and I think this is very much a legacy of the Brexit war, and there was that referendum result in 2016. There was Corbyn's victory in the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015. There was the election in 2017 when the Corbyn-led Labour Party seemed about to win power. There was the 2019 election when Boris Johnson won and carried out Brexit. So what has happened is that throughout this entire period since 2015-2016, the British establishment has conducted a scorched earth policy in Britain,

basically closing down, annihilating all political alternatives to itself. So in the Conservative Party, all the really important Brexit is now gone, starting with Boris Johnson, but many of the others as well. In the Labour Party, Corbyn has been thrown out essentially of the party. All of his supporters within the leadership have been purged. The parliamentary Labour Party, basically, there's just about two or three MPs left there, who, to some extent adhere to Corbyn's ideas, but they're marginalised. the various parties that Nigel Farage used to lead, there's been attempts to suppress them as well.

The newspapers have been brought further and more tightly under control. And one of the mechanisms that has been used to exert this conformity is the Ukraine war. because the kind of people who would have been critical once of this policy, who would have raised question marks about him, were people like Corpian in the Labour Party and people like him in the Labour Party, right-wing Brexiters in the Conservative Party, who were much more sceptical about some of these adventures,

Farage himself and some of the people in the parties that he used to lead. So, but you use Ukraine and the issue of Ukraine to basically marginalize and discredit them. To say these are Putin apologists and Putin puppets, push them out of the margins. So you use that to tighten control. And of course, that also means the debate on this whole policy has become impossible. Yeah, what about Corbyn, the news that he's starting his own party, Is that true? Yeah, I think, well, he's been talking about this, and it might even happen.

But I'm going to say this, in the long term, it's something that I don't think it'll be Corbyn, actually. I mean, I think he's too old. I don't think he's politically very effective anymore. But eventually, no doubt, as Peter Frost said, a new political force will appear in Britain. I mean, it has to. I mean, unless there's, you know, we're locked into permanent. stagnation. Sooner or later, there will be a new political force. It's not going to happen this year. More likely than not, we have to have a period of starmer and his government before this thing starts to

burn itself out. And we're able to see, to get to get to that point where we have a proper debate in London. And I'm afraid we have years ahead of us before that happens. And if you come back to the situation in Europe, by the way, the protests are spreading. I mean, blockades of the border, Ukraine border, are now spreading to Romania. I mean, you know, their truck is now closing the border with Ukraine in Romania as well. Protests in Poland, major protests in Germany, sentiment in Germany shifting radically. but you could see again that the political leadership, the political class in Europe is in effect doing exactly the same thing that the British political class is doing, is that they're using Ukraine, the issue of Ukraine, to justify actions, authoritarian actions, in order to maintain control. So we've had all the talk about banning the IFDA, for example.

And of course, you could already hear people say that the IFDAO is a Putinist puppet, that all of these political forces that exist in Europe are ultimately controlled by the Kremlin. And lots of war talk now that the Russians are going to march on Berlin, that they're planning in a march on the Baltic states. there's been a paper by the German military talking about how Putin is intending to incite the Russians the Russian speakers of the Baltic states against the Baltic governments as if by the way Putin even needs to do that

given the realities of the Baltic states but that's a discussion for another time anyway all of this and you can again see I think people are wrong in thinking by the way that this is all intended to prepare some kind of military action by the West against Russia, what it really is all about, is about clamping down further on the enemy within the people who want policy to change, not just on Ukraine, but on everything else too. Yeah. I wonder when and if the people in the majority of people in the UK or in Europe are going

to wake up to the fact that a lot of this this Putin apologist fear tactic stuff is really directed at them the citizens and not so much Russia well it's going to take time I think in Britain there is a shift actually I think I think I think a lot of people are are very cynical about this I mean you know about even about a year ago you would see lots of Ukrainian flags all over the place they've all disappeared. I mean, I never see them anymore. And I think people have become a lot more skeptical about this. So there is definitely a shift,

but not so far to the point where people are prepared to come out and engage in protests and, you know, try and force a serious change of direction. And it's interesting how the Ukraine crime. is both the catalyst for economic decline, the collapse of governments, the discrediting of political leaders, Zelensky does in some respects, but is also the mechanism that the political class is increasingly using in order to justify maintaining its control. It is interesting. All right.

We will end it there. The durand. orgas. go to the Duran Shop, 50% off. No, no coupon, no coupon needed, 15% off all T-shirts. Take care.