The Duran Podcast
Tories crushed. Labour, declining victory. Farage triumphs
All right, Alexander. Let's talk about the elections in the UK. You'll go through the results. I've got one question that I need to ask you, which is driving me crazy. And I imagine it's driving a lot of people crazy that do not understand the elections in the UK. How does reform go from being the second, definitely the third most popular party, if you go by the polls. And even if you go by the votes, I believe, even if you go by the actual votes that they got, how do they go from being such a popular party, from having such a surge in support, to having the results show only, I think, 13 seats, if I'm not mistaken, while the liberal Democrats had something like 65 or 71 seats. I mean, I don't understand how a party like Reform UK, apparently, is so popular. But the result is seems. At least to me it seems low, 13 seats. Yeah, I think it's actually work. I think it's less than that. I think it's more like four. And can I just say, that is a massive achievement and a colossal breakthrough. And the most important thing to say is that Nigel Farage is now in the House of Commons. And that is the single biggest event and most important thing, in some respects, to happen in this election. Now, the thing to understand about a British general election is that it is an election that takes place on a first-past-the-post system in 600 constituencies. So it's not one general election right across the country. It is 600 elections that take place simultaneously. And in each seat, if you win 49% of the vote and the other side wins 51, they win all the seats and you win none, that is the way the electoral system works. Now, the way that works out in practice is that it gives an incumbent MP enormous advantages because he or she's got their organisation already in place. They have name recognition. They have the connections with all the local business people and all of those things. And it's very, very difficult for parties outside the electoral system to break through. What has happened in this election? And big, absolutely no mistake about this. Reform UK has broken through. They've managed it. They've got into the House of Commons, Nigel Farage has got into the House of Commons. He's stood in many constituencies before. The system, the political system, basically combined against him in every one. So, you know, the way it works is that in every, you know, in the two big parties, and to some extent even the third party, the historic third party, the Liberals, will always send people, shuffle their votes around to the extent that they can, to keep outsiders out, you know, when it looks like they might break through. It's just, by the way, happened in Rochdale. You remember George Galloway won Rochdale? There was this election. He did very well in Rochdale and the by-election. He did pretty well in this election too. But again, there was a sort of churning of votes to prevent him winning. And they just managed it. So, they were able to push him down, even though he's clearly a very popular figure in Rochdale. Now, what Farage has done is he's now got four, at least four seats in the House of Commons. He's also an MP. He will start to get inevitably, more television time, more attention. He's going to attract funding. He's going to work even further to build up his organization in, across the country. It's very important in Britain also to gain control of local authorities, just like, you know, in the United States, state governments are very important in controlling how votes work in elections. The same is true to some extent in Britain. You get representatives in local authorities. Gradually, you pull the system towards you. No one has managed it before, since the late 19th, early 20th century, when the Labour Party broke through. And the Labour Party at that time had the massive backing of organised labour and of the trade unions. And if that meant that it had a huge organisation ready to hand across the country, and that was how it was able to work the system that it did. So, in fact, most people are saying, you know, they only got four seats, not a good result. For them, it is an outstanding result. And that is how it has been perceived in Britain. It means they have broken through, and it means they're very well positioned now in the election as, in the future election, and in terms of the development of politics in Britain. And I get to say something else. The Conservatives, as I am making, as we're making this programme, have around 121 seats. This is a catastrophic collapse. I think they had something like 360 before. They imploded. And Reform UK is now running them close in seat after seat, in constituency, after constituency. There is a high probability after this election that you're going to start to see a move in individual constituencies of sitting MPs wanting to join Reform UK. So, the Conservatives support might even fall. The Reform UK support might increase. You're going to see that with local councillors, local businessmen, local movers and shakers in individual constituencies, and they're going to start pushing through. And that's how it's going to play out in British politics over the next five years. Now, can I talk about the elections as a whole? So, yeah. - Kierstammer, one big, 400 plus seats? Or no? - Yeah, I don't know. - That's how it looks. - Yeah, okay. A triumph, I was talking about machine politics in Britain. This