"Political SUICIDE" | Labour Cosying Up To Zack Polanski?

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Let's speak to Paul Embry, a trade unionist and author of Despised: Why the Modern Left Loa the Working Class. Now, we've seen this in politics. It's nothing new, is it? That a a politician might somewhat um spin their narrative depending upon which audience they stand in front of. But this is different to, you know, someone saying one thing at a branch meeting and another thing on the doorstep because this really is the rest of the country looking at this this sort of battle, this proxy war going on in Makerfield and thinking, well, you know, if it comes to pass that this man is our prime minister, is he going to do things radically differently? And if so, what?

[00:00:38]>> Yeah, good morning, Alex. Um, he has certainly flip-flopped on a number of things. There's no question about that.

[00:00:44]Um and the danger is you think you're um appealing more broadly to people by shifting your view according to the you know prevailing weather and the prevailing mood. Um but you then alienate I think a lot of other people who then say we don't really know what you stand for mate. Um, and I think particularly in this day and age where politicians are so robotic and so on message and so frightened about dissenting from the party line, I think people more and more respect those politicians um, who are a bit honest in their views actually. I mean, one of my political heroes was Tony Ben. Now, not everyone's cup of tea politically. Um, but he was somebody he said himself that politicians are divided um between signposts and weather veins. Uh, and the signposts are the politicians who say, "Look, this is what I believe in and follow me because I think you should believe in it as well." And the weather veins are people who just, you know, form their views according to the latest focus group. And I think there's an element uh of that with Andy Bernham. Uh and people ultimately I think don't necessarily respect those who change their views so so quickly and for politically expedient reasons.

[00:01:59]>> I mean looking at um this sort of battle that's now going on between Burnham and Blair. Uh whose side would you take?

[00:02:07]Because Tony Blair, interesting, this is sort of quite a telling interview he did with Nick Robinson at the BBC where it's almost if he is going to start the sentence of I don't really care who's in power, the tourist or Labor as long as it's a centrist government. And Andy Bernham, meanwhile, seems to be saying, well, look, you know, Tony Blair inherited fatism and seem to continue down that road. I want to do things drastically differently. Uh talking a lot more about state intervention.

[00:02:35]I mean, you're a a sort of trade unionist and labor man at heart. Where do you think is the right direction if you were going to be a signpost, not a weather vein?

[00:02:46]>> Well, look, I mean, I'm I'm a a traditional leftist, Alex, as you as you know. I'm not a modernday um leftist.

[00:02:52]I'm, if you like, an old fashioned socialist. So, I'm more with Burnham than I am with Blair uh on this particular debate. I'm I'm an oldfashioned Keynesian in many respects.

[00:03:01]I think that when you're in a situation where your economy is tanking, uh, and certainly about to tank, as it probably will do later this year, um, and everyone within that economy, whether it's individual consumers or businesses, are tightening their belts. You know, they're making financial calculations and tightening their belts, you then get into that downward spiral, which takes you into a recession. And actually the only agency really with the power and the money to be able to kickstart the economy uh in those circumstances certainly to kickstart it quickly um is government is using the power of government and the fiscal capacity of government to turn the economy round to invest in infrastructure and business and the real economy and so on to get growth and then through getting growth you increase your tax revenues um and you're able to then fund your public services. So I think Bernham has certainly got a point that under new labor they did follow that agenda of rolling back the frontiers of the state, handing pretty much everything over to the market, privatization, deregulation and so on. And I think in the current circumstances with the economy on the precipice of a major crash, uh I think that's not what we need at this moment.

[00:04:10]>> What we what we do need though is a bit of a clear direction of travel, isn't it? If we are going to change the man at the top, what is that man going to be doing differently? Let's talk now about the right wing, which is where um Jacob Reemog understandably has called for the right to unite. It doesn't surprise me coming from a conservative because frankly unless they attach themselves to something else, they're not really going to go anywhere or get anywhere near power. Um but he has said that if there were to be a pact among right-wingers that cannot include Restore Britain. Uh because there have been some rather damning revelations of extremism, certainly mouthpieces for that political party. seem to have some pretty choice opinions when it comes to ethnationalism.

