TRIGGERnometry - Reform Donations Scandal and War with Argentina? - Off the Fence

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

This show is proudly independent. Thanks to the sponsors below for making that possible: -Venice is private, unbiased AI. No conversation logs sitting on someone else’s server. No refusals dressed up as safety. Try it at venice.ai/lp/triggernometry and get 20% off your first month Winston Marshall - https://www.youtube.com/@winston_marshall Winston Marshall X - https://x.com/MrWinMarshall Tom Slater - Spiked - https://www.youtube.com/@spiked Tom Slater X - https://x.com/Tom_Slater_ Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://shop.triggerpod.co.uk/ Advertise on Triggernometry: https://trigger-brands.com | or enquire at [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to Off the Fence with myself Constantine Kishon, Francis Foster, of course, Winston Marshall of the Winston Marshall Show. And last but not least Tom Slater from Spiked. Welcome back, lads. Good to have you. Our four stories for today are war with Argentina potentially. Javier Melae says Argentina will prevail over declining Britain. We've got the reformed donation scandal, the Lindsay Clancy case. And of course, Andy Burnham is back. better than never, presumably, we will find out. So let's get into our first story. That is, of course, Javier Malay, saber rattling, saying that he will prevail, or Argentina rather will prevail over poor declining Britain. Could we be facing war over the Falklands with Argentina? Well, a few quick things introducing the story. There may be other dimensions going on here.

So President Trump, very bitter against the UK's lack of involvement in trying to reopen and the strait from us apparently has signaled that he's prepared to reconsider america's neutrality on this there's some oil considerations which we'll talk about and of course we'll discuss britain's military capacity to actually deal with this problem so first and foremost win how do you feel about argentina say rattling over the forklunds you're going to start with me are you brilliant well i'm extremely triggered about this issue i'm sick to death of this is essentially Latin American Palestinianism. The Falklands are British. We saw it first,

right? The first written European sighting is John Davis in 1592. We were the first to set foot there in 1600. No, sorry, I've got that date wrong. In 1690 with John Strong, right? This is British. Now, it's been British, longer than the Argentines, have been, Argentinian. It was British before Argentina existed. Not only that, there have been several polls, where 99.9% of the people of the Falklands want to be British. They are ethnically British. The indigenous people of the Falklands are British. Not only that, we have had considerable blood spilt because of this continued claim by the Argentines, of course talking about the Falklands War. I was at the Argentina game in the World Cup and I had these Argentines shouting in my face,

about the Luzmauvinus and Argentinus nonsense. They're British and it's actually offensive. I have friends who are veterans from that war. They're still banging on about this is just, it makes me very angry. And I just want to add that there's a few other things that have come up in this story. Benjamin Netanyahu's son, which I know you've gotten a spat with him KK this week, has come out on the side of the Argentinians trying to provide. because of the British government's response to Israel throughout the war of Hamas.

But it's completely contradictory from his point of view, because it is Palestinian. Firstly, we have the longest claim to the island. Secondly, the people there want to be British. They are British. And thirdly, like Hamas, Argentina keeps starting wars. They can't win. And a lot of people die along the way. So it's not entirely a joke.

So anyway, I'm pretty annoyed about this whole thing. And I'd add to it, I'm not confident that our Prime Minister Burnham is going to have the balls of Thatcher to stand up to this antagonism. Well, in addition to lacking the balls, I mean, one of the things that I did is I was quite curious because I don't know if you saw there was a story in, I think, of the telegraph earlier this week about the fact that the British Army is now canceling live fire drills. And we're not talking about for reserves. This is a prominent front fighting division. They're canceling live fire drills to save money. So the preparedness of the British armed forces to do anything about this, irrespective of the political will is an interesting question.

So actually, I looked this up on Venice AI, and it's a mixed picture. The garrison on the Falkland Islands is much, much stronger than it was 40 years ago. at the time of the Falcons War. So at the time, there was only 80 servicemen on the islands. Today, we have somewhere between 1,3,700, including helicopters, fighter jets, et cetera. The problem is the Navy. So the 1982 task force had 127 ships.

There is now only 63 ships in the entire British Navy. So we are at half of the task force now. And so Britain realistically- Can I just add to that? Yeah, go for it. Constantin, just on the 63 ships in the Navy, if you actually look at aircraft carriers, frigates, and destroyers, where it's far fewer.

I mean, it's only two aircraft carriers. I think there's only six destroyers and maybe eight frigates. I don't show the exact number off the top of my head. Well, it's worse than that. So in terms of what we could deploy, in terms of what we could deploy now, it would be a carrier, two destroyers and five frigates. And the first sea lord, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, I suspect he might be Welsh, has stated that the Royal Navy is not ready for war.

So that's one side. On the other hand, I also got Venice to tell me the Argentinian numbers. And this is where it gets really comical. They basically have nothing. They have no Navy whatsoever. And so it would be like, I was thinking what the good, it would be like the battle between Stephen Hawking and Hamza. not Hamza, Yusuf, Abu Hamza, the one with the hook. We would be in the role of Abu Hamza in this situation.

Slightly, slightly advanced, but both crippled. So, so irrespect of the political will, I just think, Tom, militarily, when Javier Millay slags us off and says they're going to triumph over declining Britain, it's sort of hard. There's part of that where you can't argue with it. Yeah. Absolutely. And on the one hand, it is kind of not saber-attling, like plastic saber-attling. Like, no one really expects something to properly kick off in. Neither side could actually

wage any kind of conflict. I have been thinking, though, in tandem with the story that we're going to talk about next, Falklands and Reform hitting a lot of controversy. It's been a very bad day for Gammons in Britain, you know, and I share in that sadness, two very crucial, important things there. But yes, I mean, to see what Havier-A-M-Lay kind of play on our kind of relative weakness, even bringing out the question of migration, how we're kind of internally weakened and so on and so forth. On the one hand, obviously, he has a point. The British Armed Forces, not just the Navy, but in general, has long been sort of four bloats of packet of quavers. There's very little that we could possibly project, even that we like to pretend that international summits that were a

terribly important player. But it's also a reminder, though, isn't it, that even though we shouldn't expect any kind of conflagration anytime soon, that we're increasingly in the era in which hard power, are of increasing importance and also that there's a lot of players on the world stage who are dropping the pretext of international law and agreements and whatever and just going for the raw assertion

of what they seem to be, their interests, their territorial claims, what have you. And we're just so fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with that kind of environment. So what I don't think is about to kick off over the Falklands anytime soon. It's a reminder of the kind of era

that we live in and how our politicians are so almost uniquely and capable of reckoning with that and the broader thing. You say you're not convinced it's all about to kick off, but I would put it to you with what happened in Venezuela, with the fact that Trump is clearly behind the scenes very pissed off at the UK not providing support for the efforts to reopen the straight. And it's signaling to have him. I mean, we've got a clip of Hamir Malay.

Look at this. He looks exactly like Vladimir Putin announcing the special military operation in 2022. Look at this. For that, to ensure our preeminence in this territory is a capricio political. It's a question of super-vivency. And for that motive, any advance additional on the Islas Malvinas

is it is considered as a violation to our security national. We're going to act on the future, and Malvinas is the future. Not only a question of our past, Defend our sovereignty and recover our islas requires to be a nation politically relevant, economically influent, and militarily respectable. No, there are other way. Now, I will correct myself and say,

I mean, if you read the subtitles, it looks like Vladimir Putin. If you look at his hair and also Spanish just is not as intimidating as Russian, let's be honest. Francis, you're our token Latin American, famously. Finally, okay, finally. I get a chance to speak, right, about one of the nations from my continent. Oh, and by the way, Winston, it's pronounced Malvinas.

