Starmer on the brink: What Greens' extremist victory means for Britain

0:03Camilla: The Telegraph.

0:09Tim: Keir Starmer is on the brink. Will the hammering he got in Gorton and Denton destroy his premiership?

0:17Camilla: Sectarianism, accusations of family voting, virulent anti-Semitism. What does the Greens' extremist win in Greater Manchester mean for the rest of the country?

0:27Tim: Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley.

0:30Camilla: And me, Camilla Tominey.

0:41Camilla: Tim, a seismic result for the Greens. We've got to stop using the word seismic, extraordinary and unprecedented, which seem to apply to all news events of recent weeks. However, waking up to a Zach Polanski victory this morning. We're both working from home, which is why the podcast looks a little bit different. Your initial reactions, I'm not that surprised. I think we basically called this.

1:05Tim: We did. And on the ground, there were so many Green posters and their campaign was so whipped up that I guess we all sort of knew they were going to do well. I don't think the word seismic is wrong. This is the best result in a by-election that the Green Party has ever had. Its leader is now saying it could go on to win 100 seats at the next election. Well, we'll dig into how realistic that really is. There's a case for saying we've been here before. We've seen other Muslim-dominated seats in by-elections in the past giving a bruising to Labour. But right now, the Prime Minister must feel very uncomfortable because he made an effort to come to this seat, which suggested that he had some hope that he might win it.

1:49Tim: And he has always argued, I am the only way to beat reform. And it turns out voters do have an alternative.

1:57Camilla: Let's have a look at the results, because as you say, everyone was saying it was too close to call. Actually, in the end, no, not really. Hannah Spencer for the Greens got 14 ,980 votes. That's a 40.7 % vote share. Matt Goodwin of Reform UK, who spoke to the Daily Tea earlier this week, got 10 ,578. That's a 28.7 % vote share. And Angeliki Stoyer for Labour got 9 ,364. That's 25.4 % in vote share, which is considerably down from the previous Labour incumbent, Andrew Gwynne. Let's not forget that this was the sixth safest Labour seat in the country.

2:39Tim: We should also mention that the Conservative Party, Charlotte Cadden, got just 706 votes and Jackie Pearcey got just 653. The point being that the Conservatives have clearly been eclipsed in these contests by reform, but also the Lib Dems are not people's choice as the progressive alternative to reform. Let's also give a shout out to a strong result by Sir Oinkalot, who got 159 votes, and also Hugo Wills, who scraped 29 for the Communist League. Nice. The revolution isn't quite here yet.

3:13Camilla: The monster-raving loony party, it should be noted, polled more, a little higher, okay, by five, than Advance UK, Ben Habib's hard right outfit. Just hold that thought. The turnout, though, Tim, 47.62%, with 36 ,903 votes cast. I think the constituency comprises 74 ,000 voters, so less than half turned out for this.

3:39Tim: That's true. Still feels pretty good for a by-election, actually, on what apparently wasn't a very nice weather day.

3:46Camilla: Okay, so I have said on X, the men of Gorton and Denton have spoken progressive stuff. And I say that because we had already discussed in the week the dirty tricks that were being employed in this particular by-election, how sectarian it had become. We spoke to Alistair Heath yesterday saying this voting along religious lines akin to voters in Northern Ireland or even Lebanon is increasingly worrying. I'd say it's a bad day for Muslim women whose vote is dictated to them by their father or husband or brother it's probably a very bad day for Jews in Greater Manchester I would suggest I'm not sure it's a great day for progressiveness I've got to be perfectly honest my reaction to this family voting situation which is the suggestion it is illegal under electoral law for you to take a family member into a polling booth and try and influence who they vote for.

4:41Camilla: And there's even some question marks around some of the behaviour outside the booths yesterday. People flying Palestinian flags, people playing culturally appropriate to them music, a degree of corralling of a certain caucus in that community. We then hear from an organisation called Democracy Volunteers that they did witness family voting, and so that is the coercion of others to vote along your own lines. We then got a...

5:09Tim: Just to step in there and explain. Because people are asking, what does that look like? What that looks like is husband and wife go into the polling station. Wife says to husband, who should I vote for? Husband says, vote. Green or reform or Labour or whatever it might be. That's what family voting is.

