The Duran Podcast - UK Reeves driven to tears. Starmer on his way out

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

UK Reeves driven to tears. Starmer on his way out

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the prime minister's questions. That's what the PMQs are. No. Right? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. The prime minister's questions. Okay.

So, Stammer's in not in good shape. He is not in good shape at all. The UK is not in good shape. And Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves during the PMQs was crying. So, I mean, my first question, I think everyone's, first question as they are seeing the social media posts on this PMQ's session, or this PMQ's event. Everyone is asking, why was she crying? What is going on here? What is going on? Why is the chancellor crying? Yeah. Well, the straightforward reason why Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor,

the Finance Minister, I mean, I think that's just to make it absolutely clear. She's the Finance Minister. She's the Finance Minister. We talk about, I mean, we, we, The British have all of these pompous titles left over from the empire, which is Chancellor of the Excheco, which is a medieval title. But the Chancellor of the Excheco is the Finance Minister. So she is Britain's finance minister. Her job is to make the books balance. She cannot make the books balance.

For all kinds of reasons, we're going to come to shortly. Britain is up to its ears of debt. It's probably got more than 100 percent that the debt to GDP. ratio is probably by now above 100%. We don't have up-to-date figures, but it was, you know, well into the 90s, you know, when we last all the figures. The government is running a deficit. And we'll discuss why it's running a deficit shortly. She wanted to provide some kind of savings, basically to reassure the bond markets. So the government got to. together and they came up with this idea to cut the Social Security spend by five billion

pounds and they proposed these five billion pound cuts and a major bill was put to the House of Commons to try to get them to approve these five billion pound cuts and basically the entire Labor Parliamentary Party said no. I mean, there was a massive rebellion. They refused to agree to these cuts. The bill collapsed. The government basically changed the bill so completely that all of the spending cuts were deleted from it. So there's still no savings on the Social Security budget. The Labour MPs are absolutely furious. They're blaming the government and Stama specifically for this disaster. So we had Prime Minister's questions, and Stama sought to defend himself, and he was asked

the question, does he still back? He's finance minister, and instead of saying that he did back, he's finance minister, he answered evasively, making it absolutely obvious to everybody that she's being set up as the scapego. And she was sitting next to him, and she saw that happen. And that was why she burst into tears. Right. And that was basically the explanation for what happened.

And by the way, Starma came across absolutely terribly, because even as she was crying next to him, he just plowed on answering questions, paying no attention to the fact that his finance minister, who is a woman, was it? this state of deep distress, many people felt that he acted very dishonorably towards his finance minister, both by seeming to be ready to scapegoat her, but also by, you know, plowing on in the way that he did without showing her any degree of human sympathy. And that has also made a terrible impression, which is probably justified, by the way. But anyway, so that is the simple story about what happened yesterday.

But there is, of course, a much, much, much more complicated one, which is the one that we're going to come to. And it's about the fact that this entire administration, this entire Starma government, is falling apart. And the prime minister's career as prime minister is, in my opinion, coming to an end. You may remember that about two or three weeks ago, I made a prediction. I said that I didn't think that he would be prime minister very long. At the time I said that, I think I am right in saying that I was the only person who said it.

I follow British politics very closely and I know my own country. This morning everybody's saying what was an out of the liberal, I was far out on the limb when I made that prediction. Now it's becoming the consensus. So Stommer is throwing her under the bus, right? She's going to get the blame for the terrible state of the economy, right? Eventually, that's where things are heading towards. How much time does that buy Stommer?

I think he's doing it to buy some time, right? She's going to put all the blame on her and she realized it. How much time does that buy him? This is actually an excellent question because, of course, if he now does sack Reeves, what it's going to do is do exactly the same for him that sacking quasi-quarteng did for Liz Truss. It's going to actually precipitate the final collapse of his government and of his position. It's going to weaken him even further. I mean, he may have to do it because as the criticisms grow,

the last desperate throw of a prime minister in trouble is to blame the chancellor and to sack the chancellor. But sacking the chance of the finance minister in this situation, when everybody could see that the person who's ultimately responsible for this whole chaos is Stama himself, all that that is going to do is lead to demands that Stama himself go. And so it might, because he's got a majority and because he's won an election and because it is the Labour Party, it's probably going to buy him a little longer time than it bought Liz Truss. But Stama is far more widely disliked than Liss Truss ever was. I mean, Liz Truss, many people think she was a terrible. Prime Minister. I think she was a terrible Prime Minister. But she still had her supporters, and she still had people who liked her and sympathised with her within the Conservative Party. I don't think Starman has anybody like that, actually. I don't think anybody likes him anymore.

So it may by him a few weeks, but not much more than that. He's run through his credit incredibly fast. Right. This is about spending cuts, right? The UK economies in a world of a mess. I mean, it's just a complete mess, right? Yes. And so they have to make some cuts. Okay. Fine. Why don't they start with the most obvious cut? Instead of trying to figure out cuts to health and to pensions and to all of these programs and they can't find a, a consensus there and they're going through these debates and these arguments trying to find out where do we cut from the British people. What do we take away from the British people, right? That's the question that they're asking. We've made a mess of things as a government and the government before and the government before. They've made a mess of things and what's their solution? Let's take away from the British people or perhaps let's tax them some more or maybe Let's take away from the British people and tax them some more.

