What the hell is going on on the British right?

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0:30The New Statesman.

0:35For decades, hell, even centuries, there's only been one show in town for the British right, the Conservative Party. But now, as the British electoral system complains and convulses and shudders and shrieks, a right-wing party has been at the top of the polls. It's just not the Tories. And that fact has played no small part in the Keir coup, because for anyone opposed to mass deportation or who enjoys planet Earth being able to support human life, the prospect of a reformed government is pretty existential, both figuratively and literally. But there's a new prime minister, and Labour's polling is already improving, as is the Tory party's as voters warm to Kemi Badenok.

1:19And a split within reform has led to the creation of another splinter party, Restore, on the far right. Its leader, Rupert Lowe, was recently a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience. I think that the Muslims are frightened of female sexuality. It's all there. And as you know, you get FGM, female genital mutilation. So these cultures, I think, Joe, and to your point, are just incompatible unless you have a very strong government which basically protects its electorate from any subversive behaviour which is not compatible with our values. You keep using the term meat. Is that how they actually refer to it as?

2:04That's how they consider it. So, what the hell is going on on the British right? Helping us to answer that question is Ian Dale, a broadcaster of more than 25 years, as the editor or author of more than 50 books, a former Tory party staffer. I'm Oli Dugmore. This is The Exchange from The New Statesman. Enjoy the interview.

2:28There is a party of the right that's at the top of the polls. You've mentioned it already, but it's not the Conservative Party. They're on about 20%. And I'm interested to know how you think about that change, how you pass what's happened and the timeline of events. you might turn to Brexit as a pretty central point in that but how do you think about what's happened? Well it's a tragedy in many ways but it's all entirely self-inflicted that's the problem in that if you run successive governments and I would say from 2016 I wouldn't go back to 2010 I think the coalition government was generally quite successful I mean obviously it had will have had its failures, but I think Cameron was a good prime minister.

3:11All prime ministers are remembered for one thing, and he will no doubt be remembered for the Brexit referendum as his main failure, in inverted commas. He didn't have to do it. But since then, every single Conservative government, every single Conservative prime minister has failed. And if you consistently fail. And I don't just mean sort of the odd policy failure. It's certainly two of the four prime ministers had major character defects. One of them probably should never have been, well, in fact, no, two of them should, possibly three of them should never have become prime minister. I mean, Theresa May, let's go through them.

3:53Yeah, go on. Theresa May, in theory, could have been a good prime minister had she not been the prime minister taking Brexit through. she didn't really believe in it she had no idea what to do i mean this is where i i have a there is a comparison i'm afraid to be made with andy burnham in that she came into power two months before she was expecting to she had no plan and when andrea ledson sort of dropped out of the race she then immediately took over now i think it would be much better for andy burnham to have had a competition so it will at least given him time to prepare because although i mean louise hager said he was they'd been preparing for a year that's a very advice thing for her to say um so far we've seen no evidence of what that preparation has culminated now we may do and i hope we do because i think anybody who believes that this country wants to be a success should want andy burnham to succeed it doesn't matter what their politics are if he succeeds we all succeeding.

4:53And Theresa May just didn't really have any clue where to go on Brexit. Had she been Prime Minister now or a bit before, I think she could have been good. But she was an absolute disaster. She couldn't make a decision. And that, I think, is a disease which affects too many politicians now. A, they don't know how to pull the levers of power when they're cabinet ministers. I heard an example of a Conservative cabinet minister, Rishi Sunak's government, who, I won't say what the issue was because it'll give away who it was, who said, well, why aren't you doing this? It'd be really popular. And she said, oh, no, I can't because my department won't let me.

5:36God save us for ministers like that. Civil servants respect ministers who have a clear idea of where they want to go and they want to be led. And I'm afraid if you have somebody who effectively is an apparatchik and just kowtows to number 10. It's not going to work. There to do the media round. And so, I mean, you couldn't accuse Boris Johnson of that. I think he did have a clear vision. I think his levelling up vision was great. And had it not been for COVID, he may have had a chance to have implemented it. Now, I'm not excusing him because I think, I mean, I can remember in 2014, 14, probably earlier than that, Alistair Campbell was coming on my radio show and he overheard a conversation I had with my producer, Matt Harris, now he's Andrew Miles' producer.

