TRIGGERnometry - Labour Conference, Diesel Shortage and Far Right Labradors - Off the Fence

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

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Welcome back this week's big four stories are Andy Burnham's first conference speech as Prime Minister, in which he announced a return of tax, spend, renationalization, and a not so subtle hint that Brexit is up for renegotiation with a possible referendum being offered at the next election. Diesel has hit over £2 a liter and Trump is threatening an export ban. Andrew Neal, who we had on the show, it's coming out tomorrow, argue that this could mean a recession by Christmas if it happens. Five men were arrested outside Ayrf Fairfoot in a suspected terrorist incident. And now the government says Iran may have been involved.

in fact, was involved. And finally, the Green Party has published a list of banned words, including Nutter and Lunatic, presumably so we can't accurately describe their supporters. With all that, let's get into our first story, which is the Labour Conference, as I mentioned. Tax and spend is back, baby, renationalization is back. The 40-year consensus, I nearly said Tony Blair would be rolling in his grave.

He looks like he isn't one. He hasn't quite got there yet. But this is a tear-up. not only of Thatcherism, but also of Blairism, going back all the way to the 70s, and the potential for a renegotiation of Brexit and a hell of a lot more in his speech, which was lauded not only by the left, actually, but I saw lots of right-wing commentators applauding it as well. Tom, what did you make of it? I've got to say, I was taken aback by the gushing that was met this speech.

On the one hand, because I think there's just an element. of because of how awful the quality of political leaders has been in recent years. Kirstarmer was like the complete nadir of that, that a lot of the commentary is very easily impressed, both in terms of his presentation, which again was a bit chummier than usual, but nevertheless not exactly barnstorming by historical standards. And also the content, I mean, what he was talking about in that speech was as if he was living in a parallel universe.

I mean, this is the sort of speech a Labour Party leader would give in economic good times where there might be money to splurge on the Labour Party's kind of pet projects and ideologies. It's a sort of speech that you would give if you had a very solid majority of the country behind you, despite the fact that he's just kind of inherited what was already a pretty weak kind of sandcastle majority from Kier-Starmer and since then the Labour Party's fortunes have plunged. And the things that he was talking about and the things that came out over the course of Labour Party conference, I feel like I am loath to make predictions these days, but this could be the point in which Labour really scuppered it for themselves, both in terms of

going towards Brexit again, but in terms of the softening up of the position on migration, let alone what sounds like, if he ever actually pulls it off, a much more radical change to the economy, which in the context of incredibly jittery bond market, seems like something which he couldn't do even if he wanted to. So, yeah, I mean, all party conferences are a bit like staring into a kind of parallel universe, I suppose. They're exclusively talking to the faithful of that particular party.

they're saying things which play to their preferences and to their pet projects and whatever. But given the state that the country and the world is in at the moment, this felt like hubris doesn't even cover it. It felt delusional as much than anything else. I'm going to offer a contrarian opinion here, which is going to upset people, particularly Winnie. So, strike on. You can absolutely go at me with vengeance and hell and fury. Look, I'm going to be.

honest with you, I think the Labour Party have played an absolute blinder by getting by getting Burnham in charge. Starma was a sinking ship. There, the greens were coming and taking all of the left wing lunatics away from the party. That was really damaging them. Then they had the right of the party who were casually flirting with the Lib Dems. Burnham has come in and shored things up. Now you can say, oh right, look, come on, right, but this isn't going to happen. You know, this isn't a permanent thing. And maybe it isn't. And maybe it's like the proverbial drink before you have to face the harsh realities of the morning. And it's only a short-term solution.

But you know what, boys? As short-term solutions go, this is a pretty good one. And you also can make the argument that in lifetime, we get the politicians that we deserve. And here's what we deserve. What we want is someone to come up. not to say the hard things, not to be like, oh, actually we're going to need to make drastic cuts. This ship is sinking. We need to be prudent.

We need to be finite. We need to actually think about finances and economics. No, we want someone to be our mate. Look at our ever expanding, terrible habits, gambling, expanding gut and going, you know what, baby. You're beautiful as you are. That's what Burnham is. I couldn't help noticing, man, I couldn't really concentrate on what you were saying there because I was just watching Winston's face. Now, he went through a range of emotions there.

Most worrying, most worryingly, he was making notes. Now that's when you know things are serious. Believe it or not, I take a different view. Actually, I have a higher sense of self-worth. So I don't feel like this is the prime minister I deserve. but Francis maybe the Prime Minister. I was pacing the room in anger, listening to this guy's speech.

And also up again when I heard all the reactions which Tom alluded to earlier, and the sort of fawning and hagiographies from the media, the guy, the new statesman said he was crying, listening to it. Beth Rigby at Sky News saying it was sort of, you could see her sort of teary in the kind of of emotional about it, everyone thinking this is some sort of amazing moment. I cut to the chase, the most important part of this, in my humble opinion, is the allusions

to proportional representation. He calls it electoral reform. Now, for our American audience, people don't understand this. At the moment, in Britain, we have first passed the post, which means that whoever gets the most votes, whether in a constituency and then in Parliament at the most seats. So we have 650 seats. And so whoever gets 326, which is half plus one,

they can form a majority and they can form a party. If you bring in proportional representation, which Andy Burnham has been saying throughout his political career, we will never be able to vote out of our problems again. Because as we examined last week, the split of the nation, not just now that we've got like six parties, or there's several more actually. But the right and left are pretty much split 48, 48%.

So you would never get to a situation where you could form a coalition of parties to get over that 326 seats, which means we'd be stuck here. And if we're stuck here, there will be other consequences. This, I really don't think people appreciate how damaging it is. Best case scenario, look at the continent,

look at these other countries like it's, who are just perpetually changing leaders, we'd be stuck. And for that, I don't need to go into all the problems we've got, but that is really the number one problem. There's some other things though. He's talking about expropriation. They're saying they're going to confiscate homes and properties in towns and expropriate them and give them to people who need homes.

This is literally Leninist. We're past socialism here. They're taking property. I don't know how that he I'm not sure they use the exert the word expropriate they used the word sees these guys make Mammani look like van Mises it's mental it's literally mental and then people are still forning over this and uh sorry I could grant a length and I don't want to sort of hog hog the air time so if anyone wants to push back on any of those things please please do but before I sort of I want to push back by I'm biding my time well I'll just say a couple other things

things, this idea that Brexit, and I think we'll probably talk, are we going to talk about Brexit separately? Should I save my Brexit points? Yeah, yeah, save your Brexit stuff. I think we'll talk about that. I'll say one more thing about thatcherism. This whole thing was anchored, his whole sort of world view is this idea that sort of, after the war, the beverage report, which he cited, and then you have this kind of high time in sort of English prosperity and British prosperity, and we sort of build the country up. I'm sorry. And then Thatcher, of course,

destroys and ruins everything. Firstly, in the 60s, it was 95% tax on top marginal rates. That's a disaster if we went back to that. Not only that in the 70s, we didn't just have piles of rubbish in the streets. We had dead bodies piled in the streets. We had three-day working weeks.

