The Duran Podcast
Nigel Farage returns
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the election in the UK. How are things going between Sunak and Kia or Stommer? Faraj is now in the election as well, which is going to make things a bit more interesting. Did we have a debate? I think we had a debate between Stommer and Sunak as well. How many debates are scheduled? Or is this the only debate? No, there's going to be many more. I have to say, the idea of more debates between Stommer and Sunak judging on the one that happened is an almost unendurable thought. I mean, it was awful. I mean, they were both incredibly rude and insulting to each other. There were lots of race voices. There were attempts on both sides to pretend that they had disagreed on fundamentals. It was actually very difficult to see that they did disagree on anything of substance. So they said rude things about each other. Neither of them, in my opinion, performed at all well. They both performed dreadfully. It just demonstrates again that there are two parts of the same uni party. We did a brilliant program about all of this recently with Dr. Nima Parvini, which explained now when looking at elite parties, two parties that are part of the same elite structure, fighting things out. But again, it demonstrated how empty of content of policy and of ideas, the struggle between labor and conservative this time has become. Dr. Parvini talked about the froth, the froth of politics, which is where the divisions between the parties classically have existed. There was very little of that. There was very little even of that. In this election, to get a sense of how absurd it was, each of them was pretending to be more anti-immigration than the other. I think looking at both of them, and also looking at the record of each of them, Sunak has been prime minister for a while now, and has managed to do absolutely nothing to stem immigration. Starmer, who's a human rights lawyer, by background, somebody who again you don't really expect to be to make immigration. He's major concern. I don't know anybody really believes that either of them take this issue particularly seriously. Anyway, there we go. So that was the debate. Now, what's happened, and I come back to the analysis that we made when we previously discussed this election, and we discussed how the decision to call the election when it was called was in order to prevent alternatives, the parties to the right and to the left, outside the central block of the two big parties, not to give them time and space to organize, how that was the reason that the election was called when it was, rather than postponing the election until November, as many people had intended. Well, what has happened is that the election itself has been so boring, so bad, so completely empty of content, that the person who has, to a great extent, been the dominant figure in British popular politics for well over a decade now, sniffed the opportunity and said, "Given how bad this is, this is the moment for me to burst in." And that, of course, is Nigel Farage, and he has burst in, and even the media is in shock about this, and the election has been electrified, and though it's unlikely, I would have thought that Farage in this election is going to take votes from Labour, though you must assume that. It's highly likely that he will take votes from the Conservatives, and I've just seen one opinion poll which puts reform UK, now just two points behind the Conservatives at 17%, which is a big surge since Farage joined the fray, the Conservatives are down to 19%, which is catastrophic. I mean, it's more than a halving of their vote from the election that we saw. Now, there's some ideas and thoughts that reform UK in the popular vote might even overtake the Conservatives, that I will have to wait and see, I'm still uncertain about something like that happening, but of course, if it does, then the whole plan to hold the election now is to prevent alternatives forming, will have been thrown to the wind and thrown to pieces, and we might actually have an election which would promise a fundamental change. Because to be absolutely clear, even if Keir Starmer wins two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons, which is not impossible, but reform UK enters the House of Commons, perhaps doesn't win more seats than the Conservatives, which would be difficult for it to do given the electoral system, but perhaps wins more votes than the Conservatives, that would be a revolutionary moment. It really would be 1906 again, you remember what we talked about, the 1906 election, which the Liberals won by a landslide, but which really showed that their position was starting to become crumble, under the new political force, the Labour Party of that time, was emerging. If we have a situation like that in this election, then it'll be another revolutionary moment, well, revolutionary moment would be too strong. It will be another pivotal moment, and it will mean that British politics, or at least the shape of British politics, will have fundamentally changed. Does Farage enter the Parliament? Is that how it goes? If he wins his seat, is he in the Parliament, or is the goal or the possibility that reform actually becomes a viable, strong third party? Is that something that could happen from these elections, instead of having this two party system? Could we actually be looking at three strong parties in the UK after these elections? Is that too much to ask? It's not too much to ask, though it must be said that at the moment, it still seems a little far-fetched. The British system has been a three-party system. It's been conservative and Labour. They've each generally polled between 30 and 40 percent in various elections for some time now, and we've also had the Liberals, the Liberal Democrats, who've polled between 10 and 20 percent in various elections as well, and that's been the basic balance. They've all