The Ricochet Podcast - Boris and Blighty's Big Day

Episode Date: December 13, 2019

Around these parts, we strive to provide Class A Punditry® no matter where in the world the news happens. So this week, we jump across the pond to cover last night’s stunning Tory victory in the Mother Country. To do that, we call on our mate Toby Young (he of the London Calling podcast, aka Great Britain’s fastest growing chat show) who takes us through all of the machinations and expectations of... Source

FBD doesn't stand for friendly business ducks. Or for the freelance beatbox department. FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland. Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD insurance team and see how we can support your business. FBD Insurance. Support. It's what we do. FBD Insurance Group Limited. Trading as FBD Insurance.

Is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. I'm going to say I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think he missed his time.

Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lallex. Today, we talked to Toby Young about the British election and John Yoo, of course, about impeachment. So let's have ourselves a podcast. It's the Ricochet Podcast and it's number 476. I'm James Lallex here in Minneapolis, where the snow is falling gently in a Courier and Ives Christmas-era sort of vignette that's just beautiful. And off in New York is Rob Long, Peter Robinson in California. Gentlemen, how are you? Very well, thank you. No snow here. I'm happy to report.

Doing very well. There was some snow here yesterday, and it was beautiful, and then it stopped, which was also beautiful. Well, I like it because I have a snowblower, and I get out and snowblow now. But I've started snowblowing. Interesting little philosophical thing here. Once you've snowblowed your neighbor's front yard, or not your yard, but their walk, you're sort of obliged to keep doing it at some point because for the rest of your life. For the rest of my life, and I'm happy to do so because theirs is broken. Anyway, I'm happy.

I'm in a good mood. The season is great. My daughter's coming home next week. And the nastiest, meanest, Jew-hating, terrorist-sympathizing man who looks like he ought to be sitting in an auditorium somewhere in a great jumpsuit, noticing all the people who aren't screaming hate at Goldstein enough, that guy went down, and it is wonderful to behold. The old order seems to be fissuring, shall we say, in England as places that were considered to be labor strongholds said, not this time and not this guy. So what does this mean? Does this mean now that we have a Thatcher like an era of renewal coming to England, a repudiation of labor. Are there any lessons for this for the

left in America, which seems intent on repeating Corbyn's mistake? Let's hope they learn that lesson very well. Please do repeat Corbyn's mistake. Move hard left and sprinkle your positions with continuing anti-Israel, anti-Semitic positions, and you'll do just as well as Jeremy Corbyn did. Go for it, Bernie. Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably true. I also feel like the lesson, I mean, it's not a lesson that I'm particularly happy about, but it's a lesson that the right has learned, too, and certainly is learning here, is that most people are, it is easier for conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic to get a little liberal economically.

Big spending government conservatives are now a thing. But it is nearly impossible for liberals to get a little more conservative socially, not in the American sort of sense, but in the sort of the larger sense of that's this incredibly crippling arthritic identity politics that they're all absolutely enthralled. They can't get they can't shake that. Whereas Republicans, at least in this in this country and Tories in Britain, have been found very easy to shake what was, in fact, Thatcher, Reaganism, economic conservatism. They've shaped that pretty hard. It just shows you that the party that's the most flexible and nimble with its core principles tends to be the one that wins. Well, you know, you mentioned the anti-Semitism on the left. If you if you look online, if you cast your eye about the American political scene, you'll see a conviction on the left side that the anti-Semitism is concentrated entirely, mostly on the right. What with Trump being the most anti-Semitic Jew-hating president ever, as we saw with the, well, here's our friend J-Pod writing,

I assume, a commentary. They wrote, the ridiculous storm over Trump's latest move against anti-Semitism, quote, this was an act of solidarity and friendship, and there should come a point when the Jewish community takes such gestures for what they are. It is a distressing habit to look with suspicion and distaste at an outstretched hand if that hand comes from someone with whom you disagree politically. He's referring to the executive order that essentially codified

what had previously been policy under the Obama administration. But what does this say about the left's ability to correctly read Donald Trump and the way these issues are developing on the right? Because Trump is not the next Hitler at codifying Nuremberg laws. I mean, yeah, extraordinary. Right. I mean, it's just extraordinary. Right. I mean, there are more yarmulkes in the White House right now, I'd wager to say, than have ever been worn in the White House up till now.

I mean, you can say what you like about Trump, and he may have some salty, interesting, hilarious Queens-born stories and prejudices about ethnicities, Archie Bunker style. But nobody thinks he's anti-Semitic. That's just, I think it's just bananas. Right. It's important. I think it's useful to note that our friend John Pothoritz, J-Pod, is no fan of Donald Trump.

Right, right, right. What John is, is a sensible human being. He is unaffected by Trump derangement syndrome. And so John is able to say, are you kidding? Relax. That was just, as he put it, that was an act of solidarity and friendship. Take it for what it was. So it's just, it's yet another indication that the left, the Democrats, and they're the same thing now. The left are the Democrats and the Democrats are the left. Just can't, they just can't see anything he does for what it is. It really is a kind of deranged view, an inability to see reality.

He also has this incredible knack, I mean, not J-Pod, but Trump, for, I mean, I don't know whether it's just an instinctive genius or it's just, you know, he forest gumps his way through this stuff, but he has this incredible knack for picking just the right thing to do to absolutely troll the bejesus out of the left. So the idea that he would do a thing that actually forces them, their heads to explode,, of course, the one, the shibboleth, as we say, in the left is that the right is bigoted. The right is prejudiced. The right has a whole host of ethnic hatreds and the axis to grind. And it's the left that's free and open and we all come kumbaya.

And it turns out that every time a conservative president or a Republican president or Trump does something which gives the lie to that, they just don't know how to handle it. They just they don't they can't accept it, which is part of the that's part of the entertainment of the Trump administration sort of watching that happen. I mean, it it it is unclear whether that happened in Britain amongst people who traditionally vote Labour, who then voted Tory. Right. We don't know that information. It could be.

We just don't know that information yet. I don't know where they were going to, but right now we don't know it. But what does seem clear is that people are associating the Tories or the right, even in this country, with being sort of broadly interested in the things that they're interested in. Correct. Broadly, broadly aligned with their values or at least broadly attentive to their concerns, even if you disagree with their solutions. And they consider the left to be broadly obsessed with weirdo, very obscure, completely irrelevant

details of modern progressive life. That's not a good position to be in. It's as simple as this, right? Ordinary human being, ordinary person. Let's say in Britain, we now, the strange thing about this election is that it used to be, say, the southern half of England. That was really the Thatcherite homeland. But what happened this time is the Tories won in the north, which was the Labour heartland.

And here's the appeal. An ordinary labor voter, now voting conservative, says this. I want the country in which I grew up to remain recognizable to me, and I'd like a job. That's it. That's really what it comes down to. Well there, Peter. We've got Toby Young coming up up and we'll talk about this. But that first part there is a dog whistle, a dog whistle through an amplifier, through a megaphone, through a Marshall stack.

I want my country to be recognizable. Don't you realize what those are code words for? Yeah. Go ahead. Tell me. Tell me. Well, they are code words for that. I mean, and we should say at the outset that one of the huge differences between the UK and the US is the UK is still very, very white, much whiter than the US is. And so there seems to be – there does seem to be that attitude there.

