TRASHFUTURE - The Politics of the Ocean Floor feat. Mathew Lawrence

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

This week, Riley, Milo, and Alice speak with Mathew Lawrence (@dantonshead) of Common Wealth about the state of...things in Britain, the momentum outside of party politics, the opportunities of the situation, and the prospect of even more stupid austerity. Hope you enjoy! *MILO ALERT* Here are links to see Milo’s upcoming standup shows: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows *AUSTRALIA ALERT* We are going to tour Australia in November, and there are tickets available for shows in Sydney: https://musicboozeco.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/3213de46-cef7-49c4-abcb-c9bdf4bcb61f and Canberra: https://au.patronbase.com/_StreetTheatre/Productions/TFLP/Performances *BRITAINOLOGY ALERT* We’ve added a live show in Melbourne on the 19th of November in which Nate and Milo will present Britainology! Get tickets here: https://tccinc.sales.ticketsearch.com/sales/salesevent/79853 *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, everyone, and welcome to the first non-live, all-in-person episode of the podcast featuring Milo Riley and Alice. Hi. How's it going? How's it going to you in the bunker down in London? I got on a fancy West Coast train, I suffered greatly, and now I'm here, and I'm very, very excited to be here. That's right.

Yeah, we are. We're in the Enver Horsher commemorative podcast in Trunk. And with us, of course, today is a returning champion, in fact. I believe his third appearance, but his first in quite a while, is the Commonwealth think tanks, Matt Lawrence. Matt, how's it going? Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. I was actually told it was the Fritzl basement.

So, you know, in some ways, maybe that's not great to have an Albanian. It depends on the day, really. It depends on what kind of chilling crimes you're looking to be involved in. Indeed. Look, look, a lot of stuff has been going on, right? And we are here to, as almost an expression of discipline, to self-discipline, is rather than just indulging all day in the continued, slow-rolled collapse of the Tory party that really hasn't been arrested ever since Boris Johnson had that suitcase of wine.

We are actually going to talk about that for a little while, issue one correction from Corrections Department. They don't get a lot of airtime on the show. We've got like 12 people working up there on the third floor. But we are then going to talk with Matt a little bit about some of what Labour intends to do now that they basically are measuring up Downing Street for new, sensible, low-cost, but effective, curtains. That's right.

Yeah, they're going to do a much cheaper job on Downing Street than Carrie Johnson did. Yeah, and Keir Starlem is going to go down to MFI. Yeah. I welcome the curtains, but you know, I thought the problems go further and have like maybe a Roman blind. Yeah, that would be nice. A bit rich for the taxpayer, though, I think. Venetian blind?

I think ultimately, you know, what's going to be very important. Getting closer and closer to home. People don't like being reminded of Italy, or having Venetian blinds. Well, after what we experienced with, you know, Liz Truss doing British things for British class interests in the history of multiple British projects, some of which are directly anti-European, the Economist looking directly at it and being like, what is this, Italy? Oh, I saw a BBC commentator call it Caracas on Thames. Yeah.

So a very cheap house price is there. The thing about Caracas is more stable politics than London at the moment, and for a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The instability in Venezuela is more in other ways. That's not really the... Yeah. Look, we're not getting any Silver Corp mercenary. Silver Corp comes on holiday here.

Yeah. You know, they're not washing up on the shore, sort of being... Although maybe, you know, at this point. Got a little job for them. This is some guys from Florida just... I've been offered a job in London, so I'm going to take a little trip to the Thames, if you know what I mean. Look, before we get into all that, corrections.

Corrections. Metta has not, in fact, cracked the technology for legs. We were fools. We were bamboozled. We naively believed that just because they announced that they had developed the technology for legs, that they had, in fact, done that, and they hadn't. We, who do a podcast about how technology companies lie to you all the time, believe the technology company, mere culpa, mere culpa, mere maxima culpa.

And we believe them simply because if you've got the technology for the upper body, presumably, you don't really need different technology for legs. That's just more of the same. That's just like... Is the upper body materially different from the legs in terms of how the computer sees it? I don't think so. Legs of the upper body, in many ways.

Exactly, yeah. So, unfortunately, while we did not mean to endorse the incorrect assumption that Metta has, in fact, cracked the technology for legs, for the upwards of a dozen people who are using Horizon Worlds, we want to issue a formal apology to the listeners that we have not... We do not, in fact, endorse that. We recognize that the idea still, unfortunately, does not have legs. I was waiting for someone to use that. Yeah, and I was the first.

So, no. Look, I'd like to set us up with a little clip that will, I think, set the scene a little bit, especially for our American listeners. It has been a night of astonishing scenes at Westminster with reports of jostling, manhandling, bullying and shouting outside the parliamentary lobbies in a supposed vote of confidence in the government. The Deputy Chief Whip was reported to have left the scene saying, I'm absolutely effing furious.

I just don't effing care anymore before he resigned, along with the Chief Whip, but we've just been told they have now officially unresigned. The Home Secretary has, however, definitely gone. In short, it is total absolute abject chaos. We have now had a chaotic vote over fracking that has led to the now downfall of Liz Truss's government. A fracking frack hall. In Caracol in turn.

Yeah, that's right. She has now offered her resignation, having shown all of Britain exactly where the Conservative Party tips over into being a victim of its own success. Hitting the bottom of the barrel, having thus begun to dig, and we've now scraped through onto the concrete floor below. Correct. She has resigned after, as you said yesterday, a number of Tory grandees and whips, but Americans might not know this.

The way you vote in the House of Commons... Like everything else in Britain is primarily bullying-based. You get up and you walk into a lobby that is yes or no. You vote quite literally with your feet. Yes, but the people who are assigned by your party to make sure that you walk into the yes or no room correctly are called whips, and they're called that because they're nice. Normally. Correct.

Unfortunately, there's been a huge deviation from the standard of behaviour in the suplexing people through windows or things of this nature. There were reports that Jacob Rees-Mogg, Therese Coffey, other whips, and so on, were literally grabbing recalcitrant Tories who didn't want to come out in favour of fracking, which was considered a confidence motion in the government, which would have brought them down, and literally pushing and shoving them into the right doorway. For the purposes of defending Liz Truss as well. It's like really the sort of the gutter-dammering for so little stakes as this.

I know. Liz Truss was like, I wish someone was picking me up and shoving me through that door. Well, exactly. The only thing, right, is I guess the question I have to ask, and this is to everyone, maybe I'll turn to Matt first, because you've been long been a long time British politics watcher. Alas. Who could have guessed that kind of the end of this chapter of the Tory ideology would

be so slapstick, other than everyone at this table. I think we all probably guessed it, but what do we make of that, right, that this thing, this project that was started by Thatcher, sort of coming to a head in some of the biggest oaths in the country, kind of shoving some of the biggest nerds in the country through a door. Well, I think like Toryism as a political project, it was always had names like High Fast and was High Camp to it, combined with like, yeah, sort of a Brutals of Boot combination, right, going right back to Thatcher.

