Lammy's PMQs calamity as second migrant prisoner accidentally released

0:02The Telegraph

0:10Calamity Lamy has overseen one of the most bizarre PMQs in recent memory and revealed that he seemingly didn't know that another foreign prisoner has been accidentally released from prison. Also, New York has just elected a communist lunatic to quote the president as its new mayor. We speak to a pollster who tells us how he did it and could it happen here? Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

0:46Tim, you've just come back from what I think is one of the most bizarre PMQs of recent memory. I was there. I can't tell my own grandchildren about it, but I will tell other people's grandchildren about it. Because it's spun on a dime, as they say. I've got America in my head because of the New York election. James Cartilage was standing in. Sorry. Okay. James Cartilage was standing in for Kemi Badenock against David Lammy, who was standing in for Keir Starmer. Why? Because Keir Starmer has flown to the environmental summit of COP. Along with Sadiq Khan. They're all in Brazil with Prince William.

1:22Historians will laugh at the fact that people flew to environmental summits. It's absolutely ridiculous. So Keir Star was out of the country. David Lammy's replacing him. And this guy called James Cartlidge, who's not very well known, but who I popularised in my sketch as having strong hair. Yes, and eyebrows. He is a man with very strong hair. Touch of the Alistair Darlings about him. And so when it began, we all sort of thought, how is this going to play out? Because David Lammy has a reputation for being Calamity Lammy. Yes. Fair or not? I mean, whenever Lammy fills in for someone at PMQs, it makes you think of like Chaplin does Hamlet.

1:56You know, how's this going to go? When Honours Hamlet came off as omelette. In fact, it was his first PMQs. And as he pointed out, he is also the first black person to speak on behalf of the Prime Minister at PMQs. So it had a historical vibe. Anyway, we're all thinking, how are these two understudies going to play it? And we were braced for Clamity Lammy, but actually it looked as though Lammy had a very good PMQs because it looked as though James Cartlidge had cocked it up. He's the shadow defence secretary, I should point out, just in case. And he is also the son-in-law of Gerald Howarth, if that means anything to Thatcher fans.

2:34It's a small world. Indeed. James Cartlidge had one question to ask, which was this. Can he reassure the House that since Kabartu was released, no other asylum-seeking offender has been accidentally let out of prison? Whatever you think of the strengths or the weaknesses of that question, Cartilage went on to ask it six times Was it six or was it five? Well this is the thing He asked the question so often That we lost count of how many times he had asked it And it looked as though he got up to ask it again For a seventh time But the speaker questioned that And told him to sit down Let's listen to Lindsay Hoyle intervening and trying to work out the maths of the situation.

3:23Kicking out 5 ,000 foreign criminal offenders. I've got to say, to the honourable gentleman, he should do better. Jonathan Blash. Thank you, Mr Speaker. My constituent, Georgia Hart. More on, I got it to six. James Carpenter.

3:44Order. It is six. Am I right? Siggs, you've had this thing. Sorry, I was correct. Jonathan Brice. Again, regardless of the strengths of the question, the fact that he asked it again and again tested the patience of the House. And David Lammy. David Lammy thought he had given a fair enough answer and Lammy eventually lost what little patience he had and said this. Get a grip, man. I know I'm the Justice Secretary. That's why I'm at the dispatch box also as Deputy Prime Minister. We know that. I'm not going to pray in aid. Dame Anne Owens is a former Deputy Commissioner in London, head of the NCA.

4:34It is for her to get to the bottom of that work. Of course we know that there have been spikes since 2021 under his watch. When did he come to this house and apologise? So by the end of this back and forth, it looked as though it had been a disaster for poor James Cartilage. And Lammy kind of did OK in the rest of the PMQs. He can be very good at this thing. Although, can I point out one thing that went a little bit wrong for him? Right, I know what it's going to be. He starts out in PMQs and I keep on getting messages as I'm watching it on my computer, doing a bit of tweeting as one does. He's not wearing a poppy.

