"Reform are the only national party" | David Starkey & Mark Littlewood react to election results

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:04]The electorate are up for a very big change. They accept that this could involve a bit of pain and will involve a bit of risk, but they are signaling they are up for it. The traditional political parties are still playing politics on a micro level. You almost expected the Labour pundits on television over the last couple of days to say, "Ah, well, the lesson I take from this fury amongst the British electorate is we need to roll out more breakfast clubs at school." None of them, I think, have the the kind of intellectual bandwidth to even cope with the discussion really.

[00:00:40]And that explains their present disruption in the polls and at the ballot box.

[00:00:46]Hello and welcome to David Starky Talks.

[00:00:49]This postelection binge if like my friend Mark Littlewood to whom I'm delighted to be speaking, you were one of those who dare I use the word an addict. Mark, um we remember I I now got you did something terribly dangerous a few days ago. You actually posted your predictions. You said what's going to happen. How did you fare?

[00:01:14]Uh, not too badly. I think actually if you'd followed all of my betting tips, you would have been slightly quids in.

[00:01:22]So, uh, you wouldn't have made a fortune, but you would have been slightly quids in. Uh, the the truth of it, David, in trying to give some tips beforehand was although the results here are utterly spectacular and will have ramifications for the immediate future of British politics, they were also quite predictable. There were not very many things where people said, "Wow, we did not expect that to happen." Might have been the sort of thing you didn't expect to happen two or three years ago, but it was exactly the sort of thing we expected to happen two or three days before polling. So although dramatic uh and of considerable impact pretty much things were in line uh with what most pundits were expecting. The exceptions were that the Green Party performed rather more poorly than expected. That's to say its advances uh were not as great and that has probably helped boost the total tally of Labour Party council seats won even though their own result was utterly disastrous. But basically uh more or less in line with what most people were thinking but that doesn't make it boring. That makes it incredibly exciting. In short, uh the party system that we have be become used to over over our lifetimes has def definitively been and I think permanently being shattered.

[00:02:43]That's the that's my big takeaway from the results. And I was not alone I think in anticipating that in advance of polling day.

[00:02:51]>> Now when you say it's been shattered that can mean one of two things. In fact it can mean many things. Are we saying that we are now in permanently multi-party politics as opposed to a two-party system? Or are we saying that simply the two traditional main parties are manifestly broken and that what we're going through now is a period of chaos before a new part two party division emerges with different labels and maybe different issues of division.

[00:03:27]um and uh different styles of politics.

[00:03:31]Broadly, which one of those positions would you go for? Is it that we're into a permanent kaleidoscope or is the kaleidoscope going to settle down into something like the old two-party pattern but with different labels obviously different leaders perhaps different values different constituencies which >> yeah I think eventually you get back to a a different type of two-party system David at least for as long as we have the present electoral system that becomes a practical necessity So the kaleidoscope of uh parties, you know, it being considered a relatively good result against other parties to get as much as 20% of the vote. In fact, had any party been able to do that on Thursday, it would have come second. Um is uh I think a relatively temporary phenomenon because the inexurable logic of the electoral system uh essentially means you need two big forces. They could be alliances, they could be coalitions, they could be packs, they could be coupons, or they could be a grand overarching party. We'll probably eventually get back to that. But in the meantime, I think what's evident is we aren't simply going through a phase in which people are sending messages to the Labour Party and the Conservative Party that the Labour Party and the Conservative Party are being slightly cloth eared at the moment but will eventually hear the signal and everything will snap back into place and the present insurgent parties will disappear. I think that prediction is for the birds. And if we were to look back at the last major challenge to the party system, the the rise of the SDP and the alliance, it sort of achieved that. It sent a message especially to the Labor Party. You're going too extreme. The Labor Party took sort of, you know, 10 years to really get that message. But when it did, the SDP uh completely disappeared. You might say it had done its job. I don't think that's going to happen this time round. I don't think that the Conservative Party is going to start resembling reform in order to try and pick up all of those votes. Nor do I think that the Labour Party is going to start resembling Zack Palansky in order to hoover up all of those votes. So, how it ends, what the new big forces will be called, will it actually be reform versus green potentially? I don't know. and how the various different parts in the kaleidoscope or proximate to each other on the rainbow start to merge and work together. All of that to be determined.

[00:06:00]I think we get there eventually but over the next year or so this multi-party kaleidoscope of politics is going to be with us. Do you see any indications? In other words, uh if if you like when when you made your predictions beforehand, I mean to shift from from kaleidoscopes to tea leaves, rather less cheerful things, uh rather less gaudy things, do you see indications as to the direction, immediate direction of travel? Do you I mean, what is also striking is you made the point about the Greens. Yes, the Greens did very well. They didn't do as well as they thought they were going to do and many other people thought they were going to do. Uh reform did incredibly well. It still significantly underperformed on exactly a year ago. It was down of the order of five points which as you said in this kind of in this kind of of multi multi-arty system actually is the difference between an apparently overwhelming majority and maybe being primos parees uh in um in a house without a majority. Do do you I mean do you do how do you read the tees?

