Be Quiet, Small Man

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

Suffs!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

Ready to take advantage of an incredible deal at Mazda?

September is the final month of eligibility for federal $7,500 electric vehicle lease cash on the new Mazda CX70 and CX90 plug-in hybrid.

All Mazda current inventory is unaffected by new tariffs.

See your local Mazda dealer for details.

$7,500 electric vehicle lease cash offer expires at the end of September.

Don't miss out.

$7,500 lease customer cash good toward 2025 CX70 PHEV and CX90 PHEV when leasing through Mazda Financial Services.

Lease customer cash can be combined with other public offers, including lease incentive offers.

Lease customer cash cannot be combined with APR or other customer cash offers.

Lease customer cash is not redeemable as cash or cash back option.

Lease customer cash is only available on approved credit.

Not all customers will qualify for credit approval or offer.

Limit 1 discount per customer per vehicle.

Lease customer cash offer only available in the United States regardless of buyer's residency.

Void were prohibited.

Apply within the lease structure as a capital cost reduction.

Lease customer cash is only available on participating Mazda dealer's current inventory, which is subject to availability.

Offer ends 9:30-2025, and you must take delivery prior to the expiration of offer.

See Participating Mazda Dealer for complete details.

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Hello, and welcome to Strong Message here from BBC Radio 4, a journalist and a comedy writer's guide to the use and abuse of political language.

And it's Amanda Yurucci.

And it's Helen Lewis.

And in a week where Mr.

Musk told the Polish foreign minister to, quote, be quiet, small man, we're looking at how politicians project strength through language.

Talking about the peculiar creep that runs this department for overseeing government efficiency, in the vein of an email he sent out to everyone asking them to list five interesting and important things they did in the last seven days.

I asked that question of you, Helen.

Well, you know, it's been the usual.

What have I done?

I started a trade war with Canada.

That was Monday.

I left reform after a dispute with Nigel Farage.

I launched a chainsaw agenda to reform Labour.

I won the election in Greenland with my centre-right party.

And of course, I went on King Charles's podcast to talk about my love of Snoop Dogg.

Is this a fever dream that you've had always?

I've just realised that this is very pleasing to me.

You can't spell doge without ego.

Think about it.

But yes, and I think you've been doing some slightly slightly more

sad thing.

I mