TRASHFUTURE - My Son is Also Named A Tornado of Bonhomie feat. Josie Long

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

We speak with comedian Josie Long (@josielong) about a recent article in the Atlantic about whether or not Boris Johnson is Britain’s Trump. It’s a terrible article by a guy who knows nothing about Britain, but we wanted to get down to the individual details of why it’s just so infuriating. So, enjoy this episode where we’re in a good mental space. We also talk about a startup that, despite its name, has nothing to do with coffee. If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture Please consider donating to charities helping Palestinian people here: https://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/palestine-emergency-appeal/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3oja5NbR8AIVSOmyCh2LdQ9rEAAYAiAAEgKM9PD_BwE and here: https://www.grassrootsalquds.net/ *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello and welcome to this free one. It's the free one. I've just welcomed that that's going to happen every time. That's right. Yeah. It's an important thing to acknowledge that it is going to be the free one. Yes. Celebrity hearing that.

It was me all along, Josie. Yeah. It wasn't that what the guy that we get just to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was costing a ton of money. Yeah. Just have like the guy from the commercials.

It was actually Sir Patrick Stewart. Yeah. That's right. It's the free one. Yes. That's right. Well, it is the free one and you're here with Riley Milo in Hussain and we are joined by a friend of the show.

I would say four time, I think four or possibly five time returning guest. It's a few times. It's a few times. It's a few ass times. Presented with a half bottle of champagne as a welcome gift. It's Josie Long. Do you know what? Don't say shit like that when there's no champagne.

It's cruel. That's right. Josie, you now have the Trash Future Platinum Plus membership where you do have access to the unlimited Oriental Buffet between the hours of three and six in the members lounge. That's right. And you're no longer just access to the Well Cash Bar. You now have two premium drink tokens, right? And those can be exchanged for Bombay Sapphire, Grey Goose even.

Yeah. Grey Goose will take both tokens for one measure, but any cocktail of 10 pounds are under. Yeah. No more house spirits for this prick. But a couple more appearances and we'll send you to a resort, a wellness resort. Yeah. To be euthanized. Where that guy who's doing viral rounds right now, the one who says that he's never read

a book, like he's the one who's actually leading like the mindfulness course. Please, that video with his searching dead eyes. I was hypnotized by it. You just wanted to invest in his cryptocurrency or whatever, but actually there's a picture going around the Internet that I would very much like to discuss. All right. It is the DUP's Sammy Wilson just looking, looking like a looking himself like a sausage standing in front of a big, a blank, but clearly dirty white wall with a small looks like it's

in a prison visiting area like Sammy Wilson for the DUP standing in what appears to be a prison cell standing in front of an Ulster is British poster, which looks like it's from the 70s. It's very like old looking graphic design. Yeah. So that is, that is a poster that some guys promise to commit some murders to and I'm standing here with this handkerchief full of Prince Charles's fingers, but it's a real open for a surprise image.

Yeah. Absolutely. Holding in his hand, none other than a bag of uncooked sausages just spilling over going on to his. I assume he's just going to lick his like these sausages are so pink. Is he using like an Instagram filter on this? I feel like he's really turned the saturation up because he's very like a ruddy cheek and the sausages are outrageously pink.

Like they are like implies. I think the way that he's holding the plastic bag sort of implies that he's like kept them in his jacket pocket. Like this is just like where, where the sausages, like if the place for the sausage, you got your keys, your keys wallet, phone in one pocket, you've got your bag of raw sausages on the other. He's a bit of selling you sausages. What do you happen to be in the market for any illegal meats?

I feel like there'd be some sort of saying as well, which would be like a good Ulster man keeps his sausages close to hand and that gave the sausages and his left pocket and his balaclava and his Roy. So all of this is around because this is something that I think I feel that we've lost the art of recently, which is different kinds of conservatives doing like weird literal protests about matters of technical constitutional matters. In this case, it's because there is a sort of a trade kerfuffle going on between the K and EU about who gets to import chilled sausages at what quota.

And of course, if that happens, then the Northern Ireland protocol is threatened. And if that happens, the peace process is threatened. But because, you know, Sammy Wilson's whole thing is just like, like his purpose in politics is to just be, be an embarrassing moron who doesn't get anything on behalf of the British state. Right? Like it's, it means that he's an effective tool. He just doesn't know that he's a blunt instrument of stupidity.

His first instinct was just to like run out to the local Tescos and just like grab a handful of raw sausages to make a point about the peace process. And so Sammy Wilson, you have the TF salute of the week. I just love the fact that he was like, I've got to talk about these sausages, but how would people understand them talking about sausages unless I'm holding these threaten the peace process? They're just sausages, you fools. Hey, congratulations.

You're a real fucking pie, Zahn. Yeah, this is incredible. I'm really excited for like the, the, the, the UVF to start blowing up trucks of sausages. Well, I mean, I'm excited for like as more different things become matters of like technical disagreement between the UK and EU for more like Sammy Wilson type guys to just do extraordinary like, for example, how are they going to represent financial services? Is he going to like have like a little outfit with a green visor? I'm just going to throw an adding machine off of, off of the Harlan and Wolff shipyard.

Oh, they're all just Brian Butterfields. Yeah, they're just very literal. They're very literal. They're very literal. They're very literal. And I love that kind of literal conservative posting. But speaking of new genre, how do we go back to an old genre? I've got a startup for us.

All right. Uh, it's a classic, classic start. When I found it, I was like, this is like a season one startup. Who boy is it a startup? Yeah, it is a season one type of startup. It does boy. Does it ever do what it does? It's so it's just, so it's Juicero era.

Uh, late season one. The Juicero era. Yeah. I'd say it's late season one. We're past Juicero. The juicacious period. When we're kind of just getting into what became our focus in season three. Um, so Juicero Park, it's called.

You did it. You crazy bastard. You really did. You brought the Juicero back. It's like Jeff Goldblum's stare and staring at all. There's a giant Juicero marches across the plane to press a giant bag. Yeah, that's right. So no, it's called caffeine and no, it's not spelled right.

It's K-A-F-E-N-E. Oh yeah. That's right. Josie, as the guest, you have first guess. What does caffeine do? Well, I mean, I feel like I'm about to like be laughed off, but it's got to be something to do with coffee, right? Oh, sweet summer child.

I'm afraid it is not. It is nothing to do with coffee. Wait, does it squeeze coffee out of a bag? I'm afraid Milo, you're wrong as well. Not a coffee out of a bag. Nothing to do with coffee. Is it a way that people can pay monthly to have some sort of digital alarm clock? Oh, it does involve paying monthly.

Okay. Of course it does. I all do. Shane, give me your guess. It involves paying monthly and it's called caffeine. I'm actually stumped with this. I wonder like, is it some sort of like subscription service to a platform? No.

