Local Council Challenges and Scandals

Yes, thanks. I think that makes sense. Send over the projections and let's sort out next steps. Ooh, that's creamy. Velvety? Mmm, properly good. Simply sensational. Shock or lush. Where have you been all my life? Sorry, you're not. I knew that. Shaken Udder Milkshakes, the utterly slurpable way to snack. Find it in all major supermarkets. Page 94, The Private Eye Podcast. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of page 94. My name's Andrew Huntermurray and I'm here in the iStudio with Alan Lewis, Adam McQueen and Ian Hislop. I'm gonna start off by saying to you all Hey. Hey. Hey. And I say hey because we're going to the Hay Festival. We have a live page ninety four. That was the cheesiest yeah, I think. I liked it. I'm gonna get cheesier next time, yeah. We're doing we're doing a live event at the Hay Festival, which is Sneezy commute from anywhere in the United Kingdom. Incredibly fast. Yes, we're gonna be setting the world to rights, as we always do. But this time we'll be doing it live. Um that is going to be on the twenty seventh. What day was that? Twenty seventh of May. Is that a Wednesday by any chance? I believe it is. And what time would that be, Andy? Oh early evening. Just turn up whenever. Seven thirty, I think. But it might be six thirty. We should probably find that. Well to be fair, they can't do without us. So if we only turn up at seven thirty. Right, hang on. Seven. Phew. No. And all four of us are doing separate events around hay. So also on the twenty seventh, Ian, you're going to be interviewed uh by Patty O'Connell. Yes. And I'm going to be talking about um My favorite books that have influenced my life and it says career, but I think that might be pushing it. Adam, you're doing an event also on the twenty seventh about tribalism in politics. Apparently so, with Penny Mordon and Gouto Harry. Wow. I will. Uh Helen, you're gonna be talking about America two fifty? I've got a really impressive panel. They're all just so much more impressive than me. What's it, the hemi semi sesquipili centenary of America or something? Some complicated word that means two hundred and fifty years. Two hundred and fifty years. Fantastic. Uh and I'll be doing an event on the twenty sixth at two thirty PM about my new book. Have you got a new book out there? Is that available to pre order by any chance? Do you know? I think it is. Great news. I thought we didn't read out adverts. Oh sorry, yeah. There's been a change of policy. Can I point out my books available for pre order as well. Plug corner ends. And now uh from one, you know, exciting race between four very dynamic candidates, only one of whom is a woman. We move to flavor leadership. How was that? How was that? That was good. Why why do we have to do this? Why is this all going on now? Thing is, I'm black pilled about this. I don't think any of these people are gonna make any difference to the intractable problems we've got in our uh so I'm just going to I'm just going to enjoy them knifing each other. And the shores note then it sort of doesn't matter, really. Game of Thrones and succession viewer right there, isn't it? But you know what I mean? It's really quite sad. Like I think they've got some very large problems in Britain, but You know, if you look at the difference case now obviously now drained of all authority. Uh, Angela Rayner did a very odd um sort of mini manifesto where she said she wanted to Free hold. not really that possible. Like people owning homes. Andy Burnham gave an interview to the New Statesman last year ahead of conference in which he said I w I will do more borrowing, I won't be carried by the bond markets. Last person who said that was Liz Trust. And also the phrase we can't be in Hawk. to the bond markets. Hawk is what you are if you um go for more borrowing. It was a very, very strange idea that I don't want to be um uh responsible for um uh borrowing a lot and then have the people I've borrowed off asking for the money back. I mean it doesn't work. Yeah, you don't get to pick what interest rates people are charging you and your money, I'm afraid. So then we've got West Streeting? We got West Streeting. I don't know if he said anything Oh, well actually he came so he immediately he uh resigned from the cabinet. um resigned his house. So said I've had an amazing time. We've got waiting lists downs, but that's it, I'm leaving. You know, always go out on a high note. And then he went to the Progress Conference and said, By the way, I'd love us to rejoin the EU. Very funny. And and you have to be quite steeped in labour law to understand why this is so funny, which I I understand that some people may have lives and fulfilling personal time. Um the Labour membership are mustard keen on the EU. They absolutely love it. So when Kirston was running in twenty twenty, he said, I will basically be continuity Corbinism. Love that guy. But I think we could have b done a bit more on anti Semitism, plus I'm much more keen on Europe than he is. 'Cause he knew this was the way it was safe to descend from the leadership line in a way that the members who were generally very pro Corbyn liked. Streeting has done exactly the same. I know you think I'm all in I'm incredibly right wing for a Labor person, but by the Lord I love the EU, right? It also has the secondary excellently funny effect of stuffing Andy Burnham. We'll never be be asked whether or not he thinks we should rejoin the EU. he has to know if his plan is fight this by election and then fight the Labour leadership election. If if it's contested, he needs to get the members on the side. So in order to get the members inside you need to go, God, I love the EU, I wish to be buried in a flag with the stars on it, my mother is Ursula von der Leyen, you know, I yeah, have a big portrait objection rack in my office, whatever it might be. But he's about to fight a very form facing Brexity seat. So if he says, you know, lads will all be speaking French by Christmas Great for the second election he's got in his future. Very bad for the one now. So he's going to have to do some good old fashioned ne new Labour style triangulation if this becomes an issue. It's not his only problem, because he's fighting this by election uh if if he gets the nomination, on the grounds of if you hate the Labour government, vote Labour. Which is an odd position, isn't it? You've got to vote for him. In order to get Keir Starmer's. Everyone will be saying, hate Starmer, vote for me. You see, I think Keir Starmer should run under that. Okay, you hate me. You