We had blackouts. We had inflation going through the roof. We had to be bailed out by the IMF. And this is, that's supposed to be the high time and these guys worldview. Oh, bring back the 70s. But can someone explain? Can someone, one of you guys explain why they're so obsessed with the 70s and this period, which was clearly like a low point in our history?

What's going on? Well, we had two interviews this week. One of them I mentioned already with Andrew Neal. The other one was with Owen Jones, who literally made the very argument that you are now saying that the 70s was the best time, and then neoliberalism came along and ruined it. So I hope people go and watch that. Dean, let's show people what Andrew Neal had to say about Burnham and the policies before I get to my controversial take.

It's the people who blame. It's British attitudes to blame, because the British people think they can have Scandinavian levels of cradle to the grave welfare on kind of midded, taxis. And here's the thing you can't. Although if people vote in a way that results in a right of center government that might not deliver in all these things, if the country does vote for the Andy Burnham prospectus, that's it. We are a socialist tax and spend future. There's no going back from that. He believes that a bigger state means more growth. I hope he is. He's away with the But that's his belief.

Why don't you think it's going to work? Because I don't see anywhere in the world where it ever has. So a crisis in the bond markets could force this government into doing things it doesn't want to do. I think we are heading for some really tough times. So that will be out tomorrow. And I wrote an article yesterday in which I only with a very little small portion of my tongue in my cheek argue that Andy Burnham will save Britain. There is a bit of a caveat, which is that if there's a fiscal crisis very soon,

then that might not happen. But if he is allowed to do this, it will destroy the economy so much, that that is, in my opinion, the only way the British public will actually reset their attitudes to all of these things. Because one of the things I talk about in the article is the British public have a schizophrenic attitude to tax and spend. and spend. If you ask people about tax and spend, it's actually very unpopular. Only 36% of people in this country say that they're in favor of tax and spend in the general sweep of things.

But then when you ask them about individual policies, if you ask them about a wealth tax, if you ask them about taxing the top 1% more, taxing the top 10% more, re-nationalizing the water companies, re-nationalizing railways, renationalizing your They're massively, massively, massively in favor of it. And my argument is the British public will remain in favor of all of these things until this worldview is utterly discredited by reality, which I would argue is what happened in the 70s, which is why you then had a period of time when you were able as a country to pursue a different set of policies that actually created the modern economy as we have it.

I am, with all respect to our fellow citizens convinced that until that reality, that reality manifest itself in disaster. We will not quite, there is no argument to be won anymore. People are, people believe that prosperity is generated by taking more from other people. That is the British attitude to these things, as Andrew Neal said. And until we have an economic reality that really hurts people, which is something I really, really don't want, it will be absolutely terrible. All four of us are going to be more or less insulated or cushioned from it's certainly more than the ordinary person. And it's because of that that I've spent my entire public life arguing against this worldview.

But I feel entirely powerless, and I feel that better people than all of us have made better arguments than all of us about this. And I don't think the British public care, I think they want to have a go at socialism. And I think the elation that you saw not only in the room at the Labour Party conference, but across the media, social media from across the political spectrum, actually, is not because Andy Burnham talked about his dad movingly, although a lot of people are seduced by the sort of personal narrative. I think the reason this stuff got the reaction that it got is that he's offering a lot of people what they want. Well, of course, the difficulty here is that how you poll particular questions will produce

particular outcomes. Because as you say, even though you could look on net what the British public seem to believe about economic policy more broadly. You break it up, you get different responses. I suppose one thing, maybe this is a note of optimism, is that I think the British public, where economic matters are concerned, are actually more persuadable than it's often seems. Like even the kind of quote-unquote austerity is, we can argue about whether or not that was meaningfully austerity. That was very popular. I mean, that was a program for the country which the public felt that was necessary, that needed to be implemented to write the public finances.

Of course, it didn't actually put us in better steady economically in the end. But nevertheless, that was something that the public were open towards. The thing about Andy Burnham and his economic outlook, I think he's going to be disastrous for the economy for the country, but maybe not in the way that you think Constantine, just in the sense that I think he represents the continuation of what Kirstama was doing, of what the last Conservative government was doing, rather than any particular acceleration of it.

The weddedness to net zero, for instance, which I'm sure will come on to in relation to the diesel crisis, the weddedness to the just kind of trundling along rather than engage, in the kind of spending cuts, restructuring of the economy that is necessary. If you listen to that speech quite closely, it's also, there might be proven wrong by future events. There's an element where I think he's just going to go down as a kind of a bit of a left-wing prick-tees to a certain extent. He will say things like in that speech, we're going to lift the Thatcher-era ban on nationalisation. Then when it comes to him saying what it is

that he actually intends to do, it's more public control, which could be everything from having some kind of Ponzi community representative on the board of an energy company, just to having the mayor being able to call in bosses of energy companies. It can be something a lot lower than that. I think he is kind of aware of the fact that even when he wasn't leader of the Labour Party, him even just sounding off about the bond markets, move the bond markets. I think he knows he's actually quite hemmed in. I think he is going to be disastrous for the country, for the economy. I think it could well accelerate the decline in the way that you're slightly tongue-in-cheek hoping for Constantine. But because he's...

more of the same rather than it being any kind of radical break with the past. But again, I might be eating these words in six months. Do you know where I am with this? And it's slightly with Constantine, but it's just, I remember when I was doing stand-up, and I were regularly, and I was saying to the stand-up comedians, as Constantine was, this free speech thing, it's a big thing. Cancel culture is real. It's going to affect you.

It's going to affect all of us. It's going to constrain it. You know, they called us far right, Nazi, whatever else. And then they went on. Anyway, the other week, I was in a comedy club in the green room, and there was a group of comedians in a corner, and they were talking about how worried they were about cancel culture. They couldn't say this, they couldn't say that.

Someone got banned from playing this club for saying this. What happens if you don't fully go on with the Pro Pally thing? And I looked over there, and I was like, Welcome to the club, boys. You finally got it, didn't you? And that's how I see this. You can only keep repeating the same thing again and again to people. You can only do it so many times. Eventually, it's like when you're, my only other reference, being a teacher, you can only say to the kids, you know what, do your revision. And if they don't want to do it, you go, well, you're going to fail your exams. And I'm going to be on my summer holidays. Would you want? That's where we are.

If the British public won socialism, Viva la revolution! Keka in a way, I'm sort of hope you're right. And you're giving the example of Thatcher coming after the 70s is a positive example. I'd say it's not the only way it goes. No, I agree. So, you know, we've got the example of the 70s. that pre-80s period.