But I think in some ways, you know, we can look at Truss's end and what's going to come really is sort of a much deeper story of essentially the stagnation of British capitalism. So if you look over sort of the long term, what we're seeing is sort of the waning dynamism of British capitalism. And what the Conservative government have tried to do over the last 12 years or so is tried sort of series of different maneuvers, first austerity, second Brexit, third trussonomics, which in its own logic was an attempt to jolt into life of a stagnant economy, a stagnant unequal economy.

So there was some logic to it. And I think in some ways, the sort of bind we're going to get now is the sort of cure that will be offered up in response to the disaster of sort of Truss's budget and also the maneuvers and the loss of credibility and the sort of pressure from financial markets. The cure to that to buy stability, but worse than the underlying condition of stagnation. So, you know, if Jeremy Hunt proceeds with, you know, essentially austerity 2.0 brings in sort of a set of measures that kind of stabilizes financial markets, but those same measures will double down on the economic conditions that are generating stagnant pay,

inequality and sort of, you know, the sort of malaise we're seeing across the country. And I think the fact that it was the end, the end of this particular chapter of the ideology, I think it's right and proper that it was so slapstick because fundamentally, what all of these projects have done is they've tried to animate a body that has been dead since the 1990s by applying electricity directly into its brain. Going to the sort of Victorian cemetery or the shovel in a defibrillator. Yeah, effectively, yes. And I think that's quite, the horror image I think is quite useful. I mean, if you look at Marx, he uses a lot of Gothic and horror images throughout his writing.

Because he was cool. Yeah, because he was cool and got. But I think what we have had ever since we realized that we could sort of stay on the carousel of paper growth, of inflating asset values, largely having an economy where we just manage stuff that happens elsewhere. That's a lot of what the British capitalism, a lot of the actual thing that happens in British capitalism is just sort of managerial and services activities that are directed mostly elsewhere or at the central bank via the state, basically. Emails jobs.

Yeah, email jobs. And that when that decision was taken is kind of when the patient went terminal. And it was decided that the model of British capitalism that we had, that the Tories were there to defend, they were there to defend an ownership class against various generations of rabble, whether that's peasant rebels or whether that is trade unionists or whatever. Podcasters. People eating yogurt and tofu and stuff. From broadcast to podcast.

That's what they were there to defend that elite from. But then that elite became so detached from the country itself that they continued to try to defend the interests of people who really weren't there anymore. And if anything just ended up and in so doing sort of killed what was left and then have spent the last 20 years attempting to just run electric currents through a dead body. No wonder fucking Therese Coffey is picking up a recalcitrant, fucking Johnny Mercer or whoever and physically throwing him through a door. Oh, I choose to imagine it's any of the sort of like tougher in their own imagination story MPs,

your Mark Field, your Steve Baker or anything like that. Like taking Mark Frost 1, rolling him like a bowling ball. I like the idea of Johnny Mercer having to give back his green beret because he got a manhandsle. Yeah, Therese Coffey has actually been awarded at ceremony. But I think really like, you know, they were each of these projects that were totally unconnected to any kind that were totally unconnected to the world around them. Right. These projects that were a product of a totally internal conversation. Right. They all kept working in terms of they got to execute them.

They never had the result that they wanted. And so they kept executing increasingly insane programs. I think that's true, but there's also like an internal logic to it all. So if you go, so like the like a rontier turn, the turn of the British economy to a world in which like ownership, as you say, is fundamental, like that's how people sort of sweat assets to generate income. It's so fundamental to, you know, how the Britain's political economy works. I guess there's a question like, well, why did sort of that neoliberal turn happen? Like in the sort of late 70s and then obviously into that trism.

It wasn't just like random. It was a response to a prior sort of thing, which was the stagnation and crisis of British capitalism and indeed global capitalism. And then that then started this logic, which you've kind of described of like privatizing common wealth, sort of selling off assets, but also in the process, creating a political coalition based around asset ownership rather than work. And that there is a logic to that that has sustained. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see looking forwards, what will happen is there'll be an attempt to be like the sensible is going quote unquote, back in charge, which will combine

austerity with an attempt to try and like ease the pressure on mortgage owners as the basic attempt as a basic Tory bargain. So it's kind of like, on the one hand, absolutely mad, they've tried to sort of juice assets like this for ages, but there is this internal logic. And then we can kind of then see from that where it's going to sort of proceed. And I also think we've got to kind of locate this like turn to like Laurentier society, not as a spasm of like, well, this is just madness, but actually sort of rationalized response to sort of, you know, slow down in global capitalism that proceeds, trust is madness by a number of decades to put it mildly.

And therefore that actually then opens up, I think a conversation about the solutions, which are just more than what we just need to get the sensible's back in charge. Well, if the sensible's get back in charge, they've got some ideas. But largely, I think their ideas seem, and correct me if I'm wrong to my friends, their ideas largely seem to be like, we're going to do, we're going to take up the mantle of Toryism, and we're going to do it without the nonsense. Yeah, all of the sort of like commas and semicolons are going to be in the right places. And I'm going to get a very good grade for my economy.

Yeah, we're going to get some nonsense. I mean, I think the indicative of that is, I don't know if you saw that tweet or know who he is, but sort of Rupert Harrison, who's been George Osborne's advisor, and he got into like a te-ta-ta on Twitter. He's one of the council of wise men. Exactly, and prior to that announcement, he'd gone to sort of argument a series of sort of commentators on Twitter, kind of defending austerity, like this really is what like actually made Britain much more

resilient in the face of the crisis, which obviously, as lots of people were pointing out in the replies, is just like a complete misreading of the actual consequences of austerity. But I think the very fact that he was then appointed that later that day, or a few days later, I think is indicative of the general direction of travel and sort of intellectual sort of inheritance that what is going to come will follow. And this sort of like brief trust interregnum will be sort of thrown in upon, the ripples will disappear, and we'll go back to sort of almost this sort of continuity period. But I think with much more instability, because the world has checked that the regime of cheapness,

of cheap money, of cheap energy, of cheap food, that has been abruptly come to an end. And I think that's going to put intense pressure on an already sort of fragile model of capitalism. What we have is we have the appointment of our Mario Draghi figure in terms of Jeremy Hunt, the current prime minister, the sensible indeed, who is literally, as you say, appointed a bunch of George Osborne finance people to his actual Council of Wisemen. And I think that the thing that we're talking about here as well is it is too important to maintain this kind of stability, but to maintain this kind of stability for bond traders, basically, to allow politics to come too close to these decisions again.

That's the whole point of the sensibles. That's the whole point of the idea of political sensibility, that you know the places where politics must not tread. Exactly. I know that's the thing. So the sensible's bind is this like, to sort of use the phrase by this economist Minsky is like stability is destabilizing. So their political project is to reassure and stabilize financial markets by a series of interventions, austerity and series of other things that will themselves lead to the destabilization of the social fabric of the UK. And so I think, you know, we also like, we've got stability, but it's a false stability that's coming because it will involve intense social pain

and sort of amplification of all the sort of trends that are frankly going only one direction. But, you know, it will come with a packaging that will scream, this is stability, this is, you know, this is what's needed, this is just tough sober government. Oh, the idea of just being like, well, as you can see, this austerity that we've brought in, it's very, very good for a lot of the numbers. You can see like the numbers here, the interest rates, stuff like that. That's all house prices are going up. That's all good. Unfortunately, if you look at this other graph, the number of heads being clattered off is alarmingly spiking. And I think we need to do something about that.

