Future of the Union and Reform

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Celebrate being human. Shop the Etsy app and discover your finds today. How big's the job? Compact and Nimble, that's perfect voxel combo. A bit of everything, meet the award-winning Vivaro. Or is it a proper load it all job? That's Mavano. Wherever you're moving, there's a Vauxhall van for it. And right now during a Vauxhall Van event, running from the 15th to the 31st of May, you can save £1,000 on any new Vauxhall Van, electric or diesel, on top of all other offers. Search Vauxhall Van Range. Business users only £1,000 including VAT must be registered by 30th of June 2026. 18 plus TCT supply Hello, and welcome to not another one. And yes, it is another one. Thanks for joining us. I'm Miranda Green and I've got Ian Martin and Tim Montgomery down the line to join me today. Steve is taking a well-earned break. Although doubtless because we know Steve so well, chaps, he will be glued glued to the whole uh you know labour turmoil where he is where Miranda can I say he's on holiday and I've um Yeah right I've had three messages from him today about the Labour leadership cont est. I think he'll be delving deep myself. Yeah, exactly. He'll be delving deep into his uh you know, delicious plate of Mediterranean whatever. Um and holding forth maybe to the sommelier uh on what he thinks uh will happen between Burnham and Streeting. And we will of course be discuss ing, you know, Burnham Street Streeting, Uncle Tom Cobley and all, as they uh express an opinion on on the leadership crisis at the top of the Labour Party. But we thought today , because there's going to be weeks of this , we thought we'd do one of our tapas editions, i.e., we'll have three little plates of tempting discussions during the course of our of our episode. Um and today we're chatting on Tuesday and there isn't the most extraordinary story today about HS II and I honestly can't really believe it except that it keeps happen and yet more delays. And the numbers are absolutely mind boggling. A hundred and two point seven billion is the new estimated cost . And, you know, completion date not until the twenty forties. So it's really sort of taken on even more epic proportions. Heidi Alexander the transport secretaries had to sort of, you know, make this uh make this statement and talk about the new estimates and I mean just on a sort of non to make a non political point, do you sometimes look at these stories of the disaster that is UK infrastructure projects and you think it sort of puts your own mistakes into perspective ? I mean however bad ly I complete any of my work You'll never do it. It's never gonna be that, is it? No, no. Well the thing is about mistakes. Mistakes are incredibly important for human progress. But the key is you've got to learn from them, not repeat them. And um we just seem to s keep repeating the same mistakes on infrastructure. And um well I'm not working uh politically in London, I live in Salisbury and anyone who's travelled past Stone henge will know it can be quite a bottleneck in the summer. And the amount of years that we have spent trying to sort that problem out, and recently they had an idea about burrowing a tunnel underneath Stonehenge. Anyway, £2 11 million has been spent trying to investigate possibilities of how to get past Stonehenge. Not a single inch of tarmac has been laid, and they have decided to abandon the project. So it's just everywhere all the time we seem to be spending money either not building things or building things. Whatever path we choose, we manage to spend money and the traffic jams and the delays and the congestion and the commutes just continue. It's not good. It really is not good. I think it's complet ely completely completely abandoned. Motorists wanted something, uh people wanted to preserve the environment wanted a different thing, and yeah, it's just been g it's just been a completely abandoned now. And um the only people that have benefited I imagine are lawyers and um campaigners, but uh certainly not local people, stonehen ge or or or whatever. But I bet there's most of our listeners. And consultancy's one of one of my listeners in their locality have experience perhaps not quite as grand as HS two or uh Solzb It Ian, what do you think is going on here? Because you know, clearly the costs the sunk costs of the project are already quite considerable. We know that all of these big infrastructure, particularly transport projects, do end up with a hefty price tag and usually taking years. Then when something does finally arrive, I'm thinking of the Elizabeth line, obviously, uh which was crossrail through London, which is an absolute wonder of modern engineering. You know, it's efficient, it's beautiful . It's a sort of advert for a a modern UK. And then we have this. What do you think is going on? I mean, are you in favour of pushing ahead and just sort of swallowing the pain? Or you know, is is is that the sort of sunk costs fallacy of it's kn as it's known, i. e. you shouldn't be put off making a decision to abandon something just because you've spent time and money on it already? Uh good questi good question. I'm not actually sure I know the answer. I mean I I assume you have to on in in this case when it comes to HS two, I assume you have to plough on and try and get the costs under control in in in some way. I mean the the problem the problem seems to be there's been a lot written on on this over the years, this idea of you know it's it's a railway but for environmental reasons and all sorts of complicated reasons and the seats that it passed through at the time being conservative