[00:07:14]>> Do you think do do you think it's a mug's g I mean the be honest I I I think you know one of the problems of punditry uh faced with a question like this one is invariably tempted to say something positive rather than perhaps to put one's hands up and be honest and say don't know we know each other well enough.

[00:07:32]>> Well no I mean it goes to the whole high thing doesn't it? All of the important things can't be measured and all the things you can measure are not important. So I'm not going to overreach for a prediction here. I'm not totally sure you're right about reform, David. I don't know how these things are measured, but just before starting this discussion, I looked at one projection of the national equivalent vote share.

[00:07:50]That's to say that's not the votes cast because only parts of the country voted derived from that what it would have been had the entire country voted. And that put reform at 31%.

[00:08:00]>> Oh, then ex then. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:01]>> Slightly up, I think, on last year or about the same. the Conservatives on 19% uh up on last year from their woeful 15.

[00:08:10]Labor on 15% the Liberals on 14 and I think it was the Greens on 12. Uh so I think >> me just to make sure everybody is clear on this. You're saying that if you take these these various patchy which they were only patchy elections and you project them as though it were in fact a national parliamentary election those would be the rough figures you'd get.

[00:08:31]>> Yes, that's right. If you assume people, the other big big assumption you're making is that you're assumed pe people would vote the same way in a general election as a local election. I get you.

[00:08:40]>> Um but uh but because for example, you know, Cornwall and Devon didn't vote, you've got to work out how you would try and map results that you're getting from Kensington and Chelsea and Wigan onto a putitive election in Cornwall and Devon.

[00:08:53]So you're not actually just tallying up the votes. you're then having to map from certain parts of of the country what that would have meant in parts of the country that didn't go to the polls on Thursday and it produces those numbers. The Telegraph has had a go at mapping that onto uh what the outcome would be in the House of Commons. Uh and on I think this was Rawlings and Thrasher who've done the number crunching here. It would have given reform I think just over 280 seats. So short of a majority but by far and away the largest party. Labor 110 and the Conservatives 90 uh leading one would have assumed to a reform-led government with the Conservatives as junior coalition partners. So that's roughly where we're at and it's not that dissimilar to a year ago. Uh and actually contrary to the opinion polls, the reform vote has not obviously dipped by 5% or so since last year. And my theory about that in the opinion polls is because of this yet another new party, Rupert Loe's Restore Britain, who only fought seats in in one tiny part of the country in his own seat at Great Yarmouth are typically polling 3 or 4% of the vote in opinion polls. That's probably come straight off the top of the reform pile and might explain in opinion polls why reform are down 3 or 4%. But absent a restore Britain candidate on the ballot paper, that 3 or 4% switch is back to reform if reform were the only option for that cohort.

[00:10:22]So, uh I don't think any big change from a year ago, but the change from a year ago and suits the general election has been dramatic. All we're seeing is it's now being cemented on the kind of where do we go next? Great question. Uh but I I think I can't predict where we're going to go next, but I can um hazard a pretty good guess about who makes the first chess move, and that will be the Labour Party. So, their decision uh let's put aside, you know, who might the next leader of the Labour Party be, when will they come in, or whether they're actually going to loyally stick with Star. their strategic decision rather than their personnel decision is do they tilt to the left to try and hoover up the uh green vote people who are terribly worried about Palestine who are uh think there is still insufficient diversity equality and inclusion in British policym that the rich are still paying too little in taxes do they tilt in that direction in the hope of winning back votes there or do they tilt in the reform direction to try and win back the white working class or do they continue as they're doing at the moment to fall between two stalls now uh where if they make the fall between two stalls decisions decision I think you could actually see the death of one of the great political parties if they tilt one way or that I think then leads to other parties then making their next move but that's the first big strategic decision for Labor do you do a Morris Glassman Shabban mood type tilt to the white working class or do you do an Angela Raina type tilt to the uh >> indeed Andy Burnham >> or an Andy Burnham tilt to the to the sort of wokerati uh they or do you decide it's all far too complicated you're going to put your head in your hands um hide in the bunker and make no decision at all. That's going to be the first thing that will play out and that could have quite substantial knock-on effects for how the party system eventually realigns if we are of the view that somewhere down the track we're going to get back to two big forces, one of the right and one of the left.

[00:12:27]>> The problem with that, isn't it Mark? I mean, you present that as though they had a choice. In other words, that the part of the Labor Party has a choice. Uh if you actually look at the distribution between Morris Glassman as blue labor on the one hand and the Angela Raina uh Bernham softleft on the other MPs are and party activists are overwhelmingly on the Raina Bernham side aren't they? I mean isn't the much the greater likelihood that they will try the tilt to the left?

[00:13:00]>> Yes, I think that probably is right. Um, I think it is the greater likelihood, but I think it's the more stupid move, >> of course.