Malvinas. Oh, don't you start. Anyway, listen, right, this is the problem. I had a video that went viral at the time of the World Cup about the Argentine football team, in which I basically said that they were a representative of their nation, a terrible country. I think the actual quote was a nation of and I stand by that 100% because nobody in the whole of South America likes Argentina. They've always, always, always thought of themselves as above their station. They've always thought of themselves as this great power within South America.

And you can see this by the way that they actually behave. Like Argentina is a country that has for the moment. vast majority of his existence has been broke. It has been absolutely broke. It has suffered record levels of inflation. Now, Malay has actually done a good job and managing to turn around the ship. But the reality is his approval ratings are very, very low.

They're not where they used to be. He's in real danger of not getting reelected. So for him, this is a very cunning strategy in order to play to the jingle, elements of that country of which there are numerous in order to get him re-elected. I don't think there's anything really in this. I think this is, as Tom said, glorified plastic saber rattling in order to make himself look strong, powerful and relevant, and also taking a bash at the English, who are always the great nation that Argentines have always

hated. We are the pantomime villain, and what better way for him to make him to make him to look strong and powerful than taking a little dig at the English? I think it's the case. Firstly, you're absolutely right that all of South America hates Argentina. I went to the Mexico, England, Mexico game, and all the Mexican fans, like, we don't mind that you beat us, just beat those bastards from Argentina. Like, everyone in South America hates Argentina. But the difference, I think, when it comes to this,

is how weak the British are at the moment, as we've already stated, John Healy, who resigned from Starmer's cabinet as defense secretary because they weren't going to meet the 3% of GDP defense spending has now, as Chancellor of Exchequer, kick the defense spending commitments down the can for a year. Not only that, you've got the, Trump is, it seems to be more on the Argentine's side of this because he's so pissed at us over Iran, not letting them use RIA-F-F, not letting them. use Diego Garcia in the Chegos Islands. So we're not in a good position there. He might try and antagonize us more. I think Argentina are in as good a position as they could. They've been since the Falklands War to actually do something here.

I guess we'll see. I also note that for them, this is the, every time they're in trouble, whoever's in government, they bring up Las Malvinas, as they call it. This is the one thing that unites the whole country. It's the, it's a real central point of Argentine nationalism. I mean, it's, it's the same sort of thing with the Palestinianism, where you have this grievance at the very core of their identity. And I think that's the same with Falkland Island.

It's a grievance that unites the country and is the core of their identity. My worry is that you, I worry that we may be underestimating here, certainly Francis and Tom, the moment we're in in terms of the possibility of this actually becoming much more real I mean first of all there's some oil interests involved here and I don't know if you guys call uh president vice president Vance's press conference yesterday he kept talking about the fact well yes the stray isn't quite as open as we'd like to be but that's why venezuela was so important actually 130 miles off the coast of the Falkland islands to the north is

uh an oil field called sea lion which has way more oil oil in it than either of the two major fields in the North Sea. They're due to start production of these fields in the next two years. And one of the things Malay specifically said is they will sanction the British and Israeli oil companies that are set to explore this. My point being is control of oil in the Western Hemisphere is clearly something that the United States is very, very heavily focused on at the moment. And combined with the fact that,

that the current administration is willing to tear up conventional norms about who our allies are and who our enemies are. I am concerned that this actually may be something real. And look, I've been saying this for many, many years, probably so many times France has got bored of hearing it. But there is a very simple rule to geopolitics is if you signal weakness, you invite violence. And we've seen it over and over all over the world. And my worry is, as I said from the beginning, when you know,

When people like Malay talk about Britain as a declining nation, they're kind of right. And if you are a declining nation, people will start to have a go. They'll start to test you. Absolutely. I mean, it's one of those things which we've been telegraphing to the world. I mean, I forget the exact date that Kirstan put on it when he was still in power, saying that we need to be ready for war by X date, as if to say, hello, Russia, Iran, you've got this window in which to exploit.

fact that, as we've already been talking about, we were in this bizarre situation where we've got this new Chancellor who obviously resigned as Defence Secretary precisely because Keir Starmer and the Treasury couldn't stump up the money to reach the 3% of GDP by 2030 target is now incapable of saying in public, John Healy, he resigned over this issue and yet now as Chancellor, he cannot tell anyone categorically that we will meet precisely that 3% of GDP target by 2030. And that's even without getting into wherever. or not these kind of arbitrary targets are actually even going to translate in the kind of capabilities deterrent which is actually going to be effective you see across southern nato countries where a lot of

kind of creative accounting takes place and you know the pensions of military personnel or whatever suddenly starts to take up a outsized proportion of what it is that it's supposed to be that three or ultimately three point five percent of GDP so we're still playing these quite silly games kind of rhetorical games. Meanwhile, whether or not it's the Falklands, whether or not it's something else, we're just so clearly not capable of even just creating the impression that we might do something, let alone actually doing something, which is a big problem. And I think what was very interesting. Sorry, go for it, Wynne. There was a story last year about how we'd been, we'd spent billions on Ajax tanks, but tank warfare is just not relevant anymore. And you'll remember also at the

the Iran War, HMS Dragon was sent out a week after our bases in Cyprus were hit and then it had to come around and turn around in the end because it wasn't it wasn't ready. Our money is being misspent. We don't it needs to be we need to have a proper navy as Constantine said earlier, but we should be investing in drones we should be investing in actual tech that's useful. Tanks aren't useful and tanks aren't going to be particularly helpful if we're at war with the Falklands. And look the problem is as well, as a country, and we'll come to this in the fourth story,

I will talk about Andy Burnham and Parliament reconvening, is that we're broke. We don't have the money to let alone spend, not just to spend on defence, but to spend on our own country. Because what we need to do is we really, really need to tackle the deficit that we have. We spend a huge amount on just interest alone on the debts that we owe.

And until we actually make those very difficult decisions, which successive generations of politicians have refused to do, we're simply not going to be able to fund our defence in any way that is adequate. Yeah, well, we spend more on welfare than we raise in income tax. So that will tell you quite a lot about the position we're in. I wouldn't go for a last word before we move on. Well, just on your point there, Francis, if we had a proper look at defence spending,

actually you could increase the size of our armed forces and military. It would give employment and it would it would create it would wean people off the welfare state. By the way, this is what happened in the Second World War with FDR. I just had James Holland on the show discussing this, but actually you can actually use a proper defense strategy to pull people away from welfare, create employment and the massive added bonus as well as having a bloody defense that protect our small islands is that you create national unity you actually give something for everyone to get behind so i think it's it's a frame of mind not even just a financial thing it's it's how we look at our defense and how we think about our defense

well francis says we have no money left you know who has some money it's reform because they've got a lot of donations uh great good transition uh but seriously there's been a story actually front page story now in all the newspapers i think and on the BBC, which is the two senior reform officials have had to step down pending an investigation into their conduct after allegations of unlawful activity in relation to two donations. Tom, do you want to tell us more about this story before we get into the debate? Absolutely. I mean, this is the biggest story in town, not least because it coincides, of course, with Reform UK Conference, which is kicking off in Birmingham as we speak. So there was this,

investigation which was put together by an organisation called verbatim which is basically an offshoot of something called the Centre for Climate Reporting so you can kind of understand where they're coming from politically and Channel 4 and essentially the journalist in question or the campaigner in question depending on your perspective posed as the sort of British son of an American businessman who was looking to contribute to reform in any way that they could financially and he's got all of this footage. primarily meeting with James Orr, the head of policy at Reform,

who is one of those officials who has just stood down pending this investigation, as well as Dan Dute, who for more than the decade, has essentially been Nigel Farage's kind of closest aide, right-hand man, maybe kind of would-be chief of staff if he ever got into Downing Street. And essentially it boils down to, because of the electoral law prohibiting foreign companies from making donations to British political parties, this would be an arrangement in which, and what seems to have happened, is that a poll would be commissioned, it would be paid for by, again, the British son of this American businessman,

and that this is being presented as a potential breach of electoral law, a kind of way to get around what the letter of the law says in order to enable a donation in kind, if not exactly in form, as it were. And it's now naturally turning into a big, enormous story. I think there is a couple of things I'd lay out about this before we get into it, one of which is that I think we do have an increasing problem with scandal mongering as a kind of political weapon in British politics and British media. And what I mean by that is not to say that in all instances there's no bad smell to a particular story that there is no story, that there is no potential wrongdoing. It's just that something is taken, sort of leapt upon, turned into a kind of totalising, unprecedented, never-before-seen kind of story and then used as a stick with which to beat in particular populist upstart off and right-wing parties.

Meanwhile, you know, it doesn't take a particularly long memory to remember that after the 2015 election, you know, the Conservatives find more than £70,000 for failing to declare or not properly declaring around like £300,000 worth of donations. There's a whole kind of labour-together scandal, which I could bore everyone to tears by explaining, but again, boiling down to a very pro-Starmer think tank, the people who led it, ending up being key parts of the Starma government, again failing to declare large amounts of donations. and then crucially also commissioning a organization to produce a report to discredit the journalists at Sunday Times, potentially who had produced those allegations and published them in the newspaper.

So I'm not trying to sound like a kind of cynic, everyone's at it, whatever, but at the same time, one must always take these stories. First of all, subject them to scrutiny. This is not yet a kind of cut and drive legal case, most stretch the imagination, but also kind of putting it into perspective so that it doesn't allow itself to be too weaponized. The other part of the story, though, of course, is that I think reform have often said, and rightly so, that particularly as they were looking like they were spoiled to, you know, potentially win the next election, dropped off in the polls a little bit since then, but still have been the kind of preeminent party of government for much of the past year,

that the media, that various wings of the establishment were going to throw absolutely everything at them. And in that environment, you've got to be as cautious and as squeaky clean as you possibly can be. You certainly can't invite this kind of thing. and also just sort of, you know, whilst the full details are yet to come out, you do wonder whether the kind of the basics of due diligence would have avoided this kind of story from either taking place. So as ever, I think it's, as ever with stories like this, there's a lot that we don't know, there's a lot that we'll still find out.

There may well be a there there, but whether or not it is the totalising, this proves they're rotten to the core. That is something that I think we need to deal with a, to take with a huge amount of skepticism because I think we've seen that story play out over and over again, and it's often not in proportion to the scales of the allegations that have been leveled at them. I think one of the things actually that this story has shown, and it's disappointing for a lot of people who support reform and support the issues that reform raises is the lack of professionalism

when it comes to the organisation itself. As I was watching Channel Falls Expoise, I was thinking to myself, well, who was vetting? Why weren't these people properly vetted? And if they were, why weren't they exposed as to who the, and I'm talking about the undercover journalists? Why were they allowed to go in and just have direct access to Nigel Farage? I really couldn't imagine this happening with the Conservatives. I couldn't imagine it happening with Labor.

To me, it just shows just how inexperienced and in some ways naive reform actually are, that they're prepared to have these types of conversations, which are highly sensitive. possibly legally incriminating, and they're just prepared to have these conversations openly with people that they barely know or have met a few times. It's really, really, really worrying for reform. And you have to say, on the back of the Times Expoise, which I think looking back on it was a bit of a damp squib, possibly,

these things are cumulative. And I don't think it's going to hurt reform's base, who will always vote for reform, but what I think it will hurt are the floating voters who have been disappointed by 14 years of, to put it bluntly, inept and incompetent Tory rule, and a couple of years of Labour proceeding to essentially throw their opportunity away as well. So it's deeply worrying and potentially, potentially a body blow to reform's chances of getting elected in the next election. Like I said, not because it affects the base.

I don't think it will. But those floating voters, it's another one in the minus column. Yeah, it would be interesting to see whether it is a body blow. So I think of Trump, particularly in his period out of office, between his two terms. And they threw everything at him. They were, you remember, various sort of investigations, and they were going to Mar-a-Lago to sort of investigate things.

and they were all sorts of, they threw the book at him. And what it did to the American public is actually made them more inclined towards him because they felt like the blue stack was against him. And there is an element of that going on here. So if I were to break this down, I agree with you guys watching the video. It's sloppy from James O'Rour and Dan Jukes. and they've said some things which are not great. I'd also note that it's a heavily edited video,

so we don't see everything. I also note that the case of the, so it's a British son of an American father. If this had not been sloppy, there's nothing, I don't think there's anything legally wrong if the American father had said, right son, I'm gonna give you some money, it's up to you what you do with it.

I know you like, reform, you can give it to them if you want, it's not my business. And that would have been, I don't think that's illegal. And it would have been fine. And so why they didn't just make it as simple as that if they were going to do that route, it seems a little bit strange to me. But so that's one side of it. I also note that the organization, as you as you say, Tom, it's a center for climate reporting. These are, this is a foreign, these are foreign funded. So, it is a version of foreign interference into British politics about and they're claiming it's about foreign interference because it's the money side so there's a kind of hypocrisy here I'd say that

that it's channel four have legitimate sort of verified this work but it is very much activist so these are activists working against reform I see it's part of a the what Dominic coming describes sort of everyone throwing the book at the Reform Party or the sort of unipati trying to destroy them. I think that you mentioned in passing Tom that there's examples of this kind of stuff happening with other parties. Yeah, there is there's been there's been foreign money coming to the Labor Party. For example, there was the Gary Lubner story when when there was 6.5 million from Johannesburg to London and they kind of, you know, he became a UK resident and although there's a Cayman Island hedge fund who gave

four million quid to Labor after their election in 2024. So there's foreign money going to the other parties. And I imagine this kind of stuff happened with the Tories as well. But they kind of left themselves exposed here reform. I would also note, and this is important, the Times and the Telegraph who published that polling without checking into the source of it, they look bad in this. JL partners, the polling company, look terrible in this.

Like absolutely, I mean, I think they're finished. Or if they're not finished, heads have got presumably role to, if they want to preserve themselves as an entity. So there's a lot of people who look bad in this whole thing. And I'd also say the problem for reform is, James Orr, who full disclosure, I'm friendly, I'm friends with.