seats who campaigned very effectively against it. It's it's a giant tunnel, um which is obviously very expensive to to construct. I mean thinking quite a bit about the history of Yeah, the history of getting stuff done at all. Very interesting. And it stems from the Second World War, you could say, or historians would say, there's a in in there's a great magazine called uh Works in Progress, which is run by a bunch of people, Sam Bowman and and others. And it's essentially dedicated to our articles, lot very long articles about the history of technology and amazing examples of progress that are happening now, but also the history of why progress sometimes doesn't happen and why it's interrupted. In the most recent edition there's a fabulous piece on the history of nuclear power, really, really long, which I hadn't really took tracked why it goes so badly wrong for Britain, because Britain's seen as this trailbla zer actually after the second world after the second world war. And then we make a series of errors which I won't bore won't bore people with. But the at the heart of the problem, and when Britain turns against uh turns against nuclear power. You have to track it back to the nineteen forties when the scientists essentially were given huge huge amounts of leeway and there was always no scope for public inquiries or complaints, just essentially the Technocrats decided with an order from the top from Churchill or whoever that you needed to get things done in I suppose they would once have said the national interest. So great projects just sort of happened to win the war. That then informs the thinking which emerges in the nineteen forties, and it's in that spirit that the nuclear enterprises start is started to get the nuclear bomb and then from the process with you know uh nuclear material to to create this dream of nuclear power. And the Brits are initially very good at it choosing a simple design. What happens is that when it starts to go unpopular because there are these stories emerging about nuclear waste and how dangerous it is. When that really takes off in the nineteen seventies, it it's it's apparent when they do the first inquiries into this that the technocrats are not really keeping records which nowadays you'd regard as adequate, and for the first time a light is being shed on a really complicated, difficult process, and it just bl it blows up in the mainstream media, and all sorts of checks are put in place and publicing uh there are sorts of public inquiries um and new rules introduced about public permission . And from that then casc ades this sort of spreads out across all sorts of other infrastructure projects as well. And you get a transfer from the great trust placed in the technocrats, sometimes misplaced during and after the war, into a a culture of endless compliance, which was obviously correct at the time , but just in a very British way, we've just piled regulation upon regulation and you end up now with a a a short, relatively short railway to Birmingham taking more than twenty years to construct and costing one hundred and seven billion That's really interesting. So so so in a sense the project was sort of going on in a slight vacuum and then when it was create sort of confronted with political reality and the idea of public consent for something that is potentially dangerous but also extremely potentially valuable. It sort of couldn't really cope with that pressure. Yes, exact yes, precisely. And it was all but also a lot was happening in the late sixties, early seventies with you know, there'd been a sorted political scandal. So the fa the fashion w was for and the media was very vocal on this and you had, you know, great papers like the Sunday Times and there was this you know idea of sunlight being you know disinfectant. So there w there was a fashion for openness and for um you know for journalistic investigation and it was in you know into nucle and and nuclear was one of those stories that stories that featured. I'm I'm not criticizing that. I just mean that it introduced for the first time the idea that that it's not the man in Whitehall but, the the the technocrat , the expert, might not have had covered off every single angle and might not have been thinking about um about public uh safety in every instance, 'cause essentially they just had huge leeway to build this stuff, which they did very, very quickly um with the first first wave of uh you know first wave wave of nuclear power stations, which were extremely extremely successful in the short term. So it's um it's a big and complicated culture culture change, but we then seem to have with the culture of judicial review plus a sort of big pieces of legislation, uh we've just gummed everything up that it's just incredibly difficult to get stuff done, unfortunately. So s so somehow a government is gonna have to emerge at some point in the next ten years, I don't know from where, which is gonna have to sensibly dial back on this. A lot of it will be very unpopular because it inv involves getting stuck into environmental legislation and picking fights with the courts. But um if it doesn't, this is what we're stuck with. We just we'll find it very difficult to build stuff other than in special particular circumstances like Crossrail, which is obviously part of the London Underground network. So it's sl it slots into an existing I'm not a transport export expert, but it is it's technically part of the overground network, which I'm not sure is administered in the sa quite the same way, is it? But you see what I mean? It's not it's not it's it's not building an in t it's not okay, it is building an entirely new new line, but it i it's designed to facilitate connection between an e as parts of the existing network. Okay, well we better take a short break and then we're gonna come back and talk about all the drama in the Labour Party Working across teams is tough, but Asana helps you handle it. 