[00:13:07]>> Um, so, uh, although you're right, the numbers are there for it. I think if they were starting with a complete blank sheet of paper and willing to take entirely objective electoral advice about what they should do, then winning back reform voters in, you know, in the Wiggins and the Sunderlands would be uh, rather more important. I mean the intriguing thing of what we're seeing because people are definitely looking at this and quite rightly in many ways through a kind of party political lens of these new relatively new groups like reform or or a kind of reinvented Green Party popping up but in some ways David this is as old as the hills. If you were to look at a map of Britain and convert it into a heat map on how intense was the Brexit vote in various different parts of Britain or you know so the the darker red the more intense red the bigger the leave vote and perhaps the more intense blue the bigger the remain vote. This maps almost totally onto how great the reform advance was. I mean they they advanced everywhere but London certainly you know west London not so much Scotland advanced but not spectacularly Wales now you're talking you know Wales did vote for leave and reform advanced well but now look at Sunderland uh you know big leave area or Wigan or Wakefield the advances for uh reform here are spectacular and correlate almost perfectly with the intensity of the leave vote similarly If you were to look where the conservatives sort of held on or indeed made modest advances, these were areas that couldn't really be touched by reform. Wsworth, Westminster, deeply deeply remain uh areas where reform wouldn't really have a snowball in hell's chance. Uh the conservatives have performed relatively well there. Or even within the kind of London area, havering the the east of London, an area that might even detach itself and go back to Essex. a colossal reform win, but just a little bit round the road in Brmley, quite a remain area, conservatives hold on and do very well.

[00:15:09]So, we're to some degree, we're not refighting the Brexit wars, as in I'm not saying these votes were about Brexit or are about our relationship with the European Union. What I am saying is the sort of things that caused people to vote leave seem to be the same sort of things that are causing people to vote reform, i.e. great satisfa dissatisfaction great great dissatisfaction with the prevailing status quo and wanting to knock over the apple cart. Those are the areas reform are doing well. And David, you're the historian, not me, but I'm told even it could be e go back even longer than that if you map the Brexit vote onto different areas of the country and where they stood in the English civil war.

[00:15:51]That apparently explains why we voted Brexit and the rise of reform. So perhaps this isn't quite as new a phenomenon as some people are suggesting.

[00:16:00]>> Uh yes, I I think we get ourselves, dare I say it, normally I'm very happy to go back and immerse myself in the tides of history, but I think to mix metaphors, we're getting into deep waters there.

[00:16:12]But let's go back to what I think is really important in the point about Brexit. uh if we we both thought uh when we started meeting and talking about these things that the Brexit vote was itself a proxy for something very much deeper for this s which of course interestingly was tapped into by the allpurpose slogan of take back control.

[00:16:37]It was the loss of the sense of self, of country, of belonging, of uh your your your your in a sense very right to exist. Now, if that's true, that then does offer a much bigger pointer, doesn't it, to the shape of our future politics? Doesn't it suggest that the big line is going to be uh essentially rather than the economic division of the past, it's going to be a line on do you take your nation, your country seriously or are you an allpurpose cosmopolitan?

[00:17:16]That really is the line of divide, isn't it?

[00:17:20]>> It is. It I think that's exactly right.

[00:17:23]And the reason >> somewhere and anywhere >> there somewhere and anywhere or I don't know. So, I mean, it's very difficult to find the right um words for this, but sort of national conservatives versus globalist liberals, perhaps you could say that's the that's the divide. No, I think you're absolutely correct that that is now the key driver of how people vote. And what's changed and the academic Steve Davies has written very uh interestingly on this and from years ago he saw this coming. What's changed is not that um we all used to be globalist liberals or way back in the day we were all national conservatives.

[00:18:00]People of of different types and different demographics have always had these underlying divisions which uh you know come to the four when you're discussing for example our relationship with the European Union. No, that hasn't especially changed. What's changed is the salience of them. So that what we have been used to until recently is the principal driving force. I mean generalization claxon here, but the principal driving force of how you would vote was not where you stood on international law or our relation with the EU. It's where you stood on economics. And broadly speaking, if you were a sort of low tax government spending must be frugal, let business do its business sort of chap, you would vote for the Conservatives. And if you felt the government needed to do more to run public services, to redistribute wealth, that taxes should go up on the successful and the wealthy, you would vote Labor. Uh you might within those tribes have had big big differences about national sovereignty or what our relationship should be with the common market. But those were secondary considerations. They've now become the primary driving force of how you vote with your views on economics being a secondary force. That's what's changing the map. And the traditional parties, I think, are still fighting the old war.

[00:19:14]Uh they're still talking as if economics is the principal driving force.

[00:19:18]Economics matters. It's just now not the principle reason that would lead people to vote for a particular political party. So the tribes, the big tribes, the the banners and the rosettes that we gather around and under are now being divided on a different axis. And the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, and probably the Liberal Party have not realized that yet.

[00:19:41]>> And in fact, they are acutely split.

[00:19:44]>> Yeah.

[00:19:45]>> Probably not the Liberal Democrats, right? The Liberal Democrats.

[00:19:47]>> No, but then what? Sorry, just briefly because the Liberal Democrats only deserve brief commentary. It is striking in the kind of situation where we are now with with deep discontent with both the old Tory party and the old Labor Party. one would normally have expected a live dem landslide and instead they're on the margins. Uh they are they're not going anywhere. They're a going nowhere party apart from you know that that that satisfying feeling of their leader getting in and out of wet suits and falling off logs.

[00:20:20]>> Well, you would only I think that's true. In the past, you would have expected that, but that was a very different type of third party politics in that the Liberal Democrats or their anticedent parties, the SDP, were a kind of safety valve on encouraging the two big parties to become more moderate.