is a triumph of machine politics. Let's actually look at the number of votes that Jeremy Corbyn, who, by the way, won his seat. He wasn't able allowed to stand as a Labour candidate, but he won his seat convincingly. Let's look at how the Labour Party did when it was led by Jeremy Corbyn. And let's look at how it's done now that it's led by Kierstammer. I'm looking now at absolute actual votes, numbers of votes cast. Now, there's still some constituencies that's about seven, I believe, that have to declare. So, these are not final figures, but they'll give you a sense. So, in 2017, first election, in which Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Party, Labour won 12.8 million votes, 12.8 million votes. Now, in 2019, which Labour lost, and of course, that was the Brexit election when the conservatives were led by Boris Johnson, and they campaigned on getting Brexit done. Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party won 10.8, 10.2 million votes. So, a significant decline from 12.8 to 10.2, and that was because working class voters in the Midlands and the Northern constituencies voted conservative because they supported Brexit. - In this election? - Was that the vote where Farage supported Boris Johnson? - It absolutely was, that is exactly right. That was the one where Farage supported Boris Johnson. In this election, the election, which has produced the gigantic Labour landslide, 412 MPs or whatever it is, Labour won 9.6 million votes. So, the actual number of votes is falling. It's not growing. They are losing ground. They are losing ground over what Jeremy Corbyn achieved, certainly in 2017, 13.8 million in 2017, which is the peak of Corbynism, 9.6 million understarm them. Now, they want something like 260 seats in 2017. They want something like 412 seats in this one. Why has that happened? Because again, machine politics, Labour has the organisation on the ground, and we are looking at a complete conservative collapse. So, let's look at the conservative numbers. To raise a May in 2017, won 13.6 million votes ahead of Corbyn, but not by very much. Boris Johnson in 2019 increased that to 13.9 million. Not a huge increase, but a significant increase achieved largely in my opinion, because of Farage's support, and because he promised to get Brexit done. In this election, they've collapsed to 6.7 million. They've lost more than half their vote. It has been a total implosion. So, it's this extraordinary collapse. It means that even though the Labour vote has fallen, because in individual constituencies, it is not the conservative vote has fallen very much more, and the Labour vote has fallen by less. That means that in many more seats, Labour has come out first in each individual seat, because it's got the organisation, because it's got the support, because as I said, vote hasn't imploded, and that's what's delivered the landslide. So, you can see how hollowed out British politics has become. 9.6 million votes would have never delivered you a landslide in British electoral history in any election, since basically the end of the First World War. It's only happened because of the total collapse of the Conservative Party, from which, in my opinion, there is no recovery. And why are the Conservatives collapsing, because they've governed abysmally, because they failed to carry through their promises with regard to Brexit, because Nigel Farage has come out, and is telling more and more people to vote against them, because he sees them as betraying the promises they made to him, and to the voters in 2019, and because so many British voters are supporting, are agreeing with him. Now, the overall turnout in this election, by the way, again, I want to just deal with turnout figures. In 2017, the peak of the Corbyn search, turnout was 68.8%. In the 2019 election, it fell to 67.3%, largely because many, many working-class voters, who couldn't stomach voting Conservative, because they're left-wing, but were angry over Brexit, because Labour had worked alongside Conservative, Remainers to sabotage Brexit. They refused to vote. In this election, the one we've just had, turnout has fallen to 60%. The second lowest since the X, since the Second World War. So, the British establishment is losing credibility. The Labour Party, despite its enormous landslide, is living on borrowed time, and the Conservatives are facing extinction. - Can you address the Liberal Democrats just quickly? - Yes, they haven't, I mean, they have barely shifted. Again, if anything, they're falling back, just as Labour and Conservative are actually losing votes, so are the Liberal Democrats. But again, in many, many constituencies, they were second placed to the Conservatives. Conservative voters imploded. The Liberal voters remained steady, because they were second placed. That means that they now become first, and that's why they're getting around 70 seats. It's, again, the nature of the electoral system. It's a hollow victory, it's as much a hollow victory for them, as the Labour landslide is for Labour. The party that's growing is Reform UK, to a small extent, the Greens as well. As I said, the Reform UK is basically a right-wing party. It is starting to, we're starting to see a realignment on the right. There hasn't yet been a realignment on the left, to the extent that there is one. It looks like the Greens are capitalising on it, that whether the Greens are a traditional left-wing party, I'm not going to get into