I would just say that this is not a return to Thatcherism, that the people in the north who voted for Boris Johnson did not do so because they want more free market reforms. That's right. They don't want that. They want big government. They want the government that he suggests. They probably do want national health care reforms, although even that is unclear right now. I mean, we'll probably know more about who those voters are in the next couple of weeks, but right now we don't really know. But the truth is that he represents to them something that they recognize. You know, he's pompous. Yeah. And I'm sure there's, of course, racism is a blight on all human history. So we have to be very, very careful about it. But I would draw a distinction. I would insist on drawing a distinction between the view that says, throw everybody who's here right now out, which is not the view, which is not what Boris Johnson stood for. There are 1.5 million British citizens, British subjects, I think is still the term, 1.5 million of who were born or are second

generation from the Indian subcontinent, right? The African-American or, excuse me, African population, the black population in Britain is much smaller than it is here, but there are populations. And, but that's the British colony that sort of, it's a question of not wanting to be overwhelmed, not wanting to have immigration proceed at a pace at which it outstrips assimilation. I believe you could argue that since the Second World War, Britain, including the North, has done a pretty good job at assimilating and proving tolerant toward those who were born elsewhere and the children of those who were born elsewhere. But they see Germany accepting a million immigrants two or three years ago from the Middle East, just willy-nilly and saying, wait, wait, wait, wait a

minute. Let's just, let's think this. And I believe that's a reasonable non-racist position. I think it's not, it's not let's keep England lily white. It's let's keep England recognizably our country. But I would say two things. One thing is what's remarkable, of course, you could always tell when you read the news. I was sort of scrolling through it last night and this morning. If you've been watching politics for a long time, there is something about a majority which is cheering, which should be, which means something. But we now have, certainly on the progressive left, this kind of cliche where we're deeply divided.

Britain's deeply divided. It's a deeply divided country. Well, no, actually, as of last night, we can clearly see Britain is not deeply divided. It was astonishing, surprising, absolutely undeniable majority. That's what that was. It suggests not that Britain is divided, but thateniable majority. That's what that was. It suggests not that Britain is

divided, but that Britain is unified. The people who don't understand it are this tiny little thin layer at the top who insist that we're deeply divided because we don't agree with them. But just as a thought experiment, think about a few, you know, a decade ago, I mean, not a decade ago, but close to a decade, well, you know, eight years ago. If the EU had taken a more measured and thoughtful stance on immigration and refugees and had been more respectful of the sovereignty of its member nations. And then couple that with another thought experiment, harder to wrap your head around. But still, what if the progressive left, the labor left in Britain, and for that matter, I think the same goes for the United States, had had a more respectful and humble and open and accepting policy towards social moderates or older people or people who are sort of on the brink of change and aren't quite sure where we're going? What if they had instead of been scolds and schoolmarms and, in the case of the EU, dictators? What if they had instead shown a

modicum of respect and humility? We would not be in the situation right now, could very easily be Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn. But this is a world that they have created, not a world that was created by crackpot weirdos on the right. There are two, I mean, there are two issues there. One, what if they'd gone slower on migration, immigration, assimilation, whatever? It would require them to lie about their eventual goal, which is to sort of remake Europe away from national identity, because they hate national identity, because national identity is the font of all evil, etc. National identity props up the privileges of Western civilization. We have to create something new that, just by some odd coincidence, is going to be run by this 0.01% in Brussels. That was the Europe that they wanted to construct. When it came time to bringing along

the people who were a little hesitant to adopt this brave new world that was coming at them a million miles an hour with a freight train whistle screaming. That's also hard because then you have to make deals with horrible, bad people, people who are morally unfit really to participate in democracy because they don't instinctively agree with whatever Twitter decided was going to be the way society is run yesterday at noon. So, I mean, they're impatient and they're contemptuous. And what we have here, it seems, is deeply divided. No, Rob's right. You've got a large amount of people who are allied against a very thin, small percentage of people who have no, shall we say, identity to Europe, I mean, to individual nation states, but to this progressive

transnational ideal. So yeah, they're going to be angry, but I hope that nobody learns, that the left does not learn from this to lie better. I mean, essentially what Peter said, what Rob's positive is there, what if they'd lied better about their eventual objective? What if they'd been able to take this particular bitter pill and wrap it in an icy clear and have us... FBD doesn't stand for friendly business, ducks. Or for the freelance beatbox department. FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland.

Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD insurance team and see how we can support your business. FBD Insurance. Support. It's what we do. FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading as FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. You know, jam it down with us. But local parties do that. I mean, you know, the Republicans have done that for a long time, have, you know, the optics of Republican economics, which were,

you know, low corporate taxes, tax cuts for the rich, essentially, all those things, the optics are terrible. They have very sound, in my view, economic principles underneath them, and they are pro-growth, but they are easy to caricature. So you have to do a lot of, like, fast talking, shuffling, and tap tap dancing and misdirecting to get the population to sort of agree with it. But you also do a whole lot of listening. And when Republicans didn't do the listening part, that's when they ended up out of office. And you could accomplish, I mean, I would say this to sort of all the Democrats, like

it's a remarkable how much of your, I mean, in my view, crackpot agenda, but how much of it could actually get enacted if you merely treated the voters like you wanted to hear from them and not that what you wanted for person who's going to listen to me yell at them instead of I'm going to hear – I'm going to listen to you, and I'm not going to put down your views. And I understand that it's weird that your country – that your county has changed a little bit. the dream immigration scenario of every progressive American politician, which is essentially open borders, as if they bothered to treat the voter with a modicum of respect. But because they can't do that, they end up just hanging a lantern on their own arrogance and their own sort of dictatorial impulses. And I think that is what that is what's happened in Britain, is that the British voter was just started getting fed up by the EU, made it clear they didn't like it. And then instead of being chastened, the sort of giant left wing progressive monolith of EU plus labor, plus media, plus universities simply doubled down on the screaming and the yelling and the name calling. And at the end of the day, the yelling and the name calling.

And at the end of the day, the voter has the final say. And these people are driven crazy by it. Well, Peter, how do you respectfully tell people that open borders is going to change the character of their neighborhood, of their country, of their county? I mean, how do you respectfully get them to go along with that? Respectfully get them to go along with open borders? I suppose you do what, what did I, I suppose you do what, I did an interview some years ago with Archbishop Gomez, Jose Gomez of, Archbishop of Los Angeles, who's just been elected chairman or president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. So he's the top bishop in this country now.

And I asked him, what can you think of, let's go, you and I are now mental experiment, we're at the border and you see, and he's Mexican, he grew up in Mexico, he's an American citizen, and you see Mexicans headed toward the border. Can you think of any reason at all to tell them you're not allowed in? Any legitimate reason? It's American law, the United States can only absorb so many. And he said, actually, no, I can't. Every person who's seeking a better life should be able to come here. Well, I consider that position crazy, but you could see that he meant it well. So the argument would be, frankly, a sentimental argument, but it's a good-hearted

argument. Not we want open borders because we want power, and we know perfectly well that recent immigrants vote for us. Instead, you'd make the argument of compassion and humaneness, right? That's the only one you can make. Or you make the argument that the Wall Street Journal and- Oh, that's true. The Economical- Go ahead. Chamber of Commerce argument that they made for almost 20 years, which is that they come in and they do jobs that Americans won't do. You could disagree

with that. I certainly disagree with that in a lot of ways. But it was not a crackpot, crazy left-wing argument. It was a very chilling. And I think Victor Hansen, I mean, I disagree with him on a lot of things, but I think Victor correctly identified this and the problem with this argument in his first book on immigration, which still I think remains probably the definitive – from my view, the definitive word on it called Mexifornia. But there are arguments to be made. I just think that voters – I mean voters, they choose a mixed bag, right? They are – voters all know the thing that the politicians don't know. Politicians think that when you vote for them, it's because you like them. And voters know that I voted for you because I just don't like the other guy.