5:09He's not wearing a poppy. By the time those messages came through, he was wearing a poppy. So then I had to rewind the Telegraph live stream of PMQs, which we do every Wednesday, should you ever want to watch it on the website. And then I thought, no, hang on. At the beginning of all this, he's not wearing a poppy. Suddenly somewhere halfway in between, in fact, after 20 minutes, one appears on his lapel. He then confesses to having bought a new suit and how important poppy wearing is. But if it's that important to the Justice Secretary, why on earth didn't he have one on all day? Yeah. So that was a bit bizarre.

5:41I think his whole demeanour... It was a new suit. It was a new suit. A new suit had been bought for him for Remembrance, therefore it wasn't one with a poppy on. I know. His godmother, he said, because he had this big moment in PMQs that his godmother had bought in this new suit. But I merely make the point that you've got to have some chutzpah to start talking about the importance of poppies on Remembrance Day when you haven't worn one for half of the session. David is also very anecdotal. So, for instance, when there was a question about Scotland, he said, I'm 5 % Scottish. I'm surprised he didn't tell us that he served in the Second World War or that he gave birth in a maternity ward that was being discussed.

6:15Anyway, by the end of the session, it looked as though few Calamity Lamia got away with it and Cartilage had really embarrassed himself. And then our phones went off. Our phones went off to say that the Telegraph had broken a story. Uh-oh. Which was... Another migrant prisoner has been accidentally released from prison. Following on from the farce that was Haddish Kabati being accidentally released from HMP Chelmsford. They've gone and done it again. Gone and done it again. So that was the migrant involved in the Epping scandal. Cartilage had been standing up for the whole of PMQs asking Lammy, do you know of any other prisoners that have been released?

6:54Can you rule out other prisoners having been released accidentally? Lammy gives an on answer. And then Cartilage has his Columbo moment, stands up and makes a point of order. As a point of order, clearly, God love Cartilage, he's got our breaking news alert thing on his app, which kind of flashes up any latest news story. And I'm very proud to say he quoted this newspaper. The Telegraph are reporting that a police manhunt has been launched for a second asylum seeker mistakenly freed from prison. The question is, Mr Speaker, can you advise me on how I can ask the Justice Secretary whether he was aware of this when I asked him about it repeatedly in Prime Minister's question?

7:33So from a PMQs which Lammy bossed and cartilage flopped, it suddenly looked as though Lammy had had a disaster of a PMQs and cartilage had pulled off something rather special. So what do we know about this prisoner that has been accidentally released? Well, it's an Algerian man, aged 24. As I say, he had been held in HMP Wandsworth. Then, apparently, he was accidentally freed last Wednesday. The Met police were only told about this on Tuesday of this week, yesterday for the purposes of this podcast. And the questions that remain in all this as we record this, and I'm sure more will be reported on the Telegraph website, so stay tuned, but did David Lammy know that there was a prisoner on the loose at the moment he first stood up at PMQs?

8:26And was that why he was prevaricating so heavily and using the deflection technique of saying that prisoner releases were all the Tories' fault, even though they're no longer in power? and, I suppose, secondly to that, did Cartlidge know that this story was coming and that's why he focused all of his six questions on this issue? Or is James Cartlidge, has he suddenly become the luckiest man in Westminster that he questions on an issue that suddenly the telegraph breaks just as they're all about to leave the chamber so he's able to make this point of order at the very last minute? And, by the way, it was the last minute.

9:03They were all getting up to leave him. They were. I think it's the latter. I think it's a case of strong hair, big luck. I don't think he knew this was coming. I think he was probably as surprised as everyone else. High on hairspray fumes. Crucially, one part of Lammy's non-answer was, I have instituted the strongest checks in prisons possible. For those who are listening to this, I'm chopping the air with my hand as I speak, as he does. If so, how did this person get out? I know, the timing is absolutely priceless. Can I just blow a little trumpet for The Telegraph? It's been quite the week, hasn't it?

