Is Trump getting away with murder in the Caribbean?

14:01Andrew Marr:Shiny, satinated gowns.

14:02Emma Barnett:Well, seeing as you ask, yeah. School of life? School of life, you know. School of hard knocks. Pennsylvania Avenue.

14:10Andrew Marr:Yeah, exactly.

14:10Emma Barnett:Massachusetts Avenue.

14:12Lewis Goodall:Massachusetts Avenue. Both of them. Connecticut Avenue. Are we going to talk about polling

14:16Emma Barnett:or are we just going to go who's got an honorary doctorate or not?

14:19Lewis Goodall:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very newsagent's content. Yes, this is the latest poll from YouGov, which shows, I think, and is crystallising the extraordinary sort of transformation in our politics which has taken place since the general election. complete multi-party picture Labour now just 17 % which pretty much I think as far as anyone can tell is the lowest level that has ever been recorded with YouGov and it also found that the Green Party at their highest level of support winning the backing of 16 % of all voters so basically what you've got is reform with a sort of 10 point lead about 27 points or so and then Labour, the Conservatives the Lib Dems and the Greens all clustered nip and tuck at around 15, 16, 17 points.

15:02Lewis Goodall:I mean, this is the sort of thing that you might see is commonplace in certain kind of proportional representation, multi-party systems in continental Europe. It is not something that we have typically, or indeed really ever seen in Britain.

15:13Andrew Marr:And all this comes three days after that win for Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly on Thursday night, which was seismic, actually. I mean, all the polling before that had put reform and Plaid neck and neck. And when the results came, it showed that the two dominant parties, I should say, formerly dominant parties, Labour and Conservatives, had a tally total of 13 percent. I mean, inconceivable, given where it was four years ago and they were combined total of about 60, 65 percent. And I was sort of tweeting, as one does, in the middle of the night. What have I told you about that? I know. Honestly, she doesn't know, does she?

15:55Andrew Marr:Put it down. But the interesting thing was, I was saying this is an extraordinary moment when the combined dominant parties are on 13 % and Plied is the sort of the runaway winner. People say, oh, don't you understand how voting, what was it called when you're lending your vote? What was it called? Yeah. Don't you understand how tactical voting works? I was like, yes, I do. But the interesting thing about this was that people were going from Labour to Plied to vote tactically. They weren't trying to keep reform out by backing the main candidate. they were going to the edges. They were going to the Welsh Nationalist Party who'd run a very strong campaign, a very, I have to say, a very pro-Europe campaign, still talking about the single market.

16:35Andrew Marr:I think they're the only party now who regularly talks about sort of rejoining or re-entering the single market, the SNP. OK, so the nationalist parties in both Wales and Scotland are doing that work. But isn't it interesting that what that election result told us is that everyone is leaving the centre to go round to the edges. Yes. Whether it's reform or applied. That is where the sort of popular populist vote is now.

17:00Emma Barnett:And just for a moment on the Caerphilly context of it all. I mean, Caerphilly is not just one of these bellwether seats that changes from one party to another, to another, to another. It is Labour. It has always been Labour. Ever since the seat was created, it is Labour. And no one else has ever won there at all. And so for Labour to come in so poorly, I think that it would be hard for sort of Labour Party headquarters or in Downing Street to say, oh, yeah, I mean, it's just a bit of unpopularity we've got at the moment. This does look something more profound. And the poll that we're talking about now, which has the green surging and Labour at 17 percent, suggests that the age of two party politics, Conservative and Labour, is sort of, if not dead, it's very close to dead.

17:45Andrew Marr:So here's my question, which is, is it that Labour is boring and doing things badly and led by somebody who is fundamentally not exciting the voters? Or would that be the case, whoever, whatever shape Labour was now? I mean, that's just what I mean. Like, this is my question now. People keep saying, oh, Keir Starmer doesn't really inspire. He's not, you know, he's not politically political. He's not very exciting. And we've all gone. Yeah, we've had enough of exciting politicians. Thanks very much. But is it about the party itself and its place in the middle that is just destined to have a pretty low time at the moment?

18:23Andrew Marr:Or is it something that a change in the leadership could shift?

18:26Lewis Goodall:I think what there is in politics right now, and you're seeing this sort of manifest itself in all sorts of different ways, not just in Britain either. There is such an anti-system feeling. There is just such an anti-establishment. And not just, I mean, we've had times and moments in our politics when there has been great dissatisfaction with the two main parties. And occasionally, as we saw with the SDP in the 80s or, you know, the Brexit party, arguably in the sort of part of the last decade, you see a new force breakthrough, at least for a time. What I don't think, though, happened in those moments as there is now was there was not such a deeply corrosive feeling and caustic feeling about the system itself, rather than just the main two parties.