hate everyone else more. Can we just come back to Keir Starmer for a second? Yes, but Chucking threshold for Prime Minister seems to have been Downwards, I would say. Liz Tross I I I get it. I get where she had to go. Morris Johnson Richard Seneck lost an election. What's What's Starmer done? Nothing. That's the problem. Right. The haunting thing that kinda keeps coming out again and again is the idea that people don't know what he stands for, who he thinks he's born against, what his vision is. So the classic idea of the Prime Minister is that you set the terms of the debate. So people can make decisions 'cause they know what you would do in that circumstance. And what people report from inside the operation is that they don't know how Starm would jump on something, it paralyses but he's also not a very quick decision maker himself. So nobody knows what to do. So stuff just gets in this holding pattern, basically. With welfare reform they tried to put something that was quite tough, didn't get it, the MPs puked. And then they came back with something less, you know, with winter fuel they tried it and didn't try Shibana Mahmud's reforms to indefinitely to remain. V you know, very hard thing to get past labour. MPs who don't want to vote to be m meaner to immigrants. But you'd have to say, This is it, I'm staking you, we all got elected on this manifesto, you're gonna have to do it. And the and the quote that I think will forever haunt Starmer is from um Gabrian and Patrick McGuire's Get In. Um hang a minute, no, which one is it. They've all got in and out titles, then Shipman's Yeah no. I saw Get Out Laban. Yeah. Jeremy Callman sat in a chair and plunged into the underworld. Uh no. It is it's get in with the uh but um someone said it's like um The DLR. It's a driverless train. No one's driving the train. And that's what they felt. They felt that Morgan McSweeney, his former chief of staff, did have an idea of what he was doing, but people didn't like it. Now he's gone. There's nothing. I thought the most interesting bit of of of last week's events wasn't actually wet street and going. There were there were also before that there were four junior ministers who went as well, didn't they? Um three of which I must admit I was completely blissfully unaware of until the point when they sent in their resignation letters. But one of them was Jess Phillips, who uh people will know about. I certainly know about. And and I thought there's a really interesting line in there. Most of the resignations investors with that standard thing of the first paragraph says I'm really proud of all the stuff I've achieved in my de my department. Here is a list of it. But we have disastrous results in the election, and I think it's time for you to go, sorry. Jess Phillips was much more in detail about what she thought was wrong with Keir Starmer. Um and the line I thought was rather brilliant one from her, she said, the desire not to have an argument means we rarely make an argument. And it's that thing you're talking about. You don't feel that there's a sort of vision there that he's pushing through in the way that, say, strong primarists like Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher absolutely had their convictions and they were kind of pushing through whether the rest of the party liked it or not. I mean she of course was um minister for um against rather violence against women and girls. And and she said she did there was a possibility of real changes in that that area, but it it usually came from threats made by me in the light of catastrophic mistakes. She was very honest in the letter and she said basically she jumped on the Mandelson stuff. Every time that the Mandelson stuff came up, suddenly the government were very keen to prove that they were on the uh uh on the side of doing stuff against the exploitation of women. And she she took those opportunities. She said never wanted to waste a crisis to make advancements for women and girls. She would kind of push things then. And that was the only way she found she could really, really get stuff done. Wasn't part of the problem there was the grooming gangs, fiasco was in the background. And again Keir Starmer and his um operation were not keen to say we've already had a lot of inquiries, do we absolutely need another national inquiry? This hasn't been ignored and shoved under the carpet. This is a narrative coming from somewhere else. I mean we covered this quite extensively in the eye and the idea that, you know, sort of mainstream journalism from Andrew North for Comfort and then local government and local inquiries. I mean he he wasn't keen to take any stance on this. So even the one thing that Jess Phillips suggested, I would guess, got lost in a feeling of Nope. We don't want to go there. They didn't want to say that, so it left in this Labour MPs are very tense about they they didn't want to go out and defend something that was gonna change. I mean look at this with the two child benefit um cap. People got suspended, they got the labour whip withdrawn for a policy which is now, a year later, labour policy. Right? This is just you have to have even if you're wrong, you have to tell everyone what you think so they can be confident, deploying out and going and having the argument with people in their constituency. Yeah. And I think that Jeff Lips letter was exactly right about that. I also think the fact that panicked Keir Starmer's panicked response to the local elections was bring me Gordon Brown and Harriet Hallman. Which was I think I think everybody in the whole of Westminster went What? It's really weird with Kirstomala, 'cause there's a combination of that sort of decisive action, but not allies to any sort of vision, it sometimes seems like. So all those people were expelled from from from the party or or suspended for come six months at a time, I think. But without any sort of attempt to kind of push that through I mean well when Boris Johnson kicked all of those people out because they were going against his Brexit thing. It it wasn't popular with people on the other side, but it was at least a kind of definitive this is what we're doing, this is the government's agenda. The whole thing was about getting Brexit through and that was seen as a way of doing it. Whereas with Kirst Armour, it just seemed like I mean, how many um of your of your kind of friends and allies can you make take the fall for you? I mean m Morgan McSweeney went, um Ollie Robbins went, um all sorts of people just seemed to have to fall on their swords for cockups that that