They’re mad as hell and we don’t want to take it anymore | Oh God, What Now?

What on earth were they thinking? The Conservative Party’s weird, dystopian, GOP-style attack ad on Sadiq Khan shows just how much the party has lost its mind. The panel unpack what was wrong with it and why the Tories might have thought this was a good idea at all. And Jeremy Hunt says £100k a year “doesn’t go far” – is he right? Or is he just massively out of touch? Plus, in the extra bit for subscribers what could replace the Labour Party’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ ring-walk tune for the 2024 election?

• “They do a really bad video, they get roundly mocked… and the next day they do something worse?” – Ros Taylor
• “The Conservatives are going to have to improve 12 points just to do as ‘well’ as 1997… They are looking at a generational defeat.”– Jonn Elledge
• “People are now locked into jobs and house shares they don’t like because they feel too financially insecure to start again.” – Zoë Grünewald

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ohgodwhatnow

Presented by Jacob Jarvis with Zoë Grünewald, Ros Taylor and Jonn Elledge. Producer: Chris Jones. Video production: Kieron Leslie. Audio production: Robin Leeburn. Drum’n’Bass insert by Simon Williams. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. OH GOD, WHAT NOW? is a Podmasters production.

Welcome to oh God what now and apologies if this is a particularly long episode but we’re all too scared to venture back out into the dystopian Wasteland that is sadique Khan’s London I’m Jacob Jarvis and first we want to say a quick thank you to everyone who’s joined our patreon

Boost over the past few weeks advertising has got a bit tighter in podcasting lately so we need your support more than ever and you have really responded amazingly and we truly sincerely do appreciate it a lot if you want to sign up to backers or just step

Up your support maybe from the 2 to the 3 tier search oh God want our Patron or click for the link in the show notes you can even do it whilst you’re listening to this very episode on today’s show doing the same thing over and over again

Is said to be the definition of insanity so the Tories have decided to Simply go completely insane as a new thing to do after the party released the weirdest video on the internet well maybe not quite but you get my point we ask what is driving them so so far to the brink

Plus Jeremy Hunt whose net worth is reportedly upwards of5 million has said £100,000 isn’t that big a salary how deluded is he and has he basically admitted the Tories are screwing the middle classes over just as much as they are the working classes and in the extra bit for supporters what could Labour’s

New ring walk music be it’s time to replace things can only get better and we have some suggestions now let’s meet the panel first up it’s the host of jam tomorrow and author of the future of trust it’s Ros Taylor hi Ros hello so the BBC is looking to reform the license

Fee we learned this week and uh part of that might mean the Mah hoovering up a bit more money from the podcast industry which doesn’t make us particularly happy what did you make of the announcement from Tim Davey and what stood out to you yeah you’re right about the podcasts I

Must admit I was a bit disappointed by the BBC’s latest announcement of its new season of pod podcasts I mean there are things like off the Telly which is a new pod with two people chatting about what’s on TV which is nice but I don’t feel is actually core content that the BBC

Really has to be doing and there’s not a lot of risk-taking and there’s a lot of celebs and well I’m biased okay listeners you know I’m biased but hey having said that there was some good stuff in this they’re going to double down on BBC bite size which is fantastic

Revision tour when you have kids who are trying to pass exams and BBC verify which is also really really good service uh he is basically pressing Tim Davy for the world service to be paid for through General taxation because he thinks that the foreign office or to fund it and

Taxpayers shouldn’t be funding it through the license fee I tend to agree with that because it’s um part of the UK soft power essentially but there’s also inevitably going to be some kind of renegotiation of the license fee and what the BBC exactly should and shouldn’t be doing and there’s this

Endless dilemma about how to reach a younger audience that the BBC really needs to reach or it’s going to become irrelevant without stifling competition and you know indep dependent companies that are trying to do stuff in the same sphere so it is it is a tough one but uh

It’s it’s time for time for a really good discussion I think about what the BBC BBC does and what it ought to be doing and what it does well and what it doesn’t do so well and I would suggest off the Telly is perhaps not key to its

Content hopefully they can do some politics podcasts where it’s two older blos talking about politics and Fil A void which you know the commercial sector simply isn’t managing to do yeah there is actually what there’s the BBC Today podcast with Nick Robinson and Amal Rajan which I think he’ll find fits

That b fairly well what can’t Amar Rajan do I ask next up we liked him so much last time we’ve loaned him back from our sister podcast paper cuts it’s John ell John hello hello thank you for rescuing me you wouldn’t believe what they made me talk about

Today yeah no I was uh when I was uh seeing the headline about pegging I did feel somewhat somewhat sorry for you so I thought we’d bring you into a more lofty conversation here so sunak was forced into a bit of a mini reshuffle after Junior education Minister Robert

Halen and Armed Forces Minister James heape both resigned from the government there was also a conspicuous promotion which we can discuss a little bit more later on but on this does it feel like sunak is losing the battle to convince his party he’s right for the job not

Just convince the public he is I mean it’s not looking good is it and the problem is those are kind of the same thing it’s like the fact that he’s failing to convince the public is what has the party in such a flap I think

It’s now 63 MPS who have said they will not be standing in the next election and some of them would just want to retire but a lot of those guys it’s just like I’m going to lose it’s not worth it we’re going to be out and you know

There’s plentiful evidence for that like polls are still trending downwards we uh reforms seem to be going up there was one from yugov last week which have the Tories on 19 I don’t they’re Fallen below 20% before if if that poll was actually you know replicated at a

General election they’ have fewer than 100 seats and that’s before tactical voting is taken into account like they’re they’re fucked basically and the problem with with being fucked is like there’s no power of patronage anymore like Su that can’t kind of dangle things in front of people and say well if

