The Duran Podcast - UK Starmer, unpopular and without a program

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

UK Starmer, unpopular and without a program

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on what is going on in the UK with everyone's favorite Prime Minister Kierstommer. He is more unpopular than everybody, uh? Even Liz Truss. Is he more unpopular than Liz Truss? Is that even, is that possible? Well, he's definitely more unpopular than Sunak, I believe. So how are things going with Sir? Sir, Keir Stammer. I haven't seen an opinion poll that says that he's looked. less popular than Liz Truss, but I have heard some people say that. There are opinion polls now, however, which show that most, you know, plurality of people in Britain now think that Rishi Sunak's government was better than Kirstarmus.

So it's, it's an astonishing implosion in support and popularity for a government. and we've just had the party conferences. Now, every autumn, this is something to explain to people, every autumn in Britain, the major political parties, the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party have their party conferences. By the way, Reform UK have also had a party conference, which was addressed by Nigel Farage.

So, you know, this is a tradition. And the parties go to these conferences. the leader gives a speech, the various ministers, if they're in government, give speeches. They set out their program for the year. They sort of, you know, rally the supporters. Many people have been saying that the Labour Party conference this time round was one of the weirdest that they've ever seen.

Because Labor has just won this huge victory, supposedly, in the election. on 33% of the vote, they've got this massive lopsided majority. But everybody at the conference was unhappy. Stama's speech failed to impress. He's clearly empty. He has no ideas, no real concept of how to move things forward, that the speech of his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was the same. And the party is already unhappy and confused.

And one Labour MP, Rosie Duffield, who's the MP for Canterbury, who is admittedly something of a maverick. Anyway, she's already left the Labour Party. She's defected. So they've had their first defection just a few weeks after they won this huge election victory. I have never known a government enter office in such a sad, unhappy way. And if you read the newspapers, we've now put the scandal of his clothes and all the money that was being paid to him for his clothes.

That's all behind us a little. But we have all kinds of reports now about the feuding in Downing Street, that the Prime Minister's personal team are disorganised and chaotic and that they're arguing and quarrelling with each other, which is inevitable when the Prime Minister himself doesn't have a real programme that he is presenting, which is the support of the party, and which will unite the party and take it forward. I think it's the ultimate problem. It's one that we identified, by the way, before the election. The ultimate issue with Stama is that quite apart from the fact that he's not a particularly engaging personality,

he doesn't have charisma or charm or anything like that. He doesn't really have a real program that people can relate to or an identity. identify with, all which they will support through hard times. So he says hard times, there's going to be hard times. We can already see that. Business confidence is falling. We look like we're heading back into a recession after a brief period of growth. But I can remember when Margaret Thatcher came in, there were hard times then. There was lots of unpopularity. But the Prime Minister of that day, Margaret Thatcher, had a clear programme, clear out vision of what she wanted to do. Many people supported it. They said we will stick with her through these hard times.

We understand that they are the price we have to pay to get to this position which she wants to take us. Stala is not providing us with any of that. So that's why I think support. is simply draining away. The problem is, if you look at the other side, the Conservative Party, well, they're in the middle of a leadership campaign. And I think the general universal consensus is that none of the candidates there look at all impressive. And Farage has held his party conference.

He's, however, I think so far failed to make the impact in British politics that many expected. And he hasn't yet found his way in the House of Commons. He hasn't really managed to make that impact in the House of Commons that many people were expecting that he would. So we are in this situation where there is really no one in Britain giving any kind of lead, imparting any sort of vision, giving any idea of where they want the country to go

or have any real plan about how to get it out of the problems that are building up all around it. Is Stammer in a unique position in that he's messing up so much, but he doesn't have any opposition to call him out? I mean, I don't see any opposition from conservatives. Even Farage, it seems, is not really hitting hard at Stammer. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like anyone's in the political landscape is really going after Stammer.

So he's just kind of, you know, just trudging along. I mean, he's making mistake after mistake, but no one's calling him out on anything. Yeah, he's making mistakes to me. I don't know, from the outside. He's making mistake after mistake. He's unpopular. I think that before long, if this continues, the unpopularity will turn to positive dislike, but you are absolutely correct.

this is an unprecedented situation because we're functioning inside a political vacuum now Farage achieved this breakthrough in the election he's in Parliament

he's got MPs he won 13 I think it was 13% of the vote which is for a party that has just got started a significant breakthrough a lot of people were looking to him to make a big impact. He hasn't yet done so. And well, just to give

away, we saw him, the two of us. We saw the speech that he gave when we were in Malaysia. He was in Malaysia at the same time attending the same conference that we were. And it immediately became clear to me what I think his problem is, which is that he did set out lots of ideas about where he wants Britain to go. But with the exception of the key immigration issue, where I think he has massive support right across the country, in terms of his economic thinking, he is basically wanting to go back to the kind of program

that Margaret Thatcher had in the 1980s. In fact, he even referenced her he spoke about Thatcher and made it very clear that he identified very much with the program that she had. The problem is, at this particular time, just after a conservative government has lost office, and after the conservatives have been in power, for 32 out of the last 45 years, preaching similar ideas about small states, lower taxes, less regulation, all of those kind of things. Things that the Conservatives were saying they were going to do,

maybe they didn't do them. But anyway, that's what they were saying they were going to do. The general feeling amongst the British electorate is that this isn't really what they want to hear now, that they are looking on the contrary. for something almost diametrically opposite. They want a more interventionist economics. They want more nationalization, not more privatization.

They want more spending on particular programs. Maybe, you know, people will tell them countries massively in debt. People don't really want to hear that anymore. So this is the problem. for Raj is arguing against what the Germans call the zeitgeist, the general mood and feeling in the country at the present time. He talks about a smaller state, lower taxes, more deregulation, whereas the British electorate overall,

wants a bigger state, more intervention, more nationalisation, more, you know, return, if you like, more to the kind of policies that Britain used to follow in the 50s and 60s, when according to popular belief, there was full employment, living standards were rising, the welfare state was at its best, and there were very, very strong immigration controls. all of which, of course, to some extent, is true. But of course, it was a different time then. All right. And anything else to add about what's going on in the UK

or should we wrap up this video? How long is Stammer going to last to YouTube? Well, this is the other question. He doesn't have any opposition. So, I mean, who's going to replace him? Anyway, yeah. Somebody within his party, May. And I mean, this is the, first of all, I would say,

I mean, there's no opposition. There is an opposition on the right, which is Farage. And, you know, Farage should not be underestimated. I think that one thing he could still do. I mean, none of the potential leaders of the Conservative Party look at all impressive. And at this particular moment in time, I think that even if Farage is going to have difficulty breaking through

and winning over Labour voters, he could still win over quite a few right-wing voters. He could argue that, look, if you want conservatism, true radical conservatism, Thatcher-style conservatism. I admit the conservatives are not, and that will attract some support. So I think reform could grow.

The other possibility is that we can start to see a challenge on the left. There's some talk that Jeremy Corbyn is now thinking of setting up a left-wing party in rivalry to the Labour Party. I think that Jeremy Corbyn is an exhausted figure in British politics. He's still popular with many people, but I don't think he has the force of personality to make that successful. That's my own view. But there might be a challenge on the left.

If there is a challenge on the left, then the problems within the government will increase. And at that point, I would not be at all surprised if we start to see leadership challenges against Stama start to appear. I don't actually think he's going to be prime minister for very long. The Labor Party will certainly be there in government until 2029 and perhaps even beyond. But it doesn't follow that Starma will be the one who will go on leading it. All right. We will end the video there at the durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bitchie, Telegram, Rockfinn, and TwitterX and go to the Duran shop.

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