[00:04:52]There have been allegations of anti-semitism. I would certainly join the chorus of others who are saying that certainly some of their acolytes and loudest and most vocal supporters online are womenhating scumbags. Um I'm certainly not enjoying their attention, but there you go. Um what do you make of this new movement that has sort of sprung up out of a spat that happened within Reform UK?

[00:05:16]I would agree with Jacob Reese Moog.

[00:05:18]Actually, if I were advising the the Tory party or reform, I would say you would need to give restore Britain a very wide birth. Um, now there are probably some good people uh involved with it. But I think it's certainly true that on the fringes and in some cases not particularly on the fringes, more centrally, um there are some people with views that I think probably could be categorized as as extreme. And there are certainly people who I think have what I would call an unhealthy focus on the issue of ethnicity. I mean I call them ethnobsessives because it's almost as if they look at every political issue through the uh through the prism of ethnicity. And I don't think that's particularly helpful. And some of them, you know, were were really leading the charge against Shabbana Mammud when she gave a recent interview and said that even though she's got Pakistani heritage, she considers herself to be English. And they said, "How dare you?

[00:06:15]You know, you're appropriating our culture." But can you imagine if Shabbana Mammud had said the opposite?

[00:06:20]Yeah.

[00:06:20]>> If she said, "Actually, I don't regard myself as English." I mean, she even said in the interview, "I would support England against Pakistan in a cricket match." And people got angry at that.

[00:06:29]But just imagine she said the opposite.

[00:06:31]I would support Pakistan over England.

[00:06:33]>> I mean, let's call it what it is. I'm saying let's call it what it is.

[00:06:36]Frankly, it is racism. And I'm not saying that as a like whoop, let's all jump on the leftwing bandwagon of calling everybody racist. No, I'm saying it because when you were judging people by the color of their skin, the definition of that is racism. And I would say quite the same about agitators on the left wing who also do that with their critical race theory nonsense.

[00:06:56]Personally, my opinion has always been I care about what's on the inside. They care about culture. In that regard, I would agree with the idea that they seem to espouse that we are a Christian country. And by that, I would like to see the morality and the mores that have sprung over the last 2,000 years from that one religion being sacrianked in our nation. But when it comes to skin color, I mean, come on. This ain't 19 or 1850 anymore. You know, it it we've gone beyond this. And it terrifies me. It terrifies me as somebody who has um you know relatives who are not born and bred uh you know whose you know long long lost heritage isn't entirely British. It terrifies me uh that these sorts of ideas are now being pushed.

[00:07:43]>> I share your view. I mean my my own in-laws are Anglo Indians. Um, and you know, my brother-in-law, for example, was born in India, but has lived here every day since he was 2 years of age for the last 60 years or whatever. Uh, and I do wonder what some of these ethnobsessives would think about people like him who's worked his entire life and paid his taxes and and so on. And actually I don't think that their um radical kind of extremist views on this issue is are shared by the vast majority of Britons because I think most people in Britain will say look it's perfectly possible to be on the one hand wary of multiculturalism and its impact in terms of social disintegration in the country.

[00:08:24]Wary of the impact of mass immigration.

[00:08:27]We want to tighten our borders. We want to reassert our national identity. But do you know what? We don't want a witch hunt against people on the basis of the fact they've got a skin color that's a few tones darker than our own. I don't think most people are interested in that sort of thing. And if the likes of the people following Restore think they are, I think they've seriously misjudged it.

[00:08:47]>> Yeah. It also seems to be consistently at odds when Rbert Low speaks he seems to be saying, "Well, no, we should invite people in who are spouses and make that easier. I don't believe you we should be deporting entire communities, you know, so on and so forth." he seems to say in front of camera when he appears is vastly different to what people like his head of campaign seem to say. And I just think, you know, always be careful because you never know when you're being used as a chew toy. And what happens to a chew toy is it gets chewed up and spat back out. Let's talk now about Andy Burnham because he wants to potentially open uh the door to a pact with the Greens. hadn't been explicitly what he said, but when challenged in an interview about whether he would form coalitions if need be, he sort of made the sort of vague platitude that he's willing to work with any political party if it's what's best for the country. But that does suggest to me when you look at the fracturing of politics away from the sort of legacy two-party system, away from a bi bipartisan choice to something far more spectral, um we are potentially going to be looking at not one political party forming a majority, but some sort of coalition on the left or on the right.