[00:20:38]>> Right now, our third parties or insurgent parties are encouraging our two big main parties to become much more bullish, much more full throttled, much more red-blooded. Um, and we would have seen, I think, a massive rise in a parallel universe for the Liberal Democrats if both Labour and the Conservative Party had chosen to go off to the um somewhere rather than anywhere side of politics. If both had enthusiastically embraced Brexit and tight immigration controls, the Liberal Democrats could then monopolize the globist globalist international space, but uh that hasn't happened. So they're a kind of bolt-on to that uh that space in party politics which is also occupied really by the Green Party as well. I think sort of one one world government and the Labour party in so far as it's tilted one way has tilted in that direction. So that globalist internationalist sphere of voters well it's crowded. The Liberal Democrats do well with a cohort of them in certain areas where they're electorally viable. Uh but they don't have a monopoly on that side. So that's why you haven't seen the Liberal Democrats surge. But it's also why you haven't seen them disappear because they do have globalist liberal credentials if you like and probably of um rather more credible globalist inter internationalist credentials than either Labor or the Greens. So they're sticking around. They're hanging around. They're unlikely, I think, to be an overwhelmingly interesting part of the new realignment when it finally takes shape, but they'll be there.

[00:22:09]>> Yes. Um going back now to how the various issues are going to pan out. Um we both agree that the big line of divide to put it very crudely is between national conservative which is the basic thrust of reform um and the uh globalist which of course hyper globalist hyper third worldism which would be presumably a new reform dominant sorry a new green dominant left. But of course the economic issues don't go away do they?

[00:22:42]The bond markets don't just fold up because we've taken a vote in one direction or another. There is there is this kind of cross quadrant now in politics isn't there between the the the globalist and the local and between the socialist and the capitalist. And the interesting thing is if you look at the the areas that have gone very very solidly for reform they would also in the old politics they were old labor areas they were socialist.

[00:23:15]However there is no way that we can actually have a national conservative government is there that can be essentially socialist. We're at the limits. Our state machinery, um the structures of welfare, the collapsing nature of our public debt, well, the collapsing nature of our public finances, our economy, all show, as of course Tony Blair and Peter Mandlesson recognized that socialism has failed.

[00:23:46]Now, how do you see this conundrum, this tension being navigated by the reform? And as you've described it, the momentum in polit, however much the immediate change, the immediate trigger for political realignment will be the decision of the Labor government as to which direction it goes, the long-term trajectory is emphatically with reform.

[00:24:13]That's the huge choice that reform faces, isn't it? How does it hold its existing electorate together with the the other electorate, the other electorate of the uh the areas that have remained conservative, but in other way, in other words, would be supporters of much of a traditional conservative platform. How's he going? How is poor old Nigel going to straddle? He's very good at straddling. But dear me, that really that really is the challenge of the ultimate straddler, isn't it?

[00:24:43]>> So, what could the Farage straddle look like? I actually think, although I readily concede here, that the wish may be the father of the thought, that it's rather easier for him to do this than we might suppose. and that we're sort of assuming that voters in Gates Head and Sunderland want vast amounts of state expenditure, huge welfare benefits, uh, and, uh, the government to run every meaningful industry in their lives, whereas the good people of say Norfolk and Suffukk want a light touch state, limited welfare, lower taxes, and the rest of it. I'm not so sure that's true in that I think the reform cohort, the the national conservative cohort, the somewhere cohort, a big cohort that's voting reform in those areas are the sort of modern-day equivalent of Essex man from the 1970s and the 1980s. That reform will be doing better, I'm summising this, I haven't proved it, will be doing much better in Sunderland amongst those who are working rather than on welfare. um who are working in the private sector rather than in the public sector. And uh I think actually we need to get our books in order and we are unfairly and wrongly and stupidly taking vast tranches of resources from the productive side of the economy and giving them to the unproductive side of the economy. I think that sort of message uh which is a free market message if well enough framed is actually highly attractive to your reform voters in the red wall. I think this is the new essics. And just to clarify what I mean by that in the 1970s it was sort of assumed Essex was a bit of a bellweather. Would it vote conservative or labor in any given election? and thatcherism might be an affirmate to Essex because Thatcherism was all you know was a bit too on the capitalist side. In fact, it went down there fantastically well. I mean famous possibly better than any other part of the country and Essex is now associated very strongly with that sort of thatcherite um opinion with regard to enterprise effort, low taxes, limited welfare and the rest of it. And I just and as I say I I appreciate I might just be wishing for this rather than predicting it. But it seems to me that that sort of message I could go down pretty well with the cohorts who are voting reform in these red wall areas who I think are typically people who are working standing on their own two feet sick of how high their tax bill is skeptical about what the government how the government is actually running things. Now, it won't nit knit together quite as neatly as that, but I don't think these two stalls are a million miles apart. I think that Farage uh without having to do the per the perfect Farage straddle probably can get a foot on each of these.

[00:27:36]>> So, what we're saying is or are you saying that let's let's name what's happened. Why has there been this tre?