9:39We've had Gordon Rayner's amazing BBC expose. We've now discovered this second migrant on the loose. I mean, it's a good week for journalism at this newspaper. That's all I'm saying, Tim. No one else is going to blow our trumpet. So we may as well just give it a little toot. But this brings us back to this question of institutional failure. And it's so great and so wide and deep that it feels as though the government's actually drowning in it. Yes. Also, I think you saying he had a stonking PMQs up until the point that Cartlidge had his moment of correction. Pardon the pun. I don't know if it was that great because I'm not sure if this whole shtick around, well, it's all your fault that we're making mistakes actually holds any water.

10:22Yes, you can make a very good point about the Chris Grayling reforms that have denigrated prisons because they've got rid of all of the experience, brought in a load of people that don't seem to be able to control the cells. We've had rioting, we've had people escaping. An early release began under the Tories and deportations have actually gone up. But there was a point at which Lammy was almost trying to say that it was the Tories' responsibility for what was happening now and that clearly can't be the case. You're in power, mate. You're the Justice Secretary. You've been in power for more than a year.

10:52Yes. So you can't blame the Tories for stuff that is happening now on your watch. Yeah. And also the Tories and Labour are both parties of the system in capital letters. They are parties that reflect the establishment and the state and the way that it does business. They're not parties that tear things up, reboot, reset, like Mamdani in New York, which we'll come on to, or Nigel Farage in the UK. They are parties that will always say, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the hard-working public sector. That's what they represent. So I feel they own it because they are parties that represent the culture that are letting us down.

11:31Indeed. If anyone's seen a 24-year-old Algerian that should belong in HMP Wandsworth, do please contact your local constabulary. Coming up next, a communist lunatic, according to the president, has been elected mayor of New York. We're going to be speaking to a pollster who will explain to us how he did it and can it be replicated elsewhere.

12:03Tim, you're looking suited and booted but you haven't shaved and you have the air of a man that's been up all night. I'm an insomniac and last night there was an election in New York so who could sleep through that? It's the city that never sleeps. And my little bit of Kent became the village that can't sleep. And so I did indeed watch the results. This is a big moment in American history. I think the election of Zoran Mandani has been seen in Europe through the prism of the fact that he is a Muslim and that he was very critical of Israel during the Gaza War. And that was very important, especially during the primary.

12:38So Americans, as you know, first select their party's candidates in the primary system, where he faced off against Andrew Cuomo, and then they run in the general. And in the general, he was up against Andrew Cuomo running as an independent and also a very amusing Republican guy who wore a beret and just shouted at everyone. They've got a very small percentage. But actually, although the Islamic anti-Israel stuff mattered in the primary, In the general, the really striking thing is that New York has elected a socialist as mayor, someone who was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. Socialism has not really mattered in American politics since about the 1910s and 1920s.

13:16Back then, it was a significant third party force. It lost ground in part because the US state simply crushed it. Yes, as they do. Put its presidential candidate in prison, Eugene Debs, who was name checked by Mamdani in his speech. Let's hear a little bit of that now. The sun may have set over our city this evening. But as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.

13:53For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns. These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater.

14:33Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it.

14:41The future is in our hands It looks like socialism is coming back and it's coming back in New York Socialism, it's the new black Oh, how annoying On a massive historic turnout one of the biggest they've seen in a very long time he won with just over 50 % of the vote and even if Cuomo had managed to get the Republican to drop out and endorse him they still wouldn't have had enough votes to beat him So a historic victory. I was trying to, I was looking up his profile, didn't know that much about him, was thinking to myself, well, is this New York's answer to, I don't know, Zara Sultana, Zach Polanski, the Green leader?

15:19I mean, where's the equivalent here? He obviously does have an immigrant background. He came to the US when he was age seven. And then you see his childhood and it's actually quite privileged, quite gilded. His father's an academic at Columbia University. Cuomo liked to point out that this is a socialist who lives in rent-controlled accommodation, whose parents are privileged and who has never had a proper job in his entire life. And it's tempting to say that is now the profile of the left. Well, he attended a$60 ,000 a year private school. Right. Owns a parcel of land in Uganda. Handy. So there's a degree of champagne to his socialism.