that that really sort of went all the way to the top, didn't they? And it seemed to be odd that You bring in two quite old people from a previous government, it does suggest to your current pensions that none of you are any good. I've got some jobs going, but you can't have them. Obviously I'm going to give them to some people who you've already seen before. I mean I have to say most cartoonists and indeed nearly everyone on the eye immediately said, Can we have Peter Mandelson back as he's another another big figure from those years who'd be really useful to have and Again, I mean it it is the fact that Cia can't do any sort of management. Wh, you know, is a boring thing to point out. But that that clearly is one of the reasons he didn't um carry anyone with him. It's also odd, I mean something we've talked about ever since the government got in is the kind of Blairite comfort blanket. We mentioned about Alan Milburn coming back and people Jonathan Powell And it's very odd for Kirstamer, who doesn't give any impression of being deeply steeped in labour history. You know, he's not somebody who kind of swoons over Clement Attlee or whatever it might be. To then have this attachment to bringing back Blairite figures. Sort of odd, isn't it? It's sort of like reviving You know, like Malcolm in the middle or something. It's kind of just like Well everyone at the time. Right, right, why don't we do this again? But I wonder how if that was a that was something that was interesting for Jess. The other thing she said in that letter was I wanted to put software on everybody's phones that basically would m stop children uploading naked pictures themselves to the internet. Now we can have an argument about whether or not that's authoritarianism or whatever. But her way of presenting it was they didn't want to have the fight with the tech companies. And I think that is a really interesting thing is that are you willing to identify villains in public life? So reform have got a very clear argument about who they think is ruining Britain. The Greens have got a very clear argument about who they think is ruining Britain. Who, according to Keir Starmer, is stopping us being the kind of country he would like us to be? And I can't two years in, I can't answer that. He's come out pretty strongly uh about reform and th and their opinions and he's I think flirted with actually saying I think these people are are acting in a racist manner, which is strong prime ministerial language, but that's Not enough for you? Being scared of the tech barons is a really weird one because these guys are not popular. I mean I know that weirdly Tommy Robinson on Saturday got his his crowd to give three cheers for Elon Musk, but I'm not sure the country at large want to give three cheers for Elon Elon Musk. I mean they these are quite identifiable baddies that that it might not hurt him to go up against. You know, they're a bit like sort of water company bosses. There are a few obvious villains out there who um you know you could set yourself against and define yourself that way, sure. Yeah, Andy Burnham knows what he's doing now. He's come out against, you know, smartphone using school. And he came out at the maybe at the weekend or maybe it was an archive clip against VAR in football. Which is just one of those things that is I think unites most football fans is that they hate the idea that you stop a match for six minutes while some people in a shed look at the clip and then you start again. Yeah. Experts, boo. Sorry. No, but that the referee was supposed to be the expert and he's actually there. Anyway. But you know what I mean? Like the he is identified there. Who likes FIFA? Mm. Who likes the FA, right? Who likes faceless corporations that make a load of money out of fans? Yeah. And don't see you know, Fever in the middle of putting like half time breaks into the World Cup final so they can flog more adverts and make it like the Super Bowl. These people are not popular and if you're a government you're allowed to You're allowed to hop This comes back to your De Dre Barlow theory of Tony Blair. My Digi Bony Bear. You jump on the bandwagon, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. This was when she went to prison. Uh a fictional character, my lad. Uh for a minute there Tony had been campaigning for someone in the real world. Right, but like if she was on Coronation Street, there was a storyline and Tony Blair shamelessly hopped onto it. And then the Jess Phillips one in particular seemed like 'cause not only is it going up against the tech baron at tech barons, but it's also attempting to stop child pornography. I mean this seems to me that this would be quite a popular move with the public. There's not there's not a huge pro child pornography lobby out there in politics that you're gonna lose vote to the thing. And there's a big reform chunk who are fixated and concentrate on defending children. Yeah. This is their agenda. What about slaps? You're always telling me slaps would be incredibly popular for a government to bring in. Yeah, slaps which seem to have completely fallen by the way so and we talked about this uh in in in in the last podcast. Uh so this is strategic lawsuits against public participation. And there's been a lot of um research come out for FOI uh requests by various people that show that the lobbying by the Society of Media lawyers, our friends at Carter Ruck and Mish Conderea and places like that, uh has been very, very successful. I mean it's gone completely on the back burner. I d I again, it's greedy lawyers and sort of Russian oligarchs and people suing journalists. It would I think be fairly popular with the public to go up against these people. It would certainly get the newspaper editors on side, wouldn't it? I mean I think we would unequivocably say that people suddenly back Trying to put us out of business would uh would would would would go down quite well. So None of these things, I think, clear the public opinion threshold. I know I I see what you're saying about the slaps, but I don't think most members of the public care too much about slaps in particular. Sorry. No, they should but I know they should. I know they should. But none of these things seem to clear the bar. It just feels feels like a slow agglomeration of irritations that have sapped public support, meaning that eventually no one's willing to go into bat. I think there's also a feeling that um putting um employers and ass insurance up hasn't helped hugely and the figures are you know, people are still arguing about them but they're