6:27And I said to Matt Harris, I'll do anything I can to prevent that man from becoming prime minister. And Alistair repeated this on air. Cheeky. He has a record of doing this to me. And I always liked Boris. I I mean, I always found him really entertaining. I mean, even nowadays, if I ever meet him, very pleasant conversation. He's fun to be around. I'd actually think he was quite good mayor of London. But being a mayor, not the same as being prime minister, if you get my drift. And I think he had the intellectual capacity to be a good prime minister, but his other personal flaws let him down. I mean, do we need to talk about Liz Truss?

7:11I think we can all agree that she should never have been prime minister and probably lasted 20 days too long. And then Rishi Sunak comes along, somebody who, in a sense, was an antidote to Boris. Competent, pleasant, but not quite got the leadership qualities, I never thought. And he didn't have long enough to really put his mark on the government. so all of that's a very long-winded way of saying that people were very very hacked off I mean sort of diehard conservatives were hacked off with their own party um there were several points in the latter few years of that where I thought I'm not sure I can vote conservative at the election um and if I thought that well god knows what people who were sort of not really that interested in politics were thinking.

8:01So they got to a point where, I mean, I don't think they reached the nadir until this year's local elections. I always thought that that would be ground zero. And I think that was right. Now, I'm actually quite optimistic now. I said the other day that I think by the end of this year, we are going to see some dramatic developments in the polls. I think reform are possibly going to drop to third place. I think Labour will be in first place, because I think all things being equal, Burnham will have a honeymoon in the way that Starmer didn't. And if you look at the polling of both Labour and the Conservatives over the last year, the Conservatives have gone from 15, 16, 17 to 19, 20, 21.

8:45Labour have done a similar thing. And even though it's been very slow, there are signs that the Conservative body is twitching. there was a by-election last week a county council by-election in Norfolk which is where I sort of got first involved in politics and the Conservatives beat reform in this by-election and their vote went down but reform the reform vote went down dramatically and I'm not saying one single council by-election you can learn a lot from but I did think that could be quite significant and I think Kimi Bader's challenge now is I think she should basically not do anything for the next couple of months and just let Burnham get on with it see what he's like and then maybe sort of party conference time then start the attacks and all the rest of it but her personal polling has gone way above what the Conservative Party's polling is she is the most popular leader admittedly it's still I think very low figures or it may even be a minus figure but it's not as bad as all the others It's pretty rare these days, isn't it, for your political leaders to have positive approval.

9:58I think, I mean, she's got a touch of the Whittacombs about her in that people like the fact that she's very direct and she doesn't suffer fools gladly. She does a phone-in with me every so often, and she's done seven or eight of them so far. And I see her develop in each one. She was very nervous about doing it, first of all. Whereas now, if a caller rings in and says something that she thinks is bollocks, she'll tell them that it's bollocks. And people love that. they don't want the sort of Cameron sort of well of course I feel your pain type stuff that they want somebody to even if they don't agree with them they respect them for actually showing a bit of leadership yeah I think I think um the prospect of doing call Clegg or you know whatever whatever it is is I think pretty terrifying for most politicians because it's one thing to go and knock doors and be told well tell you what I think I think Zach Polanski in October of November time and it was supposed to then become a monthly thing but it never has because I actually thought he did quite well in it but his press people were horrified because obviously in the first one you sort of ask about all the controversial reviews not just that he has but the Green Party has and the callers sort of gave him a bit of a roasting and I actually think he well he said to me the other day that he did actually enjoy it I said we'll come and do it again then but they're very nervous about it yeah it's it's it's like a door a doorstep conversation right but there are hundreds of thousands millions of people listening when it takes place it's a terrifying prospect you've got to be hot on it um okay well let's dial into what you just said there about reform and their potential drift away i mean the first thing so you described them earlier as being as i didn't directly say it but you were talking about the hard right and you were talking i think you were talking about reform when you were using that descriptor would you describe reform as extreme no i don't i sort of slightly if a caller rings my radio show and calls them extreme right or far right i get slightly uncomfortable because i don't think that is an accurate description i think hard right is where i put them um I think some of their policies are extreme.

12:15I think sort of on the withdrawing the leave to remain for people who've been here for 20 years, I mean, I literally could not believe when I heard that was going to be their policy. I thought, no, they can't be serious on that. But this is where the Overton window has shifted in that Jim Murphy, former Labour Scottish secretary, was on my programme last night. and he was coming out with things that a Labour politician could not have even dreamt of saying a few years ago. And I don't believe they are a racist party. Nigel Farage, to his credit, has always been very careful to discourage that kind of person from joining any party that he's led.