5:29Camilla: And that is why, Nigel Farage, in response to this result, and let's be honest, reform haven't done badly. Reform have come second in what was once a safe Labour seat. And goodness me, it's divided, isn't it, when you consider that they were beaten by the Greens and they couldn't be standing on more diametrically opposed platforms. And we'll get on to what it means for left and right in just a minute. Nigel Farage on X. This election was a victory for sectarian voting and cheating. Matt Goodwin was a great candidate for us. Roll on the elections on May the 7th. it will be goodbye Starmer and goodbye to the Tory party.

6:04Camilla: Will it be hello reform though, Tim? We'll get onto that in just a minute. Shall we listen to the Greens' triumphant now new MP for Gorton and Denton, Hannah Spencer? Working hard used to get you something. It got you a house, a nice life, holidays. It got you somewhere. But now, working hard, what does that get you? because talk to anyone here and they will tell you. The people who work hard but can't put food on the table, can't get their kids school uniforms, can't put their heating on, can't live off the pension they worked hard to save for, can't even begin to dream about ever having a holiday, ever.

6:47Camilla: Because life has changed. Instead of working for a nice life, we're working to line the pockets of billionaires. We are being bled dry. and I don't think it's extreme or radical to think working hard should get you a nice life.

7:01Tim: Speaker Lindsay Hoyle will be very pleased because the Commons desperately needs a plumber. But Matt Goodwin also gave a speech which struck a slightly different tone. I don't think the progressives beat us. I think the progressives were told how to vote and I think what you saw was a coalition of Islamists and woke progressives that came together to dominate a constituency.

7:24Camilla: Tim, let's hear from your bestie, Zach Polanski, who evaded you during the week, but is now quite happy to speak to any media he can lay his hands on. I think people are crying out for change and they're crying out for an alternative. And on a whole host of issues, people are so annoyed with the Labour Party.

7:43Tim: I think people in this country are looking at Labour MPs or high profile Labour politicians and saying, where are your red lines?

7:50Camilla: How can you stand by what this government is doing, whether we're talking about the cost of living crisis, whether we're talking about the genocide in Gaza, or generally a real feeling that they were voted in on one word, change, and they've not offered a whole lot of it. The Green Party are here and we're ready to give them that change.

8:06Tim: Camilla, you're quite right to raise this question of is it truly a progressive alliance winning if it depends upon male heads of households telling women how to vote, right? Yes. Although, as I joked on Twitter, any vote stolen in the polling station can always be stolen back by postal voting.

8:30Camilla: Yeah. But that's not a great endorsement, Tib. I mean, we've already had, we have allegations of electoral fraud often involving Muslim voting. We had that. We had it in Tower Hamlets. We've now got it here. But my point is this, even if there was some dodgy voting, the size of the green vote is so great that you can't say the election was stolen.

8:53Tim: You just can't. It's too big. I would never be.

8:55Camilla: Let's not be Trumpian on this. Let's not say the election was stolen.

8:59Tim: And the second thing is there is an element of schadenfreude here because Labour has weighed the Muslim vote rather than counted it for several decades now. and now it's turning against it. And much of what people are accusing the Greens of being linked to in this by-election, Labour has been accused of in the past. It's just that that voting bloc has shifted to another party.

9:28Camilla: Yes. No, I appreciate that.

9:30Tim: If Labour's going to try and play high and mighty, which I haven't quite heard it do yet, this is exactly the kind of thing which tends to happen in Labour seats.

9:38Camilla: Okay, well, I'm going to be high and mighty about this. I think that people who are turning a blind eye to family voting, particularly those who are on the left, we've had Kevin Maguire, we've had Gavin Barwell, once a Tory MP, now God knows what, saying, oh, this is completely overstated. This is my problem with it all as a righty. It is the abject hypocrisy of so-called progressives turning a blind eye to electoral fraud. OK, subjugation of women in households. Yes. Yeah. Blatant anti-Semitism. We've now got in Gorton and Denton and now projected to win a great many seats at the locals and possibly at the next general election, a party that wants to make Zionism a racism offence.