Is it a subscription service where they deliver you like pro plus every month? It's not a subscription service of any type. Okay. Okay. I'll give you one. I'll give you guys one little bit of marketing copy and it's going to really, it's going to really help. We're caffeine, a mission driven fintech with the goal of empowering flexible ownership

solutions. Flexible. Is it where you can rent the shit in your house? Close. I've got an idea. Is it, is it like a timeshare, but for like a shitty office cubicle or something? Milo's closer. Josie.

Remember, you're empowering flexible ownership solutions. So try, if you need to, try and drink some pure grain alcohol to try and reduce some of the white matter in your head in case you need to figure out what they mean by this. Isn't it? You can get half a bike. More or less. Share a bike with your neighbor. Here's the next little bit of a clue for you.

Flexible ownership. Consumers. Buy the things they want and no credit is necessary. Oh, fuck. Is it like a rent to own thing for buying stuff? Okay. Who all here knows the company? Klarna or a firm.

Oh, yeah. You can pop up. Yeah. Okay. Now, Neil Desai, former CEO of Octane Lending and James Shuler, who participated in Y Combinator's accelerator program as a high school, found as a high school or rather, he was not himself a high school. This pervert's been dressing up as a school.

Yeah, that's right. He's the school. He really is a shit. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much to Peter Geddon. So, founded New York City based caffeine in July 2019. Bye, Chris Morris.

The pair's goal is to promote financial inclusion by meeting the needs of what it describes as the consumers that are left behind by traditional lenders. And it's not by giving them money. Oh, well, you give it to them for a bit. But then, you know. We're some sort of, I mean, we're kind of a, we're like a sort of marine animal of lending. That's what I would say. We're just slipping through the water and we never stop.

Like a lone porpoise. We don't sleep. Yeah. Like a lone dolphin, maybe. Yeah. Something like that. That's the thing about dolphins. They're never alone.

They're always in a pod. That's right. Well, that's much like all of us here. We're actually, we may be in different cities, but we're never alone either. I remember one of my friends did a bit once about dolphins and how he found, he read some stat online that was like over 10 innocent people are raped by dolphins every year. And he's like, which implies some of them weren't innocent. Some of them were asking for it.

So more specifically, caffeine is focused on helping consumers with credit scores below 650, which is subprime, purchase retail items such as furniture, appliances and electronics with its buy now pay later model. Right. Consider it. Right. So it's like, what if, right? As we know, subprime is always good, right?

That's what I learned from the Great Short. The Great Short. What a great short it was. The Big Short. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Short. Yeah. That's right. The Great Short is a great Gatsby, but where Gatsby always references where he's five

and three. So basically, right? So this is just Klarna so far. It's just a buy now, pay later thing where if you don't know how that works is by charging a fee usually to the business and then charging you a bunch of fees if you don't pay properly, these buy now, pay later organizations will essentially purchase, they'll essentially extend you credit to buy a whiz bang or whatever. And they go on like surprisingly low priced goods like you get offered to do it on stuff

that's like 15 quid. Yeah. And you can pay for it in like three or four installments and then they make their money charging the merchant and then you fees if anything goes wrong, which if frequently it does. However, so how that's a, how do we make that if we're, if we can't charge higher fees to the buyer, how do we make it for the subprime because any credit model, a product to the subprime has to therefore be much more stringent or else it doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense as a business. So effectively they say caffeine's flexible ownership model, remember that word, is to designed to not let it, not let the worst happen to a consumer, which is if you miss a payment on your credit card, your credit score is impacted. If for some reason someone cannot make a payment, caffeine simply comes up to, comes to pick up the item and the customer is no longer under any obligation to pay for it moving forward. We've invented repo man. Can't see this going wrong.

So basically you pay for a year for your bike and then you miss one payment and they just take it away. Then what you've done is you've effectively rented a bike. It turns out hope, hope you planned for that. Yeah. Especially, you know, for example, if you've bought a bike with this system because you're say a delivery driver, maybe the you're, you've basically what you're doing is you have to build equity in your bike and if you miss a payment, they foreclose on it.

Cool. Yeah. That's great. I love that. And so, you know, don't get sick. No, never get sick. So, there's one thing trash future advisers is do not get sick because what you've, what's happened is you've been enabled to undertake, you've been enabled to access the means of

transport required for your job in a flexible ownership model, which benefits both you, the benefits you, your community, the business and the lender. And with all of this mutual benefit, just don't get sick and it'll be fine. All right. So, okay. Say I buy some boxing gloves via this and I'm using them all the time because I'm loved a box or something well-known about me. Yeah.

Absolutely. And then. Josie odd not long. They call her. Clubber long. Yeah. I'm a terror of the ring. No.

That's right. It's right. So, say I buy them one like three years and I'm bashing the shit out of them for two years and then I get ill for a week and cut by for them and they come take the way, what are they doing with them? Are they selling them? And they now also like an eBay shop as well. Well, in your case, Josie, they're selling them to perverts.

These are Josie long sweaty boxing gloves. You don't realize if I, if there was the slightest pervert economy for anything I used, I would have jumped on that shit, but there's none. There's no niche. Yeah. There's no niche. Josie's got very impecunious perverts. They're like, I would, I would love to buy some used clothing of yours, Josie, to like

sniff or just enjoy, but unfortunately I have not been able to rent to own a scheme. I have not been enabled to access a flexible ownership model. Can't pay. I'll take it back. I'll wear it some more. Now that is a scheme that works because the used goods have a place to go. They're actually going up in value. Who wants a fucking two year old TV that's been half paid off?

That's right. So they say, so they bought, so what happens actually is you don't own the thing at no point until you're finished paying it off. Do you actually own the thing? It's not even like you've bought it on credit. Caffeine has bought it for you and then you have to pay them back. And if they, you don't pay them back, then they just claim ownership of the thing that they already have.

So the title of your boxing gloves stays with them. Right. Yeah. I hate it when I have to work out the deeds on my boxing gloves. It's just a crewing goods. So is this someone who wants stuff but they can't, they feel like they don't deserve it, so they need to put it through an elaborate system. Well, I think what, I suppose what they do is they probably just, I mean, a lot of things

that people buy do have resale value, things like computers, TVs, furniture, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Josie Long's used clothing. Yeah. Josie Long's used hat. Like, what is this? Is this a platform as well?

Like, I think they sell it probably to, I don't think they sell it to private individuals. I think it's a, it's, it's, it's a bit, it's a B to B, that Northern Irish politician. He's got a trench coat for the stuff. Someone hadn't finished paying off those sausages. That's how they ended up in his fucking pocket. Right. So they're largely still good. Only a little bit.

Yeah. And there's a few bites. What are you Lord Fauntlois? And so what I think is very funny, right, is that this is described as freedom. Oh. Yeah. So they also work with an AI analytics firm called Synaptic to, quote, better understand a borrower's ability to pay.

So effectively you just get sort of all your shit analyzed by some shit that doesn't work because AI, as we all know, is Matt. Basically. Why the fuck is this called caffeine? I hate these people so much and I hate them even more because of their terrible aesthetic choices. Like, this is obviously an evil company on the face of it, but like, if it didn't have such a stupid fucking name, I would hate it noticeably less.