13:00Reform are the only party that will not accept ex-BMP members as members. Now, I'm sure there's the odd one that slips through. I mean, you can't literally vet everybody's sort of history going back 20 years. But they have this written into their constitution, which none of the other parties do. So I think we have to be very careful about sort of throwing insults around, regardless of what party we're talking about. They're not a party I would ever consider voting for, for the reasons that I've explained. But they have some good people in their party, like every party. They have some bad people in their party.

13:38They have people who, I mean, I can't understand how they've accepted some of the ex-conservatives when they sort of go on about how they're going to be different. They want to go away from the failures of the conservative years. And look who are some of their leading figures. I mean, Swell of Braveman and Robert Jennery, they were in charge of the immigration system. And don't give me this shit. Oh, we try to do it. But I mean, seriously, I don't know how Nigel Farage has fallen for that. And I remember when Robert Jenrick defected, I said, this is a defection you are really going to regret at some point.

14:14So we'll see. I can't, you know, I couldn't pass or divine the sort of strategic, other than perhaps creating media moments. You know, there was a real sense of momentum, wasn't there? Yes. And also, I always thought that the most difficult thing for Nigel Farage is when people, as the next election approaches, how would he be able to say that he had a credible cabinet in waiting? Now, OK, he can now say, well, I've got the former Home Secretary, I've got X, Y and Z. But these are all people that the electorate didn't like. And I think there are internal machinations now within reform. I mean, Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice clearly cannot stand Generic and Braverman.

14:53And they regard Nigel Farage as sort of promoting them as a bit of a betrayal to them. And I think they've absolutely got a point. I mean, I think Zia Yusuf is somebody who is not from the political world, an excellent communicator. I mean, I think he goes totally over the top in some of the things that he says. But he's already flounced off once. I can quite imagine him doing it again. and Richard Tice I think is personally devoted to Nigel but he must feel a sense of betrayal because he okay he's the deputy leader and he's one of their more public faces but he would have expected to be shadow chancellor I would think yeah I think he did I mean there were so many of them who I think were maybe not expecting but very definitely wanted that job And I remember primarily listening to Tice and Zia talking publicly about their cabinet and what they were going to do.

15:52And they were really heavily implying that they would actually probably appoint a cabinet that didn't really draw on sort of political figures. That they would probably be looking at lords. Well, they pledged to abolish the House of Lords, but some capacity basically in the same way that this government, you know, Timpson is a lord, goes and becomes a prison minister. so that they could then draw on sectoral expertise, perhaps actual generals, former generals that go and run the MOD, whatever it is. And it's quite interesting then to bring in professional politicians to do that job. Traditionally in our politics, that hasn't ever worked, bringing people in from the outside.

16:24I mean, there are examples where it's worked, but mostly it doesn't. Just as an aside on that, it is, I think, an absolute scandal that reform don't have any members of the House of Lords and Starmer and Sunak, they just refuse to appoint any of them. The Greens only have two. I mean, that's indefensible, I think. I may not support reform, but I'm a Democrat. Okay, that's a House of Lords, so not an institution that's familiar with the word democracy. But while it's there, and while it does a relatively good job, it does what it says on the tin, surely you want all views represented. I think it's so short-sighted fails to understand where these insurgent parties are coming from.

17:08And if you sort of, particularly if you're wielding the might of institutions to try and isolate or, you know, contain these parties, all it does is animate their followers. Like, here we are, look, you know, we're not invited on, pick your media programme, we can't talk about our ideas, we're not in the house, it just gives more fuel to that fire. And it means that on day one of a reformed government, if that ever happened, they would have to appoint 300 reformed peers. God knows who they would be. Good luck getting rid of them as well. Yeah, quite. Once they're in there. Yeah, on your point about whether they're or not they're extreme, I'm kind of in a similar place.

17:47The vocabulary for describing the party moves around, right? We've got new right is a term that's being used. Radical right is another one, slightly more American prescription. I agree, by the way, about far right. I'm really hesitant to use that inaccurately because I think it cheapens the term if you misapply it. It does. And when you start sort of making these comparisons to the 1930s, and I mean, it's so lazy, I think, of people to do that because there is nothing that Farage has in common, in my belief, to what happened in the 1930s. Yes, he's got a little bit of demagoguery about it, but there are plenty of politicians in the Labour Party or the Conservative Party that you could say that about.