But the thing is Barter Town, that enjoyed a very, very stable economy in one sense. But the social services really did leave something to be desired. It had a flourishing entertainment sector. That's also true. And you know what? It enabled someone in a non-traditional relationship to take on a leadership role. Absolutely. You don't know what master and blaster we're up to. What we have now, right, in order to, in the middle of all of this, is we of course have a Tory leadership election where-

Or do we? Is the question because- I can't remember the last one. When was that? God, ages ago. I was just thinking actually at the start of the episode was, has, did the period where they were choosing a new Tory leader last longer than trusted? Because it felt longer. Yes, it did. Yeah, I think it must have been.

It was longer than six weeks. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Great. And it's in what I think, because look, the best way to understand most events in Liberal Democratic politics at the moment is largely at the funniest outcome will happen. Yes. So Boris back.

So we're finally getting, look, it's Britain's chance to apologize to Boris. That's right. Boris, a two-term non-consecutive Prime Minister, but almost consecutive. Don't call us a comeback. He's been here for years. But I think it's extraordinarily funny is that noted thriller novelist and sometimes TV host Robert Peston has suggested- Well, Rebirth of Peston now. We haven't read his book yet that says there is a risk that the Russians

may hack the Tory leadership election between Sunak, Boris, and Penny Morden so far if the election is conducted online, which they intend to do so it can be done quickly, to which to me implies the question, and this sort of implies a bigger question, what outcome is the sabotage outcome? Yeah, well, who are the Russians going for? Who's Putin's guy? The only way I can think to sabotage this would be no clear winner somehow. If you could get some sort of like no overall control-

Bring the lettuce in charge could not necessarily be the worst outcome. So just put the lettuce in charge, no outcome, and also in a very sober, boring thing. But I do think it's quite interesting that the Tories are yet again choosing a Prime Minister with a voting system, electronic voting, which they say, which are they're making a legal portrayed unions to ballot on, and it does seem quite striking that that's their definition of, you know, you can choose a Prime Minister, but you can't choose to go on strike. Yeah, it's not the important stuff. I'm excited to see Zelensky make a speech where he's like,

lettuce is great friend to Ukraine, shoulder to shoulder, leaf to leaf. But also, it's like the other question that I think we have, right, is, what is left for the Tories to do, given the ideas that they have? Oh, very little. There's a bit of copper wiring left in the walls, you know. Is there though? I feel like we're down to sort of drywall. There's a few stainless steel forks they could set off,

so maybe you get something for those. Sort of melting down the taps, that sort of thing. So much as to say, they've kind of, if you think about it, right, they have found the level to which they can cut taxes that will like, they've found the amount that will start like, hurting the people that they depend on for votes. Yeah, there is a lower limit somewhere. They've found the lower limit that they can cut taxes to in any near term.

Um, they have basically also identified that. That's it. The next project is finding the lower limit of what sort of social services, what kind of social life can exist in Britain, right? Yeah. We haven't found that yet. I think when we do, the response may be somewhat more spicy than we saw with the markets even. Yeah.

But I think that's the next project, is just like, how much pain will people bear? Yeah, I think in the case of Liz, quite a lot. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, no, that's a woman that's definitely enjoyed the last six weeks. Oh, yes. Yeah. More than anyone, I think. And she's, she's safe now.

She's back in the vac cube. But I think there is this, um, there is, there is this sense that why I sort of talk about the, the, not the death of Tory isn't definitely not the death of conservatism, but the death of this ideology of it, this form of the ideology, having run out of the stuff that it does, because not again, not because it was defeated at any point, but because it was a victim of its own success. It did so much of it. It, it smoked the whole pack, basically.

And now it's sort of hacking us along. It's inside a dumpster that it's locked itself in. It just hotboxed that dumpster. And now it's beginning to get quite uncomfortable. Yeah. And so, you know, there is, I think that, that real question of what will, and what will they do? What do they have? The, what, we know what the one thing they have done is, uh, effectively,

if you're caught at a protest, they can just put an ankle tag on you. Oh, sure. That, that was Suella Braveman's thing before she, before she resigned was even more draconian, sort of like repression. That's going to be fun. That's going to make a real occurrence. The other thing is when they're cutting, um, it seems likely that whatever, sort of like next prime minister there is, will ring fence defense spending.

So, because we have to continue to send, you know, various things to our great friend Zelensky. Um, so everything else is going to be that much deeper. Um, health, presumably. What little NHS there remains. Yeah. What little NHS there remains. Education. And to reform social care.

Like, but, but the, the, the worry thing, the worry here, right, is that there's already private, the private healthcare coming in and, and growing. There's already like academies coming in and growing. So we know what that looks like. And there's nothing left for the Tories to do in order to just hasten the, the death of these public institutions other than just sort of wait. A caretaker government in that sense, do you think? Yeah.

They are, they are a caretaker government watching the, watching the final sort of the bits of dust settle on what they have done for the last 12 arguably 40 years. A big Sam Allardyce brought in for the last eight weeks of the season, shaking his head on the touch line. And there's a sense among the right of the Tory party or the people of New Nigel Farage and GB news types. That there's the sense, there's this refrain that you can see among them that,

ah, the globalist one, everyone is now a big remainder. We've got Mario Draghi coming in the form of like sort of recurring and now total humiliation of my ideals is, you know, just proves the total victory of my enemies. And that, and their power, you know, and, and, you know, I mean, we say like, you know, they, they, the, these guys, your Dan Wooten's, whatever, Dan, Dan Houten, Dan Houten, Dan Holleran, Dan Houten and Holleran has, Rootin, Tootin, Wooten, Rootin, Tootin, Wooten has essentially gotten everything he asked for, right? All of these remain globalist people or whatever.

Like they're doing sort of what they wanted. Like there's nowhere left to go on Brexit. You can't Brexit more at this point. Oh, I mean, you say that now, sort of deploying our new foreign secretary to the channel with a big hacksaw, trying to like, cuss off the channel tunnel. Hmm. Yeah. Just, just exploding Northern Ireland to resolve that issue, you know. Yeah. Well, if I was going to guess, and this is a complete hostage fortune,

I'd imagine kind of the opposite and says like, there might be rhetorical plays on Europe, but I think essentially the next conservative government or next, well, next prime minister will pursue essentially austerity. They'll look to the Bank of England to provide the more flexibility than currently, you know, sounds like they'll be able to, but they'll, there's always more flexibility in a way than, you know, normal politics says there is. So there'll be a mix of austerity. I think there will be a sort of retightening of relationship with Europe, albeit sort of a loose, you know, still very loose and

still with like antagonist rhetoric. There'll be tax rises. There'll be a big pitch on trying to protect homeowner somehow and therefore some sort of like Bailey hunt compact. And I think they're still on kind of high and then definitely the sort of, you know, a cranking up of authoritarianism. But yeah, I mean, so I kind of think it will feel quite like the 2010s, albeit with much high interest rates, with, you know, wages have not grown for 20 years, you know, real-time wages, you know, benefits, you know, so on the floor, et cetera. So I think they'll, it'll feel quite a lot like the 2010s in a way, I think, with an added dose. So I think,

yeah, I think it will, we'll see. But I don't think there'll be enough, because it feels like there's a sense like, you know, the tide's gone out on them. But I do think there'll be, there will be a big push to be like, hold on a second, we can stabilize this. And I don't think they can. The cat's out of the bag. But I think, you know, I think they're not going to like, I think they'll, if it's us of, you know, restoration of sort of, you know, Osborne era people, I think there will be a sort of real push to be like, no, we are, come on, come on financial markets. We are ultimately your friends and come on, type attitude.