15:55I would say there is a fizz in his communism. It's interesting that Donald Trump just has totally taken the gloves off, described him as a communist lunatic. And did this thing, as people were going to the polls, Tim, what did you think when the US president wrote on Truth Social that if you were a Jewish person living in New York and you voted for Mamdani, you were, quote, stupid? Yeah. I can understand the premise of that. I'm not sure Jewish voters want to be told either how to vote or indeed that they're stupid for not voting for the Republican candidate. I appreciate the sentiment of it. I'm not sure whether that was a help or a hindrance, actually.

16:32I think you had to bear two other things in mind. One is that demographically New York has changed. The Muslim population is reckoned to be around 9%. The Jewish population is around 11%, 12%. So it's coming up to even right now. So is it really a shock that a city where nearly one in 10 people are Muslim might elect a Muslim? It's not that big a deal. And the second thing is that within the left in America, a lot of Jewish voters are critical of Israel. So the idea that you could just play that card like Cuomo tried throughout the primaries and it would work, it didn't work. Zoran is the liberal Trump in this sense that he proves that people are looking for clarity and that if you stick to your principles, people will vote for you because they think it's authentic.

17:13Whereas people like Cuomo who are all over the place and are just bidding for your vote, that looks inauthentic. And opportunist, actually. But he's also Trump-like in the way that in 2016, every effort to paint Trump as a crazy racist somehow helped him. It somehow solidified the base of his support. Likewise, all the attacks on Man Damme just bounced off. And you compared him to Polanski and perhaps Corbyn in this country. Why is he different? And we'll discuss the significance of this for Britain later. Why is he different? He's intelligent. Yes. And he's charming. And he's quite good looking.

17:49He's only 34. And he is just one of the best political operators I've ever seen, with an incredible discipline when it comes to message and just oodles of charm. And a single message, I will make life in the Big Apple more affordable for you. And I think that's a crucial one. We've done an analysis on the Telegraph website, which you can read, which is basically saying, somebody's quoted saying, there is a Venn diagram of people that voted for Trump, people that have voted for Mamdani. There is a crossover and all of them have been convinced by both very able politicians that they will be better off if they go in the direction of that particular candidate.

18:25I mean, let's be honest, life in New York has become unaffordable for a great many people. Same situation we were discussing this week, generational unfairness. You're a young person in New York. You've got no hope in hell of owning a brownstone. You know, rents are sky high. The price of food has gone up exponentially over the last few decades. And let's look at some of the policies here, Tim. I mean, they are, they're punchy. A rent freeze on rent-stabilised units. He wants to tax corporations and increase taxes on the city's wealthiest residents. That's those earning above a million dollars annually.

19:02There's talk of a 2 % tax on the very wealthiest New Yorkers. He's talking about cracking down on bad landlords. He's talking about combating unaffordable grocery prices. By running city-owned stores. I mean, that's crazy. It's shades of the USSR, right? Very much so. Fare-free buses, well, good luck affording that. He wants to raise the minimum wage to$30 an hour. Which is about like£22,£23. Wow, by 2030. He wants universal childcare for all, so children aged six weeks to five years old. Again, doesn't sound like that's particularly affordable. I'm surprised a rainbow on every street corner and unicorns and lollipops aren't in there too.

19:46I know, the planting of magic money trees. It reminds me of the conversation we had with Alastair Heath, the Sunday Telegraph editor, about the different forms of socialism. There's one, the French one, where you just tax everyone. And then there's the other one, which is this fantasy that there's just these rich people, and if you just squeeze them really hard, you can pay for everything. And, of course, one reason why this won't work in New York is because New York is partly a financial centre. It depends on how attractive it is to rich people to live there. And if it becomes somewhere where it looks like if you're rich, you're going to cross the boundary and get held up by the mayor and shaken down, then surely there's going to be a flight out of that city.