I don't like you much, but I don't like the other guy. And politicians easily forget that. They just don't understand why that they can't conceive of a world in which they're not beloved. So the ultimate decision maker is the voter. And if the voter feels dissed or unheard or in some way scolded, it's very hard to win that person back with the same personnel, with the same playbook, with the same messaging, with the same everything. It's just really hard to do. I mean, Hillary Clinton came very close. I mean, Hillary Clinton is part of it. I mean, we all make fun of her, but it's amazing to me that she won as many, she won 3 million more votes in the popular vote. It just shows you just how much-

For a deeply unattractive candidate, she did pretty well. She did pretty well. I mean, that's like, wow. She's like, I mean, you can make the argument, she's the most, she's one of the most skilled and successful American politicians ever because people hated her and still voted for. But but a lot of that, the reason I think she lost ultimately, even though it was a thin loss, was because it was the same story that sounded like. Well, to get back to the point that Peter was saying, the Wall Street Journal, yes, is advocated for more immigration for economic reasons. But there's a difference between more immigration and open borders. It's like the difference between 3G and 5G. Technically, they're both Internet.

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You must use that URL to receive this offer. That's E-E-R-O, E-R-O dot com slash ricochet. Code ricochet. And now we welcome back to the Ricochet Podcast, Toby Young, co-host of the London Calling Podcast, the fastest-growing chat show in Great Britain, as far as we know. He's the co-author of What Every Parent Needs to Know and the co-founder of several free schools. He's also an associate editor of The Spectator, an assistant associate, I'm sorry, editor at Quillette. And if I understand and remember correctly, knew Boris way back when.

Toby, welcome back to the show. What is the reaction in the UK right now to what appears to be a stunning repudiation of Labour? Or is it a stunning hello, hurrah for Conservatives or the mixture of both? Well, how you react depends on who you were supporting in this election. If you are a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, a Corbynista, then you think this is just a tragedy. The stupid, ignorant, racist working class have shot themselves in the foot and will shortly be paying a terrible price for doing so. If, on the other hand, you're a Tory like me, you think it's a glorious blue dawn. You woke up this morning to see seats that haven't gone conservative in over 75 years, having gone conservative in far-flung parts of the country, like Great Grimsby, places like Durham. And one of the glorious moments last night was seeing

Jo Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who at one time was talking about becoming prime minister. She was going to do so well. Not only did she do incredibly poorly, she actually lost her own seat. So we saw her making a concession speech because she'd actually lost her own constituency in Scotland. It was it was, you know, if you enjoy sucking on the tears of your enemies, it was a glorious, glorious night. Toby, can you contain yourself? I'm sorry. I shouldn't. But actually, I was talking to Douglas Murray about this earlier in the week.

And he said he sort of pinned me up against the wall, got by the lapels and said, Toby, if Labour loses, we must gloat. Forget about being magnanimous in victory we have to gloat we have to make sure that they never put someone as unfit for public office as jeremy corbyn a disgusting terrorist loving anti-semite in charge of their party again we don't just have to crush them we have to grind their defeat into their faces so that's what i'm planning to do so toby three three questions that i know i gotta open it up. These are easy ones. One, did you get any sleep last night? Or was it just total partying from start to finish? When did you know last night that it was going to go so well? What time?

I can tell you exactly. There is something in Britain called the exit poll. And the exit poll is, OK, and it's a huge sample, and it's pretty reliable. And they can predict with some accuracy exactly how many seats each party is going to win at about one minute past 10 PM. Polls close at 10. Exit poll is broadcast at one minute after. And at that moment, I was at this party at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a right of center, free market think tank modeled on the philosophy of Frederick Hayek. And it was quite a subdued atmosphere in there up until 10 o'clock. We were all a little bit nervous where, you know, the gap between Labour and the Conservatives had been closing. Boris didn't have a great final week in the campaign. He actually, at one point, tried to escape a television interview,

a Piers Morgan, no less, by disappearing into a fridge, an industrial-sized fridge in a warehouse, which wasn't a great look. Anyway, but at 5 past 10, when the exit poll was broadcast, it looked like the Tories were going to win a huge majority, the biggest majority since 1983, when the party was led by Margaret Thatcher, and it looked like Labour were going to sink to their worst defeat since 1935.

The room just erupted. Everyone was incredibly happy. The wine started flowing. And of course, I got completely drunk before then going off to do some broadcasting on Channel 4, Britain's most left-wing channel, where I don't think I made any sense at all. But nonetheless, I had a good night. My final question, my other question, I know I want to leave it up to, because Peter has probably more substantive questions to ask.

I'm trying to set the table here a little bit. I'm doing what they call the scene setting. Okay. Is it, when you surveyed the room of those cheering Tories, how many of them do you think are remembering Thatcherism and the victories of Margaret Thatcher and are saying, OK, and I'm giving away my bias here, slightly more liberal, maybe a good deal more liberal economically than Mrs. Thatcher's. I mean, to what extent is it the same Tory party? To what extent is it a different one? Well, I think there were clearly some people in that room who hope that Boris, with this large majority, will introduce some Thatcherite red meat policies. But one of the reasons the Conservatives did so well is because they picked up a lot of support

amongst working class voters who deserted the Labour Party. And that's not a phenomenon confined to the United Kingdom. That's true across the Anglosphere, across the developed world, the desertion of left and centre parties by working class post-industrial voters. But I think because Boris has picked up these voters, he's going to have to throw them some policies. He's going to have to put money into the NHS, more money in schools, these are things he's promised to do. So I don't think we're going to see some radical tax cutting and stripping back of public expenditure in the welfare state. I think that's unlikely. But one of the reasons it was greeted, I think, as such a momentous result is because it does mean that we will finally be able to leave the European Union.

So we voted to do that three years ago, as you know, but the Remainers in Parliament, assisted by Speaker Bercow, have done their best to frustrate the process of Brexit. They delayed it. They dithered. And this election was really fought on a platform by Boris of getting Brexit done. And now, now that he's got the majority he wanted, Brexit will get done. And that will fundamentally change Britain's relationship with the rest of Europe and hopefully the country, which has been pretty divided over that issue, can now begin to heal. Toby, Peter, so Brexit is the one utterly unambiguous result of this election, correct? Correct. And Boris will, he said, I think immediately after one of his first sets of remarks, I think even before he went to see the Queen and formally kiss hands and so forth,

he said, no ifs, no buts, no maybes. We will withdraw on January 31st. You take him at his word. Yes. When he promised that before, he hasn't actually had a majority in Parliament to be able to do it. But now he has that majority. And he really fought on a platform of

give me the majority I need. Got it. Next question. FBD doesn't stand for friendly business, ducks. Or for the freelance beatbox department. FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland. Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD insurance team and see how we can support your business.

