Final thoughts on political engagement

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Because there is so much going on uh over the next few days that we thought we would try and do an episode where we sort of step back a bit from the maelstrom of electoral politics, international affairs, high politics around Downing Street, which we uh talked about uh in our last episode. So chaps there's so much uh to discuss and of course on Thursday the seventh of May quite a lot of us across m mainland UK go to the poll s. And um when we express our preference this time , it's quite different from elections of the past. You know, we've discussed so many times on this podcast, is this really the death of two -party politics? But Ian, I think you've been looking uh particularly at Scotland where it's already been, you know, five, six party politics for some time. And as far as I can work out, I mean I'm obviously much less embedded in Scottish the Scottish political scene than you. The polls are slightly all over the place, are they not? Will it be the end of the SNP's what two decades of government and hoping for a third Well it depends uh which set of opinion polls you you look at. I mean I have regular listeners will know that a few weeks ago I said well things might be moving away from the SNP I. mean it' its's so it so it as you say, it's so difficult to know with contradictory polls. What we do know, and as you say we're recording this over the over the weekend and we're gonna move move on to some other things. But what's worrying me as a unionist is the poll by Stonehaven and Stonehaven Stonehaven have produced a what's termed a m uh you know a mega poll, an MRP , which is a you know very sophisticated series of models and it shows uh it shows the nationalists winning a majority which is sixty six seats in the Scottish Parliament and then the Greens on top of that getting fourteen seats. So if that was to uh you know if that was to come true then you know, straightforward maths, that gives the that gives the pro independence forces forces eighty eighty seats in the Scottish Parliament, so a kind of supermajority and then reform second on twenty-one, Labour thirteen, Lib Dems eight, Tories seven. So what this shows if if if this transpires you can see the disastrous impact of and that that would be a very, very good result for reform and for Malcolm Offord who's made you know quite a stir in in the last in the last few weeks in the Scottish campaign. But that would show the disaster of the Unionist parties splitting splitting eve even more than they have been split and adding a fourth unionist party reform into the mix essentially creates a scenario in which on relatively low shares of the vote you end up with a uh with a with a nationalist super majority. Also shows effectively sort of the death of or close to the death of the Scottish um Scottish Labour Party. But so in summary, if this if this poll turns out to be the one which is um I'm not saying it is, but if if if this poll turns out to be an accurate uh assessment of of where things are, you're looking at the de facto death of the old parties, breakthrough for reform, but not enough to uh halt the nationalists and a nationalist supermajority. So that that's what's occupying the 'cause it No, I was just gonna say the percentage of the vote that the SNP will get, will it be a bit less than last time compared to twenty years ago? Are they down as a percentage in the multi party system ? Yes. Yeah so this is this is the complicating factor. If you it well if you introduce more parties and introducing reform as a serious force in Scottish politics means that well, this is the back to front thing about Scottish politics is that the system was the system was designed, the electoral system was designed in the nineteen nineties to prevent the SNP from uh gaining power. Now as as as various people have pointed out, th these things usually come back to you and back to bite you if you do things for the wrong for the you know for the wrong reasons in politics and in and in life. And it was supposed to engineer a situation where a coalition of Labour and the Lib Dems or maybe even Labour the Lib Dems and the Tories, but a bloc would always keep out the SNP. That didn't work. Now the system Yeah. Yeah. Now the system is working against is is is working against the Unionist parties and then the unionists through circumstances of history and accident and the rise of reform, are add along with Labour Lib Dems the Tories add in a fourth unionist party and then the unionist vote is even more split and dispersed. Now one qualification which crucially affects your ability to actually form a government, that's the thing, isn't it, is that the other unionist parties would find it incredibly difficult, let's not let's you know probably impossible to form a unionist co alition with reform. So the thing is screwed on that side of the ledger. Yes, but you wouldn't need to actually form a if the i if this turns out slightly different, and I'll come to the qualification in a moment, um then you would you wouldn't r you wouldn't need reform to join a coalition. The one thing you just