18:28It's part of the political act. but it's just very lazy journalism or commentary I think fascism is like a unique historical phenomena really which is so contingent on I get called a fascist all the time I remember taking on a caller once I looked up the dictionary definition of fascism and I read it to this person I said could you tell me a single one of these things that applies to me I mean I can't remember what they all were now but not a single one did This is it. But even amongst academics, Ian, I mean, the definition is contested, right? You know, and that's why it can apply and doesn't.

19:05And people try to apply it to the modern time. But, you know, there are, I think there are contextual parallels in the, you know, 1930s, massive technological communications upheaval with the advent of the radio. You could draw a parallel to that social media, but do we have millions of demobbed young men who are sort of trained in how to use arms and upset with the political status quo? No, we don't. And I'd say that's a pretty central characteristic of particularly if you want to talk about Germany, the street violence that can be associated with it. It doesn't exist. But your point, right, extreme aspects of the policy agenda, I'm happy to say it.

19:42I think the mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of people from Britain, I think that's an extreme position to take. No, I agree with you. And you might not agree with me on this, but I would also venture that some of the stuff on fossil fuel extraction, I would also say that that's an extreme position to take. No, there we part company. Yeah, there we go. I'm not going to be Rory to your Alistair. Don't, don't be. No, I just, you know, my view on that is, you know, whether it's shale gas fracking or oil and gas licenses in the North Sea, for me, you know, the burning and extraction of fossil fuels contributing to making the planet less hospitable to human life, that for me is an extreme position.

20:22Go until that's for the Chinese government then. Yeah. And their coal-fired power stations. Let me clarify that for people who think I'm now some sort of mad climate change sceptic. I'm not. But I've always believed you should have a balanced energy policy. And I still think for the foreseeable future, fossil fuels will be part of that. And if we've got the oil and gas in the North Sea, why would we not extract it, given that every other country in the world is? We can't change things on our own. We have provided a lead. We've cut our carbon emissions more than any other European country apart from Sweden.

20:56We have more wind turbines than any other country. I mean, admittedly, most of them are offshore. Good. I don't want them particularly onshore, particularly in areas of outstanding natural beauty. So I'm not a zealot on it, but I think that where we've gone wrong in our energy policy is we haven't developed nuclear over 30 years. Totally agree. And it's a bit late now, but we might as well start again. Yeah. So we don't have coal anymore. Now, you look at what's happening in China. And yes, I think China is starting to reduce its dependency on coal, but they're still building lots of new coal power stations.

21:39So I think we can become very ideological on this issue. And I'm not sure that's a good idea. Yeah. Interestingly as well, I haven't heard much from Burnham so far on climate in the way that... Not just on climate. Well, yeah, quite. Quite, quite, but... Defence, foreign policy. Well, yeah, I mean, okay, we'll have a brief aside there and we'll talk about Burnham in a second. But just on this climate point, I think, you know, I would say it was a pretty central plank of Starmer's policy platform for where there was one. And it's interesting to me that Burnham hasn't said very much about it so far.

22:12And I actually, I know people have been talking about Ed Miliband's appointment as Foreign Secretary and sort of as a promotion for him. But I'm thinking about that. And I think Ed Miliband is a person who has a very powerful base within the Labour Party. I think you would probably describe as, if not the most, one of the most radical energy secretaries in Europe. And if you as Prime Minister wanted to grant new licences in the North Sea, Ed Miliband as your energy secretary would be a pretty effective blocker on that. Yes, but so would Miata Fambola. Yeah, true. I mean, I don't see much difference between her.

22:48And I'm rather proud that last week she came on my cross-question programme. And I said, I can't remember whether this was on air or not, but I said, you're going to be in the cabin. You do realise that, don't you? And she sort of giggled. And I thought, no, she is going to be. So when I saw her walk up Downing Street last night, I was quite excited. Because I think she, whatever, I mean, obviously she's not my politics. But I think she's an incredibly talented person. Yep. And I think that was a good appointment.

23:21Stay with us. We're going to take a short break. We will be back after this.

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24:31Let's pause here and just talk about Burnham briefly. I mean, listeners, we're speaking the day after he became prime minister. listeners will be listening to this a little bit later but i mean this is a we can understand what's happened to the labour party the within the context of what's happening on the right because in no small part i think starmer's deposition after he lost his political authority the many mistakes he made has been brought about by the fact that the labour party and the broader british left is facing down the barrel of possibly a reformed government or some kind of a long time to go to a general election, but regardless.