FBD Insurance. Support. It's what we do. FBD Insurance Group Limited. Trading as FBD Insurance is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Next question is, is the majority too big? The European, what is it, ERG is the European Research Group. William, Jacob Rees-Mogg's group, the real Eurosceptics who wanted the cleanest Brexit they could possibly get, number something like 30. It's a smaller number than Boris's majority now. So he no longer needs them. Is he going to start skiddling to the middle? Is he going to end up delivering a soft Brexit or a real, clean, hard, genuine Brexit? Do you trust him? Do you trust him? I think that is a fear that some people on the harder side of the Brexit debate have.

But I think the problem is, had he, say, won a majority of just 30, that wouldn't nearly have empowered the 30-strong ERG, who could have threatened to withdraw their support unless Boris took us out with the kind of Brexit they want. It would also have empowered the Remainers in his party. And there are still some. So it would have meant more deadlockers in his party. And there are still some. So it would have meant more deadlock, I think, more gridlock. But now that he's got this larger majority, he has much more room for maneuver. And if he wants to, he can take us out with a

relatively clean Brexit. And he's still, in the manifesto, he did say that if I don't manage to negotiate a free trade agreement before the end of next year, before December 31, 2020, then I will take this out with no deal. So he's still, he's still, you know, he's keeping no deal on the table. All right. I have two more questions. This sort of each one of these questions is a doctoral dissertation, but I'm hoping for brief answers because I know James wants to get in and it's so much fun talking to a man who's had no sleep, but it's still running on adrenaline. All right. So the question, these are the two two questions are essentially the same question.

The union. The Scottish National Party nearly swept Scotland. Well, not quite. The Lib Dems picked up a couple and the Tories held, I think, three or four constituencies. But the Scottish National Party, the party which is formally committed to independence for Scotland, took 48 seats, I believe, in Scotland. And over in Northern Ireland, for the first time, as far as I am aware, ever, the province of Northern Ireland elected more members of parliament committed to reunion with the Republic or union with the Republic than to remaining in the British Union. That is to say, Sinn Féin and a couple of other parties picked up more seats than did the DUP, the Democratic Unionist Party. Goodbye to Scotland and goodbye to Northern Ireland? I don't think so, not least

because there can't be referenda in those countries unless Boris grants them the opportunity to hold referendums. So, OK, take the example of Scotland. During the last Scottish referendum in 2014, the leaders of the Scottish National Party were adamant that if Scotland left the United Kingdom when the United Kingdom was still in the EU, Scotland could inherit its part of the UK's membership and wouldn't have to reapply to join the EU. And Scotland really doesn't want to leave the EU. But if the United Kingdom leaves the EU, which it now will on October 31st, sorry, on January 31st of next year, then if Scotland then leaves the United Kingdom, it will have to reapply to join the European Union. And in all likelihood,

we'll be told no, because Spain will veto its application, not wanting to encourage its own Catalan. Oh, I see. Of course, I hadn't thought. All right. Got it. And Scotland, if it is if it severs its links with the rest of the United Kingdom and can't then be admitted into the European Union, will be in an awful lot of difficulty because without the English subsidy, its economy is in deep deficit and it would have to start cutting public services. It would be a complete economic basket case. So the case for Scottish independence, once the United Kingdom with Scotland in it has left the United Kingdom, has left the European Union, collapses. So I think we're going to hear a lot of noise about the success of the SNP in Scotland and how that makes another referendum more likely and

raises the possibility of Scottish independence again. But once we've left the EU, which we will have done within about six weeks, the case for Scottish independence collapses. And I just want, I'm sorry, if I may follow up on Northern Ireland. So the Good Friday Agreement eliminated a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. And now Boris has agreed to put a dotted border down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the island of Great Britain. particularly with this election result where Sinn Féin elects more members than the DUP elects, nobody's rushing it. But in a generation two at the outside, Northern Ireland is going to be reunited with the Republic. It may be very slow motion, but it's already over. Toby? Well, it's possible. But again, I think not particularly likely. I mean, as you say, there is a kind of dotted border. I mean, Britain is still whole and it will leave,

to use Boris's phrase, it will leave the European Union whole and entire with its customs, territory and tax. And it will be able to make trade agreements between the whole of the United Kingdom and other countries like the United States. But there is this dotted border. So there is regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to prevent a hard border being created between those two regions. But if that regulatory alignment continues, and if Northern Ireland is at the same time able to benefit from Britain's free trade agreements with other parts of the world, then there's not really much economic incentive for the people of Northern Ireland to want to reunite with the Republic of Ireland, particularly as it looks as though the EU economically is not going to fare as well,

I don't think, as the sovereign independent nation of the United Kingdom as it will become in about six weeks' time. Got it. Got it. Toby, a lot of us over here in the States, of course, are keenly interested in the role that Lord Buckethead of the Monster Raving Loony Party might have in the Boris Johnson administration. He's sort of like your vermin supreme, but we'll get to that in a second, maybe less pressing, is the issue of the trains. When I was over, every time I'm over there, people are complaining about the trains. When I go to Norfolk, people are about the condition of the trains, the time, you know, the rails. Corbyn wanted to renationalize the trains. It would seem to me that people who had that as their issue might be inclined to vote for him. It makes me wonder whether or not he had some

things that people wanted, but that his personality, him, that guy was enough to poison voters and turn them against the guys who won't renationalize the trains and purportedly make them better. Yeah, well, the conventional wisdom amongst political pundits is that Jeremy Corbyn had a number of popular policies, and the one that's always singled out is the one you say, renationalizing the railways, but couldn't win in spite of that because he was such an unpopular figure himself. But actually, if you look at that particular policy, it's not clear why that would be such a huge vote winner, because only about 11% of the British public use the rails to commute to and from work most days,

68% drive. And one of the things Corbyn was proposing to do was to slash rail fares by 33%. But he was going to fund that by cutting the amount of money that's spent on roads. Well, given that 68% of the population are regular road users and only 11% regular rail users, it's little wonder that that policy didn't actually win in the election. This goes absolutely contrary to what Americans think about Europe. We think that everybody over there takes the train. Everybody. If they go to the shop down in the high street, they take the train. We don't think that anybody takes the car. So the idea that only 11 percent of them actually use the trains on a regular basis would be rather stunning to people here,

because we think you guys have got it all figured out. I know. I mean, one of the curious things about Corbyn's policy platform is it was sort of pitched by him and his activist supporters as full of these kind of great retail offers to the poor, downtrodden, neglected working classes. But actually, if you scrutinize the policy proposals in any detail, it turned out that the beneficiaries were going to be middle class people for the most part, not working class people. So he was proposing to cut university tuition fees. Now, about 50% of school leavers go into higher education.

So it would certainly benefit them and it would benefit those who are otherwise saddled with debt and you have to spend a long time paying off those tuition fee debts. But those are, for the most part, higher income owners. Those are middle class people. It was a tax cut for the middle classes. It was going to be subsidized by the working poor. So again, little wonder that that didn't win in the general election. Toby, Peter here one more time. This is a big-ish question, but what it comes down to is this. Once Boris has put Brexit into effect, let's say he gets it done

on January 31st. On February 1st, does he have anything left to do? And here's what I mean. He's made noises about spending. The argument is he's got new constituents in the Midlands and the North, and effectively, he has to buy them off. Infrastructure spending, more money going to the NHS and so forth. I can think of two people, two places where you can find exactly the opposite argument. One is the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, which has been saying throughout the Brexit, I was about to say fiasco, but it's going to end well, throughout the Brexit triumph, let's say, let's put it that way, that what Britain is going to

need to do once it is independent of Europe is cut taxes and roll back regulations and free its economy. And here we have this brilliant, funny, irresistible man saying he's going to do just the opposite. And the second place you'll hear the argument is from your beloved friend, James Delingpole, who just retweeted this piece, repeating all that the Tories intend to spend with his own comment on top saying, this may be a little bit early, but I'm already feeling, I'm already wishing they'd lost. James is always very pessimistic and gloomy. So on February 1st, he just starts doing the wrong things. Well, I think, make me feel better. I think there's, I think there's some basis for, for, for, for, for basis for that fear.