And I actually think he's a very honorable man. And this is, this is, what we see of this story isn't in keeping with the man I know. I think that he's actually key for reform. He is, he brings them an intellectual rigor and robustness that makes reform seem serious. And so to lose him would be significant. There's a report that Lee Anderson has said that,

who's the MP for reform, has said that James Orr and Dan Juggs are permanently gone. I'm not sure if that's confirmed. It looks like there's a further investigation into the story. But it is, it's not pretty. My frustration personally is that Britain has got some very, very serious problems. Our current government, and we have a new prime minister who had his first week sitting and first PMQs this week, is under a fraction of the scrutiny of this insurgent party who only have a handful of MPs. We, you know, we're in serious problems and we're going to come to Burnham later.

So we'll cover it then. But the people who actually have power are not getting the scrutiny they deserve. And the Unipati, the blob, all of these are focused on reform, trying to destroy it. Because reform are calling out some of the problems our country has. And for me, things, particularly immigration, I don't hear that. It's certainly not being dealt seriously from the Labour Party. So my frustration is if we want to actually sort our problems out, we're in a double fight trying to make the problems clear

and having the blob attacking those types of parties in any way they put sort of can. Just to tack on to that because I think it's so clear now that this is essentially one of the sort of weapons in the toolkit to try and do with scandal what the establishment has failed to do electorally or via kind of conventional means, which again is not to suggest that this, you know, that the press should go easy on reform by any stretch of the imagination that it shouldn't be subjected to scrutiny. But in the, in the middle of a kind of media maelstrom, it's very easy for a narrative to set hold when

the plain facts might not support the level of scandal which is being discussed. Like, as you were saying there, Winston, like the, again, the kind of finding of kind of neat ways in order to make sure that a poll can be paid for. It's the sort of thing which might look a bit grubby, might smell a certain way. But at the same time, in the grand scheme of things, is not the kind of image of corruption, which is being presented as.

That said, it's not to say that it still can't do damage. That's the unfortunate kind of power of the media in these sorts of situations. And also the fact that this could have led to immediately, just that those resignations, whether or not they're permanent, is a question that we have to wait for. The thing I would add is that whilst, of course,

James or a slightly more recent recruit to the party and has become very central, as you say, Winston, in terms of building out the policy offer, the kind of philosophy of the party, what have you. Dan Jukes has been basically by Farage's side for more than 10 years and is someone who, everyone was particularly surprised to have seen stepping down in the manner that he had. And Farah is then going on LBC this morning and referring to both Jukes and Orr as contractors of the party. So whilst we wait to hear what is going to happen with this internal investigation and where the dust is going to settle, it's clearly already landed a blow rightly or wrongly onto the party as it goes into this conference. So yes, the political consequences have been pretty

significant. This is part of the problem, is that in the midst of the medium maelstrom, suddenly you get a narrative that is set, which to a certain extent the stepping downs have played into whether or not that was the intention. Well, see, this is where I've agreed with pretty much everything everyone said to this point, but this is where I actually have a different view on it, because to me those two stepping down is a clear indicator. Look, I'm not a legal expert. I can't say what's legal and what's not. But the fact that Nigel Farage, who said to our faces only a month ago,

I'm really loyal to the people who are loyal to me when we interviewed him. The fact that these two men have resigned to me, that's an admission of guilt personally. Just for as an outsider, that to me is what it looks like. The fact that he's been prepared to lose Dan Dukes, who's effectively his right-hand man, as people have said, and James Orr, who is as central to reform as we've discussed already, that to me is then basically saying, we've screwed up here,

and we have to put distance between ourselves and the story by getting rid of these two people who are really big assets in their perspective to their party. So from that perspective, I think it is an admission of guilt, but I also think the context that all of you actually have presented so far is really important because you know what this reminds me of? It's like in Russia, and forgive me, Tom, you mentioned you are not this cynical. Everyone's at it.

I am this cynical, partly because of my background and partly just because of what I think the reality is. I actually, last time I was saying, I pinched his copy of Michael Crick's biography of Nigel Farage, which is by no means a flattering book to Farage. But Crick repeatedly details how the Tories cheated over and over in by election after by election when contested. seats with reform. Now, what does... Or UKIP as a LEM was, yeah, definitely. UKIP is that's right, as a them was.

My point being is everybody does cheat, and this is why I actually never get excited about any of these stories. We had a discussion last night about whether we actually wanted to cover this at all. And I think the thing that actually tipped us over the edge is the resignations. Yeah. Because if you take that out of this, what you're looking at is, let's be honest, a fairly trivial story, story about some behind-the-scenes shenanigans about sourcing a bit of money. And by the way, this is another thing that is actually very disappointing if you're

someone who's reform aligned or reform curious, you might say. We're talking about tiny amounts of money. Americans are shocked as to how little we're talking about like 30,000. I know, look, 20 grand is a lot of money for ordinary people and for all of us. But for a political party that is seeking to become the government. of the country. All of this over 20 grand to do a poll, it just, it seems a level of risk that forget about the morality of it. It's not remotely commensurate with the potential gains of this. Go ahead. I have more. Just one point on that. Yeah. So it's a tiny amount of money in,

in respect to the money paying for polling. But the hit job was expensive in terms of paying for a hit job. So they paid 30 grand for the polling. Okay, sorry, I'll let you make the point then. Well, what I was going to say is, so there is this broader context, which is basically everyone's up to it. But I just, I think the thing that that you see here is reform are kind of amateurish when it comes to this. And that's not a surprise because they're an amateur new party. But it's disappointing nonetheless. And then on top of that, we have to talk about the angle of this. This is, it's not a coincidence that the reform party conference is starting today.

This is a deliberate hit job by a far left anti-net zero. pro net zero activist organization channel four had nothing to do with this these activists did all of this work and then brought it to channel four who then went oh yeah looks decent let's let's get out there and what you are seeing as Tom rightly said I think is the the media class doing what electorally the political opponents of reform couldn't do that said you know if this is properly investigated by the police given the evidence that we've seen it would not be surprised me if there are potential prosecutions

out of this because let's be honest the footage is not a good look at all yeah which also wouldn't be unprecedented it's worth saying which is not to create excuses for anyone and just to try and rebuff any accusations of double standards or hypocrisy here certainly if you look at the way that we at spiked have covered various of the kind of stories involving the conservatives even the the the labor party um we're essentially apply the same level of skepticism too many of these stories a lot of this scandal mongering like even when they were going after like angela rana over a stamp duty or going after here starma over lord alley buying his wife dresses for some bizarre reason um again what was embarrassing there was the

hypocrisy they were running on being whiter than white on complete polar opposite to a supposedly grubby boris johnson they got caught out but i think whenever you have you know beyond clear-cut obvious corruption, money being used to influence policy in a nefarious fashion, politicians becoming bought mouthpieces, influence being bought and peddled in a really kind of clearly undemocratic and unseemly way. Of course, everyone's against that. But when you get down to these kind of more fine grade distinctions around electoral law, ethics, procedures, what have you, what tends to happen is it tends to empower the law, the state, or some kind of quango at the expense of democracy. It's like what we need is more rules, what we need is more ethics committees,

what you need is more laws that bar particular political parties if they overstep the mark in this way, that way or what have you. So again, as ever, outside of clear-cut examples of corruption, which everyone is against, there's when you get into these kind of finer distinctions, loopholes, bit of wheel of dealering, bit of, you know, creative accounting in order to get around what might be the spirit of a lot of the regulations, this can very easily be weaponised. I think we need to be on our guard against it regardless of where it's coming from. And if you reform, you need to be on your guard against not falling victim to these sorts of efforts to entrap you when they come along definitely.