not looking terribly good and the economy is is always something that people will judge you on and whether it's Caes fault or not. Um he hasn't explained sufficiently well that it isn't his fault if it's the fault of um a hangover from um Russia Ukraine plus you know the next war in the middle of plus you know the um financial crisis which is still going on and, dare I say it, Brexit and the figures are still suggesting GDP went down, you know, four percent and everybody's lost out. You've got to make that case. If you're in the middle of an economic crisis, you can't just say, Oh well, uh, you know, it's miserable, isn't it? And I look miserable. You do you do have to say why. And make the case for the unpopular bits as well. I mean that was the thing with Mrs. Thatcher. She was prepared to say, Well unemployment, sadly, is the price we're gonna have to pay. Which was a very, very unpopul to say. But it felt at least that there was a sort of vision and a reasoning behind it. Whereas I feel the public at the moment are just feeling like everything, the economy and everything is just sort of sort of drifting and no one no one is kind of taking any any charge of anything. Now the other case that people make is that Keir Starmer just doesn't look like he's having fun. And it's easy to see why you would not look like you're having fun, because it's most people have not seemed like they're having fun in this job, frankly. Some did that little dance, didn't she? Oh, you're right. She's like, that was a happy. Boris Johnson seemed to be having an absolute ball. But I don't none of the rest of us were. No, exactly. So Rishi Sinek looked like he was he was doing u useful and important work. Do you think well when he got to have his AI summit, he was absolutely thrilled. That was his that was his high point. And Massa levels that made him very happy. One hundred chessboards in parks but no pieces. Bring your own pieces. Anyway. Then when he tried to y buy a can of Coke. And meet members of the public. Oh yeah, and he's a quartet. Oh feeling wistful about Rishy Sunak now. This is what happens, you see. That's always a style. But you're right, there is a there is a trope in politics that's called the happy warrior. Which is basically someone who gets out of bed every morning and they go and they argue with people. And actually it works in journalism too. You see lots of these YouTube creators, they just love having a rug. They get up you know, r I the thought for me of being invited on some show to argue the toss with somebody makes fills my heart with dread these days. Some people love it, you know, they get out and they're they absolutely thrive on it. And actually in today's extension economy you've gotta be pumping out stuff all the time. You've gotta seem like you're really up for a ruck. And this is a thing that Nigel Farage and Zack Belansky are both constantly doing. The the almost They're almost never not making a TikTok, as far as I can tell. They're like ninety fifth percentile extroverts. They get their energy from being in company. Nigel Farage in the Reform Podcast, which I may be the only listener to, you know, he has got so many people waiting to see him on stage and there's an overflow room. So he goes and does an hour of Q and A in the overflow room beforehand. Like that is for him that is politics, is people asking questions, him shooting the breeze with them. You get that same vibe off Zach Polanski. The Q and A sessions don't involve the question why did you take that money? Um and why didn't you declare it? I he seems less keen to answer that one. Ruck is not one he's having. No, but that was also the case with Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn loved being asked like, you know, when will the socialist paradise come? Can I hear more about your jam? And rather less about do you think we should pull out of NATO than like you always used to say. Can I finish? Can I finish? Can I finish? Yeah, all right, I'm right, and I'm down. Now, let's turn to someone who does seem like they might enjoy public life, who's Andy Burnham. Yeah, I mean for some of us this is the whole episode is bringing back sort of p memories of the long twenty ten when Andy Burnham hovered on the periphery of uh of my vision for all of that that time. Actually, I was on the I was on a panel with him in Labour Party Conference in twenty twenty one. I'm getting nostalgic for Labour Party conferences and pass. This is worse than nostalgia for Richie Sinek. Um he is you know, he has enjoyed being m mayor of Manchester. I think people generally find the mayoralties to be the right size of job where you can actually do things and people see them in their everyday lives in a way that at at prime ministerial level has become much more of a struggle. So it come has been well, he's in his third term as mayor of London now. He's majored on Mostly on clean air and and things like that. And he's you know, he's written books about it. He's sort of and that's something he really likes talking about and going into that for. And he loves doing um cross religious stuff. That man has been to a lot of synagogues. But like he he sees the ambassadorial role of being like London's voice as well as being really important. be enjoying it more. But yeah, and so Andy Burnham's path to glory is uh there's a selection meeting at the NEC this week. Technically Starmer has got the votes on the NEC to block it, but I think there would be an actual riot if he did. Um you know, candidate selection again quite a brave person in the rest of Labour to run against him for that selection, so we'll see how that goes. But then um then he's got to a a really difficult challenge to win that seat. But the the the specific um so it's makerfield on the outskirts of Wigan and it just returned all reform councillors in the latest group of local elections. So why do you think his chances look pretty good then? Because he is popular in that area. Uh, he's got incredibly good public profile. Who are reform gonna run that's gonna have an equivalent profile to him? Matt Goodwin. It could be good Mat Win. Matt Goodwin in a beard. Um But you know what I mean? Like if if reform could find somebody with his popularity and name recognition And the other thing is it's a by election. It's not the general election. Reform's voter base is more people who left school at eighteen, more low information voters, people who aren't massively engaged by politics. Those people don't tend to turn out in by elections in the way that College gra I'm college graduates from say American