Dare we say the magic words first as tragedy, then as fast. Well, I mean, that's the other thing, right, is that there's this of these guys, the Root and Toot and Wootens, you know, they've said essentially, right, this is, this is the globalist coup, this is the, they've taken away the democracy, they took our Boris, they took our Liz. And now we've got, they get Jeremy Hunt, the guy that like, basically the British deep state for whatever reason has decided is their guy. Sure. You know, is he so boring? They need a boring guy.

But we got him. And yeah, there is, I think they do have this correct sense that this is profoundly undemocratic, that governing four and two bond markets, right, rather than trying to manage the international on behalf of people living in the country, managing people in the country on behalf of the international is profoundly undemocratic and extremely weird. But all of the like, right-wing, the GB news people, all they really care about is the fact that this means that people like them aren't going to be on the news anymore. Well, one thing that I heard was that the Corbyn team sort of war-gamed this possibility of the bond markets doing as they did in response to Corbyn being elected prime minister. And

I don't know how it worked out in their scenario. I don't want to compare the two in the sense that pouring water and pouring fuel on a fire, both pouring liquids on it, right? But yeah, no, I think mostly what I get out of this is how unprepared the right of the Tory party were to get everything that they wanted. Yeah. I think that's going to be right. I think it's almost like that metro, like the dog caught up with the car unexpectedly. And they're like, whoa. So there's two things. I think there's like, there is an interesting kind of factual of like, if they'd have got that, if they were sort of smarter and they've got their sort of timings better. So they'd have gone with, oh, we're going to cut, you know, we're going to cut

public spending first because we've had too much over spend during COVID. And then they were like, okay, the OBR says that's just about okay. And then they cut taxes. And they just did it in a slightly different order. You know, it's not like the bond markets are suddenly like egalitarian warriors who are like, no, this is unacceptable because it's inequality. It's because they're like, this is like, you are obviously just incompetent, like the moron premium as the sort of FD was saying. So I think the woke bond trader, we had one of those on the show. Exactly. That's right. And then the wargaming, I think, you know, that's a very nice metaphor, like the water and the fire. And it's like, I think, you know, even if you had loads of water

as a sort of left program, the bond markets are always going to look at you differently. And there's no, you know, there's only so much you can do. But I mean, I think there are, nonetheless, I think, as a fatalism that says, well, therefore, bond markets will just completely inhibit our room from maneuver that we lack autonomy is definitely the wrong thing to take from this. And that's a slight like risk of like, we told you so. And then the final thing would be on the, I mean, on the sort of crime betrayal, I mean, isn't that like the essence of like far right politics, like the politics of betrayal of like some essence, that is, that's it. And that's just like inevitable on whether it's Brexit, whether it's

tax cuts, whether it's whatever it is, that is like the sort of beating heart of their politics. Well, the left wing government will just have to deal with the woke bond traders. I just think that The bond traders, they're like, listen up, Yooksel. There was no way that a sub like Liz Frost was going to like bring the bond markets to here on. That's just all there is to it. Yeah, subprime. But also, right? It's the thing to remember here. I think this is sort of moving into more labor territory, right? Because they're acting as though they are a government in waiting

once again. They are. Can I say how much I hate that Starmer's strategy of waiting it out has been vindicated 100%. I mean, it was, it was going to work. You just had to wait. Yeah, just do all of your sort of like factional knifing left woods and just, you know, remain calm, assured. All it cost was experiencing the actual crisis as opposed to avoiding it. All it cost was like materially harming the country. Last thing I see before we move on to on to labor as well is like, I can't see it not. Look, I don't try to make predictions very often, but there are sort of, who else is going to stand that could probably, that could get enough votes from MPs other than,

other than the three of Boris. I think the modern years would be very difficult for me, personally. So I would, I would hope that the members, they love our Boris. They will never, that means that means that Boris is going to return at the country's moment of greatest need. Well, I understand. So Graham Brady is trying to like ratfuck him. But I, we were talking about this earlier. And the thing is, if Boris comes back, essentially what he will have done is gotten a month off work for the queen dying and then just be back, you know? I was going to leave him absence. Took a very short sabbatical to not finish the book and, you know, just uninterrupted.

And I mean, if I was just, if I was to wonder, right, like that none of the, at this point, right, all of the, all of these sort of, you know, stuffed shirts of the conservative party now associated with what's going on now and this sort of full frontal assault on their exact constituency, right? They would probably end up being relatively trounced by Kirstarmer. But Boris is entertaining. You get the fun guy back. First is fast, second is fast, third is fast, it continues. He's consistent. You get the, you get, you know, you get like, you know, Uncle Fun back. And then all of a sudden, I don't know, maybe all of his, his lockdown stuff,

that's really boring. That's so old. We've had Tresonomics since then. That then does point to Morden, who does combine that like high camp that I was talking about with like, you know, I sort of, I think ultimately right is that there is, there's a lot of opinions now on the defeat of Tresonomics and what that means. You know, and I think that the labor party appears to be, as it currently stands, appears to be gleefully taking on the idea, which is that Tresonomics is bad and you know it was bad because it was hammered by bond traders, right? That seems to be the idea that's taking root. And consequently, anything structural, anything that angers bond traders will be, you know, as destabilizing as destructive.

As opposed to the correct idea, which is, you know, Tresonomics was stupid. And that's why it was funny that they were surprised when they got hammered by bond traders who they were trying to accommodate rather than confine. It was a revolutionary change in the wrong direction, which is a very funny thing for a country to have done, I think. I mean, you know, never count Britain out when it's time to do a revolutionary change in the wrong direction. And I think this is, this goes back, in fact, to something Starmer said today. What Starmer said today, I'm actually just going to find the exact quote, he says, when we talk about economic stability, I want to be frank, the damage the Tories have done

means things are going to be really tough now and during my labor government. We cannot take any risk with public finances and first have to restore economic stability. And I think if you just switched out the party names, George Osborne could be saying that in 2010. But that is exactly what they said. Yeah, I think that's the big political battle now to sort of contest that framing and say, as you were saying just now, it's not sort of you're borrowing to invest or borrowing to spend, it's the content of what you're borrowing to do was the issue that there's a more impringing that this is like obviously a farcical way to try and restore sort of dynamism to a sort of stagnant economy. And so like if labor do retreat