And also look, and I think you've made a great point, Tom, this is politics. This is the game of politics. Once you get to a certain level, once people start recognizing you as being a legitimate threat to them getting into power, whether it's labor or conservative, these shenanigans are going to start. And really now, this is a moment for reform where they have a choice of whether they go down the similar route that they did, which is sort of the, you know, the wheeler dealer, you know, let's, let's play at what we're doing here. You know, we can be a little bit woo, a little bit way, a little bit geyserish, and we can, you know, make our way and all the rest of it. Or you're going to actually now professionalize and think to yourself, we can't do this anymore. If you want to get into power, if you want to get into power, if you want to. to lead this country then quite frankly the whole organization needs to up their game and there needs to be far more stringent they need to start professionalizing and they need to start looking at who the people are that they're interacting with and really really doing some stringent checks because this can't happen again this is a massive wake-up call for everyone involved it's a potential

body blow, like I said before, particularly with the floating voters, but I don't think this is the end for reform. This is a chance for them to go right. We can get better, but it means we're going to have to make some very tough decisions, and it means we're going to have to take out and eliminate some of the kind of wide boy antics that you can see in this video. Well, the thing is that while that may all be true, I think, as I mentioned, given the small. amounts of money involved you know I remember having a conversation with a just randomly bumping into a very senior media executive at a function of some kind and them saying to me well the problem for reform is they just can't raise the money that

they need and so you've got these competing things you say well they've got to professionalize what we know this from our own experience running trigonometry what what does professionalize means it means you have to hire people who are better than the people that you have that cost money Where do you get the money from donations? How do you get donations? And then you're back to where we started this entire conversation. To say nothing of the fact, by the way, that I, you know, I agree with Winston.

We know James personally. James Orr is a very decent and principled and moral man. So for him who found himself and broad in this, smacks to me either of desperation or of slip of standards or whatever. I don't know. But my point is I don't think it's as easy as, you know, get a grip and sort it out. that like there are structural issues going on here, which is for a party to be successful, you have to raise a lot of money. And as we've already talked about, you're not competing in a level playing field.

Everyone else around you is cheating while not being subjected to the same scrutiny. And this is what I was going to say from my Russian angle. It reminds me a little bit of what happens in Russia, where effectively everyone is guilty, but your guilt is identified and investigated, not when it's sort of the police miraculously discover that you've been doing something wrong, but rather when the powers that be decide that now is the time for you to be exposed. And so what you have is the completely unbalanced application of these rules and norms, because I guarantee you, I guarantee you that if independent journalists, which these people were not, these were activists, were spending tens of thousands,

if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, trying to entrap labor officials and trying to entrap Tory officials and trying to entrap the officials of other political parties and similar schemes, they would all come out with egg on their face. And the only reason you're not seeing that is that those efforts are not being made equally,

but rather they're being targeted or not because they're seen as the enemy. And also, just to add to that, the extent to which the rules aren't being applied or the rules of engagement aren't being applied equally. Also, the rules around and the law around donations, the Labor Party have been trying to change them, precisely in response to reform doing quite well in relation to donations. It's one of the many things that Andy Burnham was out to kick into the long grass because he's just got too much to deal with at the moment. And there's a story earlier this week. They kind of realized

that some of the proposed caps on donations would have potentially affected the Labour Party's coffers in terms of the union. So naturally that's, oh, we've got to rethink this now. But again, not only are the standards not necessarily being applied equally, the government has been trying in real time to change the law so as to scupper the insurgent threat from reform. So all of that is very, very real. And it's like how you deal with that, how you kind of scale. And also how you do what reform has been trying to do, which is genuinely unprecedented in British politics, which is to go from five MPs at one election to potentially being a majority party at the next one. We've never seen that before. And of course, that's going to come with it a lot of thrills and spills and arguably a bit of corner cutting.

That's not to excuse any wrongdoing and any alleged criminality, if that is what comes out of it, of course. But that's the context in which all of this has happened. And it's at least worth bearing in mind when we look at the full picture of this. All right. Well, moving on to, I was going to say, let's go to something more lighthearted. But unfortunately, this being a topical news show, it's all downhill. Next story is of course the story of Lindsay Clancy, the trial of Lindsay Clancy and Winston is going to bring us to details. So Lindsay Clancy killed her three children in January, 2023 and the murder trial has been underway these last weeks.

And we have had now another day where the jury are undecided. Neither the prosecution or the defence are disputing that she killed her children. Neither the prosecution or defence are disputing that she is mentally unwell. What they are disputing is whether this, how culpable she is in knowing and perpetrating the killings. So it's really a question between whether this is first-degree murder, secondary degree murder or manslaughter. I don't think it's a question about acquittal, although technically that could be what the jury decides. So it continues to go on. So that's the very core of it. But at the next sort of level, you then have a bunch of people,

a bunch of women, not just in America, but here in Britain, as far away as Peru, South Korea, Portugal, who are coming to her defense. millions has been raised to defend her. They were wearing pink and they're outside the courthouse protesting. And they are claiming that she is the victim that the real culpability lies at the feet of the industrial, sorry, the medical institutions that failed her. So it is the case that she had been seeing various professionals for psychiatric help. This isn't just made, it isn't made up post hoc that she had these illnesses. There is a, there is a track record of her having postpartum depression.

And it seems that I don't even think postpartum depression is in dispute right now. So that, but what's disputing is, is how. culpable she is and then there's another sort of secondary or tertiary offshoot to this story which is that the a lot of men or a lot of women are reporting on social media on Reddit and beyond that their boyfriends or even fiancees are calling off weddings or ending relationships because when asked about the Clancy case they gave answers satisfactory to the boyfriend. So so men are now ending relationships because they don't like the

answers of the women when it comes to asking their opinion about what should be done and what should be the verdict in this Clancy case. I think that's my summation of what's happened. Is that is that, I think before we get into the debate and I'm keen to hear everyone's opinions before I give mine. I think there's a couple of things that are worth adding factually, Winston. One, it's not just that she sought different professionals for various things. So by all accounts, including the testimony of her mother-in-law, who believe me, as a married man, I can tell you, that is as objective a source in these circumstances as you're going to get.

According to all the testimony, just get her to decide it. Prior to, well, quite, prior to the four months in which her mental health deteriorated, she was a devoted mother, a delivery nurse, I believe, widely respected in her job and so on, had no history of violence towards the children or anyone, and was in every way, basically, a normal, decent person who really looked after the kids. She was prescribed 12 different medications, including antidepressants, antipsychotics, things to treat her, and so I think benzodiazepines, by different practitioners, many of whom were not in coordination with each other. And she committed these killings three weeks after coming out of a psychiatric facility.