And that's why Boris is unlikely to be Margaret Thatcher Mark II. But he hasn't actually talked about raising taxes. He certainly talked about increasing public expenditure on schools, on hospitals, on the police, and spending on infrastructure, particularly in the north of England, to link up the north better with the more prosperous south and so forth. But he hasn't explained how he's going to pay for all this. And he's sort of pretending, at least pretended during the election campaign, that he can pay for it all without raising taxes. Now, at some point, you know, he's going to have to try and square that circle. And he may he may he may have to make some tough decisions at that point. But, you know, he's talking about unleashing Britain's potential, about healing the wounds of this very divisive passage in British political history. And, you know, they'll have a number of trade deals to negotiate, not least with your very own Donald

Trump. One of the big smears in the election campaign put out by the Labour Party is that Boris Johnson was going to sell the National Health Service to Donald Trump. Completely ridiculous. And Donald Trump was here for the NATO summit last week, he said, I wouldn't buy the National Health Service if you served it up on a silver platter. But nonetheless, he's going to have to negotiate a tricky trade deal with the US and with some other countries. So there'll be things to do. And you know what politics is. It's one crisis after another, one bonfire breaking out that has to be put out. So I have no doubt it'll be very busy. Hey, Toby, this is Rob again.

Last question. So we talked about Boris. We talked about the future. Can we talk about the losers? So how long does Jeremy Corbyn have before the long knives come out or the short knives come out? And when the pile of corpses is sort of at the end of the Fifth Act, who's going to still be alive? Who's going to run this incredibly wounded party, the Labour Party, back to its greatness?

Rude good health. Yeah, well, one of the problems the Labour Party has is a lack of bench strength. There doesn't seem to be much depth on the Labour benches. And their front bench team, their A team, who are out campaigning in the general election, were all pretty much hopeless. Laura Pitcock, who prided herself on not knowing, having never met and never befriended a single Tory. And she, in one of the other glorious moments from last night, lost her seat in northwest Durham. Durham hasn't gone conservative in something like 75 plus years, but it's part of what's called the Red Wall, a wedge of impenetrable Labour strongholds across the Midlands and the north of England. Well, that Red Wall has collapsed. It's now blue and red. The map of the north and the Midlands looks like a Mondrian painting. And Laura Pitcock,

I'm afraid, is one of the casualties of the collapse of the Red Wall. So it's not clear who's going to succeed him. One would hope. I mean, of course, the hard left, who sort of captured the Labour Party, are already making excuses, blaming Corbyn's defeat on Brexit, on the Tory media. On the Jews. Funnily enough, one of Corbyn's outriders has already blamed the Jews for Corbyn's defeat. But hopefully, you know, they will come to their senses and return the party to the kind of more mainstream social democratic tradition of which it has been a part for most of its life. So one would hope that they do find someone a bit more sensible, a bit more Tony Blair like to take up the reins in due course. I'm just happy that over there they call the Reds the Reds.

Here we have to pretend that they're the Blues. No, they're Red, Red tooth and claw ideology. Toby, always a pleasure. Great to talk to you again about this, and we'll speak again in the future. I hope it'll be about the astonishing cultural and economic renaissance that has taken over the scepter dial in the next six months, eight months, 12, whatever. I will probably be calling, begging you for U.S. citizenship as I can't get my last helicopter to leave London. We're full. We're full over here, sorry to say.

You're on your own. All right. Our regards to Blighty, and have a great day. Thank you, Toby. Okay, bye. If you go on Twitter now to look at the election results, a lot of people in England, the language, my, my, my. I mean, there's a certain sort of British invective that's amusing. They have a better facility, I think, with cursing than we do. We're rather monotonous, but they have a wide variety of words. Still, some of these words, you know, your eight-year-old might look at that and say, that's a bad word, Daddy, isn't it? Yeah, that's true. Any parent who knows that their kid is on the internet knows that they're going to

stumble across something that's a little bit, you know, if it's not Corbyn's frightening face, it's a bad word, or it's something salacious and the rest of it, and you wonder how you can keep your kids safe. Well, you know, if you're a parent, you know that your kids can be tough negotiators when it comes to access to the internet, when it comes to screen time. And if your kids always are saying, you know, five more minutes, when they actually mean five more hours. Well, you could use an ally, a friend, assistance in this battle. That's where Circle comes in. Circle. Circle is the award-winning way to manage your family's online time across all your devices, everything connected to the internet inside and outside of your home. With Circle, the parents can filter

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free limited time offer of $30 off a Circle Home Plus when you visit meetcircle.com slash ricochet and enter ricochet at the checkout. That's $30 off when you go to meetcircle.com slash ricochet and enter ricochet at the checkout. That's meetcircle.com slash ricochet and enter ricochet to save $30. And now we welcome back to the podcast John Yu, who last week got a glowing introduction that was interminable in all the awards, positions, and things that he holds. So we're not going to do that this week at all. Because we have for John an even more exalted position that outstrips anything he's accomplished before in his life. He is the official Ricochet podcast chief color commentator of the impeachment. He's the pundit guy who was

here to set everybody straight, spell it all out. He begged us for that. No, it was a position he won by beating out hundreds of other candidates. So don't go yelling him on Twitter because he's not on Twitter. He's here and we're happy to have him. Hey, John. Well, here we are. House panel approves the Trump impeachment articles. And if I recall yesterday, I think Nadler was saying that what the president has done is in his, I love this, obstruction of Congress, and maybe you could explain that, is absolutely unprecedented. Explain this obstruction of Congress and why it might not actually be as unprecedented as Nadler is saying. I am so psyched that I beat out all those other competitors for this job. I withheld millions of dollars in foreign aid to other countries to get

it. Well, you know, again, this is a trial. We're just trying you out today. What? Obviously, we're seeing other people. So what is obstruction of Congress? So this is new. It's a little bit – it is unprecedented. There is what we're all used to, which is obstruction of justice, which is when you refuse to participate. It's not even you refuse to participate. You try to interfere with the Justice Department's efforts to conduct a criminal investigation.