[00:27:47]What is the principal motor of this extraordinary political realignment? It is of course immigration. Are we saying the sense of the immigrant as the ultimate free rider, the ultimate freeloader, the immigrant who comes in having put nothing in and takes everything out? Who under the current rules of council housing is displaced.

[00:28:10]And council housing was built for the working class. It was built for families like mine and you had a point system and all the rest of it which meant that in a sense it became a kind of hereditary tenure didn't it? Um with within within the employed generally because employment was very high the employed and skilled working class that that's how it worked. And then in the 70s there is that extraordinary change in which absolute housing need goes to the top.

[00:28:40]So essentially council housing having been created for the working class becomes the accommodation of choice for the nonworking class the never working class the never lifting a finger class and the great the thing that that as it were dramatized that is of course immigration as I said the ultimate freeloader to do you think that that will have that will have brought the same kind we're talking now about a huge shift of consciousness Aren't we? You think in other words, you were talking about Essex. Well, we all understand Essex, but to perhaps put Sunderland in that category, perhaps put Oldm Olden went reform, the white working class in Olden. And that you see Olden my as it were my parents native town is the one that I wonder is the great bell weather because that is where the most extreme consequences of immigration have been seen. It's where the uh the takeover of every agency of government uh by Pakistani gangs and whatever has been so clear. the council, cannot say it, even sections of the police, the social services, um uh h every everything, the national health service, everything you can look at and that astonishing alienation of the native population. Is that what we're saying?

[00:30:10]>> Yes. I mean, I'm interested in the the the end of your remarks there, David.

[00:30:15]You brought in other things. So, I was about to disagree with you that it's not just a matter that there's been a large number of immigrants and they're getting the council houses, right? Uh that might explain some of the grievance, but actually the immigration thing, I think it may be a problem per se, but it's also illuminated a range of other perceived unfairnesses in the entire system. So, it's not just why have this family that's just arrived got this council house where my son and the daughter and daughter have been on the waiting list for 10 years. That may be a part of it, but it's also that um uh and also, you know, why aren't these people who are apparently investigated in crime ever investigated by our authorities? Uh why am I paying for their the translation services of their parents when they go and see a general practitioner? Why is it that if I put out on social media that I think there's sort of two immigrants, too many immigrants in my area and something damn well needs to be done about it, >> you get a knock on the door, >> the knock on the door from the police.

[00:31:15]Um, so you've got immigration overlaid with a welfare state that is big and and allocating resources unfairly from the perspective of the indigenous population. overlaid too with a kind of wokery diversity, equality and inclusion thing >> which is legally entrenched legally enforced against every single native tradition.

[00:31:39]>> Correct. So uh to my mind again thinking of a parallel universe. One could just about imagine a parallel universe where immigration had been as high as it has been over the past 25 years, but the story had played out in a different fashion that uh these people had been obliged to assimilate uh and uh were not were actually low down on the list of priorities for welfare which was typically given to pe given to people with a longer history of residency for example were having to pay for their own translation services could not fall back on discrimination or equality laws to expect their particular uh pecadillos or their religious beliefs or their cultural idiosyncrasies to be indulged and that might be a scenario in which this sort of huge division now in British politics never occurred but it hasn't gone that way. So it's immigration plus plus plus plus plus plus other things that have led to I mean people say it's a sense of grievance but I I mean it's a fair sense of grievance the grievance is real right.

[00:32:43]>> Absolutely.

[00:32:44]>> Um and justified in my in my view. So you're it's really that immigration has shone a light on all of these things and and and and you know a lot of the things that you've been talking about and I think changing the political weather on David about the the the kind of Blair uh revolution in terms of uh in in terms of embedding into our legal system equality and human rights and all of the rest of it. two tier above all two-tierism.

[00:33:11]>> It embodied it embodied two tier in every single area that you look at be it financial be it conceptual being the language of public conversation Daron said the language of private or attempted control of the language of private conversation.

[00:33:26]>> Yeah. So put put another way um if there were if you like sort of no ethnic or religious minorities in Britain by happen stance then almost all of the rules that you had about the um the way you would protect all these religious minorities and ethnic minorities and what their rights and privileges might be would be moot. Um but we've got both combined together. uh an enormous influx of people from different cultures, different backgrounds, different countries, different religious creeds and a legal framework and a welfare framework that appears and in fact does in many ways give preference to those groups. Well, that is a mix that is likely to shatter people's um longdeveloped electoral voting patterns, right? And that's exactly what it's done. So that my explanation is you could say it's just immigration but it's because immigration has highlighted so many other things.

[00:34:21]>> It's the trigger issue, isn't it? It's the trigger issue and it I mean if you like it's it's the um it's the equivalent of a fuse.

[00:34:29]>> Yeah.

[00:34:30]>> It's acted as a fuse to an already highly combustible explosive situation.

[00:34:35]>> Well, that might be right. Or or may maybe all of this sort of equality law, human rights law and all the rest of it were the fireworks and immigration was the blue touch paper.

[00:34:44]>> And if you like that, stand back a long way and watch because there is going to be a pretty spectacular response to it.