So these just little bits of context. And the final one, which will be relevant to my opinion, which I'm happy to give later, is her own ex-now-ex-husband, whose children it was that she killed says that she's not evil she was just ill i leave it there before for us to get into the discussion and so just to look at one dimension to it as well which is the there's a sort of outpouring of sympathy for lindsay and the kind of the growing number of people it seems like you feel that at the very least she wasn't kind of culpable in the same way as one might be if she wasn't suffering from severe mental ill health as they claim there's also of course that kind of conspiracy freditorial fringe, which basically rejects the idea that she killed these children whatsoever,

something that even her own defence aren't contesting. Completely spurious allegations that the father Patrick, who discovered his three children, killed, and apparently the 911 court, which hasn't been allowed to be released, but was played in court, was so shocking that most of the jurors were in tears. And many even the kind of very battle-hardened journalists who were in the room and covered a lot of very, very grim cases were pretty shot by the kind of prime screams that they heard. There's this kind of group of people online, which you now see whenever you have a high profile case like this. It's a kind of weird mix of kind of post-COVID conspiratorialism and sort

true crime fandom, which has created this level of uber cynicism in relation to cases like this. They've just been openly claiming that he did it and using his proof to the fact that he remarried relatively quickly after the horrors in which he suffered as proof of that. So there's that dimension to it. The one thing that kind of struck me, is even if we park that, because there's always going to be some nutters out there. And the thing about nutters in 21st century is that they all have social media accounts and more of a platform than they used to have, is that even the kind of outsized level of sympathy for her or identification with her is to me quite striking and a little bit troubling.

Like it would be one thing to say this is an absolute, if you take as read her defense, which is that she was suffering from this postpartum psychosis, and as a consequence of that, it wasn't the same as if she was completely within her well, and just decided to do this out of evil or what have you. Even if you take that as red, the extent of which there are a quite large number of women primarily, obviously, who see their struggle in her story, who see this as part and parcel of a society which doesn't take mental health sufficiently seriously. I think it's a little bit off, is a little bit strange.

It would be a bit like when we had that killer in Nottingham a few years ago, Valdow Caller who was paranoid schizophrenic, murdered three people in the midst of a very heightened episode. Again, there were various missed opportunities to stop him, one of which was the fact that he was black and the local authorities were concerned about putting too many black people in that form of kind of medicalized confinement. But nevertheless, it would be, it's one thing to say that's a horrific story, and of course he was not a well man when it happened, but to say we're all Valdo Caligaine and to say that isn't this a damning indictment of the way in which our mental health services are failing people, I think we would see as an odd response. And it's something that you see. nowadays growing when there is a kind of vaguely woke political script that one could apply to it. So it's mental health in this case. You even saw a little bit of it in the wake of Arena Zerutska's horrific murder on that bus in Charlotte where you had the local kind of Democratic mayor come out and suggest that basically

everyone, including the killer, was a victim in this because of the failure to take mental health seriously because he was also clearly quite a depraved man. So even if we recognize the kind of the ambiguity. the complicated nature of this. I think that level of kind of full-throated identification with Lindsay Clancy I think is a little bit strange. There's a slight kind of blessed are the murderers tendency which seems to kick in, provided that there is a kind of political script that can be folded into, i.e. mental health and how that's supposedly not taken seriously by society supposedly in this instance. I think one of the reasons why this case has captured

the imagination beyond the obvious is because what it really talks about, and Tom has used the words mental health when actually mental health is a catch-all term which doesn't really mean anything. What we're actually talking about here is mental illness. And there's someone who believe it or not has mental illness in their family. And I've seen my cousin have suffered from severe schizophrenic episodes. In fact, I saw her essentially break down and develop schizophrenia pretty much in front of my eyes. What it talks to is responsibility. When somebody is having these types of severe episodes, which the condition that Lindsay Clancy is alleged to suffer from, can cause, that sparks a debate of responsibility. How much responsibility does the individual

have? How much of it is caused by an illness? How much of it is society's fault for not intervening sooner. How much of this responsibility is belongs to the medical authorities. How much do these drugs, for instance, that the medical authorities, the doctors that are prescribed actually work? How much of it do they exacerbate the condition? And how much of it is simply that we don't like to talk about these conditions. And when people are suffering from these type of severe mental illnesses, do we just push the people to one side because we just simply don't want to deal with it. And I think that's a lot of what is happening here and why people are reacting so strongly to it. Of course, there's the obvious three horrific killings, etc.

Because these are issues that we are wrestling with as a society in real time. Winston, you never gave your take on it. So why don't you give your take on it? Yeah. So I'll say something that goes against a lot of the right wing commentary here, who seemed to be very shocked that. this deliberation is taking so long. I'm actually not shocked that this deliberation is taking so long. I think, seeing as what it's not being disputed is that she's being killed, what's being disputed is the impact of her conditions on her.

For me, this is bloody complicated. And so I'm not actually surprised this is taking so long. I think it's quite difficult. court. If you're going to make force me to come off the fence on on on this one. It's certainly not an easy one to call and I would prefer to do it with more information and have been in the court case before coming off the fence on this one, which shows how tricky an issue it is. But I also think regardless of what they decide her culpability is, she should be in prison for a long, long time because as a society, we need such crimes must be

punished properly and so whether whatever they decide whether that's some sort of mental institution or serious prison for me that's for them to decide but she should be locked away I she cannot be free I that's where I come off the fence well the one thing we haven't addressed so far which is actually to me by the way tragic as the story is I actually don't think this should this should be a new story at all the only reason I've had any opinion on it whatsoever is the commentary around it, which, but you know, Tom and Winston, you've both alluded to, which is this, first of all, this idea that women are quote, unquote, defending her.

I'm sure there are a bunch of nutters who are defending her. But broadly speaking, what I see is a lot of people saying there's not enough understanding of what it's like for women postpartum and some of the hormonal and mental changes. I give you very small example. It's got nothing to do with murdering children, but nonetheless is important. Like my wife is breastfeeding at the moment. We have a four-month-old. I remember literally the other day we were sitting having breakfast, having a chat about our plans for the week.

And then the moment the little one latches on, she goes, baby, I literally can't think right now. And I can literally, it's like, you know, one of those scenes in a movie where someone in a big, like a server room or a big hangar presses all the light switches. you could just see the brain just like the lights going off that's what it looks like so i think part of the thing that people are trying to to explain to people who maybe don't understand this is the the female brain in these situations in particular nursing postpartum pregnancy etc undergoes extreme hormonal changes and in those situations things occasionally can clearly go very very badly wrong then there's a lot of evidence i remember reading a very long article about uh the potential for the links between mass shootings in america and the prescription on certain antipsychotic medications

so when you give somebody 12 different medications of all different kinds in a very short period of time combined with sleep deprivation combined with postpartum problems combined with hormonal changes all of that together you may in some individual case you may in some individual case you may get this kind of thing. And this is why I brought up the factual stuff about her previous conduct and history. Like I really think about whenever we think about stories like this, about trying to put myself in the shoes of some of the people involved where I can relate. If I put myself in the shoes of her husband and I go, my wife, who's up to this point been the model mother and everything perfect, I come home, I find out she strangled our children and tried to commit suicide. side of thing we didn't mention in our factual introduction. I can totally understand why he says she's not evil. She was just sick. Because if that was to happen to me, I'd obviously be horrified and devastated, but I'd be like going, this is completely out of character. So whoever did this is not my wife as I understand her. Something has happened in that situation. And I know that people

like very much to make these comparisons with, you know, the guy who's stabbed her. arenas of Rootsko or the paranoid schizophrenic, who stab people. But I think we also have to recognize that your prior conduct really matters. Both of those, if I remember correctly, had a long and extensive, deranged criminal history. So we're talking about people who have a consistent pattern of behavior that was not dealt with because of various concerns, fears, the way the criminal justice system works, et cetera. It's not the case here. You're talking about somebody who went.

went from being effectively a model citizen to suddenly strangling her three children in some kind of fit. And I think these are very different things. And so I totally understand why there's a big campaign about sympathy for her, but more broadly understanding mental illness in relation to these things. And the other thing is, well, we've got to be honest, there is a massive difference between the pattern of male violence and female violence. And I think that's relevant in the situation as well. I think on that just quickly, because what's interesting is that a lot of the nuance around essentially culpability where serious mental illness is concerned. When people want to suspend that discussion depends on the politics and the optics of the situation.