this. But Reform UK are the party that has broken through. All of the establishment parties, Labour, Liberal, the SNP in Scotland, which has had a disastrous result, they've lost, I believe, something like two-thirds of their support, they've gone down from 48 seats to nine. I mean, it's collapsed completely. And again, by the way, the major beneficiary was the Labour Party in Scotland, because in most SNP seats, it was Labour that was second. So, the establishment parties are collapsing. The only significant party that is growing, and growing strongly, is Reform UK. Nigel Farage is in the House of Commons, and that is a revolutionary moment in British electoral history. OK, I'm glad you explained everything, because from someone on the outside looking in, it doesn't feel like something big happened. Yeah, it looks like a success for Farage, Reform UK, but it doesn't feel like it's this huge breakthrough. But obviously, it is. And obviously, elections in the UK are difficult, if you're outside of the two. Or maybe you could say the three-party system, if you... Yeah, absolutely. I mean, bear in mind, Conservative, Labour and Liberal, are three of the oldest parties in the world. The Conservative Party, in its modern form, was basically invented in around the 1880s. But it has a huge backstory, going all the way back to the 17th century. So do the Liberals. I mean, you know, you remember people talk about Wigs and Tories. The Liberal Party inherited the Wigs, the Conservative Party inherited the Tories. Wigs and Tories were 17th-century parliamentary factions. So, you know, that tells you how far back they go. The Labour Party basically emerged in the 1890s. So, you know, this is a very strong, well-established, political system here. Parties with very deep roots. The SMP, I believe, goes back to the 1920s. So, breaking through, changing the whole political language, is... it is an enormously difficult thing to do. And Farash has done it. He's broken through, in a way that says... I mean, I was talking about the Labour Party. Let me repeat again. When the Labour Party began to break into Parliament in the late 1890s, early 1900s, and eventually superseded the Liberals as the second biggest party in Britain, it was able to do so, because it had the support of organised labour, the trade unions, which, in seats, where there were large numbers of working-class voters in places like Lancashire, the Midlands, Yorkshire, the industrial towns, meant that there was a already formed organisation that the Labour Party could draw upon in order to break through. Nigel Faroch has had none of that. All these... he's been, you know, going around for decades, talking in town halls, speaking to people. He goes on television. He's managed to address people in ways that... is unusual in British politics. So, he's achieved this. Essentially, I'm not going to say all by himself, because, of course, that would be very unfair. There's lots of people in Reform UK. There's lots of people who've been activists, who've been involved in politics, all sorts of ways. But suffice to say, no one else has done this before. And he's done it. He's got into Parliament. He's got a party behind him. He's won 14% of the vote. He's got an organisation starting to emerge. And as a Conservative Party, looks like it's facing an extinction moment. And that is going to persuade an awful lot of Conservatives to say, "Well, you know, let's bail out of the sinking ship and clamber on to the... you know, the one that's floating." Whether Faroch will want them all, of course, is another matter. But then we're going to get into that discussion today. Right. OK, so the main issues during this election, if I understand it correctly, is immigration. It was a huge issue. The economy, inflation, I believe, that's very much connected to Project Ukraine, even if the political class doesn't admit as much, much of the economic downturn in the collective West, and even in the UK, is connected to the Project Ukraine and the sanctions and all of these things, and Brexit. I still get the sense that Brexit is this unfinished business that just doesn't get resolved. And that takes me to Kierstammer, because one of Kierstammer's tasks, I believe, is to get the UK back into the EU, or to begin the process to integrate the UK into the European Union, whatever that may mean. What is Kierstammer going to do as Prime Minister? How is he going to fix these issues that I just said? Are there issues that I'm leaving out? Have I forgotten something? As far as the main issues that citizens in the UK voted on, what do you see going forward? He's not going to fix any of those issues, and you've identified all the right ones. Immigration, huge issue. I mean, it's one that people are very, very concerned about. They talk about all the time. Nobody really believes either conservatives or Labour are going to change anything. In fact, I've seen hints that Labour is going to try and ease on the freedom of movement issues with the EU again. Kierstammer says that Britain is not rejoining. He's the EU in his lifetime. That's what he said during this election, because he needs to reassure. He wants to reassure those working-class voters, who are still not voting for him, by the way. Notice that they still don't trust him, and why would they trust him? Because this is the man who, a couple of years ago, says, was going around saying that he was the loyal friend of Jeremy Corbyn, who promised when