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Reform now as we record has just just ch osen their candidate, which seems to be the same guy who stood in twenty twenty four and did extremely well, got thirty percent of the Ken. Yeah. So um you know, everything' ssort of in place in that part of the map. But you know, meanwhile back in London in another part of the forest it's still looking quite um quite confused. Tim, what's your sort of reading of of reform's ambitions in the seat and whether they think Burnham will just be safe as a as a local hero. I don't think I I tell you what, I think um Labour should hire Ian and I as political consultants, because although we didn't get the contours quite right, I think we anticipated the pitfalls of them opening the rejoin thing quite well in our Saturday edition. And I I don't think Burnham had a brilliant weekend. He didn't have a clear message for that first sort of forty eight hours. And perhaps he didn't want to have a first strong message because he didn't look like he was overprepared, which might have caused him other problems in the Labour Party. But I think he's still a strong candidate. I don't want to call this by election. Um reform are certainly throwing everything at it. You you mentioned Miranda that they selected Robert Kenyon. I think he's a good candidate because I don't want to reopen my spat with uh Mr. Matthew Goodwin, but what reform needs is Andy Burnham to be the issue in this by-election, and Labour needs reform to be the issue in this by-election. So so choosing someone who isn't sort of controversial in his own right, uh like I think even Matt Goodwood would admit he he is. Choosing someone who hopefully will um not be um you know the centre of attention gives reform at least a fighting chance in in in this by election. And a plumber won in Gorton and Denton . I know. So it's the this the age of the plumber. I think you like maybe we should all go and uh do a career change if we want to progress our uh So Burnham has sort of got this image of, you know, man of the people and being very down to earth. He's actually been a spad and a politician for his entire career. So it's a very clever trick he's pulled off, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I think he's actually yeah the c the content of that particularly that first interview with uh I can't remember which broadcast rewards IT V, I think. Maybe. But the uh Yeah. But it's it it it the the you know content content aside, um we'll come to that come to that in a moment. I think actually some of the stuff he's done like the the the bits of video, the just the general tone, I think it some of that's quite impressive. So you'll notice for example that when the m the Mail Daily Mail started monstering him about him going for his run and noticed that he'd returned by car, he actually responded in a very politely to the the mail's tweet saying, Well it's my daily routine and explained the logic of where he leaves the car and how it works and it was just a it was an interesting piece of anti polit ical communication uh and a clever little bit of normality. So that side of it is is good. But I think he has uh on the the the Europe thing which we anticipated sort of 'cause I got kind of the wrong person. I thought it would be Burnham that would go flat out for a for rejoin and actually it's it's Streeting, who anticipated that uh that that Burnham's in a tight spot in a leave in a leave leaning seat, so he got out there first and said Britain should Britain should rejoin. That puts Burnham in an awkward position because he has said he wants to rejoin. Now as plenty of people pointed out, he says within his lifetime. But still it's a um if if that's the case, if you think it's the best policy position, then why are you going to wait twenty-five twenty or twenty-five years? You'd you'd set about advocating it now, wouldn't you? Unless you were standing in a leave levy seat and you needed the voters to look in the other direction while they voted for you and you know, forget forget about uh Brexit. So I'd I'm I'm just um I'm it's really really interesting to watch but fascinating to see Brexit coming back as the uh as one this is so tell you what my my reading of it is, 'cause since I come from the other side of the kind of Brex great Brexit divide of the that you know has riven the nation for so many years now. I think it's entirely reasonable, to be honest, to think that Brexit wasn't the best plan and that Britain will find will find itself. Yeah, exactly. Crediting it with a plan. See how generous I'm being Tim Um and and to think that over the long term Britain will be best served by finding itself back inside this enormous common market to call it its original, you know, n name, for economic reasons and also just because of the ral realities of geography as the world gets a more unpredictable, mm you know, multipolar world in trade terms but also potentially in terms of sort of you know military alliances and all the rest of it. So I actually genuinely, Ian, think it's an entirely reasonable argument and it's probably what I would have said from the day after Leave one was okay, I don't think this is great, but I mean I you know, having thought that the second referendum campaign was a sort of quixotic and hopeless and also a terrible distraction. I actually think