[00:34:54]>> This then points in another direction, doesn't it, Mark? We've been talking about politics. Uh I've also had on this show rather recently David Betts uh the professor who has been saying that unfortunately the likely conclusion of what we are talking about is beyond politics and into violence communal violence even he dares to talk about things like civil war. But if we turn around and we look at the other side, we've been talking about the co the consequences of immigration for reform in particular and its rise. If we look at the other side, of course, we're seeing something else, aren't we? We're seeing the manifest emergence of immigrant groupings that make no attempt at pretending they're part of British politics at all. They they obviously play the system brilliantly. the the the clan structures and so on enable them to turn out enormous uh enormous votes. The it could be that the uh the question of electoral cheating, the the the manipulation of the postal vote and so on have played their share. But I mean how many how again I didn't follow it probably as closely as I should have done in how many constituencies now are we seeing the emergence of let's call it by its blunt name a clear Islamist grouping of significant weight. Did you keep an eye on it?

[00:36:25]>> Yeah, it it's it's interesting and I don't think it's it hasn't changed. it's just been um brought to the four and actually Birmingham was one of the last areas to count uh in these elections and the difficulty in measuring it David is they don't all run under the same banner of course so you're having to treat you know uh independent an independent candidate in one area uh could be you know the local lady who runs the tea shop whereas in another area it's someone who you know is fully in favor it's a gang master it's a gang master um so it's quite difficult because there's not a partisan system of measuring it.

[00:37:01]But it's probably somewhere in the region of 50 constituencies, something like that. Uh where this is of meaningful import. Um was it five or six at the last election were won by independence, the so-cal Gaza independence? We may see more of that.

[00:37:16]It I mean I think it is important to underscore that the you know the Muslim population of the UK is only 6%. Um not all of >> densely concentrated densely concentrated. Yes. But it probably already has a cap at 50 seats. That's my point. Right. So um and that would require a vast range of things to go in one direction only that every Muslim in Britain starts to vote only on these lines. Um uh and so I don't think it will go that high. But that's the scale of it. I mean in terms of Betts's sort of view about division and where it all ends up is rather nightmarish apocalyptic view I think if I've understood him correctly. Um I don't uh I don't wholly descent from it but I think we've got a few moves left before we get there. And the first test is will the democratic system work. So let's just let's look at if you like broadly our side of the ledger people who want to reset restore Britain get back to how it used to be run. um if we vote for that uh and we would be good losers I think if we lost an election in some ways but if we voted for that um will we get it uh this is uh again the question that was risen arose over Brexit like we voted for it why isn't it being delivered you know so if there's a danger that people vote that way and the machinery of state fails to deliver then I think the upswing in fury will be enormous and then there are two things there firstly will it that the the machinery of state will sort of insist we don't deliver it, that somehow the the the lobbying power of the legal profession and the influence of the civil service will frustrate the will of the people. Uh or will it be a political failure that let's imagine reform win outright with a comfortable majority but just don't show the the ability to get it done just don't execute it that a reform government ends up being as shambolic and div and divided as as the end of the last Tory government. If that >> or indeed this Labor government >> or this Labor government, you're right.

[00:39:22]If that were to happen, I think we're in dangerous waters. But I think we've still got two shots on the board. One is to rally people to vote in this direction. The exact means of doing so, you know, remains unclear in certain parts of the country, but an election needs to be won for those people who wish to put a stop to the insane path we've been walking down and to reverse it. Two, uh, having won on that rallying cry, it needs to actually become policy that makes a change. And if those can be delivered, I'm very very sure we can keep, you know, violence off our streets by and large. Uh that we uh that we won't see the sort of emerging civil war that Betts uh envisions, but they probably only have those two last shots on the board. I can't really think what my plan C is. you've been very firmly talking on one side of the equation and much uh and very definitely avoiding of course the very difficult the very dangerous topic of the other side the Muslim side of the equation and there there has been an extraordinary degree of blatancy hasn't there with the Gaza marches with the staggering rise in anti-semitic attacks the overt violence of them already do you really see those groups that have emerged, if there is a reform government, if there are the moves that you and I would like to see take place, do you think you use that expression, be good losers? Do you think they'll be good losers? I don't.

[00:41:01]>> No, I think uh probably by and large, no. Uh but I think that the and I'm being very marshall in the analogies I'm using here. um uh probably unfortunately so but I think the weapons that we have to win the war are quite significant and one area is around welfare reform right um so people will start reacting um not necessarily on mass by taking to the streets and burning things down that might happen but simply by reordering their lives if the financial incentives alter so I think you've got to completely reset the the the welfare benefits system you know the the that I mean at the at the most sort of public end of it that gets the most attention.

[00:41:46]You know, no wonder loads of people are putting their hand in the air as soon as they arrive arrive on these shores and saying, "I claim asylum because you know what you're going to get? You're going to get a three-star hotel with a games room and free dentistry and discounted tickets to the football and god knows what." So, there's people responding to these incentives. These these by and large these people aren't coming here because they want to prosecute Islamic jihad. Uh they're coming here because they're being offered for uh for no work and no effort a threeart hotel at the expense of the taxpayer. If that's switched off, you probably don't you probably don't deter the determined jihadis who are willing to give life and limb for their cause, but you do deter the rest of them. And I suspect that if you were to take that as just a kind of microcosm of the generous welfareism we have, the same would apply elsewhere. If you start having limits on uh what welfare you can get based on how long you've been in the country or your association with a local area, not on racial lines, I have to say, just on on uh on on tenure, um then I think you'll find a lot of these people decide that Britain's no longer a country for them.