Yeah. What if it was called like Lend-by? That's gonna be much more literal. That wouldn't be a good startup name. Lend-lender. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

No. What happened to Fiverr? Did that go under? Oh, it's still, it's still up. Sad. It's still fiving. Yeah. So anyway, this is basically what they, what they're doing.

And the thing is, right, this is another fucking model. Remember how like, Klarna was nowhere and then it was everywhere? Caffeine, same thing. They're now, they're now, well, they say anyway, that they're no longer taking on new merchant partners, which means that effectively a, the subprime borrower for consumer goods market that is, you know, has grown to the point where they're no longer of capacity to sign new clients. So expect to see more of caffeine.

We love, yeah, we love like different iterations of the rentier economy. It's all great. It's all, it's all fun. Yeah. We're basically that it's, remember the whole point of fintech is to create debt and then call it something else. And what that's, we've done here, we've re, we've renamed debt flexible ownership. Yeah, it's cool.

Yeah. No, I think it's flexible ownership because you might own it and then suddenly you don't. And that's pretty flexible. That's very flexible. That's a very, that's not a very solid concept of ownership. It feels to me like a mandala, a mandala, you know, yeah, you got a pain in, nah, you got nothing. Yeah.

Everything you own is basically an etch-a-sketch and a big guy can come along and just shake it and like, Hey, you can start again. That's pretty flexible, huh? Yeah. Oh, don't you hate being hemmed in by all of these lines you've drawn in the etch-a-sketch? Don't you wish that you didn't have all this stuff you did? I can take it off your hands for you. That's right.

Do you not feel burdened by your worldly possessions? Just doing like what wellness, Baz, shit, like, do you not feel that all of these possessions are preventing you from ascending to your true spiritual self? Are you suggesting that wellness, Baz, Baylif? Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is Bazlif. Can I say, I literally just wrote a short story about two young women who decide to pretend

to be wellness gurus in order to fleece the rich for everything they own. And I'm so proud of myself that I got my finger on the pulse. Like it's never been the case before in my life. It's so far on the pulse. They hate to see it. They hate to see a girl boss win. That's right. That's caffeine.

So start your investment engines. Yeah. You should invest in them. This is not investment advice. No, there's not investment advice. It's not investment advice. It's not investment advice. Actually, it's probably quite a good investment because although they're an evil company,

it's the kind of stupid evil company that actually kind of does increase in value quite rapidly. But if you are an under-credited investor, you will not be able to invest because it would require a public investment and private equity, private investment and public equity. So if you're a billionaire, this could be construed as investment advice, but it is still not. You would need to get a license as a family office. I don't think we have any billionaire customers.

All right. All right. Well, now that that boilerplate disclaimer that we put into every episode, that's the FCA makes you say that. Yeah. Yeah. 2021getirudex.com. We are.

I want to talk a little bit about the goddamn news. It's news time. If Alice were here, she would play the goddamn news stinger, but she's not. It's the news. Just open up. It's the news. Good morning, Theo. It's the evening news.

It's the evening news. So it'd be like... Yeah. No, that's morning news. Yeah. Yeah. No, morning news is more impactful. Yeah.

Depending on when you're listening to it, play the right news stinger. That's right. Don't embarrass yourself, listener, not you, listener, don't embarrass yourself. Yeah. Listener. Yeah. So there are a few things that sort of came up that I'd like to discuss. What do we think?

I think let's start with this queen nonsense. I don't want to talk about any of the specifics involved. I just think it is very illustrative of certain elements of why this country is like it is. Oh, yeah. So for context, at the Modlin College MCR, a group of students voted to remove a picture... Not even the JCR. No, the MCR. The fucking MCR.

A bunch of Americans who were there for one year. Yeah. For people who are not Oxbridge cunts, the JCR would be the college common room for undergraduates, which is most of the students, the one that people actually go to, and the MCR is like a common room that's only for graduate students. Correct. And so it's always like a dead ass room. It's like not a room that people hang out in.

The MCR is not a fun room. Yeah. It's not a room that anyone cares about. No. It is the least consequential room in a very inconsequential place. Yeah. Like this is really like, yeah, we're in the darkest cellar of the darkest house on the street.

Yeah. You know what I mean? It's midnight. We're looking for a black cat that isn't there. You know what I mean? Yeah. That sounds like you're trying to sell me something. Yeah.

Look. I think it's very funny. As the only non Oxbridge person here, I think, we just had one common room at York. Was there a picture of the Queen in it? There was one of those really bad reenactment, you know, the Kitchener poster, except it was just like demanding that you wash your cups. Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry.

Your university, whilst technically collegiate, is actually more of a polycule. That's right. And all of the students sleeping in one big bed together. That's right. That's a big bed. So that's right. Anyway, this picture of the Queen was just someone put it up in like 2013 and then the students, the graduate students who are Americans who were there for one year.

So fucking nerd. Yeah. It's 2013. What fucking nerd in 2013 was like, well, we need a picture of the Queen. In 2013, everyone was listening to, you know, like everyone, like sort of red pants and everything. Yeah. The thing is, it might have even been put up as a joke.

That's quite possible. Oh, of course. But because it's a college, everyone assumes, as you know, yes, in fact, it's the MCR again. JCR, plausibly a joke. MCR. Yeah, no. Anyway, probably just a nerd. What happened is they voted to take it down, being like, this is a bit colonial.

Yeah, fine. She literally is the Queen who used to be the Empress of India. I'm going to say that is all I really want to discuss about the event, other than the fact, I think what they should have done is taken it down and then put up a poster of like Scarface or a Miller light side. You're the one of the two girls kissing in black and white. Like the tennis scut picture, where she's like scratching your arse. Yeah.

Or like a pyramid of beer cans. I think they should have put it up back with huge titties. That's what I think. Photoshop them on. Yeah, big anime titties. Yeah, that's right. I don't have large breasts, like not to not to be treasonous, but she does. Yeah.

I don't think that's treasonous. I think it'd be treasonous to say the opposite. We're saying the Queen has lovely naturals, right in with what you think is true. Who's treasonous? Is it Milo or Josie? So I think Josie and I are in agreement, actually. You're both treasonous. Anyway, the point is, right, is that what then occurred was someone told Guido Fox, who

was like one guy, who was a big thing about etiquette with the Queen when you meet her. You can't stare at a rat, even when you're cursing. She's like, my eyes are up here. I know that big mummy milkers. Oh, my god. That's so. Someone clearly just told Paul Stains to drink driving enthusiast. Paul Stains.

Yeah. Well, this is the thing also, like lots of like Guido Fox's like tips and stuff come from like students who are looking for like internships and everything. So in fact, like almost like all the almost all the kind of journalists like work in mainstream media now who started off at Guido Fox and stuff were like students who were giving tips to Paul Stains during the undergraduate years, often about like often snitching on other students. Shout out to the actual listener of the show, Tom Harwood.