10:27OK, we've had Hannah Spencer, this new Green MP, chose Holocaust Memorial Day last year to post on social media some sense of equivalence between Nazi Germany and Israel.

10:43Camilla: OK, this is my objection to it. It is the dishonesty that these people are progressives. They're not. They're extremists pointing the finger at reform and saying that they're divisive. what palestinian flags outside polling stations yes yes that's what i'm objecting to but it's the women aspect i'm going to write my column about it it's the why are the progressive left turning a blind eye to blatant sexism within communities like it's fine it isn't fine this is terrible in 2025 if a woman of whatever color or religion cannot freely exercise a vote what on earth have we come to what on earth was the point of the suffragettes?

11:26Camilla: It depresses me, Tim. I'm just going to leave it there.

11:29Tim: I'd agree with you. Sam Coates of Sky said that he spoke to a Muslim female voter and said, how are you voting? And she said, that's a matter for my husband. When I used to be involved in political activism myself, there was some folklore that back in the day, a few decades ago, you'd knock on the door of a British working class household and a woman would answer. and you would say, how are you voting? And she says, I'll go and get my husband and ask. So that has long been a feature of British society. But the point is, we have evolved out of it. But people have come to the country who are still where we were several decades ago.

12:09Camilla: Yeah.

12:10Tim: Now challenging that, it seems to me, ought to be a feminist issue. Yeah, of course it should. And in the same way that there are many things where the right has blown the whistle and said, this is going on, it has really taken the left to step in and make it their issue to affect change on it. But they haven't. You think about the trans issue, right? For many years, it was just right-wing people saying, this is nonsense. Sex is real. But then feminists and lesbians got onto the subject, and they pointed out, this is a feminist issue. And I feel the same will happen with some of what we saw in Gorton and Denton.

12:45Tim: I hope it will happen, that the point will be reached where progressives cannot ignore what's going on. And given that this has now occurred and has cost Labour a seat, perhaps it's time for the Labour Party to have the conversation about that. Rather than leaving it up to right-wing people on blogs.

13:05Camilla: No, I agree. I agree. But then we're now going to have, this is what's now going to happen, we're going to have the Greens and Labour outdoing each other in a bid to hold on to steel and compete for the Muslim vote. Therefore, these issues won't be addressed. But let's just have a look at what this actually means for the wider national picture, Tim. So this, in The Telegraph, this is a quote. The Prime Minister and all but one member of the Labour cabinet would be wiped out if the Gorton and Denton result was replicated at the next general election. Labour would drop to just 33 seats and the Tories would return just 10 MPs if that result was projected across the country, according to electoral calculus.

13:45Tim: And it won't be, by the way. It won't be. because the Greens cannot replicate this ground game they had in Gorton anywhere else. And this is one of, I think, between 10 and 13 seats in the country where there is a Muslim population higher than 30%.

14:00Camilla: So they can replicate it there, Tim.

14:02Tim: The key thing, this is the important thing, Camilla. The Greens can replicate this where Labour is strong. Why are so many Labour grandees vulnerable? Because they are at that point in their career where they are only where they are because they saved their seats in 2019. And they only saved their seats because their seats in most cases had heavy rates of immigration. So labor was reduced to its rump, and that rump depended upon multiculturalism. So this is why I'm feeling, as I say, schadenfreude this morning. Because labor has for decades encouraged mass migration. It has turned a blind eye to ghettoization.

14:44Tim: It has promoted multiculturalism. And whenever anyone

14:48Camilla: said this policy is unsustainable, the Labour Party has said, you are a racist. Yes.

14:54Tim: And they did that in part out of idealism, because Labour believes that Britain is better for being diverse. Diversity is our strength. But they've also done it for a very cynical reason, which is that these areas with high rates of immigration have returned massive Labour councils and have sent Labour grandees to Parliament. Well, what has happened in the last few years, and it began with George Galloway back in the 2000s, is the Muslim voters started behaving more like the British vote in that they've become consumers. And they've started to say, I'm not satisfied with Labour.

15:29Camilla: And so having relied upon this bloc vote, that bloc vote is now turned on the Labour Party.