You’re good you’ll get this because he’s not going to have that power very soon and everyone knows that so everyone’s just running around like headless chickens and it’s brilliant and also everyone so far has probably already had a cabinet job I suppose I mean there’s only so many jobs you can give Grant

Chaps to keep them on size isn’t there I didn’t know there were there the science science has theorized that Grant shaps could one day be doing every job so and finally with us it’s political correspondent for independent zoee grenal hello Zoe Hello Johnny Mercer is being pushed to hand over the names of

Those who told him about alleged war crimes in Afghanistan by an independent inquiry looking into this failure to comply could result in a prison sentence how do you feel about this I mean as a journalist does the idea of identifying sources make you winse a bit yeah it’s

One of those things where you immediately understand why he would be asked to provide this information you know it’s a statutory inquiry uh he is a minister it’s they are alleged war crimes of a really serious nature and now the the judge wants him to reveal the names of those whistleblowers so you

Can understand the severity of the situation but at the same time you would think they’re protected by virtue of being whistleblowers just like journalists wouldn’t reveal the sources of someone who told them something quite serious and then they reported on it you have to ask whether it’s in the sort of

Public interest for for um Mr Mercer to reveal the identities of these people um and you know the fact that he could potentially go to jail for this for not complying with the demands of a statutary inquiry is quite serious it’s not really something we’ve ever seen

Before and he suggested he won’t comply and he suggested he won well um there was some talk yesterday of him um being in conversations with the whistleblowers about whether or not he could Supply their identity that was reported somewhere I don’t know if that’s definitely true or if that has you know

Gone any further um but there’s also the suggestion that maybe the judge will back down he’ll understand the seriousness of um he’ll understand that they are whistleblowers and they are protected in that sense um but you know it is a it’s a really it’s it’s a difficult situation

You have to under you you have to question what the government will do you have to question what what um Road Johnny merca decides to take um and it’s it’s definitely one to watch out for I think people have seen uh Johnny Mercer in front of the inquiry or in front of

Any select committee inquiry as well he can be quite contous he can be quite obstinate he can you know he can be quite disagreeable and he’s very very proud of his armed forces background so you can imagine him being very loyal in that sense um so I don’t I think this is

Going to play out in quite an interesting way and it definitely presents a whole new issue for the government that we’ve not really seen before and you’ll be left to wonder who will be left to argue with Carol vman on Twitter as well his wife for reasons known only to

Themselves the Tories decided to release some of the most unhinged political campaign videos of all time this week these suggest life under labor will be a dystopian future which doesn’t sound all that much different to life under the conservatives perhaps someone at cchq is trying out the free word slogan Devils

You know with focus groups as we speak the first video in question talked about life under labor mayor Master sadique Khan and portrayed London of a 28 Days Later esque hellscape which came as quite the surprise to me when I watched it on my morning commute they then

Turned their sites on Birmingham which didn’t look like an apocalyptic Wasteland the last time I visited so what is pushing the Tories so far to the brink and can they really keep this up for very long john I see you made it through London safely to get here which

Is a big relief to all of us been fighting my bare hands when I saw the video I was shocked it wasn’t a parody to be honest what did you think um I mean have you seen Batman Begins yes it very much reminded me of

That kind of series of it was The Dark Night isn’t it the other no actually what it really reminded me of is uh about 40 years ago uh tell of Alis bear with me on this who played cojak did a series of film short films uh about cities around the UK as promotional

Things and it’s just these absolutely baffling things with let you know the voice of cojak talking about the Birmingham in a ringroad and stuff it’s kind of become cult thing it feels like someone in cchq has seen those and decided to do the kind of you know the

The evil Mery Universe version yeah I mean I suspect what is going on is like they’ve given up on on winning any votes in cities they know the people they are losing are the ones who are now fleeing to reform like they’re not going to get

The vot who gone to labor back they might get some of the sort of mad people back and they are the kind of people who are really worried about Sadi Khan and knife crime and you know they’re slightly you know they’re frightened pensioners basically aren’t they so are

They trying simply here to widen some sort of geographical political divide I mean it is a continuation of a strategy that’s been going on for since at least 2016 like possibly earlier but like it is sort of interesting how like the Tories have tried to run this country

While attacking its capital where they all live yeah yeah it feels strange to not be able to present London as something maybe quite a good place in certain ways are they just using London as a tool then because they also don’t think they can win the Mayoral race

Susan Hall I’m sure is a fantastic candidate but she looks like she’s fighting an uphill battle Susan H is like nearly 30 points behind according to the last poll um she’s labor apparently more worried than you would expect given that polling but it is it is not looking not looking great for her

So I suspect what this is actually about is Shoring up the votel where in the country although one of the weird things is like the the mayor of the West Midlands who is responsible for Birmingham is a Tory Andy Street he’s a moderate Tory but he is nonetheless a

Tory now the anti- Birmingham video is attacking Labor’s management of Birmingham city council which sits under that combined Authority but nonetheless that feels like quite a confused message yeah it feels strange also to be having a go at London but then also any other city that they just feel like at the

Same time doesn’t really quite work yeah I do wonder if these are the first in the series and like by the end of next week we’ll be looking at Plymouth or like Oxford or it it could R and run yeah I’m waiting to hear what exactly is wrong with Manchester that’s going to

Be done to Manchester yeah and he’s woke I’m sure as well we’ll add him to the list so R the tone of the videos were almost comical but did you find the language used to be quite Sinister in some ways I mean the suggestion that KH

Seized power and he was described as the labor mayor Master which just feels a bit almost like a sort of conspiracy theory Style language to me it’s bloody insane the language and they actually the Birmingham video is even worse than the first one this is a strange thing