Obstruction of Congress is not a crime in the federal code. It is a refusal, apparently from the Articles of Impeachment. It's a refusal to provide information to an impeachment inquiry. The reason it's unprecedented is never went to a court. There's no law. It's just Congress doesn't feel you're cooperating, then it's going to charge you. The problem is the president might have legitimate grounds to not cooperating. He doesn't have to necessarily provide everything to Congress in an impeachment proceeding. I suppose Congress wanted to say, we want to know the nuclear attack plans

that you're working on. And the president legitimately says, look, that is almost highly protected security secrets in the country. I'm not going to hand it over to impeachment inquiry. And Congress just says that's obstruction of Congress. That can't be right. There's got to be some kind of balance between Congress's right to conduct an impeachment and the president's right to protect national security secrets. So, there are two articles. By the way, it's just minutes ago as we record this podcast that the Judiciary Committee straight party line vote has passed to the floor, setting up for a vote on the floor of the House next week, I think is when everyone is expecting it, setting up a vote by

the House on two articles of impeachment. One article is obstruction of justice. You just batted that one away. The other article is abuse of power. What do you make of that one? I think that is a better claim. I could see a lot of people in Congress refusing to vote on the second article and just voting on the first one. Now, the problem is that it's too undefined. So, as you know, the impeachment standard is treason, bribery, or, and here's a key phrase, other, other high crimes or misdemeanors. Other, if you read that in legal interpretation, makes it sound as if the other high crimes and misdemeanors have to be as serious as treason and bribery. All the words in that sentence are of similar seriousness. So that's why if the

president got a speeding ticket, you wouldn't say, oh, we should impeach him for that because he committed some violation of law. It's got to be some serious abuse of power. So I think that's right. The problem is for the House Democrats is that abuse of power itself is so vague. And the hearings that they held last week, the one where, you know, Stanford law professor, you know, Pam Carlin attacked, you know, Barron Trump for his name. And you saw things like Mike Gerhardt say this president has committed worse crimes than any president in history. Unfortunately, this excessive exaggeration plus an eye towards quippiness actually prevented the committee from doing its job, which was to say, well, what things are actually impeachable abuses of power

and which things might be a small abuse of power but not worth impeaching? And my view has been this impeachment, if you look at these facts, even if you accept what the Democrats say as true about what Trump did, it's not such a serious abuse of power. It's worth removing a president during an election year. So you would vote against. All right. So on two articles on obstruction of Congress, you say that it's essentially ridiculous, risible. And on the second, abuse of power, abuse of power makes sense as a charge, but they haven't established the fact case that the president did engage in an abuse of power. He did a few things that we may, some people may think quite serious, but not close to the hurdle that you need to clear for impeachment. Have I got that right? Yes, I think that's exactly right. Abusive power could be an impeachable offense.

I'll give you some examples that the framers talked about during the writing of the Constitution. Suppose the King of France gave the King of England money not to go to war. Suppose the United States, the president had the United States sign a treaty that was really not in the national interest, but just benefited his own state. And so those they thought were abuses of power. Here you have the fact pattern is you have a phone call to a foreign president that says, do me a favor. And then later you have, it's not clear yet whether it's definitively true, the president might've said, we're going to hold up $400 million of aid. But in the end, the aid got released.

In the end, there was no favor done. That just doesn't seem to rise to the level of, you know, don't go to war. Don't give away territory. Don't sign bad treaties. Right, right. OK, last question from me. We have Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said or made a comment, and I'm quoting, there is no chance the president is going to be removed from office. Close quote. Now, I take that just as a statement of political reality. You need two thirds. Once the House votes these articles of impeachment, well, let's start there. Is it going to be a straight party line? Will Nancy Pelosi be able to get all the Democrats to vote for at least one of these two articles of impeachment? Will she be able to pick up any Republicans at all? How would you see that next week? You guys are just as expert in reading the political dealies as I am, but I

would expect... So this is one way of looking at it. The Constitution creates incentives for politicians to act in certain ways, because it's the ground rules of the game. And so the incentive here is not to break party ranks if you're on the side of the president, because the charges are so weak. If the charges were stronger, you could see one or two peeling off. If you look at the Clinton investigation and impeachment, actually, there was not a straight party line vote. Some Democrats voted to impeach, and some Republicans actually voted against. There were four articles, and only two went over to the Senate. Some House Republicans actually voted on the other side. But on this one, because the facts are so weak, even if the facts were true, they don't seem to meet what we want

for an abuse of power. The Constitution creates this incentive not to waste your vote, not to waste your time, because you know the Senate's not going to convict. Got it. Got it. Got it. So you would expect both houses, both articles of impeachment to be passed by the House on straight party line votes next week. Yeah, like I said, I could see a member of the House on the Democrat side not voting for the obstruction charge because that opens up such a huge barn door that you got to worry what's going to happen when President Joe Biden's in charge. Here's what you got to think about if you're a Democrat. Suppose Joe Biden wins and the Republicans win back the House, keep the Senate, and they decide to have an impeachment inquiry on what he did with Hunter Biden. Right. They'll say, you just removed a president for a quid pro quo with Ukraine.

Why can't we do the same thing? Oh, I'm sure they're deeply worried about establishing a new norm or breaking an old one and having to come back to bite them in the future. Yes. And now a few questions from the casting director who's been taking notes on your performance so far. Yeah, it's been pretty good. So, John, just to change the subject for a minute, because the other astonishing news, at least to me this week, was in the inspector general's report in which he said pretty unequivocally and then said again to Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz, pretty unequivocally that the entire FISA authorization, not the entire, but a major, if not central part of the FISA authorization application was based on the Steele dossier, which is a thing that Devin Nunes said, and everybody all laughed at him and said, what an idiot Devin Nunes is in his memo a couple years ago, or a year and a half ago,

I should say. And it turns out that's exactly the case. That's exactly what happened. Now, we've sort of been talking about that for the past few months on this, on the podcast. Were you surprised that it was that, or maybe I'm reading it wrong – that Horowitz, the inspector general, is that unequivocal? Or am I reading it wrong, and did he actually hedge it in parts of it that I didn't read? So if you've ever met Carter Page – and Carter Page is this guy who is the subject of these FISA warrants. This is no James Bond you're talking about here. So if you ever met Carter Page, as I have, several times, then you would have thought, there's no way there was sufficient evidence to get a FISA warrant on this guy. This guy's no spy.

He's kind of more, someone said, more like a Keystone cop than a 007. It makes you think that in order for the entire intelligence bureaucracy to focus on this guy, build this huge case on him, something wasn't done right. Something was done wrong. The people were not just putting their thumbs on the scale. They were putting their whole arms on the scale. There's just no way you would have had a normal investigation started just about what you thought about this guy. So I'm not surprised. The thing that I'm surprised about, which is still the open question, is was

there really any kind of partisan or ideological starting of the investigation? They should have stopped well before FISA, but they started, you know, that's really what the question is about now. It's proven that FISA was abused here. The real question is, the investigation that was started that caused you to get the wiretaps in the first place, was that ideological and biased? Right. I guess that's my question. If it wasn't, just assume for a minute that it wasn't. Or how many layers do you go through to get that? So how many people had to see and look at an application and see what was on it? How many people had to sign off on it who knew or must have known or should have known that it was based on a pretty flimsy piece of non-evidence. I mean, like how how how how incompetent is this? Is it so incompetent that it's not incompetent? Must be it must be malfeasance. Or is it just this is what happens in a bureaucracy,

which in which people are shoving paper around back and forth. Rob, this is I always thought you might have been a Rumsfeld speechwriter. I thought so, because that's one of Rumsfeld's rules. Do you know this is one of Rumsfeld's rules? One of Rumsfeld's rules is don't attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity. Because as you point out, Rob, the errors they made, 17 in one FISA application, pile on and pile on. Is it really incompetence or were they just careful not to write down, let's get Trump? But let me say, to answer the direct question, I actually am pretty familiar with the FISA process. So after the 9-11 attacks, there were, I think rightly, seemed to be a lot of problems with the FISA process because we didn't catch two of the terrorists who actually crossed into the United States that the CIA knew about. And so I was brought in to review the FISA process and to recommend changes. And so I did look at applications and the process, and we made a lot of changes. I worry that some of those might have given the FBI too much discretion. But to give you an idea of it, you just can't go into court the way you would to surveil a mob leader or a drug dealer apply for a FISA warrant. So this is considered so sensitive,

so important, such a potential violation of civil liberties that you actually have to, the FBI agent and then the Justice Department guy and then the head of the divisions has to go all the way up to the attorney general or the deputy attorney general to get a signature. That's unlike any other kind of wiretap or warrant. And I can tell you those, the attorney generals take those very seriously. They don't, you know, there's no stamp that just says approved, verifies application. So, you know, that makes you suspicious, one, that if you had this process working and the attorney general and all these people in the Justice Department hierarchy are signing off and reading these things, and so many of these applications got through, is it really incompetence or was it really all these people thought there's no way we can allow this guy Trump to win? He's got to be a Russian agent. Let's use all the full powers of the government to catch him.