But why don't you start from the most obvious solution, the simplest solution, before you even go there, before you even talk about spending cuts, before you talk about additional taxes, why don't you stop sending the money to Ukraine? I was watching one of your videos the other day, and you said that the UK is on the hook to Ukraine every year for five billion pounds. Yeah. Every year? Yeah.

Why don't they just start with that? What it is. And why don't they also stop talking nonsense about 5% NATO GDP and all of this? Just shut up. Stop talking about that. We know you can't do it. We know you don't have the money to do it. So just put all of that nonsense aside and stop sending money to Ukraine.

Actually, why don't you ask for some money back? I mean, I don't know. Does that make any sense? It makes absolute perfect sense. And one of the most frightening and upsetting. things about British politics today is that nobody, nobody is asking those questions. You would have thought that they were obvious questions that people ought to be asking. You would expect that our Prime Minister's questions, for example, the Prime Minister would be asked directly. Why are you

looking for five billion pounds spending cuts when you're giving five billion pounds gratis to Zelensky? I mean, you would have thought that this is, this is an obvious question. But nobody ever asks it. And it's like a kind of, you know, code of silence has descended upon the nation, or at least the political class, not the nation. I should make it very clear that most people do not share this in this code of silence here. But the political class are absolutely silent about this. And the reason is perfectly obvious because even as Britain's economy is in place, A terrible state. It's overtaxed. It's massively over indebted. I don't myself think that the problems

in the British economy ultimately derived from the welfare spend. I think the welfare spend is a product of the underlying problems of the British economy. This is a big discussion, which I don't mean to push. But there's no doubt that welfare spending is increasing. because the rest of the economy, in my opinion, is declining. So, I mean, there's terrible things, massive problems in the British economy. Why don't you do the obvious thing, which is stop this funding of Ukraine and give up on this absolutely unachievable, fantastic plan to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP? Well, the reason is that supporting Ukraine continues to be the overriding priority of the political class.

It's the only thing they can all agree on is the only thing they have which distinguishes them from their opponents and which they can use to brand their opponents as, you know, appeasers or, you know, weak needs, people who are not really standing up of the national interest. it's the only thing they have. And so they're clinging to it. And amongst those who clings to it, most desperately and urgently is Kirstama himself. Now, you see this time and again, one of the things that he did over the last couple of days, which I thought was absolutely astonishing and completely bizarre. He made a speech about two weeks ago in which he made certain comments about immigration and gave the impression that he thought that immigration was indeed out of control,

which is what most people in Britain believe, by the way, and that the government was going to take steps to bring it back under control. He used some language in that speech with some people on the left of his part he didn't like. Typically, of Stama, he then walked it all back, presumably in order to try to win back some support within, in his party, which he knows he's losing. And he said that, you know, he made all these mistakes and all these slip-ups because he was attending all sorts of really important NATO and other meetings.

And as a result, you know, he wasn't really focused on some of the words that he was saying. Well, that is ridiculous. And of course, what it does again is it reinforces what is now, the universal impression that this Prime Minister is not interested in the actual situation in Britain, the actual problems of the British people. There are concerns about immigration, first and foremost, perhaps. What he's really worried about most is foreign policy, and that he's most interested in sustaining the war in Ukraine and keeping Zelensky, not just in his job, but in his very, very profitable and cushy job.

So, I mean, this is a terrible thing to say. And again, it shows how completely out of touch, Stama is, that he said it and thought that it would win him support. But, again, he doesn't get criticized anywhere near enough for it, because on Ukraine, they all basically agree with him. Yeah, I mean, the fact that you're putting it like that, Stommer, the prime minister of the UK's number one concern is to keep Zelensky happy. I mean, it's madness, man.

I mean, I could understand it if the UK was at a surplus and it was this immensely rich country and, you know, everyone had health care and free gasoline and everyone was given home. I can understand. All right. So you want to play around with foreign policy? Go ahead, Stammer. God knows where everyone is so rich and happy here anyway. But that's not the case.

It's the exact opposite. So, I mean, just the fact that you put it like that is incredible, but the fact that's even more incredible, I mean, this is my final question is, is how come no one at this prime minister, this prime minister's question session? Is that what it's called, a session? How come no one put this to Stommer?

It seems so obvious. How come the media is not putting this, The media never touches on this. They never ever talk about this. They never talk about the costs of Ukraine to Britain. They mention sometimes that we have the highest energy costs in Europe, for example, but they don't explain why. They don't, you know, they always talk about, you know, Putin's war sometimes having done this damage. But of course, they never, they never discuss how sanctions and the economic war and the stopping north stream have all had this effect. They never talk about any of these things. There is, as I said, an extraordinary code of silence. Actually, not as, let's not call it a code of silence, a complete abdication of responsibility, a betrayal of the British.