now. University graduates, people who read a newspaper consistently. All of those kind of people. A much more likely like the f the conditions in a by election are more favourable to Labour. They said that about local elections, didn't they? And then a lot of reform voters did turn up this year. Yeah. Well I mean it might just be that the people I my my main fear for Andy Burnham in this is what I think of as the boaty McBoat face. problem which is I think there might be a lot of people who think you really want to be Prime Minister. This is essentially a by election to be Prime Minister. Wouldn't it be funny if we just voted against you and stopped you? Much like voting for the ship to be named Boating McBoatface. The banter outcome. There is a tradition, isn't there, of people not love people in constituencies not not not liking being used this way. I mean there was the latent by election in sixty four when Helsinki was trying to get someone in. Oh yeah, no later in sixty four, sorry. I was thinking of sixty three, but it's sixty four, yeah, yeah. With my professor Sir John Curtis hat on. Sixty four. Harold Wilson tried to parachute in um a a someone who he wanted to make his foreign secretary, and the voters just gone and went, No, we're not having that, we're not doing it And then fill this is one you have heard of. Uh same year, I think. Um when uh Alec Douglas Hume was uh appointed as head of the uh uh as leader of the Conservative Party without a seat in Parliament. He was parachuted into a seat up in Scotland and famously Private I put up a candidate against him for exactly this reason. 'Cause they objected to some sort of coronation and uh Winnie Rustin ran against him. He didn't get a huge number of votes. Thirty seven votes. So what's the successful. Okay. But it does tell you something about the kind of mood on on on on on on occasions when people feel that people are being parachuted in like that. One last solution. Surely Farage resigns his Clacton seat, stands in this by election. Whoever wins becomes PM. Easy. And then Josh Simons could take over in Clacton, couldn't he? They could all just musical chairs all in the country. That's a good idea, except that it's the first time Farage won in a bar election, I do not think he's going to give up Clacton. Uh easily. Who's gonna buy him a house in um Make us make it failed. His partner. His partner. That's so true. That's a good point. You probably won't need a uh donation he doesn't declare. Can I just m the last point I said is when I read these resignation letters, all of them say I did a fantastic job as Manchester Mayor, I did a fantastic job as health secretary, I think, Well why don't you just stay there then? Um and then you could all do this brilliant job and we could carry on. That's what I've been trying to say. Because it's the only time that anyone is ever going to listen to you talk about how hard it's been and how much you've done in your job without interrupting, right? You just have to go try very hard and I won the fifty wheels swimming medal and no one cared. I'm gonna write a letter resigning as host of page ninety four, but saying I've driven us to new metrics and new global audiences. Yeah, I'm excited. Okay. Right. Well can you do that after this quiz? Yeah. Right, we come now to the quiz. Helen, give us the name of the quiz. Okay, but you wrote this is this is like your resignation. I was writing the things I was proud of, was writing the name of this quiz. Faction or fiction. Thank you very much. It is of course about the different people vying for the Labour leadership and past Candidates for Labour leadership. Okay. With what hashtag did Angela Rayner announce that she'd become a grandmother at the age of thirty seven? A grandula. Very good. Very good. Uh in twenty fifteen, Andy Burnham wore a T shirt declaring that he had never done what to a Tory. Kissed Tentatively. Very tentatively. No, I remember that phase of people going around wearing never kissed the Tory T shirts. It is correct. Uh the update to it was that when the Evening Standard cornered him at late night at uh a Labour Party conference, he said he had, in fact, kissed a Tory. Snogging Tory, her name was Octavia and she went to Trinity College. Oh, I thought he was gonna say William Hay. Which of the following people has Andy Burnham received fewer votes? in a Labour leadership election. A. Edmilliband. B David Miliband. C Ed Balls. Or D Jeremy Corbyn. It's all of them, isn't it? It is and you saw through my rooms. It's a trick question, yes. In twenty ten he placed behind both Millibands and TV favourite Ed Balls. In the first round. Uh he did beat Diane Abbott, though. Who you remember was lent the votes to get in the contest because David Minman thought this is quite embarrassing, we're all white men. Right. Establishing a precedent that Labour and Ps then followed by letting a left candidate in twenty fifteen, his name was Jeremy Corbyn. That went badly for them. Okay, in twenty sixteen Owen Smith challenged Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership, and the Labour left successfully painted him as a big farmer shill because of his previous life as a lobbyist for Pfizer. But which drug was he forced to deny having used? Viagra. Correct. It was Viagra. He told Piers Morgan, who asked about it somewhat inevitably. That's for me and Mrs. Smith to know about. Wow. Last Labour candidate who could claim to have achieved growth. Didn't give him a bump in the poles? No stop it. Okay. Okay, all of you. Think about what you've done. Also in twenty sixteen, Angele Eagle's Labour Leadership Campaign Now yeah, okay, remember this. Was blighted by what technical difficulty? A She had lost her voice and had to use gestures to indicate her issues with Jeremy Corbyn. Think to yourself. B, one of the Tory leadership candidates at the same time pulled out of their contest during her speech, causing all the journos to flee. See? The day before BBC News had accidentally booked her twin, Maria Eagle, to talk about the contest on Newsnight. Or D, one of the banners at the front of the hall collapsed, revealing Tom Watson hiding behind it. I was gonna say B, but I remember it being interrupted not by Boris Johnson dropping out. But by him being appointed foreign secretary, wasn't it? No, you're smudging things together in your mind. I think it was B. I think it was the same speech at the same time. I I like the one where the BBC books the wrong person. Her her twin Maria Regal. They're both in uh parliament at the same time. It was bee. Ah. It was Andrea