15:35Tim: And I cannot help but feel a little bit of pleasure about that because is labour going to say that someone's a racist here yeah look i agree with you but the other problem that's happened by the way is that

15:48Camilla: under the conservatives this was incubated nothing was done about it i discussed this with alasdair heath yesterday nothing was done by the right to try and appeal to voters that actually have a great deal in common with them the muslim community family orientated faith orientated flag orientated we didn't quite believe goodwin when he said oh i've got a lot of muslim voters voting for me but you know the right just watched and let this happen and now we're in the situation we face today so it is a condemnation isn't it of the uni party politics that just cynically allowed all this to unfold because it suited their purposes for labor as you say it was about getting votes in the bag however you can.

16:30Camilla: For the Conservatives, it was this conceit that the only way we could have growth was through mass migration and the breaking of promises about tens of thousands, because let's be honest, and they can blame the civil service for pushing back against the Home Office or the Home Secretary. None of them really had the balls to crack down on this stuff when they could and now we're in the situation we are when it comes to just reforms position in all this yeah this must have been a wake-up call now for nigel farish look it's a good result for them let's not take away from that but tactical voting tim i just note daisy cooper the deputy leader of the liberal democrats who as you say were not at the races along with the tories she's released a statement this morning condemning everyone but the greens this this is so cynical this result shows people are bitterly disappointed with labor but horrified by the rise of reform no daisy some people are horrified by the rise of the greens yeah it is clear that people are willing to vote tactically for the party best place to beat reform and across huge swathes of the country that is the liberal democrats no it isn't daisy it's the greens wake up love we've seen that in our record gains in local elections.

17:46Camilla: And we've seen it again come the elections in May. So what we can extrapolate from these so-called liberal Democrats, this woman and Ed Davey, and let's not forget Vince Cable advising Lib Dems to vote for Labour in this constituency, have no electoral moral compass at all. They are perfectly happy for the electorate to just play games simply to keep reform out. That's not standing on any platform at all. That's basically saying we are the party that can facilitate keeping Nigel Farage out in certain blue wall constituencies. Is that really what we've come to? Is that really what this is down to now?

18:22Tim: The Liberal Democrats would ally with Ming the Merciless if it got them a few extra votes. So they're thoroughly cynical. And crucially, they weren't a part of this by-election. Whereas in the past, there were by-elections in critical, again, immigration-heavy seats, where because of the Iraq war, the Lib Dems did very well. This time around, they have failed to own the Palestine issue. in a way that they owned foreign policy in the past. I want to say on reform, it did okay. It did okay. This is not a seat, all along we said, this is not a seat that reform should be winning. And what it got is its national percentage vote, which proves that that national percentage vote is real.

19:04Tim: Its swing was mid-level. So weirdly, it did better in Peterborough when it ran, even though it got a much lower percentage of the vote, it got a much higher swing. So the swing wasn't very impressive. But I don't think reform should beat themselves up over this result. If by some miracle reform had one, there would be a Guardian podcast right now saying, how did fascism come to Britain? And I... Well, it has come just in a different form. Right. Okay. So we are all right to be very concerned about the agenda that the Greens are both openly and covertly pushing. I just feel we should remember this is a by-election, midterm with a very unpopular government.

19:51Tim: And it's likely that the locals would have voted for someone other than Labour. I think the key thing is that reform and the Greens were the two parties they went for, no one else. And what this brings me back to is this country has changed. No one watches the BBC anymore. It's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. No one goes to the Church of England anymore. It's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. My point is, is that everything that we had that we inherited, people are turning away from because they're consumers. Why did we think this wouldn't happen to politics? It's obviously going to happen to politics.

20:29Tim: And it's happened across Europe and in America to politics. And it's finally happening here now. What people are saying is very simply, I hate the establishment. I am willing to vote for whoever I need to vote for to send that message. And I will be drawn to the party that actually says what I think. And what a surprise, in a seat with a very large Muslim population, about 40 % voted for a party that, unlike Labour, took a crystal clear position on Palestine.