25:07And indeed, the Labour Party's strategy of pursuing those reform-curious, call them hero voters, call them swing voters, call them what you like, at the expense of their left, led to the growth in Green Party support. And I think that is a pretty central story in why Starmer had to go. Interestingly, in Makerfield, Burnham didn't really attack reform or the reform candidate in a way that I thought he might do. And obviously, I think that is going to have to change on the national stage. maybe not immediately, but certainly as you near a general election campaign, he is going to have to mount some sort of critique of the right of British politics.

25:39And I would just invite your comment. You started talking there about the lack of detail on the policy, the lack of preparation and planning. By the way, I think one of the parts of the American political system I would seek to emulate is that they actually do have a very specific and drawn out transition period whereby administrations hand over work that they're doing and we would probably benefit from something like that. But what do you think about Andy Burnham as the prime minister? How do you think about him as prime minister? I remember in 2015 hosting a debate during the leadership election between him, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Jeremy Corbyn.

26:17He was not just unimpressive, but terrible in that debate. Didn't say anything memorable whatsoever. It was almost as if he'd given up. and I watched it back recently because I wanted to find a particular section that I remembered and so I watched the whole thing back and it was quite something actually. It's very entertaining but he just didn't... I remember there was one bit where he was going on about how he was very against privatisation and I was thinking to myself didn't you want to privatise a hospital when you were health secretary? So while one of the others was talking, I just sort of Googled this and got all the details.

27:01And so I went back to him and I said, by the way, Hinchingbrook Hospital, you privatised that when you were health secretary. So don't give me all this stuff about not being in favour of privatisation. Oh, no, I only laid the plans for it. It was the Tories that did it. I said, no, but you laid the plans. It was your idea. It wasn't their idea. They did carry it out. You're absolutely right. And he just sort of went to pieces after that. I've always liked Andy Byrne. I mean, he's a very likable character. But he is too much of a people pleaser. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing in a politician.

27:39I mean, look, we all want to be liked. But a prime minister cannot be liked all the time. And we're going to see what he's really like when there's a big crisis, whether it's financial or something else, where he has to do something very unpopular and he won't just be able to rely on, well, you can trust me because I'm a northerner. And you see, I think that's something he's going to have to combat, all this sort of number 10 in the north. Well, I was in Devon at the weekend with family who are not, they're not political at all. They said, well, what about us? Why is it all about the north? And when I told my partner, who again gets all of his politics and the Jeremy Vineshaw on Radio 2, I mean like we not a political animal no you and I we live and breathe it but we have to recognise that most people don't and I said to him on Saturday I said oh Andy Burnham is going to cancel the digital ID cards he said oh I thought he was just going to cancel the south of England now if that gets into people's heads as a narrative it's a bit like Keir Starmer and the toolmaker yeah that is not going to be good it's not going to win well for him and I think his problem in the first few months, bear in mind that we always used to think every Prime Minister had a honeymoon period until Keir Starmer didn't because of the clothes and glasses and then the welfare payments thing.

29:03No guarantee that Andy Burnham will have a honeymoon period. I can perfectly see within, I say by Christmas, that there will be Labour backbenchers doing briefings or even maybe saying overtly, for Christ's sake, bring back Keir Starmer. I mean, Darren Jones has already started on day one. Yeah, he has. I'm sure we can get Carl Turner on the phone in some capacity. No, Carl Turner, he's going to be back, isn't he? So he'll be happy. I think it's interesting, right? I think it's one of the main criticisms I'd level at Starmer was his incapacity to sort of, you know, here you are, Prime Minister.

29:42We have course of action A and we have course of action B. If we choose option A, the following groups of people will lose out. If we choose option B, the following people will lose out. For the sake of the point I'm making, there are only two options. Someone must choose. And his inability to do that, I've become really frustrated with the analysis that kind of goes, you know, maybe just British politics is ungovernable right now. No, absolute bollocks. It's utterly self-inflicted. I mean, somebody said the other day, somebody who, I wish I could remember who it was, but it was somebody that I really respected.