into, you know, the sort of framing there could easily be read as a retreat into, right, you know, sound money quote unquote, you know, we're going to retrench our spending. On the other hand, you know, they have publicly committed so far since, since sort of, well, I think it was, you know, on Johnny Reynolds on BBC Breakfast for the American listeners, that's why it seemed very strange. But on the BBC Breakfast, they did, you know, commit to operating benefits, operating pensions, committing to the 28 billion. So I think, you know, I think it is an open sort of tension as to which way it will go. And I think it's, you know, part of the role of, you know, think tanks, commentators, et cetera, to try and really

stress, actually, it was the content, not the, you know, nature of borrowing to invest. Clearly borrowing now is using a different environment to where it was where, you know, as you know, borrowing, which are on the floor. But I still think like clearly the political battle now is to make sure there's still an expansive role for public investment, for public coordination of economic direction. I think the dovetail of that is to kind of really insist on, you know, there's a lot of wealth around that we could tax, which would then be like almost like the left response to like, how do you stabilize the market? It's not by cuts at all. That's going to be completely resisted. It's by, you know, an agenda to tax the rich. And that opens up fiscal space

for the type of things we need in this country. Yeah, because if we want to talk about where a lot of them, well, you can talk, we can think about this thing in two ways, right? We can think about, well, where is the money? A lot of the money is in Frank's house and Bill's house. Well, in Frank's empty house and Frank is an oligarch. Yeah, exactly. It's in Frank's mattress. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Frank's actually unfortunately fallen out of his window while padlocked into a suitcase. An unfortunate suicide attempt. He was too stressed. We need to talk more about mental guilt if only Prince Gary had gotten to him. But, you know, like ultimately, right, you know, this is in, it's in two areas. It's in what is owned by individuals in terms of, you know,

money often squirreled away in terms of also like inflated asset price, because like the asset prices are still very inflated, right? They didn't just deflate. They're not back to normal. You're telling me that it's not like sort of divine writ that a house in London should cost 28 trillion quid? Weirdly. Well, actually, depending on which version of the Bible. 29 trillion. But at the same time, a lot of it is in what we don't own, what we've chosen to not own. You know, not what we've chosen to take, what we've chosen to give away. For example, I believe you said the Malaysian government owns more of our offshore wind capacity than we do.

Yeah. So the UK's offshore wind capacity, roughly half is publicly owned. But I think the UK government owns 0.03%, which is less than the Malaysian government, less than the city of Munich, about 2,000 times less than the Danish government, etc., etc. So yeah, we have some fantastic long-term thinking there. Yeah. I just, yeah, just the eternal thing in British politics, which is that the British government must never own anything, even if it's like a big money printer. They're like, no, it wouldn't be... In fairness, they do kind of own the Bank of England. That is true. That is the one money printer, the literal money printer, where it makes things bad when you turn it on. But as opposed to the money printer, which doesn't do anything bad

when you turn it on, a wind farm, they're like, no, it wouldn't be right for us to own that. It wouldn't be proper. It wouldn't be cricket for a private company has to own it. And then we need to rent it back from them. We have to run government like a business, which means it can never make good investments. And it has to prevent all of its subsidiaries from ever making good investments too. Well, I mean, the thing is, as we're talking about, as we're going to get into more, right? There's now much talk about the future of Britain as, okay, well, this was a catastrophic failure. This was now an idea whose time has come, that how, what lessons are to be learned from it. And I think really, there are two lessons, which is number one, don't do Thatcherism

unless there's an oil boom and a lot of public resources to distribute. And number two is try not to be in charge of a country during when the Fed is tightening rather than using generally speaking, you have to let sort of socialists and social democrats build up the capacity of your state for 50, 60 years before you can go slashing and burning through it. Otherwise, you're just sort of slashing and burning through stubble. Yeah, that's my bone I'm cutting. And you can do that as long as, but you can do that, you can run on fumes, but the fumes have to be coming from the big money printer in America. Yes. And as long as if neither of those things are the case, you should try to avoid being in government, basically. Well, that's the Tory backbencher. So like a spell

in opposition would do us good sort of thing. I mean, realistically, I don't think they conceive of it that way. But I think they do, there is a kind of understanding that they're out of options because they're out of stuff. There's no more new North Sea oil and the credit's expensive. And what the fuck are they going to do? Kia Stalmer is standing, you know, five feet wide in the door frame going, mom said it's my turn on the Xbox. Yeah, but it might turn on the Xbox, but like, I don't know. Welcome the Xbox. But, you know, you're stuck on a save file with, you know, one health and a wooden sword,

you're about to go up against, you know, one of the various Dark Souls bosses. And, you know, so this is, it's not exactly an easy situation that they're inheriting. And their first instinct, as we've seen Stalmer say, is to largely make the same mistakes that led his future predecessors, that's a bit of odd tense there, to this exact position. The future perfect crisis on infinite Stalmers. The predecessors that will have been by the time he... ...is the predecessors that will have been, right, is to repeat all of their mistakes.

That seems to be the idea that is not in the party in general, not in the British left in general, certainly, but in the bit of the labor party that seems to control most of what it says and does. Well, Riley, those who don't repeat history are doomed to learn it. Think about that. A very wise man said that. Right, so thinking more about public ownership, which is kind of, I think, and this is something that I sort of gleaned from some of your writing, if I can sort of tarot conclusion, is the difference between what has been, what the Tories have been doing

and what labor sort of wants to do, and the way to actually say build state capacity to make yourself not just a better place to live, but also, dare I say it, a more credible place for capital to want to do business, is fundamentally to invest in and own things. Basically, that ownership kind of is the difference. Yeah, I mean, I think ownership and some props relations kind of are the fundamental dynamic that structure social relations under almost any economy, whether it's sort of frontier capitalism, socialism, whatever society is, it's kind of like the sort of nodal force of how we organize society, economic and social relations.

And I think the thing about public ownership, which is an attractive thing, is that it is flexible. So you could run it, you could run a sort of publicly owned wind farm as a for-profit entity, or you could run it as something that is run at cost and actually sort of helps reduce bills, distribute surplus towards local communities or the public as a whole. And the whole point is that by comparison, the for-profit corporation that's privately owned and has shareholders, it's got one thing only in its sort of DNA, which is to sort of maximize the wealth of shareholders, the returns to shareholders. And so it's very rigid and inflexible. And so like when we look at the sort of series of crises and sort of time horizons of those crises,

sort of the sort of climate crisis as a whole, housing, really any challenge we're looking at as a society, that rigidity versus, you know, private for-profit modes of delivery and provision versus the sort of flexibility that democratic forms of public ownership at multiple scales from local authorities to the UK to, you know, the Scottish or Welsh government to city authorities, there is a lot more flexibility in terms of like, what do we, what do we, what matters? What are we trying to do? How are we trying to provide for people? So I think that there's a huge amount there. And then I mean, to step back and private, sorry, public ownership should be located in a wide industry. You want to be making that mistake in your, in your role. Private, I mean,

privatization and the nationalization buttons very close together. Exactly, that's a sweating face. But yeah, I mean, I think to step back, I do think public ownership is definitely a fundamental part of it, but I think it's going to be part of a sort of multiple steps, which is why I think, you know, yes, it's, you know, a tight spot right now. But actually, there are ways out of this that can, you know, I don't know if you saw something that, you know, that ITV report. I'll start on the news of sort of, it was between three people and it's open with the sort of, so women in retirement who basically like can't afford to, you know, sort of, you know, basically like heat, like food half the time and then another family, which I mean, it's just obscene levels of

poverty that we can really abolish if we have a different political strategy. And that would involve much higher taxation of, you know, wealthy asset holders to your point, and indeed just like, you know, higher income earners. And that would give us some of the flexibility to increase spending to abolish some of these like obscene and completely ultimately unnecessary forms of deprivation we're seeing in the UK. But then to do that, you also need to reform the state, transform and democratize the state, which is where sort of, you know, public ownership as a role for anchoring and directing the economy comes in directing it towards social and environmental and sort of, you know, pro, you know, us goals rather than pro accumulation goals.