20:58Camilla: Not just that, though, Tim. It's also the appeal to the youth vote. Bless them, naive, idealistic youngsters who think that Robin Hood politics work, that we can tax the wealthy and give it to the poor. Because, of course, everywhere where it's been tried, across the world for centuries, it's worked so swimmingly well, this communist socialist project that they're so enthralled to. Again, quite frustrating. I know what you're saying about it's only a by-election, but this does have a huge impact on this government's future direction of travel. We've got three more years of Labour. It's already going disastrously, disastrously wrong.

21:42Camilla: If they now have to pivot further to the left, we're going to have probably the Islamophobia definition that everyone has tried to resist. And let's be honest, Tim, it's a really good morning for Angela Rayner.

21:55Tim: It is. And she's already tweeted something, which I suspect was written about six weeks ago. And she says, this resort must be a wake up call. It's time to really listen and to reflect. Voters want the change that we promised and they voted for. If we want to unrig the system. Sounds a bit like the plumber, the Greens. So that's what we would expect, a coded, not very subtle attack on Keir Starmer. one does have to ask what more change could Labour bring that they think people voted for. Labour didn't tell the public what they were going to do. So this is part of the problem is there is no sense of the public sent us to go and do this, and we're not doing it.

22:37Tim: Because there was no contract between the public and the government at the last election. And anything more that Angela Rayner might want to throw at the public in the way of handouts and freebies is going to be economically disastrous.

22:50Camilla: Yeah.

22:50Tim: None of what she has said suggests, and I have a an alternative platform that will win these people back.

22:57Camilla: No, but then this is a result that reflects people wanting a clarity, an ideological and policy clarity. Reform have it, the Greens have it, Labour are all over the place, you turning 15 times, nobody can quite work out what the Liberal Democrats are about. And the Conservatives are still being blamed for 15 years of failure.

23:16Tim: Yeah, but people are annoyingly don't want clarity either. They have clarity in Nigel Farage and they haven't voted for him. They have clarity with Liz Truss and she even lost her own seat. I'm not quite clear what the voters want except to punish everyone in charge because there is a great mood in this country of I hate everyone and everything. I just want to tear things up.

23:40Camilla: Let's have a look at what Unite is saying. Sharon Graham, this result basically reflects that workers and families are hurting. We have a cost of living crisis largely being ignored, an investment in jobs for here and now being blocked by a treasury that doesn't seem to understand the basics of what is needed to build Britain. OK, so this is all going to be about out with Blairism, out with moderate left wing politics, out with anything that might keep the markets happy. Two fingered salute to the rich. We all apparently want to go back to the 1970s. So it does have a huge bearing now, because if Starmer is removed and replaced by somebody more left wing, Tim, you think the economy is going to thrive?

24:22Camilla: I'm not so sure.

24:24Tim: I'd imagine Wes Streeting's stock is a bit down because he's perceived as being on the right of the party. So this would encourage the parliamentary Labour Party to look leftwards as an alternative to Starmer. but I don't think if you change the lead it would necessarily change this result because as I say there's a broader long-term process of the main party is just breaking down into constituent parts it's worth listening to the words of a good friend of this podcast Carl Turner the Labour backbencher who is speaking on the Today programme. Labour MPs are cheesed off not just because of what's happened in the last 18 months of Labour government because the last four years look here's down as a mate of mine by the way he's a pal He'll not be happy about hearing what I'm saying.

25:06Tim: But I begged him, Justin, begged him, don't block Burnham. Bring him in. Use Andy Burnham. I said, don't go in a room with the NEC, Kia. Tell them that you're washing your hair. You've got something on. You're washing your barnet today. You can't be there. What did he do? He went in the room and he said, block Burnham. What a mess we're in as a result of it. Listen, we can't rewrite history, can we? But the reality is this. I can bet you now, without any problem whatsoever, Andy Burnham would have won that by-election yesterday without a shadow of a doubt. That's the truth, and we can't deny it.

25:46Camilla: Tim, before we get into our Q &A, Daily Tears have sent in their questions, and we're going to get into more detail about issues like would Andy Burnham have won it, what's the impact on Starmer, how long can he last, and all the rest of it in just a minute. I just thought it would be worth noting what the bookies are saying. Four political parties are now 11 to 2 or shorter to win the most seats at the next general election, according to Ladbrokes. So this is saying that this is going to be the next general election. I admit it's three years off at least. Could be the tightest contested ever.