That they do a really bad video they get mocked for it and the following day they put out another one that is even more ridiculous the Birmingham one contains the words the scales of Justice are balanced by a force Beyond mortal comprehension it doesn’t even mean anything all we just that yeah because

You you actually want the scales of Justice to be balanced right I mean I thought that was the whole idea of Lady Lady Liberty balancing the scales of of of justice but they’re balanced by a force Beyond mortal comprehension what the labor party what I it’s just the

Whole thing is insane it’s like it’s been written by by Ai and it’s very very odd but I think Politico suggested was reporting something that are Anonymous obviously Tori MP had said today um that uh they thought the ad was aimed at stevenage which for those who don’t know

Is a commuter town outside London rather than stram which for those do don’t know is part of South London and that is the that is the really pathetic thing about it that it’s it’s they actually think that they can fight a local election campaign a mayor election campaign on

The basis of appealing to people who don’t even live in the capital yeah yeah it’s very sure I mean I’ve I’ve been to stevenage and it’s uh I I don’t see why this would particularly appeal to them but I don’t I’ve got some friends who

Live there I’ll have to to ask them so could you pick out some of the key false bits from the videos other than that they used footage from totally different places to the places they were referring to there’s so much here it’s hard to know where to begin so to start with

They claim that KH is responsible for the police and it’s actually joint responsibility that he has with the Home Secretary um for the Met uh they talk about him implementing attacks on driving forcing people to stay inside or go underground do they mean take the tube or do they mean some sort of

Strange sewer existence and there’s the claim that knife crime has gone up 54% since 2016 that’s not true it’s gone up 31% Which is far too much a knife crime is a problem in the capital and if it was predominantly white boys rather than black boys getting stabbed every couple

Of weeks we would be taking it Norful lot more seriously than we do you know there is a there is a problem in knife crime with with in the whole of England and that does need attention but to lie about the stats is unforgivable and then there’s even stuff about drug dat death

Rate at a record high and again it’s it’s like 56.6 deaths per million which is claimed to be of the highest the highest on record it’s not the highest on record it’s it was higher in the year 2000 and it’s it’s a bit higher at the moment because we’ve got a problem with

Fentanyl starting to come into the country but it’s still not high and it’s much less than it is for example in the Northeast which has a massive drugs problem this the whole thing is just riddled with with lies frankly I know with that as well they used a sort of

Screenshot of an article about s KH saying he wanted to potentially legalize cannabis and I’m not saying there aren’t problems around cannabis and drug induced psychosis and all that sort of thing but I don’t imagine it’s linked to particularly many drug deaths so it kind of didn’t make very much sense in any

Way there really no so a lot of MPS will have gone back to their constituencies over the recess is this just an attempt to give them something to talk about that isn’t how rubbish sunak is doing no I don’t think it is I think I think I think someone probably somebody

Somebody quite Junior thought what if we went full Republican attack ad what if we even had the US voice over would it work you know would would that kind of thing really shake up British politics do basic standards matter anymore of of accuracy you know what the hell things

Are so bad for the Tores in the polls right now why not let’s give it a go let’s see how this goes down in the country and if people like it I think that was the only the only motivation and the only reasoning behind the these videos I have an alternate theory if

Anyone’s interested in my boring on which is like it’s so bad I think it’s deliberately ridiculous like when they use comic stands in their memes and stuff like that yeah it’s an attempt like they knew if they made it really over the top then everyone would share

It to mock it uh and therefore it’s more likely to reach the people who with whom that will resonate I don’t think it being ridiculous is a as a side effect I don’t think they’re looking at this thinking oh this is a really smart video we’ve done I think they’re looking at

This thinking people are going to share this for us and I think as well if you’re sharing it round even if you think the the tone is ridiculous the things like the highest drug death rate or the knife crime stuff might stick with you you know you might take that

Bit away and believe that even if you think the rest of it is ridiculous so it’s it’s kind of like drip feeding facts into people’s brains so that when they do go to the ballot boxes they’ll think you know maybe Susan Hall who herself has been a victim of crime

Having misplaced her Oyster card on the tube yeah um would be the right person to represent me and a victim of crime for that front page evening standard photo remember as well that that counted the crime against her I’m sure you’ve also when you’re talking about London

And you having any absolute stats as opposed to you know per million but when you’re talking about say the number of knife crimes you’ve got to bear in mind the population of London has increased quite fast and it’s a million more than it was a decade ago that’s inevitably

Going to affect the stats but of course they never mentioned that so on to the mini reshuffle quickly Jonathan gullis AKA 15p Lee as he’s been called by some people on the internet God that must sound old saying on the internet but uh anyway on the worldwide on the worldwide

Web uh now I could see Lee Anderson was a bad idea myself at the time to be honest and I don’t think I’m really some sort of political servant of any kind and now they’ve gone for his discount version in his old role what are they thinking I think they’re trying to fill

The Gap with somebody who they think is likely Anderson you know he’s Stoke on Trent MP fits that kind of you know red wall type constituency um he’s part of the 2019 intake he’s um you know got some of Lee Anderson’s fighting spirit I would say

Not to the same extent but he definitely can be quite um Punchy um and of course he’s a you know he rails against woke um in in May 2022 he said that his constituents were left flabbergasted that the woke wet and wobbly lot opposite are on the side of

Their left woke Warriors who are making sure these rapists and pedophiles remain in this United Kingdom rather than standing up for British people in their safety that was regarding home office deportation flights so he uses the same language you know the same the same sort of signals I think they think he sends

Out um sort a really funny anecdote going around on Twitter earlier I’m not sure if it’s true because it was a screenshot from Reddit of somebody who said they used to be taught by Jonathan GIS and when because he of course he used to be a teacher before he was an MP