need to need to do is you'd need reform to vote for a Labour First Minister or a Un unionionistist first minister. They don't have to vote for measures after that. You can you can kind of imp you can improvise and and potentially even you know lose votes at lose votes in the parliament. But I think I mean where where what we do what we don't know is I mean because this is down to such fine margins and with so many parties I mean really you know the the the the range the range of outcomes you know hinge h hinges on you know if the nationalists underperform or turn out uh you know turnout affects the the nationalists disproportionately and they they underpole a bit, then it wouldn't take much to put push them down below fifty five seats, which is then potentially a completely different um in a different different scenario, and that's the nationalist falling short. So I'm I'm just I'm just flagging that have me having been a bit more optimistic as a unionist a few weeks ago, the latest big serious piece of polling shows quite the opposite. Oh dear. So Tim, uh it's so fascinating, isn't it? Because in a sense, even though the electoral system in Scotland is different for the Holyrood elections, and of course there's a new different voting system for Wales for the Senate on this coming Thurs this coming Thursday. But even so, it seems to me that there's one thing that's completely different and one thing that stays the same. Do you think this is a fair analysis? One is, as Ian's explained, with all these different parties in contention, the whole electoral s landscape is, as Lewis Baston, the sophologist has written for the FT uh this week, it's scrambled. So it's not just that the electorate's fractured, it's then that the outcomes are sort of scrambled and quite chaotic. But I think actually, underlying all that, even given the different electoral systems, it's still in one respect the same game in party politics, which is being in the top two in contention. And I think that's why there are so many interesting things going on with, you know, reform trying to replace the Tories as the party of the right, the Greens talking up the idea they could replace Labour as the party of the left. I mean, let's see about that, right? But that's the kind of spoken strategy. And then quietly in local government, certainly in England, the Lib Dem's talking about ending up, not this time but next year, as in the top two across the councils of England. And once you're in those top two, even under different electoral systems, that's what it's all about . I think that's fair. And I also wonder whether it's also about be ing on a particular ticket a side of the political spectrum. So we don't have quite enough evidence for what I'm about to say yet, but I'm intrigued by the fact that we might be coming slightly American in certain patterns of how we vote. So it's always I've always been amazed that certain US cities, uh metropolitan cities with terrible crime rates, massive decline, keep voting Democrat. And they vote Democrat, they vote for their left wing apparatus because that's who they are. Not what they want, that's who they are. They are fundamentally on the left side of the political spectrum. Wales, which has been incredibly bad ly run for years, uh, and I would say run badly run by the left, is going to vote for the left . Uh when it wants change, it's going to vote for Plied. The SNP, despite having a terrible track record, because they have the independence cars and because they're on the left, they're going to stay in power. Lambeth, places across London, they're unhappy with Labour rule, but they're gonna vote for a more left wing party. And I just wonder whether we're beginning to see the the idea of floating voters uh who will go from one side of the spectrum to the other is beginning to disappear. And actually what matters is just how you move across your side of the political spectrum. And I think we may be seeing that uh big time for the first time in these coming elections. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes total sense and it's so interesting after the Brexit years, isn't it? Because it's it's sort of it's sort of it's sort of even when even as we've sort of moved on, I mean I know it's still a huge um issue in various ways, but even though we've moved on perhaps from br explicitly Brexit voting patterns, this two block division may be becoming embedded. I'm not sure. I think you're probably right to say it's too early to tell, isn't it? Certainly the sophologists would say it's too early to tell, I think. It's a good theory though. I like the theory. I mean I don't like the theory because to be honest with you, I find Amer ican polarisation one of the most depressing phenomena of the modern world. Um so I would hope we can resist that, or if we flirt with it, maybe we find Ian that it doesn't serve us all that well to just think, oh well my identity is this block versus that block because within the block, core Blimey there's a lot of variety of of uh the the policies and the world views on offer, right? It's not the same across either block. Yeah, it's a v it's a it's a really interesting