[00:42:53]I'm not saying that we should make it inhumane and deliberately cruel and uncomfortable on groups we don't want.

[00:42:59]I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that if you switch off quite a lot of the welfare, I think you will actually get people deciding to leave the United Kingdom rather than remain.

[00:43:09]Silver bullet, no, but a pretty useful bronze bullet. I think once again, Mark, I think you are being as I would expect from you, rational.

[00:43:21]your o old world uh of the IIA shining through good policy management. But can I just invite you to be a little less Russian and to look at where we are at the moment and to look at those London marches, to look at the behavior of areas around Birmingham uh in Lanasher during those great tense days of the Southport riots to look at how far um important sections now represent ed particularly by the Green Party have legitimated all of this. Um I don't think they're going to let go lightly.

[00:44:10]Um I think there is a whole world again you know if you look at the old Labour party I remember with my father with his trade union and the marches and the the the recollections of the great banners remember the remains of it now of course simply a feeble parody of the old uh Durham miners gala that kind of thing a new language is developed a new language of public behavior of marching of banners And it couples into very powerful belief systems which are entrenched, which are given as was an element. Everybody talked about the old Labor Party and nonconformity. Well, there is another religious group behind all of this. As I said, I don't think it's going to go away very easily.

[00:44:58]>> What do you think the solution is, though? Um, do you think I mean, I'm maybe taking an overly this let's shift cameras now. Let let's turn it to me. I think we have to deal with it as we once did um when we had another religious group that claimed uh power over the state, the claimed that religion took precedence over politics.

[00:45:23]the claim that violence was a legitimate weapon against a wicked tyrant which in other words a religious system that then social system that they didn't believe in which we had laws that dealt with religious expression um we had the anti-atholic laws and again it's really very they were very English we didn't do what happened in the Netherlands we didn't do what happened in Spain at the end of the reconquest we didn't burn and murder and torture publicly huge numbers of people. Even then we had a kind of IEA straight streak in our politics. We chose tactically we chose to control clergy.

[00:46:07]We control the importation of legislation. And of course if you actually look in if you like successful um uh um Muslim countries like the Gulf States and whatever they all exercise very very the state exercises very direct supervision of religion they they are the technical expression is irian the state controls the church I think we're going as part of that process you're talking about Mark where we apply the econom eomic levers where we apply the subtle it were supply side things. I think we're going to have also to apply forms of criminal law.

[00:46:51]>> Really interesting. I think you're as is always the case, David, I think you're on to something here. uh and uh it it speaks to as having to draw up explain uh and ensure is rendered coherent a proper sort of civic nationalism in Britain that has been lacking and has given over a lot of territory I think just to the ethnic nationalists who have uh an oversimplified view of these things in my humble opinion you are on to something there is a difference though right between uh the Catholics and the Muslims and the integration strategy as you rightly say, and you'll know all the details better than myself, we discriminated against Catholicism. You know, you couldn't practice it. You know, you were you were hunted down and all of the rest of it.

[00:47:37]>> No, you weren't. No, you weren't. And that there was you really you really were.

[00:47:42]>> Okay. The state didn't put put another way. Maybe I've exaggerated the anti-atholicism, but we but we we didn't discriminate in favor of Catholicism. We didn't give you a house if you were a Catholic.

[00:47:54]>> No. No. Absolutely. No, >> now this time round we have discriminated in favor of a >> been completely mad. We've been completely mad. But what I'm just trying to say, so that's the sort of difference. There was there was discrimination against Catholics that we and you know for because there isn't discrimination against Muslims at the state level. There's discrimination in favor of them. Uh so I think you're on to something, but I think I am too because I think if you favorability then then a lot changes.

[00:48:22]>> Please Mark, I'm not denying it. I'm saying that I think we may need both.

[00:48:27]>> Yeah.

[00:48:27]>> That we need both.

[00:48:29]>> That we need both. And we again above all and here again I hope we're in agreement. We're coming to an end of what I hope is a period of shockingly and I'm using a word that doesn't normally go into politics. Shockingly unimaginative politics in which we've had vast changes in which nobody has thought. in which the staliest things have simply been pulled out of the cupboard. I mean, and the ultimate example, and I think this might be a useful moment to pause is the current Labor government. Clearly, in the period from the fall of of Gordon Brown and Blair in 2010 to the re-election in 2024, nobody thought anything needed to change whatever. And somebody like Max Sweeney simply goes and talks to his mates like Peter Mandel and says, "How did you do it the last time?" And they all, you know, go back, they dust off their papers and they say, "Well, you need to make a promise." I mean, look at it. You won't increase taxation. You know, that'll that that that'll get you around that one. Um, you know, and so on. That shocking lack of imagination.