We've got all the examples of socialism everywhere in the world, which continue to this day and communism. We've got the Soviet Union example. We've just got every kind of example. We've got a lot of lies about the examples of what's going on with social democracy on the continent. My worry is it could also go the example of, let's say, Mitterrand in France in the 80s.

where he comes in hard left. It doesn't go well. After a couple of years, he yanks, he goes to the right to save the economy, which means that you kind of carry, either carry on with the socialists, or, and this is what happened to Stama, you get a faction on who go,

you're not going left enough. And so then they form their Green Party. Basically, the problem, they're ideologues. So they can't be wrong. So they just, they'll just, I'm not sure that they'll ever unprofile, Clark, they'll just go further left. Oh, yeah, yeah, but that's where the market, the bond markets create the correction.

That's where the reality snaps back. To amplify your pessimism further, I think there's a third way this could go, which is, of course, a 1930-style situation. And if you look at the cultural issues that we've got a tanking economy plus all of that, you could be looking at a far left, far right, both rising rapidly at the same time in response to the deterioration of the economy. I want to make it super, super clear. I am not in favor of this.

I just think it's the only way things have a chance to get profoundly better in the next 10 years. Otherwise, we will likely get what you're talking about, Winston, which is a continuing bumbling along the bottom, continually sort of trying to, well, you know, look, we can borrow more money. We can find a way to, I read an argument, I think, in the telegraph the other day, that, you know, we really need to do is restructure the debt so we can borrow more and then everything will be fine. It's like, and I think that is the temptation of every politician actually is to find a way to pretend we don't have a problem because the moment you stop, you don't have to fix it and fixing it is going to be bloody awful. There's a practical element to this as well, which is

what is actually the situation in Britain right now. And if we get a practical element to this as well, which is what is actually the situation in Britain right now. And if we get to the next election in three years, the right is still split. Labor win either a majority or they win in coalition. They bring in proportional representation, as I mentioned earlier. So, even your example as like the least bad scenario, a way to wake people up, we might be on a path where it's almost moot because we're just going to have so many hellish other problems with a split country, as I've argued before, who don't seem to actually change from right to left particularly overall but just change within right and within left so whilst i i hope people wake up to the realities of of these policies i'm i'm less hopeful about what's actually next

well do the good news is i'm sorry go ahead i'm saying there is a scenario in which this provided the rights gets its act together which is a very big if at this point we've seen some council by elections overnight in which restore, stop reform from gaining a seat. It's a pattern that we're seeing recurring across the country. But if the right got it's happened together, I think this could be seen as the moment in which Andy Burnham just completely scuppered Labor's chances at the next election. Because what are the two big issues which are affecting society, any poll will show they're jostling for position number one and position number two.

It's the cost of living in its immigration. On immigration at this conference, Labor have softened up already an incredibly soft set of reforms. They're going to seemingly junk a lot of what they were going to do around indefinitely. leave to remain, essentially allowing a large chunk of the Boris wave to be able to access benefits, be on a pathway to citizenship. They're opening up these quote-unquote safe and legal routes. How safe they'll be legal, but I dare say they won't be safe, particularly in relation to Afghanistan and Palestine. They claim it's going to be caps, but as we all saw from that one Palestinian woman who came over and then managed to bring 18 of a family

members along effortlessly. I don't think that's going to move the dial at all. People are already making jokes. He says he wants growth in every postcode the way things are going. It's going to be a migrant rapist in every postcode. I mean, all of these things are, this is the issue of our era, and he's on the wrong side of it. Then you look at the economy, even if he doesn't get to the point where he can engage in these grand, nostalgic spirit in 1945 kind of visions for what he wants to do to the economy, even just carrying on as we are is going to be disastrous. We are facing another fuel crisis. It is going to look like a particularly painful winter potentially. And what are we talking about? Maybe, just maybe we'll speed up some of the

North Sea oil and gas licenses without, you know, even actually changing the policy there. Tinkering is what is the kind of medium case scenario, I think, for what Burnham is actually going to do. So give it a bit of time. I think that could be potentially disastrous for them. But as I say, this is, the requirement in all of this would be that even the right-wing parties or right-wing voters get their heads around this and start kind of sorting into the party that's most likely to win in their constituency or the party that's most likely to win in the country. But looking at where things are at the moment, obviously that is such a massive if it's probably not much to hang your hat on.

Well, given the negative conversation we've had, I do think it's important to eject a little bit of a note of optimism, say that we could in a few years be facing another Brexit referendum, which obviously would be wonderful and delightful for all of us. The first one went fantastically well, really united the country. And that is one of the things that Labor under Burnham are considered, from what I understand, the entire front bench are basically died in the wool remainers. And as I think everyone watching this will know, Francis and I voted Remain in the referendum,

but were absolutely disgusted by the way the Remain side tried to overturn the Democratic vote. But that is effectively what Burnham is proposing to put in the election manifesto at the next election, which would give us another 10 years of the wonderful shenanigans that we had before. What do we make of this? Well, you know what? I think it's a great idea

because I don't think we're divided enough. Oh, for goodness sake. What, you're just trying to wind me up. It's not that hard these days, mate. I don't think we're dividing enough. We're divided enough. I don't think the left's divided enough. I don't think the right's divided enough, whether it's the right or the right wing.

I think we need more division. Let's have more to argue about. Let's break up more families, more relationships, more interfamiliar relationships. Let's get everybody at each other's throats. Let's bring back the big dogs. Let's get it in the room. Why not? Why not?

Everything else is going to shit. Why not try a lynx can on the bonfire? You know what? you make a good point because Burnham started his speech saying enough of the division of the last 10 years of politics yeah before going into an unbelievably divisive speech what could be more divisive than Brexit everyone's finished with just no one wants to revisit that i mean i know they do all those remainer from matches i i would say i by the way this is going to sound very wet but i actually sport my ballot for brexit although i'm now very very hard Brexit and i don't think we need to go much further I certainly don't want to go.

And the reason because I think that is because all the remain lie, all the remain arguments proved to be lies, but that's a conversation for another day. But there is something on this Brexit thing I need to pick up because it's a crazy lie that Labor keeps selling. They keep saying that immigration was illegal immigration was easier to deal with when we were within the EU. And the argument is,

because of the Dublin Protocol, the Dublin Agreement, we could send back illegal entrance to wherever they first came from. Sorry, wherever they first entered in the EU. I got a question for you guys. It's a pop quiz. Of the 30,000 requests from the UK to return illegal immigrants from between 2015 and 2020 to other nations in the EU, how many were successful?

What do you think? Fifty. I'm not sure about that time. I'm not sure about that timeframe, but I remember it was something like 500 a year or something in that ballpark. Yeah, basically, 1800 in that total time. And not only that, we had to take in more from EU countries wanting to send them back to us. So this idea that it was somehow easier to deal with illegal immigration is a total lie. It's like they think we're stupid.

Especially to try and sustain that now is fascinating because as you said, that's stuff about the Dublin Accord is just complete bollocks and anyone who looks into it for five seconds will realize that. Also the fact that we've had all of this non-EU migration since Brexit, first of we know why because Boris Johnson decided to loosen up the visa rules, but also you saw that in various European countries. They were all desperately trying to plug these gaps in the labour market after COVID and the lockdowns and everything. And then also, if you think about the EU, we would be rejoining, an EU in which this lunatic Pedro Sanchez has just granted an asylum to,

an amnesty rather, to a million illegal migrants. So as soon as they get Spanish citizenship could be on their way to Britain. Yeah, or 60,000 people crossing the border in two hours or two days or whatever it was in Fouetta. Exactly, well pronounced there. France has been giving you lessons on that. I've been working on that for a while. Exactly. That invasion is what the future of the EU looks like.