19:08Lewis Goodall:At those particular moments, there was just dissatisfaction that the two parties weren't doing their job properly or maybe they'd gone off to particular extremes and so on. Whereas now it feels, and this is what both in their own ways, the Green Party and reform are both exploiting successfully, is there is such a feeling of dissatisfaction with the system. And this is why I'm really intrigued that people say it's a kind of received wisdom right now. And I think it's a kind of comforting truth that is often said that what Keir Starmer needs to do is just deliver. and you know I was thinking the other day I'm not sure I'm just trying to think through the sort of thought experiment of like let's imagine Keir Starmer was to get sort of economic growth up to two or three percent let's say he was able to stop small boats let's say that he was able to show sort of meaningful progress on say NHS waiting lists I think that would help but I don't think it would go anywhere near so far as to extinguish the threats from the anti-system parties and I think that is because there is something that has just shifted in our politics which is that and I think you're starting to see Starmer recognise this in the way that he's talking about reforms, racism and you're starting to see people like Wes Streeting come forward and sort of start to articulate in deep terms a kind of values, moral based sort of version of kind of Labour politics because I think as we've discussed before you need to have the deepest clarity you have about your message and what you're for and just delivering in and of itself I don't think actually would at least make the whole difference in this political situation.

20:32Emma Barnett:My answer to your question, no not my answer, this is

20:35Andrew Marr:what downing street would say funny how you confuse that well exactly well i think of myself

20:40Emma Barnett:as the prime minister but no i've heard it articulated that they say look this wasn't 97 when we came in and there was a booming economy and there was largesse to be had and we could throw money around this has been a pretty grim inheritance and yeah we've made mistakes along the way that have made things worse in terms of winter fuel payments and welfare reform measures etc etc etc but we're very early on in a parliament it would be absolutely crazy to start thinking that if you just change the leader then you erase your problems have we learned nothing from what the conservatives did and that we've just got to keep on with the course in the hope that to lewis's point that we do deliver on small boats that we do get two percent growth that people feel they've got more money in their pockets and that they can afford a better holiday or whatever it is in the summer.

21:28Andrew Marr:I get it but I think that there is something else going on here which is we often talk about the amplification on social media of the more extreme voices. In other words if you want to monetise on something like X you know you grab the I'm a complete racist with Nazi memorabilia in my cupboard site and you'll get loads of people following you right now. There is a massive bias towards saying outrageous things and getting well paid for it. You know, somebody like Alex Jones has made an entire career out of it in the US. And presumably the same is true on the other side, that you get the energy, you get the excitement from saying the things on the left, on both fringes, that will get much more traction.

22:13Andrew Marr:So is politics just imitating social media? This is my question. So when you talk about the message, Lewis, and obviously I totally get that. I'm saying, yeah, we understand the importance of driving home a message, telling a message, all the rest of it. But if the message is now more important than the policies involved, because we've learnt the arc of social media, we've learnt the art of amplification through what our social media sites do, then actually there is no way back for the middle.

22:41Lewis Goodall:No, I think that's basically correct. And I think that that is the problem. I think this is ultimately, and this is kind of what I'm trying to get up with, the sort of delivery idea, which I can understand will be comforting for Starmer and those around Starmer. I think what I would worry about if I were them is that Starmer, precisely because of this deep anti-system feeling, Starmer, I think in lots of ways, quite unfairly. But nonetheless, Starmer, I think one of the reasons he's become so disliked so quickly is that so many voters believe that in many so many senses, he embodies the system.

23:08Lewis Goodall:He is almost to them. And again, I think it's quite unfair. But to them, he almost is a sort of AI generated version of kind of what a politician looks and sounds like. And I'm not sure that he will ever be able to channel some of that anti-system feeling, which you're seeing successful left of centre kind of political actors around the world. So everyone's got to go round the system.

23:31Andrew Marr:That's the point. Whatever side you are, you have to go round what, you know, what Dominic Cummings originally called the blob. Right. And, you know, unfairly. But this idea that the thing in the middle is stopping normal people's lives functioning properly.

23:43Lewis Goodall:Or you've got to be a politician, I think, who is able to, with absolute clarity and ferocity, attack those forces. Take those forces. And so it is no surprise, I think, that you are seeing, I mentioned him again, just because you are seeing West Streeting coming out in the most ferocious terms on this. And also very intriguingly in the Sunday Times, you know, telling his constituency party on Friday that Caerphilly is a Hartlepool moment. People remember that Hartlepool, the by-election. It was nearly the time that his staff went down. Nearly resigned because how bad the defeat in the Hartlepool by-election was in 2021.

24:16Lewis Goodall:And intriguing. And, you know, when I put that to him on Sunday on the LBC show, he was like, you know, we've just got to take that on the chin. Take it to heart. I'm not sure if you can do those two things at once. But he was basically he was laying down a bit of a gauntlet. Right. He was basically saying there has to be some sort of gear shift change in either what we're doing or how we're approaching the politics.