30:14and they said that the fact that we've had seven prime ministers in 10 years shows how our democracy is broken i'm thinking no it doesn't it shows the exact opposite it's working that when parliament decides that a prime minister isn't up to the job they get rid of the prime minister or the political parties do it's such lazy thinking to say well we're ungovernable no we're not we just don't have a very good political class at the moment that is capable of governing yeah i haven't had for many many years absolute lack of human capital in west winster yeah okay well if let's say that reform do drift away the tories do recover how do you see that dynamic between burnham and badenock playing out you definitely got a sense of kemi's character if i were her i would play nicey nicey kemi because she is actually genuinely a nice person um but she worked out that being nice to starmer was not the way forward and she worked out that she had to indulge in the pantomime and boy did she indulge in it budget the budget counter speech yeah not just that but i mean i think really it all changed with her party conference speech last year and since then i would i would say she hasn't put a foot wrong which in nine months for any opposition leader is quite an achievement on it by itself um she i think has shown a sense of humour that people like um she got under starmer's skin and you have to do that as opposition leader and if we think back to the blair and brown years did any of the conservative opposition leaders then really get under their skin i'm not sure they did i think very few people did no quite because blair and brown had an inner self-confidence now burnham maybe has that and i'm not sure um but if i were kemi i would as i say not do much for the next few weeks let him have the summer to decide what he's going to do be nice to him at pmqs for the first couple of weeks but i mean he he's put a hostage to fortune by saying he's going to do politics differently well they all say that at some point david cameron gordon brown said that well that didn't last long david cameron certainly said it he did he didn't want all the argy-bargy of pmqs within three weeks if you if you had him here now he would say well it's just inevitable it's just the way it's set up so i think she needs to almost let andy burnham let the mask slip and then she can go in for the kill what's that like stand up wear a suit and tie and sing the national anthem um on on kemi i mean what do you think animates her what's her what's her political drive

32:55i think that she's just somebody who has very definite beliefs in the way that kia starmer never did she is a political animal in the way that kia starmer never was and she is a very good debater she's very good at defending what she believes in and there have been several occasions where i've watched people question her either in interviews or maybe at PMQs, where I thought, how the fuck are you going to get out of that? And she does every time. And that is a real talent in any politician. There's no going around the houses. She just comes straight at you. And she also has this very disconcerting habit in interviews.

33:39And I'm surprised more politicians don't do this, where I'll ask her a question and You say, what do you mean by that, Ian? Now, it's partly a trick to think, shit, I don't know the answer. How am I going to answer this? It gives you time as a politician to come up with an answer. But most interviewers do not know the subject as well as the person they're interviewing, whether it's a politician or somebody from a pressure group or whatever. And I'm always astonished that nobody ever really fights back and say, well, that's a bloody stupid question. what you really mean to ask is this um whereas it's also very polite and and kemi doesn't really play that game if she thinks that you're being a damn fool she'll either tell you you're being a damn fool or certainly let the public know that you're being a damn fool and it's very effective it's a trick i've um i've employed when i'm not interviewing someone and i'm there to talk is if you don't rate the question you've been asked you can sort of throw a sentence at it and And then you can say, you know, if you were to ask me, blah, I would say.

34:44And you sort of get to answer your own question. Yeah. But I think the most interesting thing is, you know, I. I mean, the thing is, she is not a bullshitter. Yeah. Interesting. And most politicians, they are very good at bullshitting. I suspect she could do it. But I don't, I've never seen her in a situation where she's really had to do it. Starmer was an absolute classic for it. Yeah. Just tell me what you think. 14 wasted years. I mean, that was just every prime minister's question time. And it became a thing where she exploited it without appearing to do so. Yeah. What about weaknesses on Kemi?

35:21She can be quite abrasive. I mean, I think she's... When she was in government, you talked to her fellow cabinet ministers about her. And they didn't like her interpersonal skills in that she didn't have many. I think that has changed quite significantly. She hates or hated the media. And I kept saying to her when she was a cabinet minister, I never get to interview you. You've got to do more interviews. Yes, but you'll just clip it up and put a 90 second piece or your people will put a 90 second clip up on Facebook and it'll make me look stupid. and she's now I think got out of that mindset because she realizes not only that it is part of what a leader of the opposition has to do but she can turn it to her own advantage you'll have noticed maybe that she started to doing a lot more sort of softer programs um I mean she started appearing on Good Morning Britain a lot where and she's been very good at it and she's like showed a sense of humor um did you do you remember seeing that clip where martin lewis had a real go at her yes and she handled that i thought superbly because he was she was on the sofa and i mean she's she's a very small woman and i mean martin lewis isn't exactly a giant but he was standing and the presenters didn't know he was going to do this and he just marched into the interview and started haranguing her.