They've always struggled to control their own external border. We'd be lumping ourselves back into it again. And it's like going back to this point about how Labor live in fantasy land, the Remainers within Labour and the rest of politics are completely in fantasy land. They're the most low information people when it comes to the issue of the European Union and migration. The only way the rejoined case can be sustained is if you do not pay attention at all to what is going on within the European Union. They act like it's a land of economic milk and honey. Meanwhile, France is like teetering on the edge of a sovereign debt crisis in Germany.

The former industrial powerhouse is de-industrialising rate of knots. They talk about it as if it's this kind of haven of like political centre-left centrist stability. Meanwhile, again, in France and Germany, they're spoiling to elect parties that make reform look like the liberal. Dems like it doesn't make any sense if you actually it makes sense in one way Tom it makes sense in one way I think which and I think this is the reason that they think this might be a time to do this because if you poll the British public at a very superficial level there are a lot of people who quote unquote regret Brexit and I think that what's happening there is my theory I'm maybe wrong about this is people don't think about the cause of relationship very carefully so

they say, well, we had Brexit in 2016. Then we had five years of dicking around about Brexit, which was, as Francis alludes to, quite divisive. Then we got whatever Brexit got, we didn't get reduction in immigration, but what we've also got is falling living standards. And people go, well, we got Brexit, then we got falling living standards. Therefore, Brexit caused living standards because they don't know that the European Union is actually growing far slower than the UK, even though our growth is anemic.

theirs is even more anem. I don't know what the right adjective would be for worse than anemic like lead the dead I guess is right they're not growing at all basically they got like sickle cell or something you know yeah sickle cell yeah yeah exactly the economies are sickle cell levels so so what we got was two months after sorry yeah yeah so I think I think what's happening is British people go we had Bregg's fit it's that prop or whatever I can't remember the Latin expression, but something happened, therefore, the thing that followed to happen because of it.

And that's what we've got with this, where people go, Brexit happened, things have not got better, therefore Brexit was bad. And they're not looking at the facts that you're talking about, which is on the two major issues in this country, which is the economy and immigration, the European Union and its key countries, Germany, Italy and France, and Spain, are actually doing even worse than we are. And so to go back into that at great cost and great turmoil to the country, even as someone who thought, you know, the remain argument, not the ones that were lies, but the other remain arguments were strong. This doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. And by the way, we talked

about this with Andrew Neal and his argument was that actually Labor haven't thought this through because that's superficial Brexit regret when it becomes converted into actual campaigns. and when people start to become aware of the economic realities of the EU and other things that are going on, this may prove if they go for this, this may prove to be their downfall. Yeah, I completely agree on that score because also rejoining the EU, the case for that is so much tougher than remaining within the EU. Like, remain, we know what the status quo looks like. You know, that's something which is quite clear. But as soon as that campaign gets underway, talking about the euro, talking about freedom of movement,

that rebate, we're never getting back. All of these arguments are ones that strengthen the leave, or in this case, the remain out, if you like. Of course. I just don't see it. Again, immigration, I think we've a bit of, it wouldn't take much explaining to say that, again, rejoining the EU at this point is going to be a very, very bad idea. So I think, be careful what they wish for, really. I mean, I, again, don't like to make predictions too much. But it seems like a slam dunk if we ever got to another referendum.

But it's the sort of thing that I don't think there is much appetite for it in the country. Because you can superficially poll people and say, do you reckon we should rejoin the EU? Do you reckon you regret it? But again, as soon as you get a bit more granular, do you think we should be in the euro? No. Do you think that we should have freedom of movement?

No. Even if you ask people, do you think we should have our own trade policy? They're like, of course we should. So, again, it won't take much, I think, for this fantasy to collide with reality. And I am amazed they're going back towards it. I think it's just because it's like an identity question for these politicians as much as anything else now. They were so wounded by that vote going the wrong way 10 years ago. Even ones who were in the Labour Party or in politics,

who weren't that bothered about the EU, of suddenly it's become their entire personality. But it's definitely not going to survive contact with reality. And also as well, Andrew made a very good point when Andrew Newell in our interview, when he said, look, there's also the practical realities of, as a politician, you're a human being. you've got limited bandwidth, you've got a limited amount of hours, you've got a limited amount of energy. You can only dedicate and devote yourself to so many issues and causes and problems and whatever else.

You're going to add this to it. This is going to take up so many man hours. It's going to take up a huge amount of time, effort and energy. We've got huge problems elsewhere that I don't think it's hyperbolic to describe them as existential. and this is what you want to do with? Do you know what I mean? We're like, you know, a guy who's basically his house is falling apart. The wife's about to leave him. The kids are hanging him. And he's like, you know what? I think, I think it's time to get the band back together, in it? What's what we need to do? And you're going, no, mate. I think, I think you need to put the fire

out. That's where we are. So, realistically, I don't, can't see it happening. Purely from, just logistical point of view on the Labor side. When final way, we actually have to we have to do this. It's the opposite of what we actually have to do, which is we have to leave the European Convention of Human Rights, which we're bound to with the Human Rights Act, which is what is stopping us from actually dealing with a lot of our legal immigration problems. He is going in literally the wrong direction. We need more Brexit. There we go, more Brexit. Easy sell, no doubt, to the country.

Now, let's move on to another issue, which I actually think could be extraordinarily impactful on the country. And it is, of course, the potential diesel ban from the US. The US is currently providing about a third of the diesel we have in this country. Francis, take it away. Okay, so Trump has threatened to ban diesel exports from the US. And so just for a little bit of info for people who don't know what diesel is used for, It's used for heavy transportation, industry agriculture, but also this is important for emergency backup systems for hospitals. This is very, very, very important stuff.

He's worried about the rising price of diesels with the midterms coming up, and he wants Europe to use their diesel reserves to flood the market and therefore lower prices. And obviously, the rise in diesel prices due to the war in Iran and a Russian ban on diesel exports because of the oil. of the Ukraine war. And this is a lot of this pressure has been put on him by Republicans in agricultural heartland. Are really worried about the backlash from the midterms. France, Italy and Germany have about 900 days of diesel combined. We're in the UK because we're retarded. We have 42 because we're idiots. Now I've got a different

stat to you, KK, because in the Telegraph, they said we import about 55% of our diesel from the US. So I don't know who's right. That's what the-Dino, can you look it up with Venice AI? What is the percentage of our diesel that comes from the US at the moment? But carry on, Francis. We'll look it up and we'll get the stats up. Yeah. And I've got some other good news, guys.