And then sort of, you know, you layer that in with sort of democratization of work through, you know, the expansion of collective bargaining, you know, sort of roll out so much more expansive and generous welfare system that kind of alleviates rather than sort of is punitive towards people's lives. So I think like, there's always much more, you know, there's no denying that sort of the global environment means there's less room for maneuver potentially than there was maybe, you know, when, you know, borrowing rates were so low, but there's always much more room for maneuver, particularly when you coordinate between central banks and treasuries, there's always much more room for maneuver. And some of us have seen, you know, insecurities and injustices and indignities

that people have to enjoy in this country that are politically driven. We actually do have the tools, even though, you know, things might be tougher now, we absolutely have the tools to challenge and ultimately abolish those. We could get rid of Mr. Blobby. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's quite hard. That is, you know, that's a cultural, you know, guys in guys in like stripy jackets on a trading floor, just head in hand, Blobby is being executed. That's why they love him, you know, so similar plumage. Yeah, I think Edmund works at Blackrock. I think my question right is what we have seen over the last, I get, I think since thatcherism, we have seen attempts to

reconceive a British capitalism as something else, right? Thatcherism came about because if one form of British capitalism had died, we had a new one, a lot of current run-off. Yeah, it was killed off, in fact. Like Mr. Blobby. Capitalism softly uttering, Blobby. Well, as you said earlier, right, is we had these attempts to kind of rejuvenate British capitalism, to reinvent it, of which, you know, Corbinism was one, right? It was going, it was to say, look, British capitalism is broken. Here are the things that will fix it, and we're going to do that by creating broad-based social legitimacy for an economic system

broadly called British capitalism. That's what that kind of was. There were others, as you say, there was austerity, there was Brexit, these ideas that we could, we can redo British capitalism. And once again, right, it seems as though what Starmer is going to be forced into, what you say is very nice. I think it would be great if it could happen, and I think it can happen, but I think that there are powerful people in the Labour Party who are resistant to that idea of transforming British capitalism in that way. And I think my question again is, will they simply be forced by circumstances to, let's say, transform British capitalism in the way you're talking about, or will they just continue with their narrow orthodoxy and fail again?

Well, I do want to say, I think it's important to give them the option, right? I think that's the value of having the sort of the serious case, if you like, the like responsible, prudential case for like a sort of a left transformation of the economy, even if they choose to reject it. So, you know, it's there, right? It's on the table. And I don't want, and again, this is not me being, trying to be a cynic or a doomer, right? It's my question rather is, if this, if we're basically at a situation where, because there has been infinite essentially managing upwards for global financial markets, more or less, and purely cultural managing downwards, just trying to change the entertainment

that's on the TV in the form of the form of Brexit. Executing Mr. Blomby, exactly. Right. But that much of the managing downwards has been a managing of the, what we give to you is culture. We will vanquish your enemies. We will humiliate the tofu eating, your shitty nephew that you hate and all this. We will humiliate those people. The podcasters. Yes. The pod from broadcast to podcast. From broadcast to podcast.

And meanwhile. I don't like how that's become a sort of like homily that we're doing, like a call and response thing. Like from broadcast to podcast and also with you. From podcast to broadcast. But right. That in managing sort of Britain on behalf of say bond traders and stuff, on behalf of global credit markets, on behalf of capital, but again, very international. Not very rousing speech, that is it. Right.

For the bond traders. For global capital. Well, that's why it has to sub it in with, don't you hate your nephew? Yeah. I do hate my nephew. Get rid of him. But right. That's sort of no longer possible, largely because we've made ourselves an unattractive environment for the bond traders, basically. And so my question to you is really sort of, this is all good. But will they be able to manage the British economy for the people who live here, essentially? Like is that something that is in the realm of possibility?

So I think there's a couple of the thing I just sketched is, I think it's better to say that's not quite where labor is right now. That's definitely true. I think, secondly, there are some things which I think broadly would do exactly the same. So whether you look at them attempting to sort of reset employment relations, so sort of a much greater role for collective bargaining, some kind of like nuts and bolts things that aren't particularly sexy, but that would make us a material difference to people's lives. The big question is really, yes, okay, that's great. And to be welcomed, but do they address this like the deep currents? Are they sort of like going along on the surface and like, where are in the wave,

where are they addressing the deep currents that are sort of in the ocean, the oceanic depths, that are kind of moving British capitalism around its productivity crisis, around its investment crisis, around that combination of stagnation inequality. They sort of like fucked up ocean floor looking guys like a fish with a lie. Exactly. It's got a London housing market written on it. So we welcome these things. We call upon them to go further. Yeah, we do. We do.

We do. We do. We do. We do. We do. We do. We're driving it. And the question is like, that fish with the light bulb, is it just going to be like

in the dark, the profit in the oceanic depths, or will there be actually saying, okay, hold on, you're right, there's a structural crisis that needs a sort of response that is equal to them. And that requires institutional response. It requires fiscal and monetary response. But it also requires, I guess, the social and collective movements to try and push that forward. I think on the plus side, currently, it looks like there might well be just be one of those sort of affairs in the tides of men style elections, where it's just like people have just had enough. And so there might be a very significant non-tory majority in the House of Commons, which will give you the flexibility to

really redesign the institutional fabric of the UK's capitalism. That couldn't also, though, lead to caution. It could say, well, we're going to win. Don't do anything more. That's it. And like, you know, obviously... Gizama, don't say anything. Anything you say could be... Gizama, actually, like a guy's been arrested with a kilo of cocaine. This is where the prosecutorial sort of like background comes in to help him. He could still know this, you know? It's shut the fuck up Friday. I don't have to answer that.