20:22I am foreseeing an opportunity here for us Brits. Yeah. Because we've had this mass millionaire's exodus. Also, perhaps it does embolden the city of London. Where is our main competition these days post-Brexit? It's not Frankfurt. It's not Paris. It's not Milan, Rome, wherever. It's always been New York City. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is an opportunity there, but I doubt Sadiq Khan is going to take it. He's not the right person. Also, I doubt the next budget is going to entice that many high rollers, frankly, to start moving into Kensington and Chelsea. And the New York election is also bizarrely a choice over who is your candidate to take on Trump.

20:56And one thing Trump is doing is using ICE, the immigration people, to round up thousands of immigrants in America. And there's a great deal of popular opposition to this within New York. I don't personally understand that but there you go I think I would like illegal immigrants to be removed from my city especially given some of the headlines we've had in this country but also if you're young and you're living in New York you're probably not a textile worker no this is not the left of the 1930s no you're probably someone who works for a TV company or a fashion company you're probably white collar well educated so as well as wanting the rent to be lowered you're also really woke yes And to some extent, I think this is the woke generation coming of age and entering politics.

21:40Mamdani is woke. OK, he might. This is a misunderstanding that lots of people have. They think Muslim left wing. How does that work? Well, actually, you know what? A lot of Muslims are secular and really woke. And he's an example of that. No, I know there is the assumption that they might be a bit more socially conservative. But hang on a minute. We had Piers Morgan in the studio five minutes ago telling us that woke was dead. Woke as a cultural phenomenon is dead. But in the same way that the people who opposed Vietnam and were crazy left wing in the 60s grew up, put on ties and entered politics and became Bill Clinton.

22:09That same generation of people in their 20s who, say, 10 years ago were woke and crazy and left wing and were chaining themselves to things on campuses and gluing themselves to the road. They've grown up, they've put on a tie and they've entered politics. But it is the cult of the personality, as you say. I mean, can lessons be learned by the Corbyn, Sultanas and Polanskis of this world, of our world, of UK domestic politics? As you say, they've got to have a huge amount of panache to pull this off. I mean, there's the stark sort of social media depiction of Mamdani. He goes out with a kind of big sign saying, do you want to discuss New York politics?

22:45Do you want to discuss it with me? Do you want to discuss socialism? And like nobody comes up to him. Fast forward to the end of the campaign and he's being mobbed by screaming crowds. I mean, there was echoes of, oh, Jeremy Corbyn in the way that he was being received in recent days. Echoes of Charlie Kirk too. Wow, yeah. That same young, I'm up for a debate, I want to discuss ideas. It's not just about tedious procedures and practicalities. There's a bit of that there as well, I think. So it's a candidate with some chutzpah, willing to make the arguments and making them in a way that is eminently clickable.

23:20He's won the social media war here. This is the other thing with Cuomo. Are we now in an era where the digital candidate wins against the analogue candidate? Yes, definitely. Because of the way communications have changed. And of course, we witnessed that with Trump tapping up Joe Rogan and such like on the advice of his son, Barron. And style has changed. Again, as I say, it's about sticking to your guns. And people admire that because they think if you're unbending like Farage, if you've basically said the same thing for 30 years, that must mean you're authentic. And eventually your ideas come around.

23:48If you just stick to socialism, a point will come where there's a crisis in capitalism and you look electable. Part of the problem with this country is our politicians are just so low talent. American politicians are so much better than this. You know, as they say, politics is Hollywood for ugly people. And a friend of mine who's on the far left and supports Mamdani and supports the Greens has just said, why is there no one like this in Britain on the left? Zahra Sultana does not come close to this. No. She's just a squawking student protester. It just sounds like I'm carrying a torch with a guy.