that this is right, the idea that it you know, over the next twenty five years, right, 'cause there are other countries on the outskirts of Europe, like us, who we might find common cause with in finding some sort of different arrangement inside, outside, half in, half out. So I actually think it's perfectly reasonable in terms of the country's future. Clearly in, terms of a position to take during a moment of super super intensive scrutiny in a by election and a leadership campaign, it kind of is very awkward and doesn't really hold, hence the exploitation by the streeting camp of of of this kind of you know moment of disc discomfort. But but but you know the streeting camp, surely because, they are in a sense not so well favoured if you look at surveys of labour membership and all the rest of it. They kind of need to resort to a little tiny bit of this dark art stuff to sort of discomfort I I slightly disagree on on that aspect of it, but I t I do I do I really take your um I know Tim wants to respond. I r I really do take your your your point, Miranda. I I get the kind of reasonable the reasonable case for it. But if if that is the case, why would you not why why would you not rejo uh advocate rejoining now? Well I would, but I'm not I'm not I'm not thinking of challenging Keir Starmer for the leadership of the Labour Party but standing in maker fields. No indeed. Let Tim t let Tim respond, but I would just just very one very quick point on this. Um and you know I get all the you know criticisms of Brexit and the whole thing is very divisive and it's all it's a mess, but as I said, you know, everything is unpopular. But um I just I I I think from a leave perspective, maybe that's a m maybe that's a minority of the of the of the country now, if you say you want to you you become Prime Minister and you want to rejo in, but effectively he's saying that he doesn't think there are the votes in it yet, or there isn't a way to p pers persuade people. Well or that it's not sensible yet. Well I think it much more he was t in his argument is much more sort of sort about um the division it was Right, okay. But it's I don't know. Tim Tim, what do you think? What do you think of the Streeting campaign so far? Because obviously that that open letter that Streeting wrote to Starmer was quite w well, it was very critical of his premiership and was also a sort of more of a declaration of war than anything Andy Burnham has said so far. So it's a more aggressive campaign already, Streeting's now mentions rejoin and sort of torpedoed the Burnham campaign. I wonder where he learned such dark arts from. Ha ha ha. I thought I was having an insight. But basically everyone had the basically everyone was saying the same. Maybe 10, 20 years ago you could do that sort of ploy and you know, not many people would notice. But everyone noticed or a assumed that that was why West Street said what he said. So I you know, he may undermine Burnham now, we will we will see. But I imagine there'll be quite a few people on the left, or maybe more importantly in the moderate sort of quarters of the Labour Party, who perhaps were open to streeting, but they they they won't like this. Ian mentioned the aggressive letter uh you know to to Star mer now or you just ran sorry um um but now this aggression to to Burnham. Um I'd I I I don't think it's helping streeting actually. Um in the short term it may knock its opponent out, but is getting a brand that might be difficult for him to ever become Labour leader if he carries on like this. They're actually doing something that's crucial to them even being able to have a contest with Burnham since he's so strong and out in front, which is they're trying to expose the fact that, frankly, a lot of the b urnham support is kind of vibes based. You know . Well this is this is th th this is why I think it's healthy, because we have in this country we have among both bongst both of the among both of the major parties we have had uh several glaring examples of people becoming Prime Minister with insufficient scrutiny. Right. Exactly. landslide about the failure of and you know include myself as a recovering journalist fet the about the the lack of scrutiny. There was some but there wasn't that much scrutiny of Keir Starmer and then people expressed themselves completely astonished eighteen months later. There was very little scrutiny of Liz of Liz Truss in that leadership election. Look what happened. You could make the Boris, there was lots of s lots of scrutiny but you take you you take my you take you take my point maybe not enough scrutiny on on elements of Boris's programme. But w we just sort of keep doing this sort of hoping for the best that actually, you know, there's a that as you say Miranda, there's a vibes based approach to this. So I th I think the more uh I mean hopefully leadership contest uh if it happens is not going to be drag on for ages, but I think we do need a r robust uh you know you know r you know robust series of rows and you know discussions about this. That's why I I mean just on the I didn't ex it just the point on Brexit that I just wanted to finish is that the suspicion then if you're I'm just trying to explain to a non to the non-leave part of our audience, and I do hear the criticisms and com and and complaints get all that, but if you imagine that imagine you're a leave voter and you hear that from Burnham , your suspicion of a Prime Minister you're gonna pretty pretty soon you're gonna be very suspicious of a Prime Minister who's negotiating with the European Union, pledged at some point to go back in when it's regarded as as more propitious. Would you n would