So our biggest refinery is set to shut down for 10 weeks due to maintenance. So the biggest refinery that we have is about to close down because we need to maintain it. So on top of that, that's an extra fuckery. But don't worry, the government came out and said we have a diverse. They love that word, don't they? Doesn't matter what we are. We're diverse. And resilient supply.

And as KK said, we're about to hit, or we've just gone through the £2 a liter threshold. And this is really, really, really worrying. Because if this happens, this plunges an already fragile economy into a recession. We are not robust. We cannot withstand this type of economic shock. It is a major concern not only for Europe, but particularly for us, as we simply do not have the reserves to cope with this. And I guess the question is, do we think this is going to happen? Is this simply Trump posturing?

Will the Europeans capitulate? And does it matter that we're diverse? Well, one of the things we should separate is Europeans from us. Actually, in many ways, we just talked about the fact that... Winston would agree with you, mate. Of course, we need more Brexit. But the one area in which the Europeans have actually, in this instant, done much better, is they have not pursued the net zero suicide.

in this part of it with the same vigor that we have. So they all have about a year's worth of diesel supply. We have a month's worth of diesel supply just over. And so this puts us in a completely different position. Andy Burnham is going to have to get on all fours and get very, very grateful with Donald Trump to get any concessions out of him. Maybe, you know, well, you know, it's an image that we'd all enjoy. But so in that situation, that's, we would have to basically go crawling to the White House and no, I don't know what Trump would demand, but he does not strike me as someone who gives things away without asking for something in return.

And so if Britain was to find a way to secure an exemption from this export ban, which may well happen, then we will have to give up something very valuable. change. Now let's be let's come back to why this is all happening. This is obviously all the consequences of the Iran war. And what President Trump is trying to do is to ameliorate some of the pain that that war is causing domestically because you see that the, you know, with prices rising at the pump and don't forget diesel is obviously what fuels all agriculture effectively. So a lot of the the American agricultural states and a lot of the American consumers, gas prices are one of the key metrics for whether presidencies going well in the United States.

With the midterms looming, this is not a good look. When we interviewed Senator Ted Cruz at the outset of this war, he said if this conflict is still ongoing at the time of the midterms, we have failed, I believe was his exact language or something to that effect. The reality is they have failed, and what they're trying to do now is to get Europe to open up its reserves and take their reserves down to zero as quickly as possible to suppress diesel prices in order to help the Republicans win the midterms. And Britain is stuck in the middle because of net zero and the lunacy that we've had shutting

down. Francis says we've got our biggest refineries down for maintenance for 10 weeks, but we've shut down a whole number of refineries. And then, yes, it's also true, by the way, the war in Ukraine, ironically, it's actually Ukraine's recent successes that are making this problem worse because one of the things the Ukrainians have been doing and very successfully is targeting Russia's refinery refining capacity with drones and missile strikes and they've been so effective at it that Russia a huge producer of oil and gas obviously which used to refine a significant portion of it itself is now importing petroleum products from

countries like India because so much of its refining capacity is been damaged. So it's a giant mess and President Trump will do whatever he believes is in the interests of the Republican Party. I was going to say the American people, but in this instance, I think it's fair to say it's the Republican Party. And the consequence for Europe, if he continues to press that, will be absolutely disastrous. Europe is more resilient. We are absolutely screwed if this happens. And the consequences are not just purely economic. I mean, when the fuel runs out, that's when the unrest starts. I mean, this is something, and also when the, just when the price is rocket is when the unrest starts. I mean, Alistair Campbell said that actually

the biggest crisis he ever had to deal with during the new Labor years was not the fallout for 9-11. It wasn't the Iraq war, which he, of course played his wrong and lying our way into. It was the 2000s fuel price protest where you had a bunch of lorry drivers blockading depots and basically bringing the country to a standstill. The NHS came within a, like a pair's breadth of running out of fuel. And this is something which can readily happen. It's why you're seeing countries across the world suddenly trying to placate their kind of restive populations.

And that's something that you're not just going to see in the developing country. You can easily see it in this country. And it's entirely, if not entirely, then largely self-inflicted. Obviously, we did have this sort of fantasy, this end of history, fantasy, that conflict was a thing of the past, that war was something that only really happened over there. It didn't really have knock-on effects for what happens at home. Obviously, the combination of Ukraine, Winston's favorite war, the war in Iran and all the other ones, have brought that crashing down around us. But at the same time, you can make yourself more

resilient against these kinds of things. I mean, there was a good piece in Sunday Times about this. We're currently, I think it's all of our road diesel accounts. We're reporting 55% of that, some of that from America, some from elsewhere. It was as low as 14% in the early 2000s. Over that time, I think we've gone from nine refineries to four. Last year alone, we closed two refineries. which would account for 25% of our capacity to refine oil. So this is something which has been actively pursued by successive government and has left us, of course, international crises happen. We are dealing with global markets, but you leave yourself so much more exposed to this

by the decisions that you make in this country. It's the combination of the sort of net zero ideology writ large, as you've been saying, Constantine, and also this sort of just in time model of running your economy, where you have very meager reserves because that's the way to, because it's cheaper to do so effectively. And everything's running fine most of the time. And, you know, all it takes is a pandemic and a couple of wars to make you realize that that's probably a bad way to plan going forward. So again, at the risk of just echoing everything you've said, this is a real recipe for disaster. And it's one that will show up, I think, not just in terms of price at the pump.

I think it's getting very tough for people out there, but potentially serious unrest as well if it's not gotten on top of it. Just to interject to this point, Venice-A-I says about 17% of the diesel use in the UK comes from the US, K-K. So it turns out neither of us is right. Anyway, well, I would say I was directionally more accurate than you. Look, I don't want to offend your loyalties to the Ayatollah. So I'm just going to make it. We had in the 80s 17 oil refineries, sorry, 18 oil refineries. and now we have four.

This is about Britain and it's, okay, everything you said about net zero folly, the fact that we're not still properly, not properly doing oil expeditions into the North Sea and still importing oil from the Norwegians from the same bloody fields that we own that are ours. And this is sort of across the field, there's some various net zero follies that we should, we should do a long conversation about one day. But until we have energy security, we're going to be a failing country in this new world order. Yeah, well, look, you make a good point. And without standing up for the great Ayatollah, I think it's fair to say that the UK has pursued suicidal policy that we've all spoken about in this area.

Not least because we do have access to our own oil and gas, which we should be producing as quickly as we, can in addition to building fracking is still legal and and what we should also have been have been doing there is of course that famous clip of nick Clegg saying about 15 years ago that we shouldn't build nuclear reactors because it would take 15 years here we are 15 years here we are 50 years no nuclear reactors right all of those things should have been done that does not take away from the fact that this global crisis is a result of the war in iran and president trump's or potential ban that is being mooted and his attempts to get Europeans to run down their reserves to lower diesel and gas prices for American consumers effectively is his way of trying to mitigate

the consequences of this conflict. Now, Tom and you are absolutely right. I mean, how these morons did not learn the lessons of the pandemic. To me, the biggest lesson of the pandemic, yeah, sure, they covered up the fact that the virus was originated in a lab in China, almost certainly through gain of function research, almost certainly sponsored by Western institutions. Fine, okay, you cover that up. And Chinese, yeah. And Chinese, okay, fine. But to me, you know, you don't necessarily control that exactly.