That's right. Yeah, I forgot he subs to us. What was that guy? He's the republishing the fascist conspiracy site and then refusing to acknowledge it guy, right? No, no. That's the guy from that's Tim, another Tom or whatever kind. It's too hot today.

It's too hot. But yeah, like Guido Fox, especially as Guido Fox is kind of like now, like they aren't really even kind of on a basic like news and Westminster level, just not producing the same types of stuff as they used to. Like they have gone through like this culture change where not only have they become more adjacent to the government like every other like Westminster reporter, but they also kind of know that the bread and butter isn't in Westminster gossip, it's in like culture or stuff.

Yeah. So yeah, they're like the incentives for students looking for like internships or whatever, or even just like bylines because like internships don't really exist anymore is, you know, is very much there. And I think that's why we kind of get dumb stories like this and why we will continue to get dumb stories like this. It's just objectively extremely funny to run an incredibly pro monarchy website called Guido Fox.

Just an absolute 11 out of 10 heightening the contradictions meter. So basically for a little more context, what then happened is this one right wing blog that's just where all the news comes from now because of the way that the media ecosystem works was like got a little, got just a random snitch just to say, hey, they've taken down the picture of the queen. And then what this, the right wing blog then publishes it, then every newspaper runs with it, puts it on the front page. And then what happens then is a bunch of like people from the nominally opposition party

are like marched into a bunch of radio stations where they then have to like, where they have been like, ritually humiliated and told that they have to agree with the, with like the government. Basically. Yeah. It's like basically like when there's been a military coup, except it happens every week, just like Kier Stammer's marched into LBC and forced to like recant what he said the previous week by like a guy in a different hat.

That's because, right? Like it's, this is a fake country or rather more specifically, it is an entirely fake political system. It is Potemkin. There is nothing there. There is no, there was no row. There was no row over there. It was students.

They're all idiots. No one cares. Nothing happened. Like the idea that all of the left backed itself. It didn't. Nothing actually happened. No event has occurred, but the entire left Chris, the entire, the entire political media ecosystem of this country is basically like has to just work through, just has to live

an insane life where they have to pretend that something has happened and that it's very important that it be discussed. And I think like it's, I've said earlier, right? Like the problem with Jeremy Corbyn was that he was the last sane person in the British political media ecosystem. He was the last person who would probably say, I don't particularly care. They can do what they want with their MCR and they, and you could not be allowed to continue being in politics.

Sort of muttering it from his bike while he was cycling back in his full Wilson tracksuit from like playing the fruit machines at the pub. From the aloha king. Come on. Miss that guy. Yeah. He's not got enough fruit. He's grown his own.

Honestly, this is, this is really grist for my, like, for my opinion that I'm increasingly, I'm being increasingly wedded to, which is that when your society is raised on nothing but a diet of like visceral and paranoid anti-communism, it becomes really good. The point is, even when the USSR goes away, those people's paranoia doesn't. Like, I think it's no coincidence that- Well, so a lot of them aren't even aware that the USSR went away. As we've learned from years and years, where Russell T. Davies literally says the Soviet army at one point.

On the Patreon. Yeah. Do subscribe to the Patreon. The FCA makes us say that too. Yeah, they do. I think like it's, again, no one cares about the painting or the picture even give a fuck. But it's just, it shows that like, in order to be a political participant in this country, in order to be a media figure, you are going to have to live in a paranoid fantasy world

where you have to pretend that there is a malicious fifth column of like anti-monarchists and woke stop. You have to pretend the woke Stasi is around every corner and could be poised to take over at every moment. That's what the fifth pillar of Islam is. It's the woke Stasi. Well, funnily enough, none other than Dan Hodges basically admitted that to me yesterday. Where his whole thing was basically just like, you know, if, you know, if the quote unquote

left are faced with this problem, they should simply say, I am on the side of the queen and that's it. Right. And I asked Dan kind of like, okay, so what you're basically saying is that, like, basically more than half of the population, including like, you know, vote like half the votes is not even, you know, not, not even just like general people should just like live in constant fear that anything, any sort of mundane decision that they make could be interpreted as like treason.

Yeah. And he was just like, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, how else is society going to be defended Hussein if we're not, if we don't make sure the traders are worried about being caught for treason? And obviously, like, it's an obvious thing that we've spoken about in the show a lot. And like all are, you know, it's something that we take for granted.

I thought about what was interesting about the Dan interaction, small as it was, was that he basically just like, it was basically like a mask off moment because he's an incredibly stupid, but like, weirdly earnest guy who I think just enjoys the fact that like, he gets like online attention. Yeah. And I think it's a combination of those things. And ultimately, it's also like a news ecosystem that is very, very heavily reliant on Twitter to like repeat and kind of regurgitate stories that it thinks is important because it doesn't

have any idea about like what's going on or how to like interrogate power. And I think there's like this other set of the ecosystem, which is like Gido forks and talk radio and from next week, from next week, GB news, but understand that like they can manufacture news really, really simply with like this primed audience of extremely online boomers who will get angry at like any sort of concoction of the left. I'm very excited for like, yeah, all of our news media to just become the Cambridge tab. Like that's great. What it really is, is it is about, I think you say when you say it's about finding traders,

like that's true. It is about identifying individuals and we saw this as well, even in the 2019 election, we've sort of seen it since, to be honest, we've seen it since about 2010, realistically, where there would be, where the newspapers after Levison sort of fizzled out, the newspapers realized there was nothing that stood in the way of them basically just making it their job to identify, identify what the line of treachery was and then find people who've crossed over it and then basically mount public hate campaigns against them. That's great.

I love it. And I think this, and again, this whole poster debacle, it doesn't matter in itself, but it matters because it is the perfect representation of a synapse misfiring in the dying brain of this country. It's also quite shocking to me because I feel like even three years ago, they would have had to have done something for this to happen. Like something would have had to have happened in some way. They might have had to express a left-wing opinion or boycott something or stop something

happening. And here it's literally people saying, let's redecorate the common room. And that's enough. Yeah. That's really so shocking. To be fair, they shouldn't have replaced it with a picture of Gaddafi. I don't understand why they did that. They should have replaced it with a picture of Gaddafi looking strong.

Yeah, that would have been good, actually. That would have been cool. Right. I shouldn't have turned the MCR into a mosque. I think the way to understand this is that the British press has essentially declared war on most people who live here. Oh, yeah. And about a third of the population of the people who live here are all too willing to

back them. I think they've almost declared war on everyone who lives in this country. It's like a quite... Because even the people who read it, it declares war on them some of the time, but it's usually not about you enough of the time that you enjoy the outrage. We used to remember this a lot when I was at Cambridge, that there would be every year, there would be a slow of Daily Mail articles between April and June, which is when all the big Cambridge University parties happen, which would be just taking pictures of students

having a few drinks and having a nice time and all in black tie going to dinners. And just being like, disgusting university, you are the future leaders of this country. One of them stood on a bin. Are you not outraged? And then literally the rest of the year, the Daily Mail would be like, send your children to Oxbridge, send them there, or they're scum. And it's like, this is an interesting newspaper. They were simply very angry that Cambridge students were disrespecting the bin men.