theory. I mean the the other the other factor, and it'll be a big uh story if this tra if this transpires uh across the elections is low turnout. Which if in in in Scotland that's the that that that's the other conversation that people are having, that turnout may be as low as fifty percent. You know, nearly twenty years since the anniversary of um of uh Scottish devolution uh or '97, the you know the the referendum and this uh apparent wave of enthusiasm for for for Scottish devolution for home rule, you could end up with very, very low turnout. So that will be if if that happens and the nationalists do brilliantly, then people will say, Well you know, this there's half half the people have half the Yeah, what's the mandate, half of the people have sat have sat on the the sidelines. I mean it is I do I do think that it this just this this general sense of it's not even distress, it's but it's picked up by you know, more in com mons focus groups this week, which they've done in Scotland were just beyond apathy, just resignation about how terrible things are politically and about how terrible the the system is kicking in. I think the only the the only way out of that is is I'm afraid is positive engagement. I mean if people if people don't you know like what's about to happen in Wales or Scotland or, you know or you know it's not a devolved election in England, but you know you know what I mean. But at the next Westminster election there there isn't really any antidote other than engagement joining a party but that doesn't seem that doesn't seem plausible as a uh you know as as uh y you know as as a as an outcome either. People just don't seem to see the connection between their own involvement in the system and what's what's actually going wrong with our with with our politics. So I d I don't as I suggested on a m most recent episode, I don't quite know what to do about it or what to suggest. It's very interesting, isn't it? My my colleague Robert Shrimsley picked up on that wonderful phrase from American politics of the late twentieth century, the fed up nicks, that the people were not voting against the Republican uh president of the time because they were peace nicks, it was 'cause they were fed up nicks. And we do seem to have a uh a nation of fed up nicks at the moment. Okay, we need to take a break. Yeah. Sorry, we we have a nation of fed up nicks on one side of the ledger, but then we have these on the other side of the ledger, we have deeply committed uh partisans, which is a sort of point I was trying to make in a sense, is that they're gonna vote left, they're gonna put an independent pro-independence left wing government in Scotland, come what may. W Wales is the same. Parts of London are the same. And I think, you know, w the decline of religion is a big part of uh the explanation for me is as religion has declined, politics has repla ced uh that sort of sense of mission, that sense of uh vision that people used to get from religion, from local community, whatever, with politics. And so a large number of people now, almost regardless of performance , uh uh are attached to a side of the debate and nothing's gonna shake that. And you have that two warring factions of the fed up Nicks and the um whatever whatever you call them, the uh absolutely committed Nicks. I need a better expression than that. There's a group of both of those sorts of people. Yes, there's committee people, you know, who are basically going to vote for Tory or Reform on one side, or they're going to vote SNP Green, Labour, Pride on the other. And they um will vote for an identity, a political identity more than political performance. I think we should dig into the evidence a bit on that, to be honest, because I'm not sure, for example, we've talked about more in common, I'm not sure that their kind of segmenting of the electorate shows that numbers of kind I'm not sure that those groups are that big on either side, are they? Well no, I think I well well I'm I think just I mean it's a very interesting point that Tim makes. I think that reform is clearly we're talking we're talking about political apathy, but reform is uh reform is a movement. That is a d that that is a genuine political movement. People people who get involved in reform really, really believe in it and really believe that it that it that it has the answers. There is huge enthusiasm. I find the rise of the Greens absolutely terrifying , but the there there's no d there's no denying that there is there's genuine belief there. I think what concern what concerns me is that great group in the in the middle and and you know in in in in Scotland and Wales it's essentially you know it's just that big chunk sitting sitting in the middle despairing of what's happening but not making the connection, sort of expecting someone else excuse me, to fix it, or expecting something magically to come along that takes us back to a more sensible karma form of politics. There isn't really any alternative other than i in in engagement and trying to I mean I everyone everyone should join a party that old cliche probably not probably not gonna happen. But short of short of that, politics is going to b only become more riven in that way that Tim describes , uh, unless people do something about it. Okay, well now we really do have to take a break, Tim. Sorry. But no, but that but but you know that was that was very interesting. I don't think I agree. But anyway, now we can come back to that when we know the results, right? It's just a notion. I I let's come back to it when we s when we can pour over the results, shall we, and we can debate the point further. Okay, let's take a break. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run, and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale-ups, online, in person, and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Okay, welcome back. So uh you know it's a huge huge set of elections uh this week it doesn't seem that long ago, or does it, uh, that we had the general election and a huge landslide. It it feels so different that felt like a sort of inevitability. This one feels really, really unpredictable in lots of ways and new movements, as we've discussed, taking shape particularly notably on the on the left of the spectrum and the right of the spectrum. I don't know. What do we think? Do we think this is genuinely so different that we can't compare it to previous elections that we've all known? Or are there some sort of echoes there? I feel as if it is r really, really different territory, certainly sort of in terms of the big stories and the big picture. There's lots of familiar things going on on the ground, I think. But what do you think, Ian? Do you think it just seems to you transformed and that in a sense the compass has been slightly lost. Um you know, I was was talking to a couple of election analysts uh in recent days, you know, preparing for how we cover these elections at the FT . And they said, you know, my goodness, it almost makes me nostalgic for the boring old swing omata because because elections used to be okay, we're all gonna re re react against the right and swing to the left a bit, and then back again the other way, but only into only in in that sort of two dimensional plane, right? Yeah. And now it's four, five, six dimensional chess that everyone's having to play to interpret it. Well I think you know, care careful careful what you wish for because um I mean that directed at directed at myself. I remember thinking back to you know elections like two thousand and one and thinking as a journalist how bor ing they were and how I don't know consumerist and sort of media and and um media dominated everything was and that was Hague . Charlie vs. Blair and Charlie Kennedy. Yeah. And um goodness, yeah. I mean I d I do I for all the for all the terrible mistakes that the old parties have made, I think we're we are we are potentially gonna miss them miss them when they're gone. And this what's happening on next week on Thursday with a caveat we don't know the result we don't know the results yet. But this disintegration feels to me like the uh like the evolution, the development of a of a long-running story stretching back twenty years probably to Iraq and then financial financial crisis, the system is is is coming apart at the coming apart at the seams. Now I don't want to second guess what Steve would our colleague would say if he was here and we've had discussed this before about how we're not that far it's not we're not that distant from a time when the two parties got their the two old parties got their biggest um in a combined share you know, share of the vote in decades. So it's it's possible it can swing back. Twenty seventeen. We're talking about that. Yeah. Yeah. But do you not think that seems like in re in the rearview mirror now, a few a few years later, do you not think that seems like a phenomenon of the Brexit situation though? It was so Brexit twenty seventeen, didn't we? I mean I know everyone Yeah Yeah, Tim has made that point. It's uh seventeen and nineteen are through the uh you know through the prism of uh prism of Brexit. But if you do end up in a situation where essentially Labour and the Tories cease to exist or are redu or are reduced to you know to to r ruins in Scotland and in Wales and then uh obviously Labour is now in terrible trouble in in in London and uh you know and and in Birmingham as well. Then it's quite difficult to see how you what that how you get the how you get the bounce the bounce back. So it does it does feel like something new to me actually. It feels it feels like the um f feels like a moment where something new politically is str is um is is struggling to be to be born. It's so funny. 