you really I mean if you're then if you're then arguing with the EU well you wouldn't be arguing with the EU on I don't know, migration or financial services regulation or AI regulation, things which I as a pro Brexit person believe would be would be mad to swap um uh our own regulation and law making for Brussels regul ation. Would you would you expect the Prime uh a Prime Minister who's committed to going back in to negotiate very hard? You wouldn't because the the more alignment you do and the more agreement you do, then the closer it gets you to this day when you can say, Well ah, see it's already we're already so aligned, we just have to step over the line, it's easy in ten years' time. That that's I think the problem he will have with speaking as a leave voter, that's the s the suspicion there will be amongst Labour leavers at some point. But Tim, I mean I sc I take your point, Ian, but Tim, in you know, in Makerfield th those are not uppermost in people's minds, right? I mean this whole Brexit thing has become pretty abstract. Yeah. Because of cost of living pressures, you know, all of the problems of these outer lying towns around Gre ater Manchester is hard to get about. You know, just day to day concerns surely is much more what they'll be looking to the candidates to talk about, isn't it? Right about that. Cost of living, I don't know how long it's been now. The most important issue in British politics and the situation in the um around Iran is only going to make it more relevant. Um, Brexit, I think, is an issue because um I would say it was probably number four or five because people don't like an issue that they spent a lot of time invested in being overturned for no good reason. Um because and I think they can understand, you can certainly make an argument that if it was overturned, we'd be spending so much time overturning it that we wouldn't be able to address issues like the cost of living. So people aren't stupid, I think they realise that. And of as as Ian has said, it's also Brexit is about immigration. And immigration is absolutely a top issue tier issue. And um I personally think Andy Burnham's position that I think we should rejoin the EU , but because it has created so much division, I'm not going to reopen it any time soon is perfect ly sensible and defensible. But he should have got out there saying that very early, and the fact that he didn't shows he's perhaps not, you know, as politically astute and nimble as he needs to be in this um current environment. If you're mayor of Manchester you don't get anywhere near as much examination as you do when you're a candidate for the Labour leadership as a he doesn't really have a political operation, does he, Tim? I was reading he's got one he's funded only for one political adviser and even if you contrast that with a cabinet minister or as where Streeting now is an ex cabinet minister, with a team around them, it's very different actually. You need to sort of, you know, bring your A game, don't you, in a leadership uh tussle. And of course he's got the Keirstarmer operation that I wonder what Keir Star mer's thinking. You know, if I stop and become the MP for Makerfield, I could hang on to this job and so what levers ploys are at his disposal to make it hard for he could turn up and campaign in the by election I suppose . That might that might help. But but there is a st but you're absolutely right, Tim. He must be and don't you think Miranda he m uh Starmer must be thinking well look if if Burnham loses, which is which is possible, maybe it's becoming unlikely, but there's a chance that he loses andet streing is it turns out if you look at the the the the latest Ugov polling on what the Labour membership thinks is really unpopular with the Labour Party and and you know l loses in all manner of runoffs. So if both of them cancel each other out in some way over the next course of the next couple of months and the choice is then Miliband, Rayner or Starmer, maybe people decide to stick for another six months or a year. Well apologies to both of you and our listeners. I'm gonna have to jump off and let you discuss Scotland together on your own. But I'll see you s see all soon. Okay, so um Ian, shall we take a break and then we can have a chat about uh Scotland is such a brilliant topic, and we only skated over it in the last episode, so we'll be back in a second. When life is hectic, energy ups and downs are all you need. If you're seeking energy reassurance, Eon Next can help. From smart tech that helps you take control of your energy future to always staying below the price cap with Next Pledge. We're here for whatever's next. Just one of the reasons why we're rated excellent on Trustpilot by our customers. Find out more at eonnext.com. Next pledge variable rates are always below the off-chin price cap. £25 exit fee per fuel applies. Eligibility in T's and Chess pilot February 2026. How big's the job? Compact and Nimble? That's perfect voxel combo. A bit of everything? Meet the award-winning Vivaro. Or is it a proper load-it-all job? That's Mavano. Wherever you're moving, there's a Vauxhall van for it. And right now during a Vauxhall Van event running from the 15th to the 31st of May, you can save £1,000 on any new Vauxhall Van, electric or diesel, on top of all other offers. Search Vauxhall Van Range. Business users Okay, so Ian, you are in fact far from here, but you are not in Scotland today. I thought you were in Swinden but you're not in Swinden, are you? You're in Sweden. I'm in Stockholm, yes. Well no no no no offence to Swinden, but they're obviously different places, yeah so I 'm sure they have a lot of cinnamon