24:34Emma Barnett:I mean, just going back to your question there, Emily, about is our politics today imitating social media and what you have to do? I think, and this is probably quaint and nostalgic and ridiculous and rose tinted of me to think like this. But when we get to a general election campaign and you have got say things of roughly where they are now, that you've got reform on the right. We're going to deport people who've got indefinite leave to remain. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. And you've got Zach Polanski on the other side being the kind of, you know, the figure of the left with his policy measures.

25:09Emma Barnett:of what you need. Yeah, still like might leave NATO. Might leave NATO, all the rest of it. You're going to have an awful lot of people who think I'm not on social media. I'm not that person. I don't want either that or I don't want the other. But even if they're not on social media, their impressions of politics

25:23Lewis Goodall:will be shaped by people who are. And that's the thing.

25:27Emma Barnett:I mean, I think Keir Starmer is a problematic communicator in an age where, you know, we've just been discussing on the US edition of the News Agents, you know, Zoramandani in New York, Whereas this charismatic young guy, you know, they're very instinctual.

25:40Andrew Marr:If you ask Wes if something was racist or not, he would have an answer for you in five seconds. He wouldn't have to go away and think about it for 24 hours, which I think is is interesting. I mean, there are some very instinctive centrist politicians like Mark Carney. But arguably Mark Carney would not have got elected in Canada. I mean, not even arguably if it hadn't been that he'd taken the fight to Trump. You know, you can look at, you know, the Scandinavian countries where there is a strong centrist, you know, socialist centrist sort of power base. But honestly, there are fewer nowadays. There are fewer of the kind of Obama type characters who will take on, you know, who will respond charismatically from the centre.

26:20Andrew Marr:There aren't that many.

26:21Lewis Goodall:Look, I think if you're looking for some glimmers of hope in either this poll or carefully, you could say, well, look, on the poll, reform have obviously led in like well over 100 polls now for quite a long time. It's also intriguing that there does seem to be a bit of a ceiling to their support. You know, like I remember at the start of the year talking to reform people and they were talking about this being a year of consolidation and expansion, a year that, you know, they've got this kind of base of 20 points or so. We're going to get up to 30. We're going to get up to 35. If they were on 35 consistently, you could see that's kind of like wipe out territory right now, a bizarre system.

26:55Lewis Goodall:But they're not really they're never really gracing 30 points or getting that close to it. Very, very seldom anyway. There does seem to be a bit of a ceiling to their support. And that might give you hope if you're in number 10 and looking at what happened in Carefully, that their strategy really for six months now, we've talked about it a lot, has been to try and make the political contest about Farage and about reform and say, basically this the next election is going to be a choice of whether you want Farage as prime minister or not right and okay that might have some unfortunate echoes of the Biden kind of you know don't compare me to the um almighty me almighty compare me to the alternative but you know it didn't work for him but you can see in carefully there was you know big tactical voting clearly to keep Farage out now the unfortunate part of that for Labour obviously it wasn't towards him it was toward Ply but they might hope that in enough constituencies certainly in England and elsewhere where clearly Labour will still hopefully for them remain the main alternative that they can frame politics as basically an alternative between a government led by Keir Starmer or whoever is Labour leader and one led by reform and maybe I mean maybe that will work

28:03Andrew Marr:look let's let our imaginations run free for a second because the interesting thing about this poll that you mentioned at the beginning the YouGov one is just how close four of those parties are to each other right conservative labor greens and the lib dems three of those are on the progressive left so there is a world in which you know labor is lending other parties their vote but there is some kind of progressive co you know hung parliament sort of co-government between the lib dems the greens and labor isn't it is not unimaginable anymore that scenario i mean no it's

28:39Lewis Goodall:not unimaginable and and but what's sort of mad of course is that you know if if we had anything like this, you know, going into a general election. Oh, PR. I can feel the PR. No, I know. But like, you know, not so much that we get PR. I'm just saying that like, you know, people will be saying to us, what do you think is going to happen? I mean, Christ knows. Like trying to put that into the input machine of first past the post. Well, bear in mind, obviously in England, it could be like five parties or so. Scotland and Wales would be like six, seven parties, like, you know, sort of crazy. But also it would be a complete, complete roulette wheel

29:09Emma Barnett:spinning every kind of, every kind of, every seat. We used to wait for the exit poll on election night and think, OK, well, this is going to tell us pretty much, you know, in recent, in the last five or six elections, it has told us pretty accurately what is going to happen. I think next time round, if we are talking, as you say, in Scotland and Wales of seven party politics, I mean, good.