And um he apparently went into a of Rage once because um they printed someone printed off a picture of his head and stuck it on a picture of a seagull and posted around the sto and I just thought that was great and I could totally you

Know I’m not saying it’s true but I could totally see him responding like that yeah he does get very angry about things I saw he tweeted go woke go broke about Birmingham today so we need to kind of add that to the the list of things which are woke alongside any

Color that isn’t red white or blue the the rest of the re Shuffle I it seems a bit Barrel crey to me to be honest but is there anyone interesting or anyone I should think hey they’re talented no um well I don’t want to be too harsh I mean Kevin be too harsh

Kevin Holland rake has been in the news quite a lot recently because he’s obviously been sort of standing in for the a lot of the post office Horizon stuff so I guess they found him to be quite an impressive Communicator he’s now minister of State in the department

For business uh n g is an interesting one so she’s now Minister for Europe she’s been sanctioned by both Russia and China so an interesting choice for a foreign office Minister yeah um and then the rest you know they’re all you wouldn’t have heard of them they’re not

Household names Leo docky minister of State minister of the Armed Forces Luke Hall Alan Mack I mean none of them as you say are people that anyone would know these are fairly Junior ministerial positions um but it does kind of suggest to you that we really are you know we’ve

Got over 60 conservative MPS now saying they’re going to stand down before the next election it really is giving you know the the the bottom of the pile I think last PE yeah exactly I mean Jonathan gullis was the sort of headline I would say and that’s only because he is 15p Le

Yeah and I mean that does also feel like a sort of rat that just can’t find the Chiefs and wants to keep electric electrocuting itself so uh John is it the sense of just total rejection that’s making the Tories get a bit weird the polls are completely diabolical there’s

No election in sight and it doesn’t really look like anything is going to turn it around are they in quite a weird place psychologically which is going to make them act strange I mean they must be I mean just like knowing everyone hates you kind of do weird things to you

Isn’t it but I think it’s a couple of different things I think firstly there is no policy there is going to be no policy we are just in one long election campaign so there’s a vacuum like no one is governing the country and other is it’s very difficult for them to kind of

Make the case for their record because you know things are visibly falling to bits and the FD is just the sense of desperation like as Ross was saying like things are so bad for them I can see like why they’re thinking well we really might as well try just throwing shit at

The wall to see sticks basically yeah they feel like someone that’s really upset about being dumped and just kind of won’t leave the person alone sort of Desperately claing back to them yeah leaving like you know three minute voice notes of sobbing at 4:00 a.m. I’m really

Sorry about that I didn’t I didn’t mean it someone opening WhatsApp and it’s just the whole screen they have to scroll through the edge so there’s a peace in conservative home which asked a question which I found quite enjoyable to read really the uh what if the polls

Are right which uh I mean even if they’re a little bit not right it’s still pretty bad for them are they having a bit of a whilst going into this sort of Realm of non-reality they’re also having a bit of a Reckoning with reality so Paul and Guru John Curtis has

Said it’s 99% certain that label will win which I think we all fought but it gives it a bit more gravitas doesn’t it I mean the the idea of the sort of Wipeout the like not just a bad result but a really bad on for the tourist has

Been kind of creeping out the agenda it was kind of like a fringe thing that was discussed on bits of the internet and then it started popping up on substack and then s of left Wing writers hello we’re doing it and now finally it’s kind

Of made it to the actual sort of Tory blogger sphere um so the next thing is look out for a column in the telegraph or something I guess but yeah no it does kind of feel like gradually reality is Dawning that they would have to recover

But I think it’s about 12% in the polls for it to be as bad as 1997 and they may well they may well do that like the polls may move it wouldn’t be that weird if there’s a bit of kind of closure between the two parties as we

Get closer to the election that does tend to happen but to be 12 points off uh a generational defeat like 1997 is like this is this is really quite bad but is there a bit of kind of I don’t know Justice is maybe the wrong word but

Here that the Tories have sort of dug themselves into this spot by using the tools of degrading the way we speak about politics so much but then I suppose like any sort of tool if you use it too often it becomes less and less effective so now you know even resorting

To videos which really draw on people’s base fears won’t help them will it no I don’t think it will but they are basically torn at the moment they are squeezed uh from both from two directions from both voters who are leaving for labor and voters who are leaving for reform and they’ve already

The switch to labor happened already labor support is pretty much consistent in the polls now what’s actually ticking up and further eroding the tourist support is reform so they are looking at that and thinking right further right is obviously the place to be because we’re losing more votes there and so that’s

Why they’re putting out videos like this but of course the key problem is that they incapable of running the country properly and everyone can see that and some people take from that that we need to move much further to the right and some people take from that to the that

We that we need to move to the center or the left but the problem is the same one they’re still losing boates yeah I suppose the the the hard thing there is for them they’re looking to win an election and the the Practical thing that might be better for the country

Would be them going more into the center but that would probably see them lose literally everyone because that ground’s been dominated by labor and then the right would hate them I think they’re actually slightly wrong about that because I think reform R voters are surprisingly promiscuous um and they’re often not you

Know instinctively pretty right-wing at all quite a lot of them are keen on quite an interventionist State on um certainly for the people they like in that state not for the people who they don’t but nonetheless they expect certain standards from public services for example and you even get some weird

Crossover between people who are thinking of voting green and people who are voting reform and that shows to what extent it is a protest vote as well so do you think as well as being desperate the Tores are just bored I I’m I’m finding some of this quite boring to dig

Into this the video shocked me but at the same time I just thought oh for fuck’s sake they’re doing it again are they just bored of it they can’t run things they can’t make things better they’re just they’re worn out I think there’s different feelings amongst different parts of the party I don’t

Know if it’s so much boredom I think it’s probably more what Ros said which is that at this point they just have nothing to lose by throwing shit at the wall and sing it sticks essentially um and that there are also lots of people in the party who have different