And I for one agree with that. We were always disrespecting the bin men. Bins are for emptying, not for standing. That's right. I remember when the bin man used to be able to kill you if you stood on the bin. They lived above a chain fish restaurant. And on Monday morning, so I was always very hungover at about 6 a.m. They thought that was the perfect time.

Was it the caviar prunier? It was all in the airports? No. It was lock fine. They used to like to tip a dumpster full of 500 glass bottles into a bin lorry right underneath my bedroom window. I hated it. That was the time in my life where I respected the bin men the least.

I thought you were going to say a dumpster of rotting fish. So it actually sounds like you got very easily. It would have been less noisy, Josie. It would have been less noisy. But the reason I bring this up again is to participate in the politics in the mainstream of this country, you have to understand that it's an entirely pretend affair. Where non real things are small coterie of print media assholes can make up anything they really want and then just declare war on you forever.

And I think it's because like they resent that Leveson even happened. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And it's also it's easier the stupider you are. Like I swear Dan Hodges was like grown in a fucking Soviet lab in their efforts to create an like an absolute zero IQ for the purposes of calibrating the test. He's a NIST standard moron. That's right.

Yeah. Like if you were like the Soviet Union went too close to the sun when they tried to build a baboon that gets every question wrong. Can I say we are leaving out one of the key aspects of the story, which is the absolutely creepy as hell internal decor of the Tory MP Andrea Jenkins showing off her fucking shrine to the Queen in her living room. She had some fairy lights on it. It's got a picture of the Queen and then two little circular pictures of the young Queen

and young Prince Philip next to it in her fucking house. And then yeah, I feel like I'm not saying it makes the whole thing worth it because it doesn't but things like that things like Michael Gove's bookshelves at the very least it's emboldening these people to give away more than they should and these things can be kept and studied. If you go into a man's house and he doesn't have a picture of the Queen with fairy lights on it and a little picture of the young Queen and a little picture of young Prince Philip next to it, don't fuck it.

If he's not holding a bag of sausages, ladies, if you're going into your man's prison cell and he's not holding a bag of sausages standing in front of an Ulster. Don't give him the air and he smuggled it in your asshole. Anyway, so with a little bit of stupid news discussion out of the way, I want to get to why we're all actually here because to talk about our good friend Riley. Yes, it's the intervention. I've been making too many episode notes. Riley's organized an intervention for himself and that's ironically what the intervention

is about. We're desperately trying to stop him from becoming a DJ. I'm afraid that train has left the station, my friend. There has recently been an article in The Atlantic that has, I think, been garnering some attention over here because Tom McTague, a man without object permanence, with a fucking name, a man with no object permanence at all, has written a piece on our Prime Minister Boris Johnson for American liberal audiences. Now, the piece is primarily concerned with asking the question, is Boris Johnson

and Britain's Donald Trump because they couldn't think of a better question, I suppose. That's a stupid question to have your article on. No, it's a different kind of guy. It's a different kind of thing. It's a very different kind of guy. He's much more of an ordinary Tory. He's just a little bit more sort of colorful than Theresa May. Boris Johnson actually is one of the less reactionary people in the current Tory party

to my mind. He's just cynical. Well, I mean, when you basically is like, yeah, well, it's him and then everyone who wrote Britannia unchained and Pretty Patel and stuff, it's hard to get more reactionary than them. Yeah, like Pretty Patel is way more like Trump. She's incredibly reactionary and she's stupid. That's right.

Boris Johnson isn't quite either of those things. But nevertheless, I think it's worth talking about this because it's answering the question, how are, how is our politics seen? And also, there's almost a little bit of a, you might say, a liberal soft selling of Boris Johnson. Right. A desire to, a desire to sort of, it feels like a marketing piece. And I don't think Tom McTague necessarily set out to write it.

I just think he's very easily bamboozled. But I think also there's something you have to bear in mind. Of course, whenever we talk about American politics is that like in real terms, Boris Johnson is to the left of most American liberals. Not because he'd like to be, but just because that's where the relative overton windows are. I think it's, it's one of these things where I think, I don't, I can't comment on where I think he'd like to be.

I think he happens to govern a country that happens to have some things like socialized in, but I don't think it's, it's, I don't think it's, it's even sort of instructive to compare the two. He wouldn't be bringing about the NHS. It wouldn't be, there's not a single one of us. And neither would fucking care Stalmer. Oh my God. It would be so awful.

It would be. I welcome, I welcome the proposal for free healthcare from the government, but I think we could go further by creating a structured system of incentives, which if the Prime Minister had read the handbook, he would have known that on page 94, there was a typo. Yeah. That is what I would like to talk about today. Yeah. And we've got a new system where if you can't pay for your operation, then actually caffeine

comes and takes your kidneys back. That's right. Yeah. So I do slightly disagree actually. I think it's not instructive. And again, Tom McTague makes this sort of same statement in the article. And I think it is, in fact, yeah, Boris Johnson is constrained by different things that Americans are constrained by.

But I think the crucial thing is that it's less about what makes American Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, labor and so on different, and more about what essentially makes them all the same. As Josie said, none of them would have started the NHS. Yeah. None of them are willing to really build anything. They're all just different kinds of privatizers and dismantlers. The difference is that the Tories and the Republicans have both identified the language

of patronage and anti-austerity, whereas the Democrats and labor are sort of still stuck in the 90s, as we've talked about before. Does it mean, though, that because they've identified the language is politically useful, it doesn't necessarily mean that, say, they're going to go through with doing any of it. But they have understood that it is something that they can sell. And someone like Tom McTague buys every bit of it. So I'm going to start slightly out of order with something that comes about two thirds into the article, because I believe it is illustrative of how this article works.

What am I doing this for? Johnson asked his aides, looking at his schedule for the day and seeing a slot carved out to talk to me. It's for the profile I advised you not to do, James Slack, Johnson's then director of communications. James Slack. But if you can see what he's doing there, right, which is he is essentially said to his director of communications.

Now, this is very important. Well, I'm going to ask you this question. I'm going to need you to imply that this journalist is too good and too incisive and that it would be dangerous to talk to him. And then... Which I'm sure is born out in the rest of the piece. I'm sure it's a real, a really hostile interview. Oh, absolutely.

Where, effectively, you could see sort of Mick Tague kind of sucking himself off a little bit over being told that... Which is impressive to be fair. I advised you not to do this. And then being like, I'm dangerous. I'm Woodward and Bernstein. Then again, if I'd ever taken any advice, I probably wouldn't have had however many wives it is.

So, anyway, I think that's illustrative of sort of what's going on in the piece generally. So, it opens with Boris jumping into a demo tram in a factory in Birmingham while doing a photo op for the election of Andy Street. And the following line occurs in the colour for the introduction, which can sum up the vast majority of what it goes on to say. Johnson was, as usual, unkempt and amused, a tornado of Bonomy in a country where politicians tend to be phlegmatic and self-serious. Fuck off.