[00:49:42]Well, I this uh I think this is exactly right, David, and the detachment we're seeing between the political elite and the electorate is in large part based on this. The electorate um in general terms are up for a very big change and I think except they accept that this could involve a bit of pain and will involve a bit of risk but they are signaling they are up for it. The traditional political parties are still playing politics on a micro level. You almost expected the Labour pundits on television over the last couple of days to say, "Ah, well, the lesson I take from this fury amongst the British electorate is we need to roll out more breakfast clubs at school." That's literally the sort of policy lever they're going to reach for.

[00:50:30]And they're just they're playing the wrong game. Uh that's not the sport we're in anymore. It may be a good thing or a bad thing to roll out more breakfast clubs at school, but it completely misses the point that the electorate want a comp a gigantic reassessment and restoration of uh of our great institutions and none of the legacy parties are talking about that.

[00:50:55]Uh none of them I think have the the kind of intellectual bandwidth to even cope with the discussion really and that explains their present destruction in the polls and at the ballot box. I could put a contra case to you, couldn't I?

[00:51:08]the extraordinary reaction to Labour's one attempt at you could say intelligent policymaking which was to remove the winter fuel allowance and then that vast oh no which is after all a completely recent invention of Gordon Brown at that moment when he was trying to get consent for the welfare state by making sure everybody however rich they are actually received you know a little a little Christmas gift um from from the welfare fairy to to mix metaphors e even more badly.

[00:51:42]So you could put forward another view though, couldn't you? That the British people, the the electorate talks the talk about wanting change, but the moment that actually comes the fact that, you know, granny loses her winter fuel allowance or uh we don't get quite as much child benefit as we were expecting immediately. Oh, well, we're not going to vote for you. Yes, that's a fair point. Uh, however, I think that the the truth of it, and again, I may be being somewhat overoptimistic here, but the truth of it is that you need to do these changes within a wider context. It is very hard to take away a pensioner's winter fuel allowance while you are increasing the amount you're spending on asylum seeker hotels because it speaks to your priorities. It's also quite difficult to take away Granny's winter fuel allowance if you gave no indication in your manifesto just a few months previously that you were remotely minded in to do so.

[00:52:39]>> In fact, you've effectively promised not to increase taxes >> effectively. Certainly. So, uh, so I think welfare reform is possible, but it needs to be done under an umbrella under an overall explanation of how we're going to reset things. And although it was a very modest program of fiscal consolidation, the Liberal Conservative Coalition government of 2010 did this quite successfully, at least in terms of its narrative. Here is the position. I will roll out for you the the amount of money that you know we need to save and we're going to have to do this in a whole range of ways. And that message got across. I mean, in fact, they didn't really recraft the shape and size of the state. They just made some modest savings. But they did make some modest savings and they held the people with them. If you are, you can't just cut winter fuel allowance as a one-off tick box to save a certain amount of money.

[00:53:26]You need to have a plan that is fair and explicable about saving 1502 200 billion pounds of public expenditure and present it as a piece and explain why these particular reductions are fair and these other things are going to be retained.

[00:53:43]The Labor government completely failed to do that. They've just been desperately scratching around behind the back of a sofa looking for some money and grabbing it from wherever they could find it. And that turned out to be the person they are lighted on was granny and her winter fuel. That's no way to make radical changes in policy. That's how it blows up in your face. That's exactly what happened. If we summarize, we've said one fundamental thing, Mark, the likelihood is that the person in line to be prime minister next is Nigel Farage. We've said he has got a gigantic task of turning round the ship of state, but also persuading the electorate that he's turning it in the right direction and for the right reasons.

[00:54:31]>> Do you think Do you think he can do it? Have you got in I mean it's a silly question in one sense but I think >> you may have no other options >> that I think we we again very often in politics you have to make do with the materials which are there but it is an enorm to use a word that I loathe which is a favorite of karmas it is a big ask isn't it it's probably the biggest ask of any politician certainly I think it's bigger than what we needed from capture >> to the same scale as what was needed from Churchill.

[00:55:11]>> I think that's right. Uh the reason that I have some faith that Nigel Farage could do it is firstly he's a known quantity. So I think whether you love him or loathe him almost all of the electorate know how he would instinctively approach a particular problem or a particular issue. You can guess what's going to come out of his mouth before he says it. And he uh communicates in a pretty consistent fashion. I think that's useful. I think that's probably even necessary for the for the prime minister who would need to uh reset Britain. Uh secondly, uh I genuinely think that uh he doesn't just want to be prime minister. This is not the he has not spent his career climbing the greasy pole and finally getting >> so he's not another Kan.

[00:55:55]>> He's not or Michael Hesselton. He has not planned this political ascent. he just finds himself in this position in which uh other options or avenues appear to be closed off. I I I welcome that uh because this isn't a careerist politician. This is someone who has a consistent view on a range of issues and simply finds himself holding the parcel when the music has apparently stopped.

[00:56:18]Uh so I think there are reasons to believe that he could well do it. Loads of people rehearse his weaknesses. Does he have a sufficient interest in policy detail or policy at all? uh does he fall out with people? All of these sort of things. Uh but it does now seem likely to me that that a Farage premiership and all good men, women, and true doing what they can to give that the best chance and the best shot is quite possibly the only way out of this mess. And will it be perfect? No. But is it the best shot we have of saving Britain? Very likely, I think.

[00:56:56]>> Mark, thank you. David, it's a pleasure as always.