Strategies for how they want to bring back power and I think you can see this a bit for from how sunak is responding to things one minute he’s pursuing quite right-wing you know legislation or or making quite right-wing sound bites the next he’s standing on the steps of

Downing Street doing a message of of unity and you know calling for everyone to come together and stand up in the face of extremism um and it’s like he’s surrounded by sort of young advisers and the right of the party and everybody’s kind of chewing his ear off

And he’s just kind of going for lots of different approaches depending on what day the week it is and who’s convinced him this week um and I mean I guess there might be to some extent if you look at the sort of people who are doing conservative comms or if you think about

People who aren’t politicians but work in the conservative party you know they’re all going to be thinking about their Futures what sort of jobs they want and you know some people might want to have on their CV I did this really well-known um conservative campaign where we made all these insane videos

And they got all this Outreach you know they were shared millions of times on social media um so I don’t if it’s boredom I think it’s just lots of people seeing this as an opportunity to try out lots of different things and it comes across confused and incoherent but I

Don’t think it’s boredom I think it’s just nonsense really someone at cchq desperately wants to be hired by lad Bible Yeah now let’s have a question from one of our patreon backers in but your emails if you supports on patreon you too can submit a question for the panel so make it a good one uh Sarah vaugh this week asks does the panel think there will be a ukip reform style

Disruption on the left and what would be the potential impact on the incoming touchwood labor government we don’t have any wood in the studio but rest assured we’re we’re all suggesting that we are touching wood here Ros what do you think to that I think there will certainly be

Some protests on the left when as if we John Curtis is Right labor takes power I think they will sniff the opportunity to disrupt and to push the agenda further to the or further back to the left um and resist what K starma is doing because they’ll sense it’s kind of their last

Chance right and that is a risk however I do think starmer’s grip on the party is such that he will probably be able to to resist that we’ve seen I suppose they a similar thing recently has been The Descent over Gaza in the labor ranks and that has been problematic and it’s been

Difficult for many in the labor party um and we’ve saw some Fallout in terms of George Galloway’s Victory but I don’t think ultimately it will really affect the the the election result so there will be flashes the thing is and the media will very much seize on these

Divisions because the tourist will be absolutely nothing probably and nowhere and no one will be interested anymore and who’s plotting against who although there will be a certain amount of excitement for a while about who’s going to be the next leader of the Tory party are they going to go right are they

Going to go statist are they going to go Orban are they going to go blah blah blah so there will be that excitement but most of the media’s attention will be on labor and its internal divisions so they will very much play it up but given the likely profile of most of the

New intake of Labor MPS and the fact that most of them not all as we you know saw with case of anti-Semitism in Rochdale but most of them have been very highly vetted I don’t think that they will want to rock the boat that much John what do you think I think there’s

Uh probably sort of a sweet spot for a labor majority I don’t know where it is maybe of like 100 something like that I think if it’s if it’s too small then like obviously that will give the Socialist campaign group a certain amount of power

Like it won’t be a veto or anything but they will know that they have the power to defeat the government and that will make their voice heard so they will um you know there will be MPS who want to do that and will want to drag the

Government to the left um but also I think if they get such a big majority that like you know if it is one of these insane results we’re kind of seeing in some of the polls then no one is better at opposing the labor party than the

Labor party um I don’t like I I think it unlikely there be a formal split but I can totally imagine kind of like an internal factionism because as as richy sunak is finding now like a lot of a prime minister’s power comes from patronage and if you have 400 labor MPS

They’re not all going to get to be ministers they’re not all going to be able to be on that track there just won’t be enough jobs out there so it makes it much harder to kind of like tell people if you behave well and vote for the government then you know

Somewhere down the line there’ll be like a nice juicy job for you so I think like and and also it won’t matter so much if people rebel and they will know like they can Rebel safely without actually risking bringing the government down so I think too big a labor Victory probably

Actually makes the party harder to run the the other issue that’s worth thinking about is like whether like that that sort of external Force already exists and it’s the green party I mean like Owen Jones’s intervention a few days ago where he said he’s left the labor party he’s going to be supporting

Independent and green candidates I think that will probably be a certain amount of the energy that previously backed corite candidates is going to end up um it would be nice to think that we could have a political force that kind of like drags labor maybe a little bit to the

Left just as like verage and Co have dragged the Tories to the right right I am not quite so convinced that leftwing politics is works like that like I think a lot of people around star are very very anti- being dragged in that direction and they will dig their Hills

In plus a lot of the green vote is not necessarily leftwing these days like it’s increasingly it’s Rural nism and so on but you know that force does already exist out there Zoe um I I would agree with um both Ros and John I think I

Think the the power that starma has on the labor part party but also just the fact that a lot of people know that the best way to kind of keep the conservatives out is to vote labor or to vote in a way that would put labor in government means that I don’t we’re

Going to get any significant challenge to the labor party but I do think there are going to be pockets of dissent and I think there’s a few issues I mean people are talking a lot about Gaza and obviously that was a factor in the rale

By elction but when I went and I was talking to voters there a lot of them were actually really angry with the labor Council you had a lot of small business owners there so people who own shops you know um travel agents takeaways Opticians things like that who

Were furious with what they perceived as labor Council failings that had affected their business they changed the roads they’d installed cycle Lanes now nobody was coming to their shops nobody could stay they were losing business uh potholes litter all those things those kind of local issues and I think George

Galloway knew there was anger there and some of it you know some of it he did capitalize on on uh starmer’s approach to Gaza but some of it was actually nobody cares about rochel except me that was the message he was sending out um and I do think and you know it’s