36:49And she just remained completely calm. But the viewers, I think, all sided with her, even though Martin Lewis is like this sort of hero figure to a lot of people. Well, he apologised for it afterwards, quite rightly. I thought, well, not everyone would have handled that well, but she did. And I hope she does a lot more of that, because when Tony Blair became popular in the mid-90s when he first became Labour leader, because he did all of these things. He would go on This Morning and programmes like that, which most politicians never had before. I think she needs to do a lot more of that. Yeah.

37:27Angela Rayner would go and do Lorraine, wouldn't she? Things like that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would love to see Kemmy do her own LBC phone-in. I mean, Angela Rayner did one last week. And I mean, some politicians are quite good at this. Wes Streeting is brilliant at it. And he's always said, sort of, this is what I really want to do. I just love doing this. And I thought, mate, yesterday when he didn't appear in Dowling Stew for all those hours, I thought, Wes, your moment has come. You're going to be a radio presenter. I'll get you on the phone.

37:57Okay, so there's kind of like a Conservative Party dominates the right for a really extended period of time. UKIP, then Brexit, then reform, come along and splinter it. And now that further splintering really getting quite fringe now where you've got this splinter from reform led by Rupert Lowe, restore Britain. Yeah. And I'd love to hear how you think about whether or not, how much attention we should be paying to them and the sort of the extent to which the electoral impact they can have on splitting the right and impacting reforms. And caveat to this, Joe Rogan experience in the last week, he's had a couple of big name guests on.

38:42One of them was J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States. The other one was Rupert Lowe. I've never met Rupert Lowe. My only knowledge of Rupert Lowe was from his time as Chairman of the Southampton Football Club, where he, shall we say, was not very popular with his supporters. I'm not a Southampton supporter, but I do remember him from those days. and um i mean if you look at reform reforms polling at the moment i mean they've gone down about seven or eight points over the last few months and quite a substantial part of that i think is because a lot of their people are peeled off to restore people some of their people are very uncomfortable about farage's last couple of months and all the five million and all the rest of it and i mean i've had people phone into me reform members saying this that this is not what we signed up for um now how big a long-term impact that will have i don't know i don't think restore will make a massive impact but then again they won every single seat in great yarmouth at the elections in may i'm not under the restore banner but it was rupert lowe's sort of personal imprint that did it so i mean he always comes across as a sort of slightly detached but reasonably nice person and then you look at some of the things that his supporters say and you think well that's not quite what your leader seems to think i mean this this phrase ethno-nationalism which i must I hadn't heard until last year, which Rupert Lowe has disassociated himself from.

40:21And yet he employs a guy called Charlie Downs, who self-describes as an ethno-nationalist, which effectively means, well, if you've got white skin, you're good. And if you haven't, you're not. What we would term old-fashioned racism. Now, if he was here now, he would absolutely deny that he was racist. um but i and he came on my program 18 months ago and i'd never heard anything like this before i'm thinking why why have we invited him on and every single question that came from a listener he would turn it into an attack on immigration or muslims and in one of the breaks i said mate you need to rein yourself in because it was i mean i felt really uncomfortable and but But this sort of genre of, well, it's not even populism.

41:14It is out and out extreme racism. This sort of thing is becoming acceptable in our society in a way that it wasn't before. And I find this one of the biggest dilemmas in modern broadcasting. you have to give a voice to all sorts of different people that ideally might not want to your responsibility to but i mean i'm not there as a censor but there is there are some things that are just beyond that i mean i won't have tommy robinson on my program i used to have nick griffin on my program why because he was elected to the european parliament none of these people are elected to anything sort of on the fringes.

41:58And that's kind of my dividing line in a way. But everybody puts their line in the sand at a different place. And this is why, I mean, Ofcom have a terrible problem here because, as I said before, the Overton window has shifted. So what I was thinking about in your book and, you know, Have I Said Too Much? is this very point that you're making, which is, you know, there are things that once upon a time, in the not too distant past, broadly unconscionable political positions that people can adopt and take. Well, I mean, anti-Semitism. Yeah. Which I always used to think of, if I ever thought about it, as a thing that affected the right rather than the left.