What we did control is the sudden realization, which these people just randomly had in this moment, that when push comes to shove, surprise, surprise, countries are going to try and do what's in their national interest. Now, you can blame President Trump or you can blame the Chinese or whatever. The reality is if you don't produce your own steel, if you don't produce your own medication, if you don't produce your own oil and gas, if you don't produce your own energy, if you don't grow your own food, you are going to be vulnerable. And I think in the last, I don't know, five or six years, we could all see that the world has changed, right?

I mean, look at the number of wars that are going on that are affecting all food, fertilizer, agriculture, oil, gas, all of these things, how the decision has not been made to do a complete handbrake turn and go, oh my God, we have been so foolish, fine, okay, we've made mistakes. Let's ramp up our production capacity. Let's ramp up our refining capacity. By the way, these things create jobs, you know. These things create economic growth, something we seem to be short on at the moment. If we were actually doing all of that, we'd be ticking a lot of the boxes that our country needs,

but instead you just have Ed Militouat, just pursuing all of this stuff first as Energy Secretary, now as Foreign Secretary. And we've got this continuous ideology that has absolutely no relation to reality and there doesn't seem to be any change. But, you know, that image of Andy Burnham on all fours in the Oval Office

will give me the moral satisfaction that trumps all of that. But again, you used the word ideology and this is what it comes back to. It is an ideology because you look at what is the inevitable outcome of the set of beliefs. And it's disastrous. If you look at the bottom line and go,

is it going to make the lives of people better? Once you get down to it, it just simply isn't. It's going to make us weaker. It's going to make us more vulnerable. It's going to mean that other countries are going to be able to bully us far more effectively, which is what the Americans and Donald Trump is doing. They're bullying us. And we simply can't stand up to them because we've got basically over a month of diesel in, how can I put it, in the back pocket? So what, what can we do apart from go over there, you know, get on all fours

and go, give it to me, daddy? Which is the position we're in. I think if anyone should do that job Andy Burnham is incredibly well placed to do it. I thought you were going to say me, mate. So thanks for that. No, no, I think Andy Burnham should do it. I'm up for it. He's got the soft touch to handle it. With all of that said, speaking of the great Ayatollah, Winston, it turns out he's been up to a few things in our backyard.

Tell us about that. Yes, this, it's a bit of a tragic comedy, this. and we have the film Four Lions play out in real life, rubber dinghy rapids and all. So this is last weekend. I mean, it's absolutely, you're going to hear it, and you can't satirize this. It starts with one of a bunch of guys going in white vans to R.F. Fairford, which has been used during the Iran War for American, air forces to bomb Iran and these men, five of whom have now been arrested, but there's been reports

of up to eight or ten by a local witness. Here you can see this in this asset, you can see, I think it's three or four of the lads who have been arrested. One of them called the police on themselves about midnight last Saturday before like an hour later, a local female farmer also reported she saw these white vans with these lads then scurring off into the into the forest to hide the police don't clear the area until eight in the morning the thing the thing slowly escalates and escalates it turns out that these are four guys from london they've been they they get arrested trump comes out and as well as rubio saying it's a ron backed burnham all also says it seems to be Iran backed. This is a terrible, it seems to be a terror plot to do something at RAF Fairford. Later in the week there is actually an Iranian Brit who is arrested on links to this this thing. And it turns out that before the plot, Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu had just given warning that this was going to happen before he and Israel were then sanctioned by Ed Miliband. So this is

kind of this tiny thing which is kind of a joke in our country has become a sort of geopolitical joke and it's a joke because these guys have all been given bail so we have these terrorists who the president of the united states the secretary of state various other partners in in the world have said these are iranians our prime minister says they are it's an arraadian base terror plot but now they're sort of free to knock about they live in westminster my studio's in wensminster so what's going on here The double, the reason why this has actually been offensive to a lot of people is because at the same time, Danny Tomo, who was arrested last week, was this week charged for criminal damage to a dinghy. So there you've got your rubber dingy rapids. The dingy, as far as I can make out, either belongs to one of the illegal immigrants or belongs.

to one of the illegal immigrant smugglers. His other charges that he didn't give over his pin code. But the real offensive thing is, he's not been given bail. So he's going to have to wait until a march for his court case. So this is a nut. It's got of everything in one story for me. It's two tier justice.

It's two tier Britain. It is the idea that we don't know whether there islamists exactly or whether they're, you know, foreign nation. And there's no huge point in speculating. But either way or whichever way it is, we should be making as hostile an environment as possible for people doing these sort of criminal acts. We're not.

We're a joke country. Anyway, I've been extremely triggered by this whole story. And if you think I've got it wrong, I'm all ears. I was going to say, Winston. No, go ahead, Tom. No, you go for it, Tom. I was just going to take the piss out of Winston. I think I've done that enough this episode.

There'll be other opportunities. No, I think this whole thing has been an absolute fast. Like it can't work out whether it's an episode of Homeland or like an ealing comedy, this whole thing, as we've been going through it. The fact that it seemed to have taken just a plucky farmer returning home from a party at 1 o'clock in the morning who spotted these men in balaclavas who then dashed into the woods. The fact that she was the one who raises the alarm is farcical.

I mean, this RAF base, it's for all intents' purposes, like a US Air Force base and has been for a very long time. The fact that it was that easy to get that close. They knew that an attack was coming. Their stories in the area of people being stopped by American military police and checked on the roads in the days running up to this. Clearly they were nervy, something was going to happen. But I didn't have trying to protect themselves against that.

They just did things like put a tractor in front of one of the gates. You would have thought it was slightly more sophisticated than that in terms of how they might defend themselves. Wow. I messed there. And then since it's happened. Don't mess with us. We've got practice. Exactly.

You'll struggle to drive through there, son. I mean, that's just seems to be... Well, we've got tractors that have run out of diesel and have never been abandoned in front of the gate. Yeah. They were driving it up, and then it ran out, helpfully in front of the gate. But, and then this happens,

and then you're expected to believe that, the story has shifted so many times, and we were just constantly being told off for daring to speculate about it, but you thought, you know, clearly there is something untowards going on it. Whether or not this is, as Nigel Farage has suggested, some kind of dummy run for something more serious,

whereas or not this is something that you're seeing, the Iranians doing much more increasingly, which is that rather than this being someone who's been dispatched from Tehran to go and build up a cell and do something that you just sort of on the dark web, find kind of local petty criminals and pay the money to do something

even if they're not entirely sure what it's for and what the actual point is. All of these questions are important, but for a while we were expected to believe that we shouldn't speculate and that maybe it was just a stag do that got out of hand or something. I mean, it was absolutely absurd.