Interesting because the the candidate who got the second largest vote share was David Tully completely independent local Rod dalan man uh I think three or four generations uh his family had lived in Rochdale and everything he was campaigning on were local issues and I do think there is this disenchantment

With with with Westminster politics this Fury at MPS in Westminster and how they think how people perceive that they look at certain areas is and I think more and more we might see people turning to Independent candidates local candidates who they think represent their interests

And when you look at the sort of issues that are happening in local councils at the minute lack of funding lots of people are furious with the state of their services with their roads things like that I think you might see a shift towards more people voting for

Independent candidates who are local to that area but I don’t think that’s going to be significant enough to make a massive dent in labor vot share but I do think it’s an interesting Trend we might see more of Jeremy Hunt has enough money to spare that around a decade ago it was reported

He had a sprung floor on which he can practice dancing the Lombard installed in his home I I honestly wish that was a total joke but it it’s not so uh his footwork fell a foul recently though when he suggested that 00,000 a year is not a huge salary in his Sur

Constituency at least I imagine that’s news to a lot of people but is there something we can glean from his comments even he realizes the Tories have made the middle and upper middle classes worse of despite having been meant to be their Champions John it’s easy to call

Hunt an idiot or worse as many news readers have at points and I’m I’m trying desperately hard not to but has he actually revealed here something quite honest about how badly the Tories have the screwed people over financially the idea of them saying 100,000 wasn’t a huge salary would have seemed completely

Laughable when they came into power in 2010 and obviously there’ be natural inflation generally but still it’s not that long ago no I have to say I think um jery Hunt’s comments this week have surprised me because I did it’s 20 years ago now but they did work for his

Company hot courses no I did uh as did half the British media in including another pop Masters person Luke Turner used to we were adjacent desks um but like there like £100,000 was definitely considered a huge amount of money £20,000 would have been considered an enormous am ount of money uh there was

An army of Staff living on 15K or less and you know yeah this was 20 years ago but even so that was not very much money so so I think hunt of 2003 might have been surprised by the views of hunt of 2024 um I mean a lot of it’s housing

Isn’t it I don’t want to I don’t want to kind of preempt but like so much of this is like he the exact comment from hump was you know 100,000s is is not necessarily that much if you have a mortgage in this area and looking at house prices in godling which is the

Largest town in in his constituency of Southwest s you are looking at half a mill for a fairly bog standard free bed house and that’s just not you’re not going to be able to buy that on an average salary you either need a huge lump of family money or an incredibly

High salary or preferably both so yeah this is the economy the Tories have presided over I think the question hunt should probably be worrying about why is it so bad that like £100,000 is not enough anymore to get you a fairly reasonable family life in in somewhere

Like s and what could his Chancellor maybe do about that well this time to the first section where we were talking about just the Tes are having to make themselves increasingly detached from reality and so when they try and talk about tangible things like this they’re just there’s such a massive

Disconnect well as John was saying I think this is this is a reality for some people living in Su particularly you know someone who’s working in London and might well be pulling in 100 Grand a year muting in and they’ve got uh a huge mortgage uh and they’ve also got huge

Child care expenses you can easily drop two grand a month on child care even more that’s 24 Grand a year you’re earning 100 Grand uh you’re paying 40% tax on uh anything over 50 Grand you’re paying a large into your sum into your mortgage it’s it’s actually not

Surprising that you know the money the money does go when you’ve got those kind of expenses and of course only 4% of Britain uh of working people in Britain do earn more than 100K so yes he is absolutely out of touch on that level but I can

Completely see where he’s coming from in the in the context of his constituency and the amount that people are having having to pay just in order to carry on working because that’s what you do when you have small kids you work in order to carry on working that’s that’s that’s

Your existence um I mean it could on the other hand you know 105k is the sum that Hunters uh forked over to the his local constituency Association in The Last 5 Years so in that case maybe it isn’t a lot or maybe it is is this a bit of a

Weird thing that I suppose for hunt have been in that position of being Chancellor and speaking very much to the nation in that role but then as you say This was meant to be him speaking to the people of Sur and he’s having to sort of think that way around you know he

Obviously doesn’t want to lose his sight his seat either I imagine yeah it’s a dog whistle it’s saying to people who are earning 100 quk in his constituency I understand how hard it is for you right now now as John was saying there are reasons why it’s so hard for them right

Now there was a survey recently of people over earning over 100k and a quarter of them said they had no money left at the end of the month but you know so someone who’s on uh 20K uh that’s going to be slightly risible yeah uh there’s focus on salaries here but

What about pensions there’s a lot of talk around the triple lock going on at the moment what implications are we going to see if there are changes around that it’s going to be more of a live issue because the triple lock is frankly unsustainable and this is why this week

There was a plan there there were rumors that they might raise the uh retirement age for people between 47 and 48 uh earlier than they thought to 68 uh rather than 67 which is obviously bad news for those people I think I might just escape this Fate by about three

Months but it’s it’s uh it’s it’s not going to be welcome news and it’s not the triple the triple lock it’s popular hugely popular among pensions but it’s simply isn’t sustainable in a world where you’ve got child poverty at the levels you have at the moment you’ve got

A situation where I think it’s one in four kids in Britain now is living in absolute poverty and of course the great success of the last 15 20 years has been to ensure that P relatively few pensioners are now in poverty and that that’s really good but there are quite a

Few pensioners now who are very definitely not in poverty and we still haven’t addressed the issues of el elderly people’s social care you know repeatedly the government various governments have tried to put forward ideas for encouraging people to pay more towards their social care or to think

About it and they’ve all been waved away because that’s too horrible to think about and we can’t confront it and it’s too expensive we need to talk about how to encourage people to stop living in properties that are too big for them but which keep increasing in value so they