he became Labour leader to continue Corbyn's radical programme. He's turned his back on every single part of it. Everybody can see what Stammer says and what he does. Are completely different things. So he might bring back free movement. Who knows? He might try and lead Britain eventually back into the EU, despite saying otherwise. Most people, I think, deep down think that's what he wants to do, and perhaps he will. This election result has perhaps unsettled him a little, because he is being advised about the realities of how brittle his position actually is. But anyway, Brexit is not done. Probably the establishment still wants to see it reversed. Maybe that is what he will do. On the economy, completely out of ideas. And on the war in Ukraine, don't talk about it. That's basically, and you're absolutely right, by the way. People are talking about it more and more. But don't talk about it. Now, as everybody who follows us knows, I've just been to Germany, and I've been there for some time. I've had anecdotal discussions with various people, and what's the truth is, these are anecdotal discussions, including young people. I'm always very careful not to lead discussions, or to ask-- when I ask questions, I make them very open. And it was astonishing to hear how often the subject of Ukraine came up. So people in Germany are talking about Ukraine all the time, especially young people. They're becoming very worried about war and all of that. I'm no reason to think it's any different in Britain. In fact, I know that it is. So immigration, people are concerned about more likely to be relaxed. The immigration controls relaxed, rather than dieting. The economy, stama has no ideas to speak of about that. At least no ideas that differ in any fundamental way. From Sunax, Brexit, probably we're going to start to see a drift towards reversing it. If they bring back free movement, that's definitely a sign that they will. And Ukraine, well, more of the same. All right, final question. How will Sunax be remembered if he is going to be remembered? He kept his seat. He keep his seat, correct? Yeah, he did keep his seat. So he's going to be in the parliament. Oh, he's going to be in the parliament. I do think for very long all of the stories are that he's thinking of leaving the UK completely and going to the United States and settling there. I go to say, I think there's a strong chance that you will be remembered as the last conservative prime minister, the prime minister who led the conservative party to its extinction moment. Now, this trust, by the way, did lose his seat. Just saying, a host of other ministers lost their seats as well, including the defense secretary, Grand Shaps, who is, of course, a ferocious hawk on Ukraine. I mean, that, again, perhaps tells you something. So Sunax kept his seat. Richmond is a very strong conservative seat. The point is he's not governed. He's administered. He came in promising to write the ship, to lead Britain in a competent way. Nobody felt that he achieved any of those things. He was an exhausted prime minister of an exhausted party, leading an exhausted government, well past its sell-by date. And to repeat again, a party that has never, in my opinion, truly recovered from the event of 1990 when Margaret Thatcher was deposed as prime minister. They've never really found their way since. In 2010, they were able to capitalize on the financial crisis, which hit the Labour Party in Gordon Brown's government. In 2015, they were able to benefit from the collapse of Labour's support in Scotland and the collapse of the Liberals as a result of the fact that they'd entered into this coalition arrangement with the Conservatives. And in 2019, they benefited from Brexit. But these were events that they didn't really cause that they were able to briefly capitalize on. They'd been out of ideas ever since then, and none of their leaders, since 1990, since Thatcher was ousted, have given the sense of control and drive, energy, and vision, which she undoubtedly did. I have one more question. How are the globalists? How do you think, if you have to take a guess, how do you think the globalists are viewing these elections? The globalists, they have their Project Ukraine, and they have everything that's going on in the Middle East, like the Bidens, the people around Biden, the Ursulas, the Charles Machels, the Macrons, the Rutes, the NATOs, how do you think they're looking at these results? Oh, I think they're very pleased. I mean, they've got the Arch globalists as Prime Minister. I think they've run their point of view. And that includes the globalists in Britain. I mean, they're not wanting to look beyond the 412 seats that Starmer has won. I mean, to him, to them, he looks like a strong Prime Minister in control of a strong government. There are some globalists who are intelligent people and who will go and look at the actual polling figures and how people are actually voting who dip under the surface and look and worry about those things. But in general, most of them won't. I mean, they will see the surface. They will not look below the water line. Interesting. OK. We will end it there at the duran.locos.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitchu, Telegram, Rockefeller, and TwitterX. And go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch. The link is in the description box down below. Take care. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music) (upbeat music)