'Ca Ian has said the two thousand and one election at the time found it very dull, but now maybe would pay good money to be back in such boring territory as uh Blair versus Haig. Were you were you involved with the Tory party at that time? Because I have to say, I was actually, it was my first job at the FT on the UK news desk, and even though it was a boring election, I loved it 'cause I just love every election, even the dull ones. And then uh you know, in in retrospect that was Blair's pomp, and we'll probably never see the like again, will we, of a unassailable prime minister in that way. I well I I love elections as well and I always watch the BBC uh recasts of election nights when they do them on bank holidays. I'm that's sad. Um I wonder actually if there is one this Monday uh that'll come to think about it. But um yeah, no, I was um working at Tory HQ in two thousand and one and I was running the uh Christian Fellowship and uh the party's uh outreach to faith communities. But they put me in charge of the um the manifesto um organiz ation, not its content, but its organization. And you may remember it was the foot and mouth election. And so we ended up for various reasons, I was working with Greg Clark and David Willis, producing two manifestos. One when we thought there might be an election, and then we had to uh re um reproduce another one and i have both copies of the manifesto because the first one we photographed all these people and they were very gloomy and because the message was Britain was in trouble and the shadow cabinet so hated the first manifesto we had to reshoot all of the images of exactly the same people but smiling about looking forward to a conservative future. Right. And so I have it on my wall actually, the two thousand and one manifesto that was never published and all the people's this is hilarious really. They go from s uh d very gloomy to very u optimistic. That's a that is a marvellous anecdote. The psychology of how your kind of pitch lands is supposed to be, you know It was all sunny uplands, come with us to the Sunny Snyun uplands. It was not to be though. No. It was also the manifesto where the translation to Welsh went really badly wrong because uh Shadow Cabinet kept amending for the last minute. And the copy was being read by Fion ne Haig as they uh went to the Welsh launch and she refused to uh allow it to be launched. And so the Welsh manifesto was launched without an actual copy of the Manifesto 'cause the translation was so bad. That's my memory of two thousand and one. All manifesto. Um Well there you there y there you go, Ian. There was all sorts going on behind the scenes. Yes, there's definitely yeah, there definitely was. It was I mean, but two thousand and one is a sort of nothing election, isn't it really? I mean actually politics then starts to change again in two thousand and five when you get Michael H oward is um his his is Tory leader and this you know massive you know massive majority is is reduced and actually that's that that's the that's the service that Howard does to his does does to his party to shrink the Labour majority and then you get the financial crisis and then you get two thousand and ten election which is potentially winnable for the Conservatives. They fall short, of course. But yeah, so I I I I I found two thousand and ten a gripping campaign and two and two thousand and two thousand and five. And and d but twenty ten crucially, as you say, is post-the financial crisis and the recession that followed, and the world changing basically across the Democratic West, as you get this wave of discontent, you know, no rise in uh in e arnings or you know really prosperity taking a huge hit and the the assumptions about advancing prosperity taking such a massive psychological hit that you know qu,ite a lot of what follows has to come from that. I mean, I was very interested. factors in these elections of those years turned out not to be at all. For example, two thousand and five we think of that as the Iraq election, don't we? Because there was so much sort of campaigning on uh Blair's decision around Iraq and and actually the evidence shows that quite a lot of it wasn't you know, the voting patterns weren't really apart from in marginal areas like Top of My Road where it turns into Brent, that was a huge issue, but not in a lot of other places. But this economic factor of post the crash, do you not think a lot of what we're seeing now is just this rolling out of all the consequences of what happened between Yeah, I think y yeah, sorry, Tim, you want to go first? No, no, you go yeah. Yeah, I think it's I increasingly see it as I mean if you think it I mean it's not r it's not really been a terrific start to the twenty first century, has it, if you take the first quar quarter of it or so, you take from sort of nine eleven onwards. But yeah, I th I do think you're I th I think you're you're you're right, Miranda, that those those big those big changes or or trends are really what this is about. I mean th there's th there's the cr there's the crash itself and then the post crash economic environment and the productivity and living standard s um story, which obviously help obviously largely explains why people are feeling disconnected and un and and and unhappy because uh because Because the you know this the the the story, the link has been sort of broken, this ide the idea of how you move upwards through society, how the young particularly get on the housing ladder, all of those distortions which you know w which which which come but you know which come after the financial crisis are uh are obviously key. But then the other thing which increasingly preoccupies me is the is technology and the the intersection with the information uh ecosystem