Don’t want to leave them um and you know they feel a sense of security because they’re sitting on this property Nest Egg we need to talk about how to build better places for people to spend the last decade or two of their lives because at the moment um it’s we often

We we have a situation where care social Care at home is often completely inadequate unless it’s extremely expensive and then people have to go into a care home which is also extremely expensive and there are so many things to discuss I think pensions are only the

Least of it when it comes to caring for elderly people in this country zo as our token young person on the panel today do you feel that salaries which once sounded good I mean I’m sure1 100,000 still sounds pretty good sounds really good but uh do they seem less and less

Livable I I can’t imagine you I moved to London 5 years ago on an entry level wage and to be honest now I’m not sure if I would make that move I’d have stayed up in Leicester where my living costs were far far less than they are

And would be down here it was a jump then but now it would be just a Monumental jump when I moved to London in 2019 I was also on a a graduate level salary in the civil service so it was it was all right but it wasn’t you know it

Was it wasn’t really high or anything and I was paying about £700 a month rent it was about it’s about a third of my salary and it you know it was yeah to be careful but it was kind of the fun of it like everybody you were with didn’t have

That much money so you found the cheap spots and you moaned about it but you kind of hoped you were on a path to earning more and that just seems to have evaporated um I mean I didn’t get a pay rise a substantial pay rise for years

And um even if I had the the pace of rents has just completely outstripped how uh it used to be if you were a graduate and you you would expect your wage to go up now the average room rent in London is over ,000 a month if you are moving to London on

26,000 that is just going to be an extraordinary proportion of your living cost and then of course everything else in London is extremely expensive as well but I think there’s something that we don’t talk about here which is really important and I’ve seen it amongst my

Peers and I’ve felt it as well which is that this insecurity around money locks people into decisions a lot earlier in their life than I think they would have done a decade ago even so people are now being locked into jobs because they’re they’re too afraid they’re too

Financially insecure to start again so people are following career paths feeling like I can’t go back to square one you know I chose this career path when I was 18 I’m on it now I’ve made a bit of progress going back to the start

I would have to move out on my flat I wouldn’t be able to afford it people are also committing to moving in with Partners way earlier than they would have done for the Financial Security of splitting half a rent um people are locked into house chairs with people

They don’t like because they’re afraid to go back on the rental market and all of these things I mean they sound fairly you know part of life but actually they they are hugely stressful for people and I think the that feeling of being locked into a life or a you

Know you’re on a path that you can’t get out of is a huge source of anxiety and stress for young people that that feeling that you can’t just go to London and try a job and if it doesn’t work out you can get a new job and you can start

Again I don’t think people feel like they can do that anymore and that’s really worrying you know it makes you think what what do people people don’t have the freedom they used to have to explore and when you’re 18 you don’t really know what you want to do and I

Mean lots of people change their mind you change your mind about the sort of person you’re with you change your mind about your friends but people aren’t able to do that as freely anymore and I think that is quite significant in 2022 so the bank of England boss at that time

Suggested that Rising salaries will boost inflation which we know Hunt is desperate to get down do it feel strange for him then to basically be making a case that would suggest basically everyone in the country needs to be paid more money than they are being paid for them to be able

To be comfortable it’s like that cognitive dissonance we were talking about earlier which is that he’ll say one thing to his constituents who are particularly wealthy and live in s and then another thing when he’s standing at the dispatch box telling people that they just all have to you know get it

Together and not ask for a higher wage because we’re you know we’re all in this together everybody’s feeling the pinch of inflation how can he say £100,000 is not that substantial yet he’s asking nurses you know to be happy on their their salary when they haven’t had a pay

Rise in in 10 years or or whatever it really it it doesn’t feel like it like it adds up and I think it goes back to what you were saying which is in one capacity he is a constituency MP and in another capacity he is the

Chancellor but it you know it also does give a sense of you know both the chancellor and the Prime Minister are millionaires the sort of the conservative party are very wealthy um the cabinet is very wealthy you you get a sense that when you’re not really mingling in those circles which the

Tories aren’t famous for then you are going to maybe not be so sure what it’s actually like to live on 30k and have dependence and I think I think that is it I think fundamentally the conservative party is very out of touch with the plight of working people in

This country I think richy soon actually just come up with a message of telling people they should find a really Rich Partner like he did because to be fair you know it seems like it’s worked out quite well for him Ross do we need to talk generally though about salaries in

Britain how’s our wage growth lagged behind other countries I look at like salaries in the US for example and it seems like things closer to the six figure Mark are much more common than they are here yeah they are um and it’s very difficult to make comparisons and

The comparisons are often made with France and Germany and so on and certainly we have lagged behind France and Germany in terms of salaries but it is so hard to make meaningful comparisons when there are such big differences between what the state provides and what you personally have to

Cough up for and also how much you’re being taxed as well so France and Germany historically certainly have been taxed quite a lot more than us although that’s that Gap is beginning to narrow now as the um tax bands have been frozen so you can’t really make meaningful

Comparisons I mean you know us has a sales tax for example so when you when you pay for something you generally got sales tax state that’s that’s applied by the state and that all those kind of things factor into it same with housing costs if housing costs are high

Then you’re you need higher wages in order to pay for them if housing costs are much lower as they often are in the US not universally then you don’t um and so I would really resist making those kinds of making those kinds of comparisons of course pay has gone up

Recently because of inflation it’s gone up more than the uh private sector than in the public sector because Jeremy Hunt has been you know forcing making sure that the pay awards for public sector unions have been have been relatively low and of course in real terms because of inflation although salaries have

Risen quite a lot the real terms increase is it’s a real terms decrease small but it’s a real terms decrease so as well we we talk about a lot of you the the political divides which the conservatives have created but are we seeing them we’re obsessed with class in