[00:09:56]And in the same way that we're talking there about Jacob Reese Mog saying, "Well, anything on the right must not involve restore." Those of us who look at the Green Party would love to say to Andy Bernham, "Do not caught them.

[00:10:09]They're crazy." But unfortunately, it seems to me that um when it comes to the Green Party, they really are taking sizable bites out of the Labour Party vote at the moment. And if the Labour Party did want to get in anywhere near um the levers of power were a snap election to be hold today, one would assume they'd have to cozy up to Palansky.

[00:10:31]Well, I think for the Labour Party to do that, I think that would be uh electoral and political suicide. Um, I would say to Andy Bernham and anyone else who is listening, you need to run a mile from the Greens. I mean, look, they've got some I think they've had some useful issues to say, sorry, some useful things to say on the issue of wealth and income inequality in in this country. But on some of their other stuff, I mean, you look at the um the extremism on trans rights and wanting men who identify as women to to be able to access women's sports and women's single sex spaces and so on. They're pretty much an open borders party. They've completely signed up to the net zero folly and actually want to go further in terms of making some of the targets more challenging.

[00:11:15]They want to legalize hard drugs. That is not where I think majority opinion is in this country. It may appeal to student radicals and social activists and various people on the far left. It will not appeal to the majority of mainstream voters. And if that's who Labour wants to win over, which I assume they do, uh they should avoid at all costs getting into bed with Palansky and the Greens.

[00:11:37]>> This is the interesting thing, you know, talking about these little wings on the left and the right that are emerging.

[00:11:42]And I'd say they're emerging as a direct result of social media as a they're a product of algorithms. They're a product of the most strident opinion, the most controversial statement. He who shouts loudest. He who outflanks someone else in terms of the uh you know boldness of their rhetoric suddenly gets pushed to the top of our timelines suddenly gets to sort of flood the digital airwaves um with these sort of more extreme vibesy politics. And so now we're seeing this sort of politics on either side popping up and it terrifies me. I mean what what do we do about this? Because look, I don't want to hark back to let's having a uni party. I'm not going to banging the drum for let's going back go back to the days where you couldn't put a cigarette paper between Labour and the Conservatives. But I certainly don't want to see the sort of unfettered radicalism, the dangerous radicalism that says on one side things like let's have totally open borders and get rid of prevent and decriminalize all drugs and decriminalize sex work which is would turn us into I don't know something akin to Kandahar. Um, and either do I want something on the other side where we're going around, you know, prosecuting policy based upon the color of someone's skin, which sounds like Germany in the 1940s for crying out loud. Um, so while I do want to see radical change, some of these offers that seem to be landing at the moment politically, uh, to me would take us into oblivion, would would take us down a very dangerous path, which, you know, leads me to wonder what we do do about this.

[00:13:18]Well, I mean, look, there's certainly been a rise in in, if you like, radical politics and radical politicians with more militant um programs. Uh, and I think that is certainly in part uh attributable to um social media. Uh, social media, you know, is is in many respects a good thing, but it has its drawbacks as well. But I think probably more attributable to the fact that I think people are just sick and tired with the two main parties with mainstream politics in this country. And we're seeing now, I think, on a on a wider UK basis what happened in Northern Ireland over the last 20 years where the two dominant parties, the UUP and the SDLP on both sides of the divide um were seen to have fouled, no longer had the support of their respective um communities. Uh and those communities both started voting for more radical parties in the DUP on one side and Chinfane on the other who since have held sway largely in Northern Ireland. I think we're seeing something now very similar throughout the rest of Britain where people have lost faith in the main parties. You know, the the fact that we've had a stagnant economy now for getting on for 20 years. The fact that people's living standards have crashed.

[00:14:27]The fact that, you know, things just don't work in the country anymore and public services are crumbling. We're seeing social disintegration break out and people look at the two main parties and say, "You have brought this in. You are responsible for this. And time and time again, we voted for you, but you've failed us. Therefore, if you can't fix things, we're going to throw in our lot with whether it's Farage on the right or Palansky on the left. The two main parties have brought this on themselves.

[00:14:52]>> Oh, thank you ever so much, Paul. We live in such interesting political times, and it's always good to be able to sort of join hands and fight the forces of well, whatever you want to call it, uh together for a change.