or what's been done to our information ecosystem. I mean we're recording this at the weekend after those uh you know horrific attacks in just the latest horrific attacks in in in North London. And we don't yet seem to have a full or clear understanding of what's been done to our information ecosystem and how penetrated and infiltrated it it's it it it's been by foreign actors and how that world how the world of viral virality and things being boosted online and the surge that the uh Met Chief Commissioner has talked about uh the Met Commissioner has talked about um in anti Semitism that is connected. It's connected to how over the course of the last twenty five years we've exchanged one flawed but long established gatekeeper run inform ation system for something complet ely different now um in the in it you know in in the digital world. You put all of that together, those enormous technological changes which are which are impacting the economy, the financial crisis, uh aftermath and then the information ecosystem corruption uh or or penetration of it, then I think it's hardly it's hardly a surprise if we you know that we end up where we are. D Tim what do you think about this? I have to say I completely agree with Ian on this on this uh uh you know eco information ecosystem thing, not least because of this proliferation of social media bots. 'Cause 'cause it's not it's not random, is it? It's not that the whole media sort of shared basis on which we debate pol politics has sort of collapsed in a sort of random democrat democratized way, which was the idealized way that the tech world wanted to present it. It's actually become a kind of wild west where you can organize and affect things. I mean I, was really struck by that story about how a whole bunch of accounts on social media that had been promoting Scottish independence went dark during the bombing of Tehran. Do you remember that story? So there's organiz ation online to disrupt Western nations that's you know that's able to sort of influence people I I think that's all true and I don't um diminish that in any way. But I think the fundamental problem in our politics um that probably would have existed anyway, even if we had similar gate level of gatekeepers, i has been the reality of the financial cras h and the long term implications of it. But the fact is that the West is now a relative decline in power. We are uh losing our share of the world's wealth, uh we are aging population and we are a fractured society. And so we don't really even agree on the um nature of how we should divide the limited proceeds of growth that that we do have. And that fundamental uh competition for resources, that fundamental dissatisfaction with life, that would be true, I think you, know, regardless of whether people were still all watching the six o'clock news um with Sue Lawley and all the rest of it. Um did she ever present the six o'clock news anyway? But uh I don't know, but I like the kind of mad ancient reference, yeah. And the fundamental problem for me is not only do you have that economic change, you have technological change, you have cultural change, you have change in um uh religious values um all happening at the same time and what we have over our politics running our politics is a group of people who are very specialist in how to do politic s and they don't have the uh breadth of life skills, hinterland that previous generation had, just when we need uh multi disciplined approaches. I think it's it's I think it's the law the law Well no I th I think it's the law of political broadcasting, isn't it, Tim, that we should obey, otherwise the broadcasting police will come for us. That if you mention politicians with a hinterland, you have to segue into the idealisation of Dennis Healy. The most cultured British politician ever to walk the earth if you believe uh various reports. I don't know. I th I think I know of plenty of politicians who've got that hinterland and who've got that life outside politics actually. I think it I think it's I think just the quest the the essay questi ons are just so hard. I mean I agree with you about the competition for r scarce resources means the sort of level of discontent is so but Ian, isn't that back to your point again that just make one quick comment. Yeah about um just so on two thousand ten, of course we did have the surge of the Lib Dems in that by election in that election. Now, as it happened, the surge went away. But actually that was the first post crash election. And maybe in that Lib Dem surge we did actually have the warning, the pr th the sort of herald that actually the loyalty to the main parties wasn't actually that great. People chose to stick with them on that occasion, but actually the changes that we've seen since with the splintering of politics, and I would say twenty seventeen is the aberration, rather than proving the point . Um we we've actually that breakdown in politics began almost immediately after the crash. And I don't think that's an accident. Isn isn't the problem with all of this that your earlier point is to you know people need to change things to s to sol to s you know, to solve this and make