been, at least since the Blair era, mainstream elite parties, very much part of the centre. If Reform UK enters Parliament and establishes itself as the third party, then it's going to be different. It's going to be the entry of populist politics into the House of Commons, and it's going to be a shock. It's going to be a shock throughout the political system. The Labour Party will be very alarmed because they know that a lot of what Reform UK says is attractive to the kind of working-class voter that used to be the pillar of Labour's own electoral coalition. It will be a shock, and it is not impossible. I think there's a number of things to say in that livestream that we had with Dr. Parvini. He spoke about his desire to see the Conservatives lose every seat, and one would love to believe. I mean, to be clear, they have governed disastrously. Notice how he also said things that we've been saying on many programmes, how bad the situation in Britain has become, how dysfunctional and broken the British state has become, and how to a great extent now it's hardly governing and not governing well. If the Conservatives implode it to the extent that he says, and we got no seat, they were left with no seats at all. One couldn't say that it was undeserved. I would say that it was fully deserved. I mean, they've governed terribly, but is it realistically going to happen? There are still an awful lot of people in Britain who self-identify as Conservatives, and it seems to me that there's still a significant block of people, especially people over 65, who are going to loyally vote for the Conservative Party, which in fairness has looked after their interests reasonably well. It's made sure that more affluent pensioners are reasonably well protected. And that is a significant voting block in British politics, and I would have thought that it is enough by itself to enable the Conservatives to win a significant number of seats. But it's not impossible that in other places, saying places on the Red Wall, in some of the suburbs, the North London suburbs reform UK could break through. When you mean breakthrough, I mean, when seats win seats, I mean, to go back to Raj, if he wins the seat, which he's standing for, he will be elected to Parliament, he will become the next. He's never been in Parliament. He's never been in Parliament, which will be in itself, by the way, a shocking moment, and some would say a revolutionary one. You'd have Galloway and Farage, wouldn't you? Well, indeed, in fact, you would have exactly the outcome that Dr Parvini was talking about, you would have Farage and Galloway perhaps sitting side by side. By the way, they worked together, they know each other. One is on the left, the other is on the right, but they have many things in common. Both are anti-EU, for instance. Is Galloway, would you define him as populist left? Yeah, he's popular left. Farage is populist right, you would say, right? Yes, so that would be a definition for a reform UK? Yes, I think so. Form UK would be defined as a populist right. And Galloway, I would define personally, the way I would define him is as old labour left. The Labour Party's working class left was very hostile to EU, as I well remember, or the European community, or the European economic community, as it was called. It believed in a public ownership, it believed in a strong state, intervening in the economy, it believed in all kinds of things. Things which remain popular, by the way, with many people in Britain. So, you know, it might potentially, a Galloway-type party, you could see that it might actually break through. Galloway's problem, in my opinion, has always been that he has not been as successful in organising a political movement beyond himself, whereas Farage has been. So, Farage is very good at, you know, finding people, lots of people who will work for him, and will campaign for him in various places. He's created parties, like UKIP and the Brexit Party, which have been successful, and of course, he's now leading Reform UK, which are greater than himself. Up to now, Galloway has never really succeeded in doing that. Yeah, but Farage is the face, though, now of Reform UK. I mean... Oh, absolutely, because our successful party's in their own right, but Farage is now the face of it. Well, I think he will not only become his face, I think it's only a matter of time, because he becomes his former leader. I have to say that. I mean, I can't imagine that... I mean, he's so much the big beast in that particular wood. So, I can't imagine that he won't be its leader before long. Yeah, but both men are big personalities and big forces. Yes. That's going to terrify. That's going to terrify guys, like Sunak and Starr. Well, I think Sunak not only knows that he's going to lose, but I think he's planning to leave the UK completely and go to the US. That's the rumour anyway. So, I don't think he's going to be here for very much long. What Starr is going to do is another question. I'm going to say this. I don't think a Starrmer government is going to be very effective or very successful. And I repeat what I said in our previous programme, what you're going to see, and especially if there is this populist revolt and that brings reform UK into the House of Commons, you're going to see a big authoritarian term as well. We've seen this already and it's going to intensify. And nobody should be under any illusions about that at all. Yeah. I wonder if Obama's trip to see Sunak has something to do with Sunak going to the US. Maybe do something with the Obama Foundation or Obama or something. I don't know. Very likely. I didn't think of that, but I'm sure you're right. Anyway, all right. We'll end it there, thedrad.local.com. We are in Rumbolatasy but you telegram Twitter X and go to the end rumble and go to the Duran shop, football 24 pickups, amazing football, t-shirts and jerseys. The link is in the description box down below. Take care. [Music]