And that response that the government always have, which is do not speculate. This has nothing to do with trying to protect any investigation. This is nothing to do with trying to make sure things are done in the right way. It's just a way of telling people to shut up. And it's not good enough anymore, especially when the fact that it's scaring your face. Because they say don't speculate on this, but when it's Danny Tomo, Burnham is prepared to say, oh yeah, he's definitely racist.

So it's always the same bloody story. It's that don't speculate about what's going on of Axel Ruder-Gabana and then Kirstrauma. comes out and goes, oh yeah, everyone protesting this is far right. So you're speculate. It's always the speculation is one way. It's two tier speculation. It's and it's, and it's, this is why I get so irritated by this.

It's, it's through every part of our society, this two tier system. Mm-hmm. Well, and it's not just two-tier speculation. It's two-tier commentary. So for example, Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, will go on TV and say, we will deal with the Dover protesters to the fullest extent of the law, When asked about other cases, she will say, we don't have to comment on individual cases. There's so much of this going on.

You almost get tired of pointing out the hypocrisy. Yeah. And I think when you say you get tired of pointing out the hypocrisy, actually, that's a really profound point. Because when something is just so obvious and you see it wherever you go and you point it out and you say, what about this and what about that and what about this? and what about that. Eventually what it happens is you become demoralized because what is becoming more and more obvious to you is you're living in a society where there's one set of rules for one people and there's another set for others. And I don't remember that being the case in our society. Not in my lifetime. Now you could use certain examples and you know there was racism. There was quite

of erasement, particularly in the 80s and the 70s when I was growing up, there was an unfairness. But we addressed that. We talked about that. But with what's happening now, there just seems to be a disinterest in it, which I find baffling because what that means is that we are going to erode the respect for the rule of law and justice and the justice system in this country. And what people seem to fail to realize is all of these things they're done because we agree to that this works. We agree that this system, this culture and this society works for us. But it seems like we're getting to a place where we don't think it works for us. And that is really, really, really dangerous. And again, this to me is just another example. of this type of behaviour, really.

Well, don't worry, Francis. The good thing is the Green Party have come up with a way of dealing with all of these challenges, which Tom, you've written an article in the Telegraph this week about. The solution is to ban words. Tell us more about this. Yeah, surprise, surprise. The Greens have still completely lost it, where work matters are concerned. And this inclusive language guide is yet another example.

So it's ahead of their conference, which is getting under. away in Brighton and the Telegraph got their hands on this guide which points out to the members of the Green Party that there are certain words that they should avoid not talk about the N-word but not talk about various slurs although I suppose various anti-Semitic slurs they probably could be due with being told not to use quite so openly in WhatsApp groups and whatnot but it's words like mother and father elderly which is quite a new one to me homosexual is also out because it's insufficiently inclusive of non-binary people the people who identify as plurals and all that What can we say in stake? Can we say benders?

Exactly. Benders, shirtlifters, I presumably that's fine. You get more retro, isn't it? Maybe that's a way that's more inclusive, I think. Winston, I am surprised at the offensive language you're choosing to use in this instance, given that UK yourself came out as non-binary on Brexit, mate. Spoiling the battle is basically trans. Let's be honest. Exactly, it is, it is. So it's, I can't, you know, I'm trying to think of a slow we could use for Winston's fence sitting on that particular question, but no, it's, this is, I mean, obviously

it's nuts, everyone knows that. Funny details that they've also included the words nutter and lunatic as things that you shouldn't say, which as you rightly pointed out, Constance is just robbing us of our words that we can use to describe them. Presumably they're worried about alienating the nutter or lunatic communities, but if you look at the Green Party these days and the kind of island of misfit toys that it is because under Zapplansky's leadership. I don't think he should be worried about alienating those people. The thing that's striking a problem, it's two things to me. One of which is that we have a lot of, in recent years, we were tempted to believe that Woke was over, or at least that it had been pushed back sufficiently to that even left-wing parties knew that it wasn't a good idea to go down this road.

This is another example amongst many of that not being the case. There are whole sections of progressive politics. We'll talk about the Labour Party as well in a second because they've come out with some howlers this week, which are entirely untouched by the sort of return to comment. sense that much of the rest of society were enjoying. They're like this kind of Amazonian tribe that has been undisturbed for its entire existence or like a, you know, the proverbial Japanese soldier in the jungle with his pronoun badge on still. Like they just haven't noticed. The world has moved on, but they haven't. So I guess that's an example of this. The other thing where the Green Party is concerned is not only is Woke Not Dead, it's also gotten quite a lot darker. So they've kept all of this kind of fussy speech policing, which was the sort of embarrassing student union stick. But then they've bolted onto it, the Islamist apologism,

the israelophobia, the going by the people who've washed up in their membership and even some of their parliamentary candidates, outright anti-Semitism. You know, the woke thing to chant from a festival stage a few years ago was trans women are women. Now it's death, death to the IDF. Like in the space of quite a short amount of time, not only is woke not gone away. It's mutated into something much more explicitly sort of third worldist, quite grim. And, not only is it just extending this kind of paternalistic posture towards it's like favoured minorities it's also treating those disfavored minorities i.e. Jews with a level of sort of sulfur scorn that you thought had disappeared from British politics, frankly. So it is a slightly

silly example, but I think it's probably a way into this whole question of, you know, woke one, woke two, some people talk about it and if it ever really went away to begin with. Well yeah, you see this now. I don't know if you saw this yesterday. Soella Bravman was on question time. And it feels like there was a moment when just calling everyone racist for expressing an opinion that kind of stopped for a while. And I think that was maybe the moment in which we were all like, oh, woke is on the decline. But it has now come back. And now you've got the basically the spectacle of a bunch of

white people calling a brown woman in Suela Bravman. These white people have spent the last 10 years saying, we must listen to ethnic minorities when they speak and white people need to need to shut up. Now there's a bunch of white people basically doing a struggle session with a British Asian woman and calling everything she says racist because she says she's not English. And it just feels like this whole thing is back with a vengeance. Yeah. I think we skipped. You go for it. You go for it, Winston. I remember in school, sorry, not in school,

in when I was still with the band, Mumford, being in a band meeting and I said, brainstorm this and someone said uh-uh-uh mind shower you can't say brainstorm that's a microaggression and because it's offensive to people with who have um what's the brain tax where you no yeah no i'm just in the states and i'm just in the states and there's this story that's been going wild there about this lesbian bar in massachusetts It was totally failing as a bar. The woman, one of the lesbians who started it had to sleep in her truck because she couldn't afford to keep the thing going.

Her partners had quit. One of them was to become a clown, the other to become a drag queen. And then they wanted to have one day of the week where they didn't have to wear a mask. So they wanted to Saturdays, on Saturdays, we don't have to wear a mask, which then just became this huge, drama between them with the owner being accused of racism for crying in the Zoom meeting and for centering it and making it about her. Someone suggested they put Lady Gaga on.