26:20Camilla: The bookies make Labour and Reform UK joint favourites at 2 to 1 apiece to win most seats, while the Greens have leapfrogged the Conservatives and now find themselves at just 7-2 in the betting, with the Conservatives now 11-2. So that absolutely backs up the premise that it appears, at least on the basis of this by-election, that it's not just the Tories who are dead, but the Lib Dems now on life support.

26:45Tim: Next, we answer your questions about the by-election.

26:59Camilla: Tim we had lots and lots of questions in from Daily Tears and let's begin with Graham Dines who asks will the current maelstrom in British politics with the growth of the Greens reform and new parties make support stronger within the Labour leadership for some sort of proportional representation PR is a form of tactical voting and should the Tories continue to be dead set opposed to it. That's a really good point. Reform were previously all for PR.

27:27Tim: Now it seems

27:28Camilla: like first past the post might suit them better. But if you're a conservative, you might well be clamouring for it. Haven't we got kind of PR via the back door with this multi-party situation we're now facing?

27:41Tim: It turns out if you have many different parties, then it's easier for them to get elected because they split the vote. The very left-wing MP Nadia Whittem has advanced the case of PR this morning. And interestingly, it's to stop reform. The argument which many Labour MPs are entertaining is that with the left so divided, reform can get elected around 30 % of the vote. Therefore, we need PR. As for the Conservatives, what they would do, I suspect because they're constitutional Conservatives, if they exist to do anything as to preserve the status quo, I suspect they'll continue to support first past the post.

28:17Tim: But it would be amusing if we entered a world in which the Greens and reform ended up being supporters of the old system because it helps them. Exactly.

28:28Camilla: How times change.

28:28Tim: Laboratories end up becoming converts because with their measly 10 or 12 percent, they desperately need it.

28:34Camilla: Honestly, what is happening to our politics? Tim Cook asks a very good question. Could the result actually help to galvanise the right. It feels plausible that more small C-stroke Lib Dem conservatives, so blue wallers, who are reluctant to vote for Nigel Farage might see a Green win as a wake-up call and begin drifting over to reform. I would just make one point, Tim, to not underestimate the idiocy of some people in blue wall seats voting for the Greens thinking that their key priority is to clean up the rivers and the seas. It is not. There are many conservative small C, big C, whatever you want to describe its seats.

29:15Camilla: I'll use the example of Braintree, where voters are literally choosing between reform and the Greens, thinking the Greens are the cuddly people of, you know, yesteryear, caring about environmentalism. People haven't woken up to these people. They don't know who they are.

29:32Tim: But to go back to Tim Cook's question, that perception may have changed. The Greens have pulled off their best ever by-election win at the cost of redefining their party as a far-left party. It's no longer going to be perceived as an environmentalist party. The word green is irrelevant to them now. I didn't hear them say anything about the environment. in court.

29:59Camilla: So they win Muslim voters over, but they lose Waitrose Woman potentially.

30:04Tim: And there are some seats where right now, you're quite right, there are some semi-rural suburban seats where they were going to do very well. Will those voters vote for them in the future? I'm not so sure.

30:14Camilla: Okay. Aidan Larkin, who is a politics A-level student and said very kindly that he found The Daily Tea to be the most informative politics podcast for his studies. Thank you, Aidan, and good luck in everything you're doing. What's your take on the impact of the by-elections on the government? Does a terrible by-election result correlate with the fall of a government? Is it the nail in the coffin in and of itself? Wondering if Gorton and Denton is Starmer's equivalent to Macmillan's Orpington by-election. Get you, Aidan, with your historical references there.

30:47Tim: That's 1962 when Eric Lubbock won for the Liberal Party. Yeah, and it sort of sent a shockwave through the Conservatives and persuaded them that they might lose because of the rising Liberal vote. I think it's quite a good parallel, actually, a big difference being that the Conservatives at that point have been in power for 11 years, whereas Keir Starmer has only been in power for 18 months. So you could argue that history repeats itself, but faster.