24:22But Mamdani was just really charming. I don't think Polanski comes near that. I don't think he's got that star quality. And also he hasn't got the teeth. No. Polanski's teeth are too British. He's got British teeth. Can I just say, Americans do have great teeth. They do. Can I tell you something very quickly? When I was working in America on the royal weddings, I said to the head of talent at NBC, you'll be pleased to know that I'm going to just get a brace because I just want to sort out those. She goes, yeah, you need to get the whole top row sorted out. It was like I was talking about my bottom teeth.

24:53So bad. Right. Shall we speak to somebody who knows more about this than we do? And that is Ryan Giderski, who is a political consultant and commentator based in NYC. Ryan, thank you very much for joining us. Ryan, is New York an outlier? I mean, this result is quite surprising in light of Trump's re-election, in light of a lot of rhetoric around woke being dead, that actually socialism isn't quite as popular as it used to be. But of course, there are demographic factors involved in the Big Apple, right? I mean, my understanding is that Mamdani massively appealed to cross-generational voters because he basically said life in the city is becoming too expensive.

25:34It's$15 for a pastrami sandwich. We can't carry on like this. And I guess that is a good appeal to the electorate, isn't it? Right. And I mean, the main thing was freezing the rent. The rents in New York are the most expensive in the country. I mean, there are apartments where you can get and it's very common on Instagram and TikTok. You'll see videos of literal closets that go for two or three thousand dollars a month. I mean, it's you can barely fit a bed in it. It is astronomically high and it is unmanageably high for a lot of working class people. And I think that the thing that Mandani did very successful, which is what Bernie Sanders did that was very successful, which is what Donald Trump did that was very successful, was he had a slogan that was tangible, that was easy to understand.

26:15and that you could understand how it affects you in your life. Freeze the rent, Medicare for all, build the wall. These are tangible slogans that people, that the average voter can very much understand. And he was facing the former governor who was disgraced, Andrew Cuomo. And Cuomo really did not believe he ever had a stiff competition. He didn't really even go on the attack until the last week or two of the campaign, despite Mondani climbing in the polls. And Cuomo was basically saying, I will manage the decline of New York very well. There was no idea that he was going to reverse trend lines in New York to make them more manageable.

26:55Now, a lot of things that Mondani has campaigned on, he cannot do without support from the state legislature, from the governor. And there's probably only limited support even there. and it's very expensive to have free child care, very expensive to have a lot of these things, free busing that he has promised, government-run grocery stores. But we will see if the legislature goes along with it and certainly if the legislature is willing to help pay for it because New York City probably cannot pay for half these things on their own. Do you think in the end that it was significant that he is Muslim and critical of Israel or was it actually irrelevant?

27:32Well, it was significant for Muslim voters, right? There's definitely pockets of New York City where you see huge spikes of support for Mondani in areas, and those are Muslim voters. And there's quite a number of Muslim voters. Critical of Israel helped in the Democratic primary for sure. I think a lot is being made of it, though. I think that only in New York would they ask a mayoral candidate, what foreign country are you visiting? They don't ask the mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, what foreign country are you visiting? You know, it's a very weird dynamic that they asked the mayor of New York foreign policy questions.

28:05And Mandani spoke to the Democratic primary, but mostly the white college educated activist portion of the Democratic primary. I think that there's definitely flavors of anti-Semitism that run through him that definitely drove Jewish voters to the polls against him. There's definitely things about him that are genuinely, you know, I mean, a little past socialism, like communism, when he says seize the means of production, which he's actually said out loud, that drove people on the Upper East Side to vote against him. I think that the man is not the moderate that he pretended to be throughout the entire general election when you saw him on his victory speech.

28:40his victory speech was the equivalent of if Trump had won in 2016 and said about Obama, I still think he was born in Africa. Like that was that was basically his speech was, guys, guess what? This whole shiny, happy person I did for the last six months. It's been a lie. I am what they said I am. He was running as a Democrat, but of course, he is a democratic socialist. And that actually ties him to a particular organization. Right. So as the mayor, is he answerable to the democratic socialist lobby as much, if not more than the democratic party? In other words, I don't, I don't imply there's some shady lobby behind him, but have we actually seen a proper democratic socialist elected here?