the politics work better. Doesn't that also come down to the fact that as as as Tim said, the fracturing is partly about this squabbling over scarce resources and unless we can find economic growth and prosperity and a plan for for such Yeah. It continues. Yeah. Great point from Tim there about the uh two thousand and ten election. In fact I I I remember him saying something similar, you know, i a year or two afterwards, because i in in the old politics of course after a financial crisis and a disaster like that, even though you can argue that Gordon Brown uh and Alistair Darling responded to it well, you'd expect a swing back, wouldn't you, in in old swing swingometer terms, you'd expect a a Tory majority government to to follow and of course it doesn't for the and uh Tim Tim describes it very well. Just two two two two quick points. Firstly just on the on this information ecosystem point that I'm you know in um inelegantly uh trying to make and um obsessed by at the moment. If you look at what's happening with Iran and social media at the moment. And you can see that some some of this has been has gone viral on online with people saying, look, wow, Iran has actually got a really the terrible Iranian regime has got a really good social media game. Look at their jokes. Look at the way that they're taking the Mickey out of the Americans. They're actually beating the Americans at social media. Now, Iran did not just magically become good. The Iranian regime did not become good or a uhdept is a better word at social media in the last uh last sixty days. Yes, quite. That that they have been running this operation for ten, fifteen years. There are there are other there are there and other states are doing a variety of different things as well, Russia and and China. And we've essentially been and parti with a particular focus now for obvious reasons on the anti-Semitism point and what is what what is happen what is happening to uh British Jews we have our society's been under attack in a really quite organised way for 10 to 15 years but we don't even seem to to to grasp yet that it's that it's happening. Things occasionally go viral in the digital world accidentally uh or just be just just because they're just because they're amusing generally when things go viral uh it's because someone paid to push it or to amplify it that's essentially how the digital global ad But I can you really is it all pushed by operators rather than be generally viral? It's incredibly easy to get something to go viral. If you look just tra track that's slightly different. Yeah. Uh generally, if you want uh I no, I d I think that that is the c the the the global tech giants have not designed a system, Tim, which is made for this great democratic outpouring in which the algorithm just sort of accidentally finds funny and interesting things and uh and this just explodes spontaneously. It is a system designed to make it a lot of designed to make money. There was a lot of propaganda around that sort of democratic ideal, wasn't there at the time? There was, and it turns out to be turns out to be largely turns out to be largely bogus. Okay. If you if you if you look at it it's i it is there on the I'm not saying it it is obviously not every Scottish independence account or um and this this applies across the fiscal sp Itec'str notum. it's it's not to say there's no real political phenomenon that it's expressing. It's how you amplify it. So so that's my point, Tim. It's not that it it's not it's not content that is all necessarily originated, it is how do you take amplify it through five thousand pounds spent with one provider or you know uh uh uh some some money thrown through three or four linked uh you know, accounts, difficult to track and then ending up in the global ad market and then amplifying stuff which is basically you know anti Semitic or anti Western. That is th that phenomenon we don't even fully underst we don't fully underst understand yet. I mean the authorities do in various countries but always follow the money though, right, Ian? I mean there's a lot of people making a lot of money out of you know, a boom in online anti Semitism. It's uh c quite clear. Listen we get we have to take a break, chaps. Um because you're all being too interesting. And so I forgot to take one earlier Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run, and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there, integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale-ups, online, in person, and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup . Okay, welcome back. So we are talking about whether the electoral contests coming this week are so completely different from recent elections that we've known that it's, you know, throw away your compass and look into the mist and make of it what you can come Friday and Saturday and the results. But um I think, you know, Ian, it was very interesting when we began this podcast that you were sort of saying, well, people need to get involved, you know, if they think politics has gone wrong, they've got to get involved. And I would strongly echo that. And, you know, Tim was telling us about his