Ledsom who pulled out. Okay. She went for a question saying, Can I take a question from Robert Peston? He wasn't there. He'd left. Oh. And that it never recovered her whole basically her leadership. You've lost Peston, you've lost the leadership. Did Andrea Ludson drop out because of a C V issue? No, she dropped out 'cause she said Theresa May won't be able to understand the country 'cause she doesn't have children. An incredible f Times front page with that interview with Andrew Ledsom and then Stephen Crab I had been sexting a young person inappropriately and just the t one day the Times just nuked two of them at the same time. Just ask your parents about all this. Stephen Crab. Just to specify quite what a brilliant media operator um Andrea Ledson was, the full quote was something along the lines of I wouldn't want to say this in public 'cause it's really, really nasty. But Teresa wouldn't be a good prime minister 'cause she hasn't got children. She said to a journalist with a tape recorder. Well then for the young people you just refer them to. It does suggest that politics Doesn't just get worse. It sometimes stays quite the same. Oh that was just an I mean, I feel sad for anyone who can't remember that, 'cause that was also Surely the one where Boris Johnson was going to stand and then the morning of his campaign launch Michael Gave knifed him and then he had to go and give a speech saying I'm not going to stand. Yes. And then gloriously the camera was on Nadine Dorris, who reacted, who'd been expecting him to say I will be your next Prime Minister and does the The look of devastation that creeps across the face as she grabs next to his arm. Oh, Michael Gove's finest hour Yeah. Definitely. Okay. Riffing on Gerard Kaufman's famous description of Michael Fo's nineteen eighty three manifesto. How did the journalist Chris Dearren once describe the Edstone? Edmilliban's obelisk of electoral pledges. Tallest suicide note in history? Nearly, so nearly. The hardest? Yeah, that's where I was going. I'll come back to Evan Smith on the live. It was the heaviest suicide note in history. He described um the nineteen eighty three Manifesto of Labour as the longest suicide note in history. I don't know who's winning, but I'm gonna give you the tiebreaker anyway. It's Adam who's winning. Yeah, it's Adam who's winning. He knew about the nineteen sixty four. The late and violence When pitched out running Yeah, short shorts. Andy Burnham was wearing a replica vintage Everton shirt from which period of the club's history didn't have to nineteen eighteen. Oh my gosh. I got a football question right now. Can I can I suggest that that's a sackable offense. It won't happen again, Boston. I would like to say also have you seen he's gone out um jogging again today on day of recording in rather long the short. Yes. Uh can can I just ask. I mean this is a serious political question. on the day he knew he was going to be photographed running about. The short were an error. Carelessness, um, deliberate I think he's got quite nice legs and good. I'm sorry, but I'm I'm a fan of the short shorted burn. Right, well that's that's the answer I was hoping for. Yes, thanks. I think that makes sense. Send over the projections and let's sort out next steps. Ooh, that's creepy. Velvety? Hmm, properly good. Simply sensational. Chocolush. Where have you been all my life? Sorry, you're not I knew that. Shaken Uder Milkshakes, the utterly slurpable way to snack. Find it in all major supermarkets. Right, now for part two. Adam, you have reincarnated as Saba Salman. Hello, Saba. Hello. Saber of of Rottenburg, you were last on a couple of uh episodes ago when we were doing a pre-mortem for the local elections. And now it's time inevitably for the postmortem. How did you do how were your predictions? Was there anything you were right or wrong about? Well I think my favourite bit was when one of the election experts we had many uh Professor Sir John Curtis said really no one's very popular. Um and that for me kind of summed up a lot of what was going on, nobody seemed very happy apart from a lot of reform. uh candidates who obviously got in. So I think largely our predictions were pretty spot on. We talked about fragmentation, we talked about the multi parties uh standing. The fact that uh a lot of new candidates are coming in with no experience. That that was one of your points. That was one of the points. And not just restricted to a single party. So I think, you know, if you look at the map of England, I suppose, if you're looking at England, uh down the right hand side you've got the teal, a chunky teal bit. which is reform. Uh down in the boot on the left, south west sort of side, uh you've got The orange. segment. Uh moving on. red window sill or trellis, veranda, patio, window sill, something like that. Um and then in London you come to London and it's just a complete mess. Um so it's sort of a bit more Jackson Pollocky, I think. There. That's lovely. The doughnut as I believe. Yes, I like that analogy. Yes, it's more down to earth than the Jackson Pollock, but I like that, yes. And you've got Havering, uh in the east that's gone uh to reform. some green action going on. And then other boroughs, uh Croydon for example, that we feature a a lot in the boroughs, uh which has sudden got five different parties. So you've got Labour, Tory, Independent, Reform, Green, no of all control. but a conservative mayor who just scraped in, who we've just covered in the boroughs. Which means that although there's no overall control, the swing is with the Tories, so effectively it's conservative run. Can I ask about the phenomenon you described of people with very little experience uh getting in? What is the more common route for people who are thinking about putting their hand in the ring to become a counsellor? What's the normal route which is being deviated from here? I think most of the of the people who've who've proved they can do the job come up through the community network. Um so they might be um particularly active residents. they've lived in the area locally. But what we've seen with this surge of fifteen hundred, uh, particularly the reform councillors, is people coming in with not much clue. And that literally extends to not knowing which council you've just been elected to so there's there's somebody, a shout out to Kids Grove News. Um a local independent news site which uh reported that a a counsellor Who was um elected to Newcastle under Lyme. Borough Council. rocked up at Kidsgrove Town Council, which is a a parish, uh because she got confused about the name of the ward in Newcastle, Town Ward. So she there I'm confused at the end. You're confused. Well there you go. Let's give us a but I wasn't sta I wasn't standing to be elected there, so you know. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was gonna be a Newcastle upon Tyne and Newcastle under Lyme situation. Yes, I mean admittedly it is confusing, although I would like to think that, you know, most people who put themselves forward for this would probably have checked where they were standing and and why and and no. And and the backdrop to this is that the election agent was a certain Jonathan Gullis. who eagle eyed readers, uh eye readers might remember. Um, I think he was appointed as an under secretary by Liz Trust. So whether or not, you know, his latest protege lasts longer than a lettuce. I don't know. I know, doesn't it? Um and then over in in Suffolk, um We've got a situation where the new reform leader has come in and said We need some training. to sort of get up to speed. So we think we need about six months of training and then an intensive day for our raft of counsellors. And I think to most people who don't know a lot about local government or public sector, you know, most of us hire people for a job that know how to do it as opposed to turning up And going where do I start? You know, we're not talking about internships, we're talking about directly elected officials who are who have a job to do in the uh controlling budgets. But there is some training and briefing if you're newly elected as a councillor, I presume. Well there there's all sorts of things. There's you know, you have your political group in a council uh, you know, m you might want to do your own research, perhaps uh, you know, look at the council handbook, download it. Um there's also something called the Local Government Association, for example, which is a membership body uh that most councils belong to, and within that each political party has a presence. So at the LGA, local government association, you have your own little group office. And interestingly I have been checking and the Green Party does not appear to be represented um at the LGA with its own political office which is interesting. I mean they might have chosen not to, but considering they've come in with a bunch of councillors and now control four councils and they've got these mayors, they might want to have a presence there. Whether it's the website's not been updated, I don't know, but it's just interesting. One of the interesting things about Hanna Spencer running for that seat in Gaughton Denton, she's got a family who lots of them I've worked in politics. And that was just completely never mentioned, right? It was all about she's a plumber. She's got a normal job and she's just happened this is you know, she's stumbled into politics almost. Because that was seen to be a much more appealing message to people. And that seems to be what you're talking about, right? That actually there's a there's a l a sort of love for the fact that you're a quote unquote ordinary person, not a career politician. I think it's difficult. I I I absolutely agree that, you know, if you're a bit edgy, you've got no experience, well let's give it a go and learning on the job. I think where a lot of people um you know, who who who vote have a problem with it is that you are trusting in somebody who has absolutely no idea what they're doing. I don't mean Hannah Spencer. I mean there are there are exceptions. There are people who've been rumbling around their communities doing great work, you know, painting the community centre or whatever it is, being a teaching assistant, whatever it may be. they're really embedded in their communities and they've they've got no political career, you know, they don't want to climb the g greasy pole. But then on the flip side you've got people uh like you know, well we talked about the Warwickshire teenage Warwickshire leader before in the last podcast I was in, George Finch, um, who clearly has his eyes set. firmly on Westminster. Is the argument that the uh the officers are meant to know how to do this stuff so that you're not completely saying well it's hopeless none of these people are to do anything. There are there is a group of non political people there already. Absolutely. So if you use the analogy I suppose in a way of of you know central government, you've got the elected member and then you've got uh the civil servants who know what they're doing and and I think what's interesting about what's happening now, which is I'm sure what happens in central government, is that you've got all of these uh many officers, paid officials who are non political, going, Oh My God, what is going on here? Uh, because all of a sudden you've got a bunch of new people coming in. Suddenly maybe your council's gone into no of all control, so that means, um, as we said last time on the podcast that decisions may take longer to get through. Um, and certainly, um, you know, on Rotten Boroughs, we have had communications from people who work in councils whose names shall not be revealed, who are saying, you know, in all seriousness, we're really worried. We're really worried because we've had these policies, we've got, you know, kids with special needs, we've got housing crisis, we've got bankrupt council, and we've suddenly got people who have never represented a local uh community before. Some people, as you said, have applied and they've got no experience and that there's a slightly different phenomenon which is where you've got uh as we say, paper candidates who didn't expect to win at all, didn't think they would, are are really just there to be a name to represent their party or the party they support, and then they end up winning. That's right. And I think we saw some of this with the last local elections, particularly um, you know, again with reform. But I think also there are um there are reports of this happen am amongst green candidates as well. And so what you have is a few days after the election results were announced. You know, you had stories of certain councillors, I believe there were reform councillors going off on holiday. uh because they didn't really think they'd get in and quite fancy to break. Um and I think, um, according to Mark Pack, who's a Lib Dem peer, who who has a very good tracker, keeps track of uh the amount of counsellors from reform um who've departed for various reasons. I think we've had about ten who've left since May the seventh this year. That's quite a lot. It's quite a lot, in addition to the