So go back to the sort of Valdo Calicane example, who might understand it, kind of deteriorated over a period of years, wasn't unlike the kind of arena's situation, wasn't a kind of down and out criminal per se, but was a student and had a series of episodes which were violent and weren't. dealt with. In that situation, there were a lot of people on the right who were kind of reflexively saying, I don't care about these mental health claims, he shouldn't be in a medical facility, he should be in prison. When it was quite clear that he was in the midst of very deep paranoid schizophrenia, was convinced that the state were spying on him, that all of these things were really kind of textbook and clearly guided his behaviour. Then you get some of the commentary,

certainly on the right, around the Clarency trial, seems to be because of the response to and the commentary around the case has been just sort of so easily folded into a sort of narrative around kind of toxic femininity and the idea like why all these women seeing themselves in them, that therefore, again, she should not only be locked up, but potentially, that she should be potentially, you know, actually killed as a consequence of what she is committed there. So again, I think it's one of those things where it's just become another feature of the, of the culture war and not particularly useful fashion. I suppose where I find it a bit strange, though, is again, that level of identification with and that level of sympathy for because we can recognize that

someone does something absolutely horrific when being quite literally out of their mind but at the same time to see one's own struggle in that person i think is a little bit strange and also we kind of see this conflation going back to a point that francis was making earlier of the kind of forms of should we say mental like mental health issues if we're going to use that phrase around postpartum whatever um thing what used to be called the baby blues you know the the very very common experiences of women after having children with this most extreme example we could possibly think about. And I think it does get to grips with an issue that we've had for so long in our public discussions around this is that we talk so much about mental health and the idea of it

being in its most minor forms often, you know, barely diagnosable and definable issues is something which we talk about endlessly. Meanwhile, very clear-cut mental illness and the way in which it completely can destroy a person's psyche, leave them dangerous. to themselves and others is something which is oddly speaking a less sexy and interesting issue, even though it's much more consequential and serious in cases like this. So being how to disaggregate those two things, I think is really important if we're ever going to get a clear-eyed sense of, not just cases like this, but how we think about this issue in general. Well, and it's also as well,

Tom, we simply don't know how to deal with this issue. We don't know how to deal with serious mental illness. We don't know how to deal with these people when they're a danger to themselves or to others. And in particular in the States, this is true. I mean, go around any city in the United States in the city center and you will see people who are profoundly mentally unwell, unable to take care of themselves, posing a danger to themselves and maybe to other people as well. Do you mean maybe? I'm terrifying walking around a lot of these places. It's terrifying. No, I'm saying, but they may be posing a danger to other people or to themselves. I'm saying there's no maybe about it.

They routinely attack other people and because they are in that state. And it's because, by the way, I don't know if you know this, but I suspect you do, it's because, you know, there was a point, there was a big anti-institutionalization movement in America, which basically said that the way to help people who, by the way, in those days, often were held in institutions where they were badly treated and those institutions were, you know, not up to the standards that we would want them to be. The way to deal with that is to let these people out onto the streets because that's freedom. And that's, you know, it's liberating them from the constraints of institutions.

That's why you have the zombie hordes that you do see in the centres of major American cities. No, absolutely. So, and then, but that speaks to a wider problem, which is nobody as of yet has a solution to this. very very important issue that actually affects a lot of people and you and is actually it's kind of damning indictment about our society as a whole because if you're not going to look after people and at the risk of sounding who are actually truly vulnerable and can't support themselves and are a danger to themselves or others then we've gone we've gone wrong somewhere well I don't know that kind of

words on this but it's it's a bit so if you like take somewhere like California billions is being spent trying to deal with this problem of what is mental illness but on the surface level homelessness and drug addiction um the the it's not a question of a desire to try and do something about it is that they can their ideology around the problem is so twisted that they that they actually are making things worse because they're incentivizing the bad behavior this is something that I know you've had Michael Schellenberger on your show, he's been in my show a couple of times and he's exposed this and really shown this. So I think that the society does actually want to help this, but progressive ideology in particular in places like California is exacerbating

the problem. Well, this is why I brought up the deinstitutionalization movement, because actually I do think there is an answer to this, which is if someone is a danger to themselves and or other people, then they have to be in the facility. where yes, they are deprived of their liberty for a period of time until we can be certain that they're not longer in danger to themselves or others. Those are unpleasant trade-offs of this terrible reality, the mental illness is a thing that exists. But throwing these people out into the street to smoke fentanyl

and be the victims of the most horrific life circumstances is not the solution. I feel that in short history of the fence, That has been the most on the fence segment that we've had actually trying to be nuanced about it. But look, I think we live in this era of sloppelism where every issue is presented as a sort of black and white, good versus evil debate between, you know, the men who are correct to dump all their girlfriends and the women who have gone, all of them have gone mental over this. I really don't think that if you're splitting up with your girlfriend because she has a slightly more sympathetic understanding of someone who had a terrible. mental episode. You're probably an idiot. Anyway, there's me off the face. It's a new Brexit, Constantine. It's a new Brexit, exactly. Final story of the week is, of course, Andy Burnham is back, Francis. He's back back again, tell a friend. So I actually think this is possibly the most important

story of the previous week, or rather this week, that wasn't really covered, but actually speaks to a very real problem that our country has and is going to dominate conversation either directly or indirectly. And that is Andy Burnham refusing to rule out tax increases in the new budget. So he refused to rule out tax rises. He was also promised by 2030 to increase the defense spending to 3% of GDP. So he's already promised to spend more money there. Cost of government. borrowing has risen to its highest level in 18 years. We have a 100% debt to GDP ratio. Debt interest cost us around 120 billion a year. Some economists say a little bit lower, some some say higher, but that's pretty much the average figure. And our debt now is double

what it was after the financial crisis in 2008. And when Andy, Burnham and this is where it gets really interesting when he was asked when he was blaming essentially the reasons for our current financial woes do you know what he blamed it on it's good let's play left wing bingo gents come on what did he blame it on fatcher Brexit um the far right who else is no no no it's got to be list trust as well blame trump yeah no it's Brexit it is Brexit it is um It is Thatcher. There's one more. It's not LIS trust, is it? No. Come on.

It's a word beginning with a. The billionaire. Osterity. Osterity. There you go. So. Well, Thatcher is a funny one, isn't it? Because Thatcher was, of course, became prime minister before any of us were born.

And sadly, we're no longer that young. So it's incredible. I was going to mention. Oh, yes. The reason I brought up List Trust, of course, is we all remember how she crashed the British economy famously, according to all the media. Well, unbeknownst to the media class who promoted that story as vigorously as they did, bond yields this week are higher than they were at the peak of the List Trust crashing of the economy.