John, last question, as Peter Robinson likes to say, to lull his victims into a false sense of security. Will the nation be served better by a short trial so we can heal our wounds and move on, or a long trial where we luxuriate in calling an endless parade of witnesses that bolster Trump's case that this has been a witch hunt. So you know what's not important is the national interest. What's important is an individual senator. So it's an individual. So remember, the rules as they stand now are the same rules they've had on the books since the impeachment of Andrew Johnson after the Civil War. And then when the Clinton impeachment came up, what you do is you can change the rules or add on to it. So the rules are just general rules, and then you have to pass

specific ones to govern the trial at hand. The less you do, right, the little, if you decide to have a minimal package, then the trial runs very quickly, right? The trial, the basic trial rules have no provision for witnesses. The senators have to sit quietly and silently. They're treated like jurors. I've never been able to get on a jury. I know Rob's never gotten on a jury. Maybe Peter's been on a jury because he looks so angelic and a criminal defense lawyer wouldn't know his true nature.

I'm, you know, you know, you know, Wilek's never getting on a jury if he dresses the way he does on the N.R. I'm sorry. When I was up for jury duty, I dressed professionally as a man who walks about the streets of Minneapolis. And I was struck three times because I was a journalist. So these guys are journalists should be struck three times. I was wearing a canary yellow workout to go on. I love that. You should sell those shirts. You should sell them with your face on them. Anyway, so those senators are going to be jurors. If they don't make any real changes to the basic rules, it'll be fast. It'll be like it could be like two weeks. But and I think every senator's interest, most senators, their self-interest is let the process run.

If I'm a juror, I have no responsibility or accountability. No one's going to pick me out and say I did something stupid. I voted the wrong – I said the wrong thing. You're just part of the collective vote to convict or quit. They don't have to follow that. But in order to deviate, they got to put a package of rules together and get a vote. So I expect the political interest of all those senators will be to have a quick and fast trial. If you think that the president is innocent, then I think that's

the national interest too. Again, this is a great time where the Constitution and the politics come together. Because why should the country waste months and months on giving President Trump and his allies a forum to explore every bizarre conspiracy theory, just prove that he's not guilty of these charges, or if he is, they don't meet the constitutional standard, and be done with it and get onto the nation's business, which is what Trump says he wants to do anyway. All right, John, well, you passed the test. You will be coming back as our impeachment pundit again, and we're going to be doing a vidcast of this soon. So we're going to need to have you filmed screeching up in front of Capitol Hill

in your red convertible in a tuxedo, then stepping out and putting on your sunglasses as the Rolling Stone song with the phrase crossfire hurricane blares on the speakers. It's going to be awesome. Awesome. All right, buddy. John U, John U, impeachy keen. I'm just a little something for your students to start using, John. I'm the impeachment man. That'll be that'll be your Twitter handle if ever you go. Exactly. All right. Talk to you later, John. Take care. I'm still convinced that those guys chose Crossfire

Hurricane because they thought that maybe, you know, because it's one of those perfect Rolling Stone, mid-Rolling Stone period songs that they thought that Martin Scorsese would play on the soundtrack when he did the movie about their bravery. About their heroism, right. Yeah, except they never thought this was going to get out. So that wasn't the case. Yeah. Anyway, before we move along, and we've got some interesting stuff. Rob Long's got his poll. We've got a post of the week. And Peter, of course, is going to tell a joke at the end of this.

Right, Peter? Peter, of course, right now is scrambling to look up a joke on the Internet that he can tell. I need to remind you about something. I don't know what you're doing when you're listening to this podcast right now. You may be driving. You may be making dinner. You may be exercising or something like that, but at some point, you're going to be hungry. Now, if you're making dinner, of course, you're already hungry, and you may be tired of making dinner again,

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And enter the promo code, Ricochet. Don't forget, that's promo code, Ricochet, for $5 off your first order from DoorDash. And our thanks to DoorDash for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. I'm hungry. I'm going to fire up my app when we're done here. All right, we have a little bit of business before we end the show. First of all, we have the Lilacs Ricochet member post of the week. It's a small one this week, and it's called Get Well Fast Pat Sajak.

And you might wonder, I didn't know that Pat was doing poorly. It's a little bit of a problem, and I discovered this by finding this little thread in the Ricochet member section saying, Get Well Pat, because he's one of us. And that's one of the cool things about the member section is that Pat Sajak is a member and you'll find him chiming in from time to time. And the people of Ricochet appreciate the fact that this guy who's on TV, who could be the biggest jerk in the world if he really wanted to be, because he's a big guy up there, is just one of the nicest guys you're ever going to meet. And he's on Ricochet. So, yeah,

I put that as the member post of the week because we all want Pat Sajak to get back, to get better. Rob, you have a poll, I believe, that people can start to vote if they're members. A simple poll that I'm just to try to, like, this is not a poll of how you feel as a member, but your assessment of the body politic, the American body politic is really four options. One, A, that the majority of Americans politically are strongly small government, but more liberal socially. B, the big government liberals and socially progressive. C, supportive of big government, but socially conservative. And D, ardently small government, ardently social conservative. Which of those four do you think best describes the American politics at large, the majority of Americans? Because sometimes how we – sometimes how we – where we think we fit into the larger profile is interesting.

And how we imagine the large profile, American profile, political profile to be is also interesting. I've been wrong about it so many times. I'm sort of interested to hear what other people think. And because Rob is not a professional pollster, that's why he uses wonderful words like ardently. I can't see a Gallup guy going door to door and saying, are you an ardent small government person? Ardent. Well, ardent. That said word is going to stick with me all day long. I'm going to just find innumerable ways to use it throughout the day. I want to, well, we're still waiting for Peter Jokey. Peter, you are going to have a joke for us, right?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, good. Well, anything else in your minds, gentlemen, you want to talk about before we close the show up? Any bits of news? any details about politics that somehow we missed in the course of the last hour and a half? They're all talked out. Savor this. Savor.

Wait a minute. Savor that moment. Peter Robinson and Rob Long were given the opportunity to talk about anything in their mind. And there was a celestial silence as though you were in deep space itself. At the moment, Peter Robinson and Rob Long were given the opportunity to talk about anything in their mind. And there was a celestial silence as though you were in deep space itself where no sound could travel. Amazing. It makes me worry about you guys because usually, of course, there's a million issues at the tips of your fingertips that you want to go to. Well, no, there's not one.