31:14Camilla: Yes. Jack Harding has asked an interesting question that I think is worth addressing. if Hamas were running in Gorton and Denton do you think they'd have won if not what rough percentage of the vote do you think they would have received unnervingly my own estimate would be that they wouldn't be far off taking the seat now Mr Harding I think you are being a little tongue-in-cheek however you do raise a good point about the correlation between voting patterns pro-Palestinian marches, which sometimes do feature the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the problematic nature of the virulently anti-Semitic strain to a lot of this politics.

31:59Tim: It's a fascinating thought experiment, isn't it? All I would say is Palestine played a very important role in this, but Palestine isn't just about Palestine. For the left, Palestine is about a loss of faith in government. They believe that governments and media lied. And it has had that same generational impact as Vietnam and Iraq. For the right, of course, it's been equally as important, because many on the right feel that Jews have been subject to the most appalling racism. But because of anti-Zionism, it's not been called out in the way it should have done. So Palestine has had this effect of radicalizing people on both sides.

32:39Tim: It's a red pill moment. to quote the young.

32:43Camilla: Well, also it's being used as a symbol for kind of modern day imperialism. Let's also note, Tim, that we've had Winston Churchill's statue debased and defaced and graffitis overnight. With, you know, he's a Zionist sympathizer.

32:59Tim: Right, okay.

33:00Camilla: Well, don't you find that really depressing?

33:02Tim: I find it depressing because it just keeps happening and I just think it's stupid and weird and dumb and I don't know what the point is being made and why Winston Churchill, of all people to target,

33:11Camilla: Because people are really bloody ignorant Because something's gone horribly wrong With our education system If people are defacing

33:19Tim: All the people to graffiti Why do they keep going for Winston Churchill The man who beat Hitler It's just insane and insulting

33:28Camilla: I say that by the way with this This is my little This is the motivational picture I have as I write for the Telegraph At home, here he is Man of the century Right

33:41Tim: Well, I have Abraham Lincoln, the man of the 19th century.

33:44Camilla: Well, there we are. That says so much about you and I. It could be the subject of another podcast. Graham Pack asks, did Andy Burnham dodge a bullet?

33:54Tim: No, I think Burnham would have won. Do you? And this, I think, brings us around nicely full circle to this question of what is the national political impact of this election? What the PLP will be saying this morning is why the hell didn't you let Andy Burnham run? OK, it would have meant a Manchester City election. OK, it would have been an obvious vote against Keir Starmer. But in these conditions, in that seat, he's possibly the only person who could have won. In essence, Starmer chose to dodge questions about his leadership. He chose to dodge a leadership challenge rather than beat the Greens, triggering a challenge to Labour's entire national leadership.

34:40Tim: over the left. This man has put his own career first. I guarantee that is what backbench MPs are saying to each other this morning.

34:48Camilla: Yes, I blocked Burnham to save myself, and now I'm even more imperiled than I was.

34:53Tim: And I've dragged my party down with me.

34:55Camilla: This is why Keir Starmer is the worst politician in living memory. Henry Langley does ask about the blatant rule-breaking by voters with the family voting. He merely points out that actually the legislation to consult here is the Ballot Secrecy Act of 2023. And it basically says a person who is with another person at a polling booth and intends to influence that other person to vote in a particular way or to refrain from voting commits an offence. I suppose the question to ask there is, should the police investigate? You know, again, we've had other hard left commentators, Ash Sarkar coming out and saying, there's no such thing as family voting.

35:37Camilla: Accusations of this are inherently racist oh come on stop this so i would personally suggest that the police should investigate because we do not want this surely to be replicated on may the 7th or are we all okay with people being coerced in polling booths particularly if they're female is everyone

35:57Tim: all right with that i'm not okay so it has to be proven that it happened first and people are asking if democracy volunteers saw that happen why didn't they say something although does an election volunteer have to intervene i'm not sure well they probably didn't do so for culturally

36:13Camilla: sensitive reasons tim they probably were afraid that if they flagged it somebody from the greens would point at them and say you're a racist a bigot and an islamophobe i okay i think postal

36:26Tim: voting was a mistake if people want to vote then go out in the rain and do it and i and if people don't want to vote. That's on you. And I don't blame you. There are elections that I have sat out as well. Striking thing is that if family voting is proven to have happened, it will have happened despite the introduction of ID. Yeah, in which case ID was not the magic bullet.