time in the center of the Tory machine in the early two thousands. And I just still look back on, you know, my time in the in you know, involved in an election campaign, happily for me, one that which went quite well for the party I was working for in 1997. It you can't have more fun than that. I mean this is the thing, isn't it? Elections are still a wonderful expression of a country, you know, making its views kno wn. I haven't told you. Isn't there still a thrill there? Miranda. Yeah. I haven't told you about the fact that the toilets in Central Office weren't working in 2001. While I was producing all these manifestos, um I had to basically wear a peg on my nose. It was unbelievable. So yes, politics is fun, but not always. I don't know if it's ever not fun. What do you think, Ian? I mean, I I always sort of all the kind of teenagers who want I do know a lot of teenagers who love politics actually, and I do think that's incredibly encouraging. And I always say to them, you know, try and get involved with a think tank or go and work for an MP or go and volunteer at election time. Because I think once you got the bug, you probably got it for life, unless you're so horrified you run in the other direction. Yeah, I mean I it still works. I mean we still have free and fair elections here and you know We do. I mean uh yeah uh may ma maybe though we had just we in describing politics as fun maybe we have sort of unusual unusual unusual taste. And I hate to know what you mean. How dare you? How very dare you I hate you know, I absolutely hate saying I listen to myself saying, get involved, join a political party. I mean, good lord, if I could have heard myself 20 years ago say ing that, I would have been, you know, I would have I was a sort of paid up cynic or skeptic as a political journalist. But I'm now deeply worried about the way in which our uh direction which our politics is is headed. W Iha mean, what worries me and I think if we do get out of all of this uh out of out of all of this change and transformation if we get something like a reform government or a reform led coalition in a f in a few years time, the questions will be as as as difficult for them to answer as for any of the old parties. I mean it's still ultimately you look at this I described as as a society under attack. So there's that. There's the c there's the information war. But then there is also the the hard power contest with China, Russia , and Iran and North Kore and and North Korea. And the ki the key questions we have to we have we have to fa we have to face while we're all getting depressed about politics is how do we grow our economy? How do we make ourselves more resilient in terms of global supply cha ins or Western supply chains, and how do we defend ourselves again on that information point and anti Semitism and all the rest of it, but the hard power point as well. And so much of this seems to be an almost a kind of um diversion from that. I just d I'm not sure how how do you how do you how does a government get elected or how do you get a government in in Britain which can which can answer those um those or stand a reasonable chance of answering those questions when you have this kind of this kind of politics. I mean that's why when I see someone when I see um Tim, you know, when I see s someone like Zia Yusuf, I understand it's all politics, everything's fair in politics. You're at attacking uh Labour and and Labour and the Tories in the terms in which he does and other and others do in reform I get it. They're trying to smash the old parties. But then once you're in, how how do you then create some sense of national fellow feeling and ideological sense that we're w we are we might have different political views, but we're in it together. If you're seriously gonna fix these problems, well, Labour has just shown the limitations of getting elected with thirty-three, thirty-four percent of the vote , getting a massive m massive majority and then thinking well, everything, that follows from that is everything's gonna everything's gonna be everything's gonna be fine. Um how d how do you as reform build out from that and say, well listen, we've got a f we we need some sort of national endeavour or some sort of national national fellow feeling. I I I I don't see how this current pol uh political approach works. Well, I don't disagree with you on that and um after the local elections I've been saying an awful lot more about that . Um I do worry about the tone of uh some reform people uh towards opponents and towards uh just generally um uh uh the national discourse Okay, well that's a very intriguing note on which to end Tim. Thank you. You've left us with a cliffhanger promising more. Which my social media savvy teenagers tell me is what you have to do with your TikToks . Not that I've tried it, but there we are. And and Miranda, of course, TikTok could never be exploited by the West en'semies to um to un undermine faith in the West. No quite, quite. Well, I found this discussion very interesting and I've learned so much more, Tim, about your past in the in the in Oh there's so much more I could tell you I suppose I should tell you that