29:28Andrew Marr:The only thing I'd say is that if the Greens are on, is it 16 % now? 16 % and Zach Polanski has only been leader of the party for two months. That is an astonishing rise. If that is the beginning of his rise, and yeah, they all might ceiling, there might be a limit to that as well. But if he goes at this rate, if he carries on growing at this rate, with membership and with polling. If he's doing a lot of lifting there. Well, no, I'm just saying he's only been leader of the party.

29:56Lewis Goodall:A bit more to overtake Labour. That's what I'm saying.

29:58Andrew Marr:He's already on the same membership as the Tories and he's one point below Labour in, OK, one poll. But if he carries on for six months, he's overtaken Labour and he's overtaken the Conservatives. And then you're dealing with something that looks like reform with the Greens in second place.

30:13Lewis Goodall:And then, yes, and then that, basically, Polanski then tries to do the trick, which Farage has done to the Conservatives, which is you go around constituency after constituency and say, a vote for Labour is wasted. A vote for Conservatives. We've heard that so many times before. It's always getting 2%. I mean, it's not their natural heartland by any stretch of the imagination. But my word, you know, 2 % for this party, the sort of natural party of government in Britain is crazy. I mean, I just think that if we're heading into this world, we're going to have to. And the media, this is also a challenge for the media of how the media recalibrates around this stuff in terms of like covering these parties and covering this different kind of covering some of the different world that we're heading into.

30:47Lewis Goodall:I think, though, John, I think that to take Emily's point up is I do think that ultimately is that old idea. Right. Which is the medium is the message. and I think that any party which is going into any kind of political contest at the moment without tailoring itself or without a leader who can be tailored in this new political world I think is going to struggle and I think that's basically what we're seeing with Labour right now You can't have a TikTok

31:11Andrew Marr:of somebody moving a mouse on a mouse mat anymore It's just not exciting enough

31:17Emma Barnett:I know, I mean we thought we wanted a little less excitement after the craziness of the Conservative years at the end of the you know tory government and yet it feels like at the moment that you've just got to be able to master the communication and be communicating non-stop about what you're doing why you're doing it why you're right why the others are idiots and we haven't got i think the um

31:40Lewis Goodall:worry for number 10 going into the end of the year and start up next year and there is all of this very you know very feebri talk about you know whether starmer will get even get to may and that is real you know mps are really talking about that is that you know this is probably going to get worse before the end of the year because it's going to be the budget and the budget is going to be a nightmare it's clear i mean obviously they're doing a lot flying lots of kites at the moment suggesting oh it might be a 2p increase in tax probably just so when it doesn't happen they can say it's not as bad as that but it's going to be really difficult and there hasn't been there wasn't that much pitch rolling for it in the in the conference speech there wasn't that much pitch rolling for it in rachel reeve's speech and i think it's going to be very difficult for them which is they're going to try and do which is to blame brexit and to blame the last tory government because for any tax rises which do happen or spending cuts because ultimately rachel reeve a year ago said it wouldn't be necessary and the only real conclusion for that is that something has gone wrong in the interim which is means that it is necessary it's going to be very hard to pin out on anyone else yeah and there's one other thing you mentioned going to birmingham yesterday actually just i actually thought about this as a little microcosm of what's to come talking to someone there involved in birmingham politics and i hadn't actually thought about it properly but you know there is the birmingham with the many elections which are taking place next year, everyone's talking about Wales and Scotland, all of the Birmingham council seats are up.

32:52Lewis Goodall:They were saying that is going to be an absolute microcosm of national British politics, because there is everything in Birmingham. There is the sort of more white reform areas. There's the kind of sort of green, more oriented sort of inner city places and all those sort of things, sort of the Gaza vote is going to be big, Lib Dem areas, Conservative Labour battles. Basically, that is going to be a little microcosm in this first-past-the-post world. In May. In May, yeah. A little microcosm of what happens in constituency-based contests when you have five or, you know, potentially more in some places, five, you know, very active, strong parties that are all going in a first-past-the-post system.

33:26Lewis Goodall:Birmingham, the centre of politics? Correct. The centre of Britain, the centre of the world. Well, tell that to Robert Jenner. He never stops talking about it. Loves it. Well... Loves it. What is that for some areas? He loves just counting faces wherever he goes.

33:38Emma Barnett:We'll be back after the break.

33:49Emma Barnett:The News Agents.

33:51Andrew Marr:A week tonight, the people of New York are going to have their final vote on the mayoral candidate. And the runaway favourite is one Zoran Mamdani, Ugandan-born Muslim socialist, who seems to have slightly set the city and indeed much of his party alight. we're going to be discussing his chances and what it might mean for the Democratic Party with one of his really good mates on the News Agency USA. But we will be back tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye-bye. Bye for now.

34:24Emma Barnett:This has been a Global Player original production.