If not... A tornado of Bonomy. Okay, the image that's in my mind right now is the one from South Park where the guys come all over himself. Like, that's what Tom McTague was doing all right. Yeah, also, to me, his shit just seems so transparent. Like, how would anyone at this stage be being like, wow, he's just so charming. And not like, he's got one shit gag.

And he just does that. Josie, that's because you're not a writer for The Atlantic and you're not as easily taken or indeed a huge number of posh women. Boris Johnson is just like catnip for a certain class of women, doesn't he? I don't know what it is, but like, they want to fuck Boris. Right? Why? I think it's that classic thing of like, I can change him.

I take that. I do. But I just like... He does not have the energy of somebody, and I don't want to sound graphic, like, who am I? But like, he does not have the energy of somebody who has ever, like, bothered to make a woman come in his life. Like, he does not have, like, any energy of that.

I have to, I have to disagree. I think the cooperation between my lips and the pussy has been positively glutinous on this issue. I'm sorry. Like, I'm not trying to be crass, but like, yeah, he's wild. He's awful. Yeah. Sorry.

Oh, please carry on. No, I just... Boris Johnson doing the Greek alphabet on the glitter. He only knows the first five letters. That's the worst part. He doesn't even know that shit. That's why. He only knows the first five letters.

He never gets all the way down the alphabet. Exactly. He never bothers. So you say, well, all done. Yeah. So, it's supposed to be Alpha and Omega Boris. Can I do the Q voice there? Yeah.

Do you remember... I feel like it's not Peter O'Born, but he's about the only person that I'm like, he seems all right. I feel like Peter O'Born, but it might have been like a BBC guy. Do you remember that article that was written about Boris Johnson in 2019? Oh, God, I'm sorry. This is a total detour, isn't it? But there was an article written about him where he said that he saw him once perform

a garlic event and he showed up late. Oh, yes. And he showed up in this... Yes, I remember this. It was Peter O'Born. He was in this cloud and he told this very sort of charming enough anecdote and he pulled it off and brought the house down. And everyone was like, wow, he's pulled that out of his arse.

How great. And then he saw him again do the exact same thing over and over again. And I just feel so embarrassed that Britain just sucks this shit up over and over again. And never... Boris Johnson is a club comic. That's basically what we're saying. He's got a tight 20, but he is fucking whipping it out everywhere. Where'd you learn to whisper?

But in this case... In a helicopter. But in this case, it is being sucked up by the... Can I emphasize this to you enough? It is for an American audience. Yeah. Right? So we are essentially the...

The thing that... Why are you saying shit like a tornado bottoming? Yeah. An American tornado going, wow, I didn't even know half of those words. That's incredible. I love that. So anyway, he's at this tram factory. So Johnson's aide told the prime minister...

Johnson's aide told me, Tom McTague, that the prime minister had been excited about his tram ride all morning. All aboard. He yelled. Though there were no passengers. News photographers crowded around and men in hats stood by. When Johnson finally made... Men in hats.

Heart hats. All right. When Johnson stole the pipe. He did it right in the pit. The launch of Stevenson's rocket. He slammed the brakes and busted the horn. Men in lamb chops. Nothing went wrong.

Of course, nothing really could have gone wrong. The tram was limited to three miles an hour and had an automatic override system to protect it from reckless prime ministers, among others. That's a very specific override system. That's right. No, no, no. Disraeli can't be using this. Gladstone only.

But again, it's the... It is... It is... Tom McTague sort of trying to be like, I'm going to get to the core of Boris Johnson. I'm going to figure out what it there is to know about him. And immediately his main thing is just now. But first, I mean, he's given me three cards and assured me that a bean is underneath one.

You have to identify which one it is. And then I will be able to engage in my penetrating review of his character. I think like, I mean, I think like the mistake to be made is that this was supposed to be... That Tom McTague was like intending for it to be an interrogative piece. And like, not even like with the ambition of, you know, really like criticizing him or you know, questioning his sort of like assumed position in British polite society for decades now. But even just kind of the most remote criticism, because as we sort of know with journalists

who have criticized the government, they've lost like proximity and they've lost access and they've lost like the very few ways in which they can actually hold ministers to account. And like the kind of media story of the conservative government, you know, from the Cameron years, but like specifically from the Johnson years is very much about like journalists, like favored journalists are ones who have proximity and ones who, you know, and one favored ones don't. And, you know, so, and you know, and that's also kind of like the situation with the

British press who really value their press passes above, or they really value their like Westminster passes above everything else, which is that they kind of know that they have to play ball if they want to have like this actually like this dependence on access journalism and this dependence on like proximity kind of means that, you know, the government have been very successful in basically like neutering any kind of like impetus of critique from reports, which is sort of why like, which is sort of why, you know, I do kind of feel a little bit sorry for Kirstama sometime, because I do kind of think that I do not. I said, I said very like a very, very small amount, which is like ultimately like, like

Kirstama can kind of do the most sort of like mundane proposals of like social democracy and he'll get like fucking hound. And he won't, but like, I think there's a reason why he won't, which is that he knows we'll get fucking hounded by the press if he does that. Right. And I think ultimately that's the thing. It's like, this is just a press that's been very conditioned for a long time to value proximity and to declare war on everyone who doesn't have, who's not useful to them.

Can I say also, it mimics their strategy of, you know, awarding funding to places that vote conservative shielding conservative councils from cuts. Like what they're doing is they're saying, either you're with us or fuck you. You know, and, and if you're not with us and you try to explain what it's like, people who are with us will be like, well, it's not like that for me. So you're obviously in the wrong. I think Roman army. One of the key, one of the key things here, right, is to see this is to see this to see

it to see, as you're describing, Josie, like this whole sort of this funding complex that we've talked about before, where it's like a patronage system where if you, if you, if you, if you submit, if you sort of understand where you are and you submit in the hierarchy, then you'll basically be kept alive. And, and, but also to understand how that connects to because the only way people understand politics is really by consuming political media or hearing other people who've consumed political media talk about it. Right.

And the only, and the only way that, that, that then your picture of what your country's politics is, is formed is through that. But if, as we've already established, this is a fake country, it is not a real place that it is, that these, these sort of stories that exist in certain, in the imagination comes right on us. The stories that exist, the imaginations of columnists that create friends and enemies that sort of draw political lines without sort of acknowledging it. And so, for example, your coverage of the prime minister is sort of fawning and your

coverage of some random guy or some random Americans that decide to like redecorate their common room is oppositional and, and searching and personal because simply because, right, we have the, the, the, the sort of power political and media elite in this country have figured out that it makes more sense for them to all work together. I really hate being made to defend MCR Americans. Yeah. That's the worst part of this. Yeah.