They said, no, no, Lady Gaga's cancelled. She's a Zionist. And it's escalated so far now that Hollywood would want to make a movie about it. But watching that story, I was thinking, AOC said, well, one was crazy. Well, they've skipped two and three and they've just gone straight to four. It's not gone anywhere. These people, they've dug in their heels, they've just got new faces. And something's getting quite sophisticated.

You know, Mamdani is pretty sophisticated, this woke for. There's this new guy out in Michigan as well. And there's a silly version, which is Zach Polanski and the Green Party, but there's an intelligent version there as well, which is more robust and a lot more of a threat. Well, absolutely. And because wokeism is a type, It's extremism and a lot of, you can be a person who is extreme, but that doesn't mean you're unintelligent. It's a temperament.

There are people who are highly intelligent extremists, just like there are people who are not very bright and quite moderate. So the people you all should be worried about are the people who are highly intelligent and have that temperament or that worldview or that outlook. Well, then stop talking about Zach Polanski. We shouldn't worry about it. Yeah. Well, I don't actually want to stop talking about Zach Polanski because I think something very interesting is happening with Zach Polanski in that he is running in the by-election, in St. Pancras and Holborn by-election, to be precise, to be, which was Kirstama's former seat, to be a MP in our parliament. And he's running against Labor. And to me, this is the litmus test for the Greens.

Burnham has come in. He has absolutely given the Greens a body blow. And this, like I said, this is a real test for the Greens. If they're going to do anything, if they had their brief moment in 2025 and early 2026, or was that a flourish, a flash in the pan? And politically, their day in the sun is over. We're going to see. We are indeed.

Frankie. Frankly, frankly, that is a quite interesting what's happening in that. Oh, sorry. No, no, go ahead. I was going to bring in the Labradors, but we can. Oh, we'll definitely get to that, but just on the by-election. So they, the Labor are running a hijabi girl of Somali refugee heritage background. So they're trying to outflank the green. So it is actually worth keeping an eye on this. And it's, it's a big part of Burnham's shifting and repositioning of the Labour Party. And it, it might, If Zach Palancey can't win that seat,

we might actually see the kind of end of this green party moment that they had. It could be a bit of a high water, we'd hope. But I suppose looking at Labour Conference this week, though, which is where the Labrador is coming, it's clear that this tendency still is very much in presence there. I think we've got this clip of this is the Labor Nature Minister who was speaking at a fringe meeting and had some pretty striking things to say about the countryside and fascism.

I think we've got that somewhere for us to all enjoy. I do believe that the next election is going to be fought on a battle line of nature and rural affairs, and that'll be the far right deciding and determining what that looks like. And it will be a vision, a nostalgic vision of Britain that never really existed. It'll be that warm ale, a black ladder door by your feet in a pub that doesn't exist. And it'll be a very very similar, with symbolism of fox hunting all around them, and it'll be a very far-right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don't want to have, never really existed. there we go this is black what are they talking about what can i just say black labs matter and this is

black lab denial black rabbit those are real they exist they have rights and the values and and by the way i should say for our american viewers a fringe meeting of a party conference is not where you get all the lunatics in your party to get together and say the most stupid things they can think of it's just like a side meeting at the conference and uh it's interesting she says the next election will be fought on rural affairs which seems to me quite a stretch in and of itself but the idea that pubs labrador's and warm ale never existed that is quite something i've i've done about you guys i'm struck by how much this is cut through as well like it feels like the more rural version of emily thornebree's tweet from the rochester and strewd by-election

with the england flag outside of the semi-detached house with the white van outside it's kind of sneering attitude towards white working class patriotism this feels like like the equivalent with the kind of rural life which people from those communities are obviously pretty affronted by the idea that the way in which that they go about things the way in which people in rural England have been going about things for a very long time that sense of continuity which exists there which certainly doesn't exist in many of our towns and cities anymore is something which is nefarious suspicious neo-fascistic it's particularly funny because this nature minister jennie redell carpenter she's from rural suffolk that they didn't take long for the

the tabloids to dig up pictures of her enjoying pints of ale in country pubs with a dog. So there's this element of this which is just sheer performance, I think. But at the same time, it does tap into this strain, which really exists in the Labour Party, women. DEPRA is currently, as a matter of government policy, thinks that the countryside is too white. That's not just like a kind of BBC news talking point. They've put out, they've commissioned reports from various organisations say, what can we possibly do to make the countryside less hostile to people from ethnic,

minority backgrounds because and the underlying assumption there being that problem with the countryside is it's full of English people doing English things and we've got to do something about it. So this is not just a Freud, you know, some kind of slip or some kind of brain fart, it is a kind of tendency which exists. And you think that whilst me and myself, I'm sort of an inveterate town, he never really lived outside of the city of the suburbs, this is still something which people who live in the countryside, if you grew up in rural Surrey or rural Hampshire or whatever, that sense of kind of not only just like, liking it for the landscape and because of it's beautiful, but the sense that there's a kind of

connection to a history and a tradition, you know, the English tradition of pastoral poetry and the rural idyll and all of that is quite important to people. I think even increasingly, because of the way things are going a bit south in many of our cities, even people who, people wanted to escape to the countryside, or liking the fact that it's there, because it's a reminder that some kind of quintessential Englishness persists. So to see that kind of painted as something that is, yeah, proto-Nazi. I, you know, I was kind of surprised by how out there it was, if I'm honest.

It's a total mask slip. I think that this ideology, sure, she's not sort of hugely prominent, but this is a widely held of view. And it's a classic far-left view, and that is now a part of the Labour Party. I was saying in the last bit that we've seen the end of the Green Party. We're not seeing the end of the ideology. It's just getting swallowed up into the Labour Party.

These people hate us. And I resent that they have any power and they have direct they choose the direction of this country. Why govern over a country if you if you hate it? Well, so you can destroy. Because you want to change. You're remaking your image. But this does feel like sort of agents of Saruman destroying the Shire while claiming it never existed in the first place. Because when I think of England and particularly Rural-Inged, I mean, that's kind of what the Shire is based on.

It's a people living in a peaceful and somewhat isolated and perhaps somewhat inward-looking life, but nonetheless, the comforts that come with that. And one thing you didn't mention there, Tom, that I think someone who does live outside of the big cities and by choice, that people do enjoy outside of the cities in a way that people who do live in them don't quite have at all is community. and the sense that there is a pub that everyone in the village goes to, that's where everyone has a drink, they meet, etc. Yeah, exactly. And the thing is, that actually is something that is incredibly valuable and is not available in the cities. And so the people who live in these transient non-communities in the centres of towns,

they not only don't appreciate it, but to them it's an inherently suspicious thing. that you know this is what these these people get together and they they know each other and and then the knowing of each other instead of moving flat every three months and not knowing their neighbors that's when the darkness sets in right that that's their idea um and that's why you know they clearly just hate that part the country as Winston says anyway ladies and gentlemen what enough uplifting episode it has been yet again on off the fence this week we are Francis and I are back tomorrow with Andrew Neal. We are back with the guys next Friday for Off the Fence again.

We will see you then.