Britain but are they splintering the class structure as well it’s as if the the middle class of often a lot of people in the middle class would like to refer to themselves more so as working class we see that but are they actually being dragged out of the class that

Perhaps used to being in and then you know frankly people in the working class they”re been pushed further to Poverty are we seeing more divides within the classes system than we maybe have had in the past I think we’re seeing that between Generations I think we’re seeing

Quite a few people who look at the lifestyle their parents had uh or currently have and say that’s a lot better than I’m ever going to get so you’re seeing a switch down between generations and the way we talk about class in Britain is just insane it

Doesn’t make any sense at all of course because nobody hardly anybody thinks they’re upper class um people who think that they pull themselves up from the bottom would never refer to themselves as middle class uh plenty of people towards the bottom don’t want to be thought of as towards the bottom so it

Ends up being the case that almost everybody describes themselves as working class on the basis that they’ve done a job during their lives um it’s better really to talk about um there was there alternative ways of thinking about class is something Mike Savage at the London School of economics has done a

Lot of work on this and he identified a group that he calls the precariat which I think is really important to think about that we don’t think about because those people don’t have a voice in the media they don’t really have you some people who will speak for them but they

They they are in absolute poverty generally and that’s not a small number of people nearly a fifth of people now are struggling with basic needs and as I mentioned earlier 4 million kids are in poverty 4 million it’s just appalling partly due to the third uh the the uh

The refusal to pay benefits for a third child which is awful but not just that it we don’t talk about the people at the bottom because we don’t like to think about them and that is the real problem and that’s why here we are talking about Jeremy Hunt um weighing it about whether

100K is a large salary or not and that isn’t in a in a way that’s a way for Jeremy Hunt not to think about those people at the very bottom of society We’ve reached the end of the show so what are the stories that have gone under the radar this week Ros what’s yours oh I’ve got a great one I I’ve got some cheerful news good but we need it after having to talk about fucking Jeremy Hunt for such an extended period

Then well there was more bad news about sewage outfalls today and how many there are but the good news is that there’s a big new super sewer that’s just been completed in London it’s massive it’s like it’s it’s 16 miles long it’s 7.2 M wide it diverts 34 of the most polluting

Sour sewage outfalls away from the temps where they would previously have been discharged into and basically it towards a big sewage plant in East London at beckon where they can be processed now of course what that really means is that there’s an awfully large amount of shit

Sitting in a tunnel for a long time after heavy rainfall which perhaps isn’t ideal but nonetheless it’s better than the current current situation and all this is is being paid for naturally through our um bills on temp’s water but it’s these are things that are going to

Have to be built more and more across the country if we are going to be able to stop pumping sewage into water courses everywhere it’s called the temps tideway all hail the super sewer I say John I really enjoyed the story the president of Botswana threatening to release uh thousands of elephants into

Hide Park yes to see how we bloody will like it to to stop plighting a British Wildlife activist from like being like upset about like botswana’s like killing innocent elephants because they’re trampling their their crops I like elephants I think elephants are great but nonetheless I thought this is an

Excellent piece of Pol politicking from the president of Botswana yeah I’m sure it wouldn’t be long until the sun said they weren’t respectful enough of the Diana Memorial or something they come over here they Tramp our Parkland Zoe mine is a cheery story as well um just a

Lovely story actually so um a woman burst into an animal rescue center earli in the week with a baby hedgehog that she’d scooped up to safety the side of the road she was concerned it hadn’t moved or pooped all night and then the vet told her it’s not a hedgehog it’s a

Hat Bobble it’s the fluffy part of a c of a hat and it was just a great quote from the vet in the story they said it was pretty obvious to us but I can see how she was mistaken I went back out and explained I’m sorry it’s just a bubble

She said you’re joking oh my goodness how did I do that she was so concentrated on doing the right thing she was concerned it hadn’t moved or even pooed that would be spooky if it had yeah I I just thought it was a lovely story I’d be so gutted if I was

Her because the I’d have just been hoping that they would have recuperated the Hedgehog and I could have it as a pet which I think would be such a good pet I would also be mortified because every single newspaper has picked this story up and it’s got lot it’s not

Really under the radar it’s just a fantastic story of someone trying to do the right thing and being the butt of the joke for a good few days well on the on the sewage theme so my in a uh in a former life I wrote a story about uh

Eels in the temps apparently being high from cocaine with the headline cocaine in the temps is another problem Els don’t need did you did you break that story I love that story fantastic story yeah no I feel quite bad I ran up some very nice sort of environmental guy I

Can’t remember what what he was called exactly and I just I really put it to him I was like would you say it’s just another problem they don’t need and he said yes and I remember going to my news editor and being like right I could

Write quite a boring eel story here or we could do the headline another problem eels don’t need and I just ran with it fish are apparently full of contraceptive pill anti-depressants and cocaine after sewage spills and it was quite amusing how this emerged on Good Morning Britain there was a bit of of

Susanna Reed having to ask and being like can you really repeat that and get that get that for me but yeah I mean it’s there’s sort of raw sewage going into Langston Harbor pretty much constantly appears and has left marine species in the Water full of drugs it’s

Uh I mean that’s just absolutely crazy I just find it strange I mean it’s but look the the notion of drugs and cocaine is one other thing but that just seems wild you’d imagine some of that comes through your system is processed that has to be a huge amount of shit and

Sewage for that to transfer to animals and be found in tangible amounts so super sewers have to happen much more quickly and much more widely I would say right well that brings us to the end of the show on that on that note so uh thank you very much to Zoe thank you

Thank you Ros thank you and thank you John thank you very much stick around for the extra bit after demon is a monster by cornner shop and a big thanks to our generous supporters we’ve been unated with new backers and faithful supporters boosting their backing since we mentioned that things are getting a

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