It's a con. It's a con. It's a con. It's not even a codic. They're trying to pull a fast one on them. They are pulling a fast one on the British people. It's absolutely awful and it's absolutely shameful. And can I just say something about all those Labour MPs who rebel?

Now, you know, there is, again, a narrative which is very popular with some people, especially on the more conservative-leaning part of the media that these are, you know, socialist left-wingers who aren't in touch with the real world and don't understand the parlous situation of the British economy. We're talking about the parliamentary Labour party. which first Blair and then Stama has basically filled up with apparatchiks. I mean, the idea that there's any kind of principle amongst any of these people has no connection to reality at all. What happens, and this is key to understanding where we are, is that in the last general election, as we discussed at the time of that election,

The Conservative Party collapsed. It got about 14, 14% of the British electorate to vote for it. And that meant that though the Labour Party only got the votes of 20% of the electorate, they ended up as the government with a massive majority. Now, what that means, however, is that the government has never been popular from the first moment that he took office because the British people looked. at Kirstama and looked at the Labour Party that he led, and they didn't like them. So you have this vast number of Labour MPs in the House of Commons who are there on

way for thin majorities. They know perfectly well that their voters don't like them. And they are incredibly frightened of doing anything that was going to make their vote. the voters in their constituencies like them even less. And that is the only reason why they rebelled in the way that they did. Because as you absolutely rightly say, this is taking away things to the British people and voters in Labour constituencies would be expected not to like that. And the government isn't popular enough and strong enough to actually succeed. in pushing through this kind of measure.

Tony Blair, in his heyday, could have done it because he was popular and he had a huge majority and he won that majority with 40% of the vote, 40 plus percent of the vote in an election. And there was this large amount of support behind him. Stama has never had that. And that's why, as I said, his government is already crippled.

and is falling apart. The other big thing to say about this is not only are we conning the British people in exactly the same way that you said. Stama is almost certain to leave, in my opinion, fairly soon. But the person who takes over from him is not going to change anything. And the conservative opposition is no different. They're each as discredited as the other. And this debate in the House of Commons that you were talking about, the Prime Minister's questions, was Nigel Farage's opportunity to shine and to ask some of those questions that you spoke about.

And he didn't take it. So, I mean, we are we are in this awful situation where, you know, we're the ship that's drifting towards the rocks. The captain himself is a fool and has no real control. over the crew, but there isn't anybody else who's able to take over the steering wheel. I cannot imagine. I cannot think of a time in British politics, certainly in my lifetime, when things have been anywhere close to being as bad as this. Yeah, I was going to ask you that very question.

What about reform and Farage? But the more I see Farage in a position of power and perhaps possibly being the next Prime Minister, the more I realize that he's not that much different than labor or the conservatives. Something's changed. I don't know. You know better than I do, but it feels like something has changed with Farage. He was a very different man when he was in the European Union and going after Brussels than he is now as part of the political establishments in the UK. What are your thoughts on that? And just one final thought. So you can You can finish off the video.

Stommer, his government falling apart is going to be a massive Aleksky curse, isn't it? Oh, well, of course, it is. That's exactly. That is exactly what it is. I mean, it's going to be the biggest Olensky curse that we've seen up to now. But as with Farage, I absolutely agree with you. I mean, I remember him in the European Parliament. He was funny.

He was witty. He was incisive. He was, he landed punches all the time. Rebellious. I mean, he was brilliant, actually. He's been elected to the House of Commons, and there's something about the House of Commons that seems to have changed him. And I suspect the problem is that the closer he gets to Downing Street and to power, and

remember, he's never been somebody who's ever shown a huge amount of interest in becoming prime minister. But the closer he gets to that point, one senses that the more nervous he's becoming, and he's losing his edge. And this is exactly, I mean, it's a tragedy because it is not what the country needs. It needs an opposition. It needs the Farage of five years ago to come back and to rediscover his energy and his drive and his brilliance and to start saying things as they are in the House of Commons. He published an article about a year ago in of the Daily Telegraph saying, you know, let's stop talking about the Ukraine war as an unprovoked

war. And then he got all the usual criticism from all of the usual people. And instead of holding his ground forcefully, eventually he walked it back. And, you know, that was a tragic mistake. And one that shows a deep misunderstanding of the currents of British politics. And again, I can't imagine the Farage of five, ten years ago would have made that mistake. And, you know, I suspect, as I said, it's just, he's just so close to Downing Street now that it's affecting the things he says and the way he behaves and his own ability, perhaps, to keep reformed together is also a problem. Anyway, I don't know.

But the reality is we have no one in the hands. House of Commons who's making those points, landing those punches. The only other British political figure who might have done it, George Galloway, well, you remember he won the by-election, but he was voted out in the actual general election. So he's not at the moment in the House of Commons. Yeah, Farage was fearless when he was in the EU now. Now you watch him and it looks like he has a lot of fear. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay. We will end the video there. The At Duran.Locals.com, we are on Rumble and Odyssey and X and Telegram. Go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch.

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