rolls in uh in Swindon these days, everywhere does. Um anyway, so you're not you're not in Scotland. But um today has been interesting because we're recording this on Tuesday, which is the day that John Swinney was re-elected First Minister of Scotland uh in Holyro od and they fell short, of course, in the May seventh election of you know being a majoritarian SNP government uh north of the border, but they're still in government and this really is extraordinary, isn't it? It's since two thousand seven now that they've been in charge . Wha how do you see this sort of sort of developing? They they clearly we were discussing in the last segment the focus on cost of living in the maker field by election. Also that seems to be the priority in Scotland they've got this slightly odd plan uh uh to ec well slightly odd to economists, I should say, of trying to cap the price of a basket of goods to help households out in an inflationary era . What do you think? I mean clearly they feel elector ally vindicated by May the seventh. But is everything in the garden rosy for John Swinney? No. I mean you described that plan on uh on on counter on uh countering the cost of living problem s uh uh by using price cap and you described it because you're very polite Miranda you described it as odd it's absolutely deranged and it's not going to work as the supermarkets have warned we'll probably cut across the internal uh the UK internal market and well it's for reasons anyone anyone who understands economics knows I mean you y you it'll it'll end up with shortages and stuff not being stopped for So it just does it it it doesn't it doesn't work. But s but Swinney of course is personally attached to it it having been uh big part of his campaign. It is uh one one thing just to remember is that for those who don't follow Scottish politics too closely and I I I was there in the just for the aftermath of the of the election or for the the the count stuff and then did a bit of TV, Scottish T V stuff and responding to the results is that it is an achievement for Swinney in that he is I mean he's been around forever. Yeah. Before there was a Scottish Parliament, I remember meeting John Swinney as an emer you know emerging SNP star. And he really has had I mean there was a point where it it seemed as as though his career was almost over. Everyone forgets that he was SNP leader when Alex Salmond walked away. So when he had a really inglorious uh spell which went really badly wrong for him and Sean Cook He had more hair then though, I remember. He did, yeah, yeah, yeah, he did. And um and uh and Sean Connery, who was then enormous figure, nationalist supporter and donor, I think, t took against him and said he had no star power, and Salmond was persuaded to return. And Swinney had to step back into being you know, into being number two or number th or or number three. And quite quite a d you know, a really difficult thing to take in politics and that is Is that when you went to the finance brief? Or was that a bit later? Must have been, yes, more than 'cause he was responsible for the the the penny on income tax um stuff in the subsequent election. So that's more than twenty years ago. And then here he is now as um you know Scotland's first minister. As you say, the SNP been in power since two thousand and seven. I mean it it is I would say this as a unionist, wouldn't I? But it is really interesting the way in which after all the kind of uh hype and excitement about the majority and then the the attempts to claim that what happened I'd falling short of a majority, but then the Greens getting fifteen seats meant that the demand for a Scottish independence referendum, another one, was unstoppable. That's just fizzled out if you if you if you you know um it's just it's just not claim that there was a mandate to count to ask for a second referendum. There isn't a mandate and it's not going to it's not going to happen. What from a unionist point of view what should worry unionists is the UK dynamic and how this is and and the rise of reform in England. Yeah, absolutely. And what is that what it what what hap what is Scotland's response if you end up with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister , uh you know, largest party in a or maybe even overall majority in a Westminster election in 2028-2 9 . Uh what does Scotland do then? Does that does do you get to a point that's what unionists will will worry about, that's um middle ground voters in Scotland say, well, despite all the enormous costs that there would be and the financial risks of Scottish independence. Farage as Prime Minister is something is something that Scots simply will not stomach. So in twenty nine, twenty thirty it gets going again and the demand becomes unstoppable. Or always with the I'm sh Tim has gone and I'm sure he would deny this, but the suspicion that parts of reform are primarily English nationalists and would not really be that bothered if the Scots um if the Scots disappeared and and and and left the Union. So there is on the one hand unionists are pleased that it they the nationalists fell short, also quite I think disappointed in the sense that well some are, but are disappointed that after everything that's happened, Sturgeon all of the drama of the last few years, still the SNP somehow managed to you know, find a way to win partly because of the the split amongst the unionist parties but also the electoral system. So you ask the question, you know, what do they actually have to do to to lose? So short you know short term it f it fades away but with longer term medium and longer term questions about um what the unionists are gonna face.