36:48Camilla: No,

36:49Tim: not the magic bullet. Because what we're talking about here is a deep seated problem, as I said before, of some people in this country, living parallel lives in a way that several decades behind the rest of us. Yes. That's the big thing that the left needs to address because it's their voters doing it.

37:08Camilla: Yes, exactly so. Paul Etherington, who is a regular contributor to the Daily Tea, asked the question, which I think is in the minds of most righties this morning, Tim, and it's this. The thing I'm wrestling with most at the moment as a righty is whether I would prefer to keep Starmer and Reeves as the devils we know, given most of the alternatives within the party would be much more left-wing and highly likely to be even more incompetent. That's not very nice on Angela Ray, huh? Sadly, I don't share Farage's view that there will be an election earlier than the maximum term, neither do I, Paul, because so many Labour MPs know they would be turkeys voting for Christmas.

37:49Camilla: Should the right hope that Starmer and Reeves cling on like a desperate duo rather than be replaced by anyone more left or indeed electorally more capable.

38:04Tim: Aren't we right-wingers in a similar position to Labour a few years ago, where we can see the other party that we really dislike and we want to see lose, we can see it breaking up and the consequence might actually be the emergence of an even more radical left-wing alternative?

38:25Camilla: What? Your party?

38:26Tim: So a lot of Labour people were happy at the Conservative Party's problems two or three years ago. Why wouldn't they be? Because the party they've always hated, often for class reasons, appeared to be in sharp decline. But the result was what? Nigel Farage. Likewise, I think we've got to be careful, even though, as I've said, I feel schadenfreude, I feel some delight in seeing Labour get a kicking. We've got to be careful because Labour, for all its faults, it is reconciled to capitalism, it is pro-democratic, it is politically liberal, it is in favour of NATO. Do we really want that collapsing either within or being challenged from without by a much, much more left-wing alternative?

39:06Tim: That's the question we've got to ask here. We do have some personal investment in Starmer and the cabinet moderates keeping this party together.

39:14Camilla: And finally, just to continue the kind of what's the thinking of the right theme, Joseph says, Labour's vote halved but the left still won. Reform's vote doubled but the right still lost. Does this make a pre-election agreement between reform and the Conservatives more or less likely? I think that there is a huge amount of dishonesty going on with the public statements of Farage and Badenock and their own private sentiments. I think they themselves think that they cannot possibly speak of PACs ahead of the election, because then what would possibly motivate people to vote for one or t 'other? If Farage says he'll align with the Tories, it will alienate the never voting for Tories again reformers.

40:00Camilla: If the Conservatives ally with Farage, it will alienate those Waitrose women who flirt with the Greens but don't like the idea of Farage because they perceive him to be a bit of a spiv. So they can't really say much beforehand, but I would really hope, not least for a character like Nigel Farage, who's constantly talking about being the people's politician and doing his patriotic duty, that they would not cut their noses off to spite their faces in the advent of the rise of a progressive alliance. You talked about more left wing than Greens. Imagine Corbyn, Polanski, Davy, and whichever lefty is leading Labour, all ganging together at the next general election.

40:42Camilla: I'm sorry, if the right doesn't unite at that point, this country may well be finished.

40:48Tim: It would be ideal if there was a coalition before the next election. There won't be. It would be ideal if after the election, the two parties, sorry, that little burp was my dog. It would be ideal if after the election, the two parties came together. But I fear there's been so much bitterness and rancor there won't be. And it is a terrible waste of time. Because in about 10 years, reforming the conservatives will come together and form a new party. I've no doubt about that at all, because there's almost no difference between them on policy. And the split between them is only going to let the left in, and they will eventually figure that out.

41:24Tim: But I'm afraid we are living through a divorce, a bitter, messy, horrible divorce. And it's happening on left, it's happening on right. And people just have some stuff they need to get out of their system. But final thought, reform would never ever have won Gordon and Denton. Do not judge the future of this country on this one by-election.

41:45Camilla: And on that note, Tim, as we break it all down, we're done and we will be back on Monday, 5pm.

42:10I love you.