Now, that's not to say the List Trust did everything perfectly, certainly not. But I think there's just this general financial illiteracy in the media class. And increasingly in the political class, that comes with it as well, which is why we're having this conversation for us. No, absolutely. And this is a conversation that we're going to continue to have because the path and the trajectory that we are on is quite simply unsustainable for this country. And we are going to have to make some decisions. And we're going to have to make some very difficult decisions. And these are decisions which are going to make the current political party

and the leader unpopular. Now, where Andy Burnham is, is I would argue that he's at the peak of popularity because he hasn't had to make any decisions yet. But unfortunately, for him, and he is going to have to get, and I quote, off the fence at some point, and actually make some political decisions,

particularly fiscal ones, if we are going to progress and turn the sinking ship that is the UK economy around, round. I think it's quite rare situation in which the substance of the prime minister we have and the scale of the problems we face are so mismatched. The same was true of Kiyostharma, but we're kind of expected to be even pleasantly surprised

that Andy Burnham can string a sentence together. You've got bordering on bankruptcy, as you say, Francis, the borders are still broken and we've got this glorified bus conductor who has managed to find his way into number 10. It's a really dispiriting spectacle. And part of the reason that obviously the markets are so skittish, because Andy Burnham, was Mr. I don't want to be in hot to the bond markets, not too long ago. And this is the problem. You might not want to be in hot to the bond markets,

but we are in hot to the bond markets. You can lament the fact that we have allowed ourselves to become so exposed that that is the case. And you could put in place policies to bring down the debt over time in a significant way to pursue the kind of policies, which would not only be good in terms of easing market tensions, but would also be good for society, getting on top of the welfare bill, ending,

the kind of social tragedy, that is so many people being put out to pasture and all of the downstream fiscal effects of that. But you can't just wish it away. And it seems what we're, the problem with Andy Burnham, I think, that we're going to end up with, is that partly because he doesn't have his own mandate and therefore even if he wanted to have some sort of drastic break with Starmerism or Thatcherism or any kind ofism, he kind of couldn't. But also because of the just inability to get anything vaguely sensible through the labour back benches

these days who have become kind of captured by what is often euphemistically called the soft left but it's basically the most vibe is based on principle we just we're labor and we do nice things kind of section of the party um that is we're just going to have loads of trundling along like it's just going to be walking of a kind of tightrope not wanting to do anything that would seem unfair to this section of society or unkind towards those who supposedly need to be in receipt of the enormous state larges which is now laid on towards them um so we're going to it's just going to be more of the same, I dare say. And I think whilst that might change if an early election comes our way or what have you, we're kind of doomed to continuity Starmerism where this is concerned,

which is not anything that anyone should be excited about. It's a really interesting point you make, particularly about the fact that, you know, Burnham famously said he doesn't want to be in hock to the bond markets. Britain is like, that position is like a bit of like a 35 year old who still lives with his parents and borrows money from them every month going, I don't want to be in hoc to my parents. Well, stop living under their fucking roof anymore. Yeah. Didn't have to make it personal, mate, but you know.

You got out there one day, Francis. Don't worry about it. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like if you keep borrowing money from people. Yeah. If you keep borrowing money from people, you will be in hock to them. And for the reasons that Francis laid,

out beautifully. We are now extremely inhocta. In fact, you know, one of the things we talked about the bond yields, Britain is paying a premium. I don't know if you know this. We were all similar age, I think. Certainly in my 20s and early 30s, the basket case countries of Europe were Greece and Italy. We now have higher bond yields than both Greece and Italy in this country because our economic policies, our government's policies, have created a situation where we are less trusted to repay our debts than Greece and Italy. That is the reality. And the point about this is the biggest problem with all of this is none of it will be solved

by the policies that are being advocated for or pursued, because raising taxes is not going to solve this problem, because you cannot tax even more to pay for all this spending that we can't afford the we spend more on welfare now as we said earlier in this conversation than we raise in income tax this is insane this is insane and by the way it's not all scroungers it's not all people who've been you know abusing the system a lot of it is people who simply don't have jobs because of the economic policies that our government pursued and a lot of it by the way is because we have an aging population of pensioners who continue to vote for policies that that protect and support them at the expense of their children and grandchildren.

And that is another massive problem that no one wants to talk about. And it's also so many of the problems that are unique in this country, like just very quickly, sorry, wisdom, is that things like the growth in sickness benefits and outwork benefits amongst the young, which is, you know, the idea that the young would become a particular area of interest for the welfare state just grates against what the whole point of it was to look after the old and the sick and so on, you know, and the destitute rather than those who actually should have a bit of get up and go. That's often blamed as a kind of post-COVID thing,

whether that relates to mental health or long COVID or some kind of bollocks like that. You look at other European countries, you do not see that pattern repeated. So there have been particular decisions that we have made in this country, which have made the issue so much worse. And there's a kind of refusal to grapple with that. That's just a constant kind of gesture to how terrible it is across the peace and what have you. And the fact that these are factors almost entirely out of the government's control.

That's just not good enough. There's things that you can do, you can act, and you can try and deal with and clean up the mess of a lot of what has happened in the quite recent past that would start to amend this. You know, you don't have to have a reckoning with 40 years of failed policies, Andy Burnham might see it, to get us back on the right track, even in the near term, I think. Just to add even more detail, 30-year bond yields are now the highest they've been since 1998. The problem we've got is that there's looming tax increase. without serious talks about decreases or sorry without decrease elsewhere or welfare decreases.

And they just don't. So I'm not to be contrarian here or I'm not actually against some certain tax increases if they're offset with decreases elsewhere. What Burnham is doing is. So the other big thing and this is a guy I keep an eye on called Lord Jim Neal. He's famous because he he's a labour grandee he took coin the turn bricks and he was at j p morgan and it was rum there were some rubbers that gary stevenson was going to be the uh economics advisor for burnham which was all nonsense but it it was more true that jim o'neill was and he and and jim turned it down because and he said he didn't want to give up his business uh his businesses and and dealings uh but he's someone really worth keeping an arm because he would have given burnham uh a seriousness in government because he's someone who does understand the bond markets and does

understand how to work a budget in a way that would keep the markets and the city settled. He has said this week that capital gains tax increases are looming. Now, I don't want capital gains tax because it's going to be tax on me, but I'm in theory not against capital gains tax if there's massive reduction in income tax and actually you have you create incentive for people to work. What we're seeing is just more tax and no real decrease in welfare. So things can only get worse. But the most offensive thing to me of all of this is watching Andy Burnham's PMQs and his various videos from cabinet meetings and the amount of times he says, uh or um, he puts the uh in Burnham and

And it's very fitting that Burnham as a word starts with an er and ends of an um. Because those are the two sounds I basically only hear from that man. It is so offensive to me that he talks like that. It's so frustrating to hear. Can he not, does he not have convictions? Can he not just speak, shoot from the hip? What does you, what do you think, man? That thing drives me more insane than the tax talk by orders of magnitude.

So it's good to see. I was going to say welcome to off the fence where we give things their true measure of priority. Yeah, that's the same issue, right? Exactly, exactly. Well, gentlemen, that I think is us for the week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for watching and listening. Make sure you subscribe to Trigonometry, the Winston Marshall Show, and of course Spike,

and share this with a friend, share this with everybody, and we will see you same time next week. Thank you.