It's just that I'm mindful. It is supposed to be a bad day, Friday the 13th. Oh, I forgot, yes. It's a lucky day, but it's hard for it to be unlucky. It's the middle of a high Christmas season, and there's just something fun about this. Particularly this time when Christmas is still pretty far away, so you don't really have to start worrying about whether you have the presents and the food and all that stuff. But it's still completely, completely legit to get in the Christmas spirit.

So last night, I went to a Christmas party at the French Consulate here, which was fantastic. And they carried around sparklers and the little bouche de Noël, and it was a lot of fun. And everybody was dressed in crazy Christmas outfits. And I forgot, having not been in an office or in a workplace for a long time what what it's it's kind of fun when people dress up for the christmas party i mean i know it's irritating but it's also kind of fun that's all i wanted to say somebody plugged in some usb christmas lights eight of them yeah and where i am um and i I somehow, I think

that the French embassy might be a little bit more impressive in inculcating some Christmas spirits to it. How did you get to the French embassy? Well, because I was taking a bunch of French classes at the Allianz here, so they sort of invite you. It wasn't a fancy party.

Are you talking about that beautiful old mansion on the, what is old mansion on Fifth Avenue? Yeah, there's two of them. There's a really beautiful one, which is the Cultural Center, which is a bookstore, which is gorgeous. And then there's the regular consulate, which is a little bit threadbare. It's a little bit more service. It's really serving French citizens. There's one that's a marble or limestone structure.

And inside, I'm almost sure it's the French. It may be Italian. Inside, there's a fountain. And in the middle of the fountain, there's a figure, which some years ago was discovered to have been an early work of Michelangelo. I believe that is in the French Cultural Center, which is really a beautiful building, which is not where the party was held. The party was held in the what is it probably I imagine the waiting room for French citizens trying to get papers taken care of. You know, the problem with all these things is that it's there, especially for New York. You have to have a residence for the ambassador of the United Nations for the mission to the United Nations. That's a separate thing, a separate rank, but it's not a capital.

So it's just a consulate. And you're only a couple hours from New York City. So the ambassador in the ambassador's got all the ambassadorial work. So either you're going to have a lot of fun, have a lot of fun parties, or you're just going to kind of sit on your hands and wonder why you're here. I just got the fact that Robin, Robin is humble way said that he got invited to the French consulate because Yes, exactly. Because he was taking French lessons. As though everybody at the learning annex, you know, down in Union Square, gets shipped up to the French consulate. Just strolled over from the Berlitz.

They're taking French. You know us, French. Anybody who's trying to learn the language has great respect from us. So come on over. Come on over. We want you to come to a party. It was more because it's the Allianz francaise was where i was taking them so like you know the french so the french there are a lot of things you know they they're a complicated group but they uh and no one understands them but they're women they do they do they do

they they are they lock arms at the support and the spread of the French language. That's the one thing that French people from across all different parts of the country agree in. More people should be speaking French. I agree with that. That is definitely how they feel. Then you understand how they're condescending to you. I get that. Exactly.

But I'm with you on the Christmas spirit thing. We're 10 days out or whatever. And 10, 12. And when I walk to work, there's one Skyway that has classic Christmas music playing. No other Skyways do. But this little dog-legged Skyway is always playing the stuff that I regard as real Christmas music, the proper Christmas music, which oddly enough seems to coincide with my childhood memories. Anything from the mid-80s onward just seems to be caterwauling by some pop artist who over-emoted in a studio in July somewhere. But they got the Nat King Cole, they got the Burl Ives, they got the Bing Crosby, all the

rest of the classic stuff. The whole Goodyear album. The whole Goodyear album. Many of the Goodyear albums, all of which I have. And I think that we can empirically prove, we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this actually is verifiably the best Christmas music. And that once we get past that period from the mid to late 60s, that it becomes dreck. And I realize that by saying this, that the entire comment thread is now going to be taken over by debates about Christmas songs. And I apologize for that. But at least it shows I got to the end of the podcast.

And we're almost there. Peter's joke is coming up, but first I have to tell you, the podcast was brought to you by Circle, by Quip, and by DoorDash. So support them for supporting us, and we'll all be happy. You'll be well-fed, you'll get fast internet, and you'll be able to control the internet that your children use. Take a minute, if you will, to leave a four-star review at Apple Podcasts. Oh, I know, I was supposed to say five-star, but I'm being contrary today and thinking maybe if I say give us a four, you'll give us a five. Just go there. Would you please do it? Because the reviews allow new listeners to discover the show.

It gets surfaced onto Apple's front page and then more people join Ricochet. And how long has it been since Rob has Ricochet. And how long has it been since Rob has done to you? How long has it been since Rob has attempted to crowbar some shekels out of that tight wall of yours? Not a lot, you know. And so you want that back? Fine. That's good. Christmas time, the time of threats. Yes, I agree. You know, Christmas time is also the time of the red kettles. And this is the first year in which I've had to actually set aside money in my pockets because I'm just cashless now. I don't carry cash around anywhere. I've got these magic cards in my watch.

So when I come up to the kettle and the guy's clanging away, I feel bad. So I get a whole bunch of dollar bills and fold them up. And at the stores around here, they get you coming and going. They have them in the front door and they have them at both doors of Target. Or not Target, I'm sorry, the grocery store. So you have to either explain to the guy on the way out that, no, I got them over there on the way in, really. Or you have to hit them, too. And would it kill you, really, to hit both the kettles?

No, it wouldn't. Peter, a joke. Well, since, as you know, I'm not very funny. And since Rob has gone with bouche de Noël and you've been talking about Christmas music, I will end, in place of a joke, Well, since, as you know, I'm not very funny, and since Rob has gone with Bouche de Noël and you've been talking about Christmas music, I will end, in place of a joke, a cultural note. A few friends and I have been disputing the best available version of Handel's Messiah on Spotify. And I love that music so much that I've listened to about five or six different versions a couple of times each over the last two weeks. And I have

the answers. If you want a big, lush Messiah, you go with Andrew Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra. There are two of those recordings, but you want the one where the soprano is Kathleen Battle. That's your lush Messiah. If you want a crisp, sprightly quickly moving messiah that emphasizes the text you go with neville mariner there i have served my country next week boys if you want a peppy if you want a peppy upbeat one you go to the one by danny davis and the nashville brass that's an absolute classic my dad i'll try that one it doesn't exist next weeks all right we'll see everybody in the comments and ricochet what are we up to? 3.0? 4.0? We'll get to 5.0

if you go there and join and enjoy. And we'll see you there later. All right. We're done. We're done. Merry Christmas, fellas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. So bone-wrecked and I betrayed it, but a little for the wayward life. A faint heart never won fair hands, so says the roads of England. From a high on a hill came the clarion call to gain young men. Come on, one, come on Make muster

Against the barren hen That's raised to the road To live For her backless boys She did weep and wail Saying, Lord have mercy Where did I fail? Out my belly, they pick up her gun, and off on the road to England.

God knows it's a cold outside, it's a prime-eyed day and a fool's prime night I know it's a hell out there I will love the mouth and the heart don't care He stand if he don't and down if he do He die if he ever found out we knew Hot potato to rub it and run Far from the rose of the midway. Ricochet. Join the conversation.

God knows it's a cold outside It's a bright, bright day And a cold, bright night I know it's a hell out there Out loud, the mouth and the heart go there He's damned if he don't And damned if he do He'd die if he ever found out we knew.

Hot potato, drop it and run. Far from the Rose of England. Far from the Rose of England. Far from the Rose of England.