42:49Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yet since 2015, and I do date it back to 2015 when Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, it's become a massive thing. And you think, well, how can ostensibly sensible people, intellectual people, people that command widespread public respect, how can they not just say these things, but think that, but sorry, not just think these things, but say them in polite society? and the very people who would fight to their death against racism seem to believe that anti-Semitism isn't a form of racism. Well, it absolutely is. And I still find that inexplicable. Yeah, it's... And it's something that is virulent, I think, in a lot of what I would term the hard left.

43:40There's so much of this kind of... It's a long history, right, of people I would describe as pseudo-intellectuals, pseudoscientists that are clearly people intelligent is the wrong word people people with sort of intelligent intellectual capacity that are just completely misapplied and pursue these insane you know look through history whether it's skull measuring calipers people that are now in you know the academy clearly people who are have a brain on them just fall for the most atrocious racism and it's sickening and saddening. We're getting towards the end of our time together, Ian. I mean, I just, final, maybe it's my final question to you is about what the right looks like in 10 years' time if we were cast forward a little bit.

44:23And I know, and I subscribe to the view that right political predictions are a mugs game, but nevertheless, let's make some, you know, think about the Conservative Party in 10 years' time. You think they're on the up. And, you know, I guess the bluntest way of putting this is are we watching an end to a political tradition that's lasted for 200 years in Britain? No, absolutely not. Political parties have been written off many times. We wrote the Labour Party off in 1992. And then what happened in 1997? We wrote the Labour Party off in 2019. What happened in 2024? It is entirely possible for the Conservatives to be the largest party at the next election.

45:05It's partly up to them. It's partly up to what happens, what events that happen. But they could be the largest party. They could even win a majority on 23, 24 % of the vote. Now, that really would be a crisis of democracy, I think. It was bad enough Labour winning a landslide with 33 % of the vote, something which I don't think we've really thought about enough. But the way the next election will be the most difficult to predict of all in every single seat, because every single seat will be different. And if you're in five or six party politics, not in three or four party politics. I mean, I don't know how pollsters will be able to make any money at the next election, because if they do, they'll be ripping people off because they will all be wrong.

45:54And I think the problem for the Conservatives is not particularly winning people back from reform, because I think people who have decided since 2024 to go to reform are unlikely to go back to the Conservatives. because they will feel the sense of humiliation if they admit that they've got something wrong. I mean, I think there are quite a few of the Conservative MPs or ex-MPs that have gone to reform and now having buyer's remorse. I mean, Tim Montgomery was not an MP, but every time I hear him talk now, I'm thinking, mate, you regret what you've done, don't you? You won't admit it, but you can just tell from what he says.

46:34He was on Matt Stadlin's podcast the other day and Stadlin asked him, do you regret your decision? Or do you think about your decision? I think that was the way he put it. And Tim said, every day. Well, you don't say that unless there is some sort of regret in your mind. Now, I don't expect him to sort of re-rat as people used to say about Churchill. But I think there'll be a lot of that possibly after the next election. But the biggest question for Kemi Baden-Ock and indeed Nigel Farage is, do we want another five years of Labour, or do we want a right-wing government? And if the answer is the latter, they've got to come to some accommodation, either before the election or after the election.

47:21That is going to be crunch point for the Conservative Party. Because if reform were the largest party at the next election, the Conservative Party was sort of quite a way back in terms of numbers of seats. Well, we all know what happens to smaller parties and coalitions, they do run the risk of extinction. I mean, the Liberal Democrats nearly got there, but not quite. But there's no saying that you can't come back from that. But I think that is, I mean, I would not want to be in Kimi Bader-Knox's shoes trying to make that decision. And I mean, she's been very trenchant in saying that she will not come to any decision, or come to a decision to stand down candidates in certain seats.

48:04But that is a debate that is going to have to be had. It won't be had yet. It may not even be had next year. And assuming there's no general election next year, which I think there will be a possibility of that. And Farage has always thought there'd be a 2027 election. But that will become a big matter for political debate in 2028. And in a way, it might be similar on the left as well. because the left have always been more amenable to electoral pacts, even if they're unspoken, where sort of Labour won't do a lot of work in a particular Lib Dem seat and vice versa. It's never really, the right have never really had to make that kind of decision, but they're about to.

48:46That was Ian Dale. His latest book, Have I Said Too Much?, is out now. I'm Olly Dougmore. You've been listening to The Exchange from the New Statesman. We'll see you next week.

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