This is sort of what I... You're going to vote for me anyway. No comment. As you say, right, is that the tendency, I think, of the sensibles, of the idea of the current sort of labor administration as a kind of probably where things are going to go, unless, of course, our Boris charms the pants off the entire country, right, is... I think this fucked up looking fish for the bottom of the ocean. It's an ugly chap, but it could be a great British fish. You could have it with chips, you know? And I think we can bring that fish back. We can go down there and we can bring

this fish and we can go together with Mr. Blobby and we can have a house party. Right, but this... It should this happen, right? I think their inclination will be to move things around on the surface. And I think you can actually see some of that with the plans that have been released so far for Great British Energy, which is, again, much, much, much better than the alternative of not having it, right? It's shuffled over a low bar, a sort of limbo bar that's like a tripping hazard. I mean, I think that something like Great British Energy doesn't exist to sort of confront the private sector in the energy market. It doesn't exist to change the relationship between

between private equity companies or foreign governments, indeed, that own the generation capacity or the fact that our grid, for some reason, is privately owned or the relationship between retailers and energy consumers. What it does is it exists to take a public stake in and crucially de-risk and crowd in private capital for investments that many of them don't want to undertake. That's the kind of thing that can cost quite a bit of money and can make an improvement. But it's not the kind of institutional transformation. It is a tinker. It's a surface current. So for readers, for listeners, maybe you make transcripts, who knows. But for listeners who don't know what Great British Energy is, it's sort of at Labour's conference, they announced

this idea of creating a publicly owned energy company that would generate energy. And sort of the aim would be to be the size of EDF, which is France's nationally owned energy company, which produces the vast majority. I think it produces over 100% of France's electricity needs and sort of exports it. So I think it is a very good test case of exactly the type of, fork in the road that we are facing in terms of a potential labour administration. So I think absolutely, if it's low bar, if it sort of pursues a sort of like unambitious agenda, it could end up doing largely what you're saying. It could be sort of a small slice of a broadly privately owned market in which the resources of the commons, the wind, the waves,

you know, sort of solar radiation, which really is inherently social, becomes privatised, becomes a resource by the foreign governments, private equity, multinationals, and you have sort of, you know, GBE operating a few wind farms here or there, but not doing much. I think in its defense, my understanding is it's not just kind of like investing in small projects and de-risking. It's de-risking frontier technologies, which, you know, you could argue potentially useful, but it's also investing and actually owning and operating its own sort of, you know, asset base. So it's not just being like, oh, here's, I'm owning a 5% stake, you will own wind farms, is my own solar farms, etc. But it could obviously be like, it produces 3% of British energy and,

you know, will that do, will that reduce bills? Will that mean the wealth of the commons returns to the commons? Will it sort of, you know, accelerate climate justice? Will it onshore, good unionized green jobs, you know, at scale, a question mark? On the other hand, they have committed it to be the size of EDF. Now, you could say, well, that's nonsense, who cares? But on the other hand, they have publicly committed to being the size of EDF. And so in some ways, the opening, and I'm not saying it's guaranteed, but the opening is saying, okay, great, well, EDF is a vertically integrated company with its own supply arm, which sort of speaks to your point there. It's a company that at scale requires significant

investment, but very significant benefits. We can just see that in the energy crisis, French bills have gone up by 4%, British bills by 65%. Not just because, you know, it's nationalized. Because you're always compared in the fucking French. Well, exactly, you know, so... 4% will pitch it all over that. Exactly. That's our bond yield difference now as well, basically. Exactly. But yeah, so the, you know, it's not the only thing, but that is a big part of the fact that this is a nationalized, you know, public champion. And so, you know, there is an opening there to say, okay, fine, right now, it could be the much smaller scale ambition,

but we'll take your word, you know, and we're going to push to try and say, right, okay, well, this is the investment, this is the sort of capital expenditure you need to invest to build 50 gigawatts over the next 10 years. So sort of the door has been opened a crack, and now it's the time to like insert a sort of left wing boot into it. We need a left wing, Therese Carpe, to throw us through the door. Yes, genuinely, yes. Yeah. So I think both that, so I think ultimately, like it's anchorage in the idea of like the

resources of the commons should be, you know, developed for the, you know, the public and the sort of, you know, the sort of commons, not privatized. And that's this fundamental upstream argument. And then downstream, it's like reduces bills, it gives you the flexibility to prioritize different goals, it allows you to plan rather than just be led by the market. But I think, so I think there's anchored in like left ideas of democratic planning, decommodification, and it's such like, you know, this is like, if it's like at its, you know, ambitious scale. But in some ways, I think the beauty of it potentially is it should, we should try and mobilize behind it, like not just the left, because if you look at polls,

the idea of like these principles are actually very, you know, very, very popular in terms of energy in particular, you know, the public are very behind the idea of energy, not being something which basically is crucifying households, but, you know, has just been like breaking the household, you know, budget of millions of people in this country. It has been a source of extraordinary profit, you know, sort of, you know, generators are expected to make what was the treasury thing, sort of 170 billion pounds of excess profits in the next two years. I think there's a sort of working so hard for working so hard. And so I think there's a deep sense like that could build actually quite a big political block around demands that they can put on to say like, well,

you've got this institution, go a lot further, go a lot faster. I'm not saying that will work, but I do think there's, you know, like majorities, political coalitions always constructed, they're like knots of just like arrive from nowhere. And so I think this is an opening, say, great, okay, here's an institutional form. Here's a potential benefit. Here's the trajectory. If you're serious, you need to push on. And if not, why not? Because then you're letting us down, you're like, you know, just taking us for a ride. So I think there, you know, I think, yes, I do completely accept the points you're making. But I think on the other hand, you know, I think just saying, well, that's, it's just nothing when they've actually already formally

committed something bigger. I think there's a sort of political tension that's worth exploring and trying to push. And that political tension, I think, exists in Stormer, reacting to Tresonomics by saying, it will be difficult, we will have to balance the books. And then it's up to not just saying, oh, well, that means he's not going to do it. But rather, it means that it's now time to look at, you know, the fact that the Tories, with an unassailable majority, tried to do things to, again, their project of reforming British capitalism that they couldn't do. And they couldn't do that because of, not not, you know, not just because of people embarrassing them on television,

but because of mass campaigns, so they threatened to not pay energy bills and so on and so on. And that to suggest that relying on Stormer to just get in and make it kind of bearable isn't going to work, because he will run up against the exact same constraints, unless, in my opinion, he is essentially compelled in much the same way as the Tories were compelled by popular pressure and not just mass dissatisfaction, but actual organizing, that actually did happen, right? Plus the woke bond traders. Yeah, plus the woke bond traders, right? But if that doesn't happen, then I think the current labor leadership is more likely to default to something less ambitious,

but they can be forced to do what is actually necessary. Yeah, I think that's exactly. I think that the idea that anyone can say, okay, because I was number 10, right, right, relax. That's it. I mean, I think no one is really saying that. We're the responsible pair of hands, we're in a correct pair of hands, we're not managerial pair of hands. Exactly. I mean, exactly. The hands have it. But yeah, so I think it's absolutely right that campaigns like enough is enough, don't pay, climate movements, the whole tapestry of movements and social power that's trying to coalesce to say, we've had enough and we can leverage

ourselves into a better future out of this crisis. Obviously, you should not displace, you should be like, remobilize and extend and say, try and put in any future labor government. Energy is the fundamental basis. Metabolism is the basis. How we organize flows of energy is the fundamental political question in a way. I think you can build a big political campaign about it because it's not just about how you turn your lights on, it's about the fact workers are going us tired at the end of the day because the regulated metabolism of capitalism is like bearing down on working class people and making their lives really tough. Why are children going hungry when they go to school? Why over 50% of people on universal credit in the last month

skipping meals? This is a question of metabolism about how we distribute energy in our economy as you can unite a wide political campaign to say, there really should be a basic energy standard, whether that's literally electricity at home or the basic calorific intake, we all need to live decent thriving lives. You mobilize that on all fronts and you put as much pressure as you can with argumentation, demonstrations in the street, organized labor, think tanks, trying to provide solutions, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think anyone should be thinking at all, well, it'll be all right on the night if in two years time. Or indeed the opposite, that it won't be all right because these people are un-persuaded.