29:25Not just a, not just a very left-wing Democrat. Right. So in New York state, though, there's a very strange rule. It's not true of most of the United States. There's something called fusion voting, right? So you could run for office under multiple party lines at the same exact time you could technically run as a republican and democrat and it's been done before actually quite a number of times uh there is a group called the working family party in new york which is a very far left quasi socialist while not saying their socialist party in new york state and they were big backers of bill de blasio and he ran for mayor when bill de blasio was in the city council he was notoriously i worked in the city council then he was notoriously lazy and basically the working family party they wrote all of his legislation.

30:07They told him how to vote and he did it. And when he became mayor, the Oregon Party ran New York City for the full eight years that he was mayor. Will the DSA do the same thing? I don't know. I mean, it's possible. The DSA is, of course, the Democratic Socialists of America, the very left-wing umbrella organisation for the left. Ryan, Donald Trump has been as critical of Mamdani as he has our own mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. He's called him a communist lunatic. He urged on true social Jewish voters not to vote for him, saying they would be stupid to do so. Does this overall have an effect on the U.S.

30:42president with the midterms fast approaching? The election last night has an effect for sure. I mean, the Democratic turnout was astronomical last night across the country. You have to remember this. Andrew Cuomo received more votes than Eric Adams when Eric Adams won by nearly 70 percent of the vote. And he lost that many votes. The Republican running in New Jersey got 125 ,000 more votes than he got four years ago and lost. Democrats are very active right now. They're very energized to vote against Trump. They're voting in presidential levels, and Republicans aren't there, and independents are certainly not there.

31:17So I think that it does matter quite a bit. And I think, I mean, Donald Trump should make a show of force and say I'm not backing down from my policies, and he should do ICE raids, immigration raids during the inauguration, Mandani's inauguration. Are we seeing in Mamdani the future of the party, if not him, someone like him being nominated for president? And if so, he can't be nominated for president. He can't be. But does this embolden the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, that they're more likely to nominate a quote unquote economic populist next time rather than go with a centrist droog?

31:53In the United States of America, South Carolina is the most important first primary. It's a majority black primary. they would probably not support a socialist, right? The Deep South that got Bill Clinton and Joe Biden and Barack Obama their nominations would probably not support a socialist. They're black, they're establishment, they're very moderate voters. That being said, it is really a question of when, not if. When will a socialist be able to break through? And it is a big question. I think when the Democrats announced their list of states that they're going to hold primaries in in 2028, the very beginning of it, If they announce a white or Hispanic majority Democrat coalition state in Nevada, Iowa, New Hampshire first, it means they're open to having a socialist nominee.

32:38If it's South Carolina and Georgia and Florida, it means they're likely against having a Democrat socialist nominee. Ryan Gerderski, thank you very much indeed for joining us on The Daily Tea. Thank you. And I just mentioned my podcast. It's called The Numbers Game Podcast. Ryan Gerderski. And I do data every single day. A new episode will come out on Thursday tomorrow all about the election. so please check it out. I do your UK elections once in a while. Tim, I want you on. All right, cool.

33:06The good thing about communist lunatics is they are good for copy. They might not be good for the countries they serve but they are good for telegraph purposes. One does also hope that the thing with idealists is they just get ground down by experience. Give the bloke 10 years and he'll be right of Genghis Khan. That is true. That is true. But I, in a way, I never want to detract from other people's joy at winning. I respect people who run on principles, even if I disagree with those principles, provided they're not the Taliban. No. I don't want to deny them the joy of this breakthrough. People like him take a risk in running.

33:44I admire them for being faithful to their beliefs. And even when someone I disagree with wins up against the odds, I still find it amazing to watch. It's like a bank robbery, right? It's not right, but there's a part of you thinking, I'm really impressed they got away with that. And we're going to be sticking to the US political theme tomorrow because you have got an exclusive interview with none other than Donald Trump's son, Eric. We'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.

34:36Thank you.