seventy or so that had left but you know, b sort of from last May. The last lot of local elections to now. And that's money, right? Because they'll have the those they you can't just appoint new people to those positions. They'll have to rerun those elections. given that uh reform in particular is about efficiency. And you know, let's not single out reform here, it happens with other parties as well. Um, but if you're trying to save money and the average by election an award costs about twenty grand. But it's not a great use of funds, is it? And I mean we mentioned Croydon, for example, as example there at the moment where the the Green uh candidate was suspended shortly before the election, but too late to be taken off the ballot paper. Now this has happened. This happened with an aspire candidate in Tower Hamlets, it's happened with other candidates elsewhere. And so if he remained on the ballot he got elected and he's currently under investigation for allegedly making anti Semitic sorry sort of perpetuating um posts online. Um, they come in and they say, Right, it's day one. We're going to eliminate all the waste, we're going to free Palestine, we're going to stop woke nonsense, whatever the agenda is. And then day four they say, I think we're gonna have to put the rates on. Yes, and and they come in exactly that. They come in and say, We're gonna stop the boats, we're gonna fix the NHS. uh we're gonna get rid of you know with the climate change non nonsense we're gonna get rid of net zero. Um and what they fail to realise is number one local authorities have no uh duty, no responsibility, no power to do that. But number two, there are s sort of processes you have to go through. So for example, you come in you have to wait for the full council meeting to be elected. Uh, you know, for example as a leader, um, you have different committees. There's all sorts of machinations that people don't know about. There really isn't any money. No. They're not pretending there's no money. No there isn't any money. But we didn't hear much of that during the election, did we? No. And I think that you know there is no money and that money um has not been there for a long, long time. So it's successive years where there's less and less money coming in from local government. So obviously you're having to raise the council tax. So One of the areas we've talked about in the past is Worcestershire County Council, where they've had to put up uh council tax by uh nine percent. Um now that's a reform council that was voted in last year. Um and it inherited massive financial difficulty. So coming in saying you know, generally the party uh sort of approaches council tax low, they've obviously been unable to do that. Worcestershire in particular, if we want to sort of we talked about the predictions. Um so one interesting thing is to look at the councils that have been run um by reform in the last surge, um a year ago they came in, so Worcestershire that's completely imploded. The leader of the council has been ousted by a coalition of other parties. Uh she's been suspended, and her son, who's also a reform councillor in a borough council just on lower tier, has also being suspended. What do you say there, Saber, about people not realising there's no money and then count councillors being voted in and then discovering there's no money. This is just a smaller version of the entire national condition, isn't it? I mean There's no money. We all think that we all want there to be more money but there isn't any. And we keep voting for people who say, Don't worry, we'll sort out more money. I think you've summarised Rotten Boroughs up really well there. So I think we just yeah cancel the next edition and just put that quote on. But yes, effectively. But that's interesting because Worcestershire is where I'm from and it's not It's not a place that's doing badly. Right, and when Labour in the twenty twenty four of General Election having having had a Tory election throughout that time, that's the city centre. But there are much more deprived places in England than than Worcestershire. So that to me I I don't know if you've looked at the figures, but I would have thought that's a social care. I mean, one of our great themes in this is that adult social care has blown has just blown No matter if you've got a fairly stable council base of taxpayers, you just can't meet your obligations, right? That's No, you can't. And it's not getting any easier. People are living longer. Um and there's no way out for any council. And so I suppose Sam, but you've been looking at the local elections from a year ago and tr seeing where they've ended up today. Worcestershire's imploded. But it was quite split, wasn't it? Didn't it have some reform and some green and some this and some that and But there was there there was no coherent message from the voters of Worcester about what they wanted. No, and I I think that's you know just just I guess going back to the John Cur uh Curtis' quote about nobody's very popular, that this is that fragmentation that um you know, on one hand isn't it fantastic that we've got all this choice. And so I can be represented and two doors down there's my, you know, neighbour who's voting in a sort of different way, uh, also has representation. But in one sense you can say that's great it's democratic, but in another it leads to um deadlock. And some very interesting characters getting elected. Well that'll keep Rotten Burrows full. I don't think there's any danger of you running out of stories. I can safely say that we we are well served from colour. Intrigue. corruption and um dodgy political characters. You mentioned last time that the uh reform campaign was launched in Sunderland. Uh Nigel Farad went himself and did a two thousand seat venue and it was you know big raspberries 'cause he was very optimistic about their chances there. How did that turn out? It turned out well in terms of they've got the council. Um however Not long after they did that, um there were allegations of of racism, sexism and then the usual stuff from several candidates, including one who wanted to melt down Nigerian people and fill potholes with them. Um Richard Tice was asked that comment and essentially really lowballed it, um and sort of slightly dismissed it, I think, which was I you know, I found that quite shocking. And James cleverly, or I think his background is Garnaian British, was like, Come on It was presented as this kind of, you know, he said Nigerian's gonna and it was like it was like he he s explicitly made a remark where he's like