The bureaucracy and the leadership will be against you, but it doesn't mean that that means that they'll win. They won once, but what you're seeing is a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of leadership that's in a much more powerful position in terms of the government being beaten, again, not exclusively by woke bond traders, but by actual movements from actual here. Like some of this sort of like a stammer, a sort of like knifing leftwards, that comes from a position of perceived vulnerability as much as strength, I think. It's like this fact that you may be in number 10 in a sort of like uncontrollable situation almost, where you're very vulnerable and you may be sort of at the

whims of 18 trillion new labor MPs who you've barely had time to vet or select or any of this, I think offers a tremendous possibility, maybe. Yeah, we could have Keir Starmer and a Kaftan going, we need to realign the notions chakras. Because ultimately, right, what we are seeing now is the old basically having sort of died. You're saying that, yeah, in the new world, it's not struggling to be born yet. It's, you know, the parents have called the hospital, they've been told there's going to be a 16 hour wait and they're thinking about getting a taxi. But like this is the sort of moment of opportunity is that the old world,

it's not just dying, it is now dead. Sure. It has died now. And you know, again, there's a doctor there like rubbing its eyebrow and checking its pupil dilation. And the strategy of keeping it twitching by sending electricity through it has in one sort of semi brawl in the House of Commons also sort of died. And this is why I talked about, this is why I kept going back to the idea of essentially any, even a future Starmer government being forced to do things, of being forced to do certain things because we've seen Tory governments with unassailable majorities being unable to pass anything and largely reacting to events around

them, which by all forms of common sense shouldn't be possible. That shouldn't be happening. And so that's why I say it stands to reason that a Labour government with a similarly unassailable majority, but also let's say a kind of unwillingness to do what is necessary, or a ideological predisposition not to or whatever, can also be forced by events. I think the question is, are you going to organise to be one of the events? Am I tough enough? Hell yes, I'm tough enough. Yeah, I think this is why I've kind of been taking the view that like, instead of giving up on electoral politics, it's like, it's a tool in the toolbox, right?

And you should, as much as possible, just kind of keep your powder dry because there would be a moment like this. And this is now the moment, right? This is a moment of immense vulnerability for the Labour right and one which we can capitalise on perhaps. Absolutely. So, you know, I didn't, I didn't know that this was going to be an optimistic ending at Michelin. We can pressure Kistama to become Muslim. Yeah, we could, all we have to do is say that, you know, there's a, look, there's a new thing that you can say that, and you know, both Welsh coal miners and also academics, not in London, Oxford or Cambridge, academics, but in like other cities, they both love saying it.

That's true. That's true. It's a very sort of like, app-enabled religion now. Amazing things are happening in Saudi Arabia. The line is happening. They started building it. Yes. Yeah. They're really going for making it look as like, how long are they going to keep that up? That's the way it's future. It's a very long subject. It could be at the length of it. It's unmanageable. So, that's Neon talk. That's for a future episode. Yeah, Tom Walker isn't here. We can't in all good conscience talk about Neon without him. We're not quarreling on that. No, that's correct.

I just want to say, I think that's a nice and somewhat uncharacteristically optimistic place to end it. I want to say, Matt, do you have any final thoughts before we go on our merry way? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, I think the, I'd like to roll back on the optimism. The optimism is exactly because I think we are facing an incredibly, you know, painful, you know, traumatic winter that will not ease particularly and like moderate solutions to deep systemic crisis will be inadequate. And so the optimism to say like, really, I think just cleaving to like actually the solutions, the tools of public investment,

you know, democratic ownership, sort of social planning of the economy, sort of, you know, rebalancing power at work, expanding the realm of decorporation so people can live freely and well. These really are the only like, durable ways out of the crisis. And so I think, you know, the pessimism is the situation, the optimism to say, well, we've got to just keep organizing and keep pushing strategically on those things because actually, you know, really in the current context, you know, these demands are not particularly, you know, radical at all, they're fairly moderate demand that we can all just live thriving lives. And with that, I want to say thank you very much for physically coming to the studio and

talking to us today. Yeah, pleasure to be in the bunker. Absolutely. You can, you know what, we don't even, now that Liz Truss is no longer, we can about, we no longer actually meet the bunker, the atomic clock is now one minute further from midnight. And I want to thank all of you out there for being our listeners. And for listening to the free episodes, there's a Patreon, it's $5 a month. You can listen to more of this, the pound now that Liz Truss is gone is worth more. So get it while it's on sale. That's right. I don't think we have Brisbane tickets left. I don't think so. No, I don't believe so. We do have tickets in Canberra. Hey,

do you live in Brisbane and fancy a trip? You could come and see us in Canberra. Marketing. Yeah, the political capital of Australia. There are also still tickets in Sydney because the venue is huge. And Melbourne, there are still some tickets for Britonology. If you wanted to go to normal TF and Melbourne, you are weeks late, pal. You really fucked it. If you wanted to go to normal TF in Brisbane, you should have acted ever so slightly sooner. And also very exciting, our special edition TF tour t-shirts, which will be on sale at all the dates are being printed. They're actually in Australia. If you want to find a TF tour t-shirt, now- Intercept the shipments. You can do like a kind of- Please don't do that.

It's in a real bull, like organizing the shipment. No, you need to do, right, is you need to steal an ambulance and a couple of trucks. Yeah, you need a guy with long hair. Like a joker. Yeah, then you need a guy with long hair. You need a guy with good teeth. I'm going to miss the Wayne Grove jokes. I'm going to miss them. I thought I would have more time to elaborate on this bit, but no, this just has failed me. No, no, I'm afraid not. She went in- She went out like Dennis Haysbert. And so that's the Australia update. Thank you for coming to our live show this last week. And we will see you soon, but not before you check out Commonwealth. Are you a policymaker?

Do you need ideas? Well, Commonwealth has some ideas that are lying around. That sounds quite good. I didn't find some ideas. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you should common-wealth.co.uk. They run a great games, too. Oh, also, this is coming out on Monday, isn't it? It's coming out on Tuesday. The usual day comes out. Does it not come out on like Monday, midnight, night, though? I consider that Tuesday. Go on.

Okay. Yeah, fine. Whatever. It is Tuesday currently. In the evening of Tuesday, the 25th, I will be doing a show in Cambridge. Stand up. Do you live in Cambridge? Come to the ADC Theatre at 11 PM. You can't be busy at 11 PM. Who is? You, really? Yeah, me. I'm the only guy. I'm like the dark matter of society. I'm the inverse of all this, holy. He thinks crime is funny. Anyway, bye, everybody.