One of my most hated groups. Yes. Yeah. Sure. An annoying bunch. I think as well, like, it, it, it does, I mean, I know this is a point that gets made over time, but like the last, you know, the way that many people who should have known better allowed the way that Corbin and the Labour Party were treated in that exact same

confrontational, oppositional, personal, fictional, when it comes to things like the Czech spy bollocks, all of that stuff, they allowed it because it was convenient to them. And they must have known on some level that they were creating conditions that they wouldn't be able to reverse. Now, Josie, I've swallowed this fly, but I've swallowed this spider. And I'm pretty sure that's going to solve this fly problem. And then clear sailing for me from then on. That's right.

You know? Yeah. And then I never had to. We've released all these mongoose. I never had to swallow anything again. Yeah. That's right. Would you know what though?

She wasn't hungry, was she? That's right. There was a little lady who swallowed a fly and then she swallowed a spider to eat the fly and then it was fine. Yeah. That's right. That's how the rhyme goes. Yeah.

Yeah. And then she took down her picture of the queen and that's when things started going wrong. So it's also the other thing about the profile is that it tends to hang. It hangs on the key question of is Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, which is, as I think we've made abundantly clear, a very stupid question. It's quite a very different guy. A lot of people, they won't tell you that, but it's true actually.

It's not the same at all. Yeah. And then the event that it hangs off of is the European Super League, which you've recall we discussed with Musa Oquanga. And because the reporter happened to be with Johnson while this was all going on. Of course. So it was announced the night before McTague, right? So Johnson had come out against it, arguing that it would yank England's grandest clubs

in their traditional environment against the wishes of their fans. It was unfair, he said, and his government would fight it. Now, going beyond the fact that it is absolutely not clear on the public record that Johnson was in opposition to this when it was proposed and that he didn't just sort of hitch his wagon to it when it became clear that it was very unpopular, right? This is not clear. And it's something that McTague just leaves in, just writes it in. And I need to interrogate that.

No. No heavens, no. Give the man the benefit of the doubt. That's right. That's what journalism is. It would not socrates have given me the benefit of the doubt. So in one of our conversations, Johnson had said that people need to feel part of something bigger than themselves.

He told me that he doesn't think of himself as a nationalist, but he argued that individuals need to feel that they belong and they shouldn't be patronized for worrying that their traditions or connections are being eroded. And again, that's just the soft sell, right, of the actual machine in this country, which is to preserve, to basically preserve the authority and property of the sort of gentry or capital or whatever at any cost, even as it's like cultural outrider institutions attract minor criticism that we essentially have to have a Bush doctrine where it is crushed.

And that's what's interesting about this. But as Johnson frames it that way, right? That, oh, people don't want to be patronized for worrying that traditions are being eroded. That's just the sort of pleasantly, that's the pleasant end of that stick. That's the nice way of phrasing it. But what effectively he does is that he sort of feeds McTague, seems like he's feeding this line to Johnson. And then Johnson is able to say, yes, absolutely.

That's what I think. This is about the de-raccination of the community fan base. And then he goes on some reverie for several paragraphs about how I was struck by his use of the word de-raccinate to describe the particular dynamics of English soccer partisanship. To be de-raccinated is to be uprooted from your customs and culture and home. Here, Johnson was offering himself as the people's tribune, defender of the national game from the threat of an alien imposition. I would invite Tom McTague to please come and join me and really experience the de-raccination

of English soccer partisanship by walking into this greasy spoon in Millwall wearing a West Ham shirt. I will be there to provide advice while he does this. But I will be wearing a Millwall shirt. It's such an annoying sort of stepping in on page 55 or 56. Is he not aware of how money has affected football in the last 40 years? He must be. Is he not aware of what the Premier League is? It's just so annoying to be like...

Of course he's not. He's American. Or even, or especially, is he not aware? Or is he not aware? Or does he not want to be aware? Because if you want to be aware, then suddenly you're no longer playing pretend with the rest of them and you're out. That effectively like...

That this is just a story, right? That this is... That the story that is being told now, the story that is being told as the outrider of sort of British capital, is essentially a homey middle England with a vicar riding a bike, etc, etc, etc. And that's just the marketing of the Tory party now. I think Tague has essentially come in as a journalist, being like, they've helpfully given me all of this marketing.

I could just print that. Johnson asked me, did I remember when the bin went more hard? I said, what's a bin man? I think he's British. And I love that he used the word bin. It was... Well, he's British. Hang on.

He probably also says Lou. I love that. He's London based. I don't know if he's British. Anyway, he simply writes with the kind of smooth brained lackadaisicalness of an American commentating on something British. Yes, that is true. Effective.

And if you want to get the real meat of this, right, is when... And so you're not Donald Trump, I asked Johnson. What? I keep coming back to that. No, because women want to fuck Boris Johnson. We don't understand why, but they do. He says, well, self, I had been just treated to a long monologue about his liberal internationalism in support of a free trade climate action and even globalism.

Well, self-evidently, he replied, the point I'm trying to get over to you and your readers, that you mustn't mistake this government for being sort of a bunch of xenophobes or autarkic economic nationalists. And again, there are some xenophobes. And when McTague then goes on to be like, yeah, the home secretary is the daughter of immigrants. I guess they're not xenophobic. Bad example, Matt.

Matt, the worst example you could have picked in the whole... His name is Tom. Dad, you've got a bad example of a name. Yeah, a bad example of a name. What would be a better name, though, to be fair, than what he has? Judge them on what they're fucking doing. Is it so hard to look up about the policing bill? Is it so hard to look up about how they're going to criminalize trespass?

There's all these fucking terrifying authoritarian things they're doing. The asylum bill, I don't know if it's called the asylum bill, but the bill that affects asylum and immigration, they're right there. You can't say, don't mistake them for authoritarians. It's like, if I'm a painter and every painting I do is of a horse's head and you interview me and I say, well, I don't paint a horse's head. You have to fucking acknowledge that there's some horse's head. But she does sell her used clothing.

And in many ways, it's more interesting. In Britain, almost uniquely among countries, I think, or almost uniquely sort of among the Anglosphere anyway, if you acknowledge what they do instead of the fact that, well, what McTague says is, well, Donald Trump is unlikely to ever have used the word autarkic in conversation. So it's a difference of style. It's much more likely to have said sad, pathetic, very, very low energy. Okay.

Thank you for defining the word autarkic for me through the medium of impression because it made me feel so good about myself. I don't know what it means. I was just saying Donald Trump would say. It means national economic self-sufficiency is an autarky. Right, right, right. A self-running in the ancient Greek. Yeah.

Well, this is what's interesting about the Tories, I think, which is that if you actually take the Tories at their word, like what they say they do, it doesn't really sound that bad. But when you actually take them at what they actually do. And this is why I think they are, they're so palatable to an American liberal. It's just kind of why I was getting out earlier when I said that like the Tories are at least in their stated position, the weight of the left of the average American liberal, not necessarily in what they'd like to do.

Or in fact, what they do, right? As Josie was saying earlier, like criminalization of like GRT people and stuff. But in terms of what they claim to be in favor of, whereas the Republicans would just be like, if you don't like it, we'll shoot you. Like it's more like a different vibe. The Democrats like, if you don't like it, we'll shoot you. But they're like, but also the gun will have a pride flag on it. I don't know if I totally agree with you here though, because when I think about their manifesto

in 2019, they explicitly said, you know, like threatening things to the GRT community. And they explicitly were like, we're going to stop anyone ever moving here by any means. You know, so they were quite clear about it. I think what I think the thing is, right? Looking at their manifesto, that's like kind of looking at what they said they would do, not what Tom McTague is doing, which is getting a vibe. So he says, for example, for example, he says, well, John Trump wanted to close the border, but Boris Johnson is letting in tons of Hong Kong refugees.

Again, as though these things are understanding nothing about the context of anything that's going on, because the personal profile of someone in politics is worthless. And if the political operator you're talking to is at all savvy, going to be used by them as marketing. We're also just like, and I'll make this like very short, because I know that we're like running out of time soon. But it's also because this was designed to be, I can imagine like the way that this was commissioned was, you know, that they wanted to do this sort of like long profile, long profile piece that you can, like you often like see in the New Yorker and stuff, which requires like its own like very specific skill in order to kind of like do an interrogation.

It's not really just a matter of like writing lots of words. It's also like thinking about how narrative is formed and like how it's structured. And you know, really like thinking about the actual structure of the piece rather than like, like, and for me, like when I kind of skim through this article, it sort of felt like this was a writer who really wanted to do a New Yorker piece at some point in his life, was kind of given this assignment, but didn't really know how to actually like approach it. So as a result, you know, you've got like rather than kind of like notice the contradictions and like notice, or even kind of just like be aware of where he fits in the story,

because I think again, like to go back to something I was saying earlier, so much of the current conservative party is really about how is really about like their relationship to media and proximity. Like Boris Johnson for all, you know, he may be the prime minister now, but he still has like the same instincts as he did when he was the editor of the spectator. And like really was the editor to shape the current spectator as it is, right? And I think that's like something we forget like a lot that like ultimately his brain is still very much being, you know, the lazy editor who kind of like brought on Taki and stuff like that. And we wonder why we feel like we're in hell.

Like that's literally you couldn't choose me, someone I would like to lead the country less than the fucking editor. So as a result, you've just got this journalist who like has no idea that there's sort of being like the entire time you're reading this, you sort of know that he's being played and he's desperately trying to kind of like craft this narrative that doesn't exist because he wants to fulfill his kind of fantasy of writing a New Yorker profile without kind of understanding how to do it. So as a result, we just get this like very messed up piece that like not only is completely like ineffective, but ultimately like runs cover for like and rationalizes like Boris Johnson's decisions in a way that like weren't didn't need to be justified, but also like were kind of not justifiable. He sort of just done a lot.

I used to believe that we're not like Tom McTague was on a train and he came up with the phrase tornado of Bonomi and decided that it was such a good phrase that he was going to build an entire article around it at some point. And this is what resulted. I mean, I think if you want to know sort of Hussein to your point, right? Like what is what is this a failure of journalism as we might think of what journalism should be? Yes, catastrophically. But in terms of getting a lot of in terms of getting Tom McTague some good profile, some good closeness with Johnson, an article in The Atlantic that lots of people will read selling Johnson to a general type of Joe Biden voter when the US-UK relationship is incredibly crucial.

Yeah. In terms of appealing to certain ex-girlfriends of mine's mothers. Yeah. It's a great article. Yeah. Why? I think you're sort of talking about this earlier, right? Where it's like where the whole poor, yeah, the Tories sort of try to sell. They sort of know how to sell themselves without saying what it is that they're doing,

but they know how to sell themselves as being kind of liberal looking if you squint. And they, and again, And also I think tourism is driven with a kind of small L liberalism in the really traditional sense. It is because it always defends whatever the existing interests are. The Tories of today would defend the sort of cause celeb of the liberal of the Gladstone era. They exist to defend the powers that exist. And so because the Gladstone era liberalism sort of did pretty well, we live in a market economy now.

They defend that power. They didn't crash the train. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it's not necessarily saying Gladstone brought us the market economy, but more like they sort of know who the rich are and they sort of line up in front of them. And so, you know, it's no surprise that they have a little bit of small L liberalism, but also like when small L liberalism is in crisis, then in order to defend it, it requires big F fascism.

That's the nature of the big F's in chat, everyone. And so it's one of these situations where, you know, you have, where in order to make sort of what they're actually doing more palatable to a sort of you, as you might say, sort of small L or even big L liberal audience in the case of America, you are, you have a journalist who has come in and essentially been very cheerfully sold a bill of goods and then reproduced Tory party marketing in the Atlantic. Well, again, thinking he's being balanced, reproducing a bunch of attack lines, like, oh, he said this about, about, about like, you know, gay people or whatever,

as though that sort of hasn't been sort of brought against him many times and sort of failed to stick. You could see like the sort of the balance of the sort of, well, maybe he's not what he says he is, is essentially a Washington generals to the Boris Johnson is a new type of politician. He's unlike anything Britain's ever seen. And actually all of his, all of his political positions aren't because he's a big mean fascist. It's because he wants Britain to succeed. And then that's the Harlem Globetrotter is in that relationship. Does the article end with, and Mr. Johnson promised he'd be back with my wallet right away.

It might as well. It might as well. So yeah, that's it. It ends with each, he's pregnant. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So congratulations to Tom McTague on getting into a big daddy situation or perhaps a junior situation followed by a big daddy situation. Yeah. He's going to be giving birth to Boris Johnson, seventh or eighth child.

It is not a tumor. It's not a tumor. Exactly. Thank you. So I was writing an article for the Atlantic. With all of that being said, Josie, I want to thank you very much for coming and spending some time with us today. It's my pleasure. I am sorry if I'm not that coherent. I feel so deeply sad that Boris Johnson is what we have. Yep.

I feel so deeply sad. Well, if you feel sad about that, you should try reading this article because it makes a pretty good case for why actually you love it. Yeah. Do you know what? I was chatting with a cab driver today because I live in Glasgow, so it's a very different thing. Oh, right, right, right. And he was a cool guy and we were getting on and just talking about like being pro-vaccine, you know, like just establishing that we both were not conspiracy theorists. And then even he was like, I will say this, I respect that Boris Johnson's tried his hardest.

And I was like, even like people who don't like him will still spout this obviously disprovable bullshit. Like school report type shit. He applies himself. Well, an A star for Boris Johnson from the British press. Congratulations. You worked very hard for it. Yeah. And I think we'll see you on the bonus episode on Patreon five bucks a month, second episode per week. That's right.

A better value you will find nowhere else. It's the bonus one. You can hear that being said in a different voice. In a different voice. That is right. Years and years thing you never had the bonus voice because I don't subscribe when we stop the recording. Yeah, we'll do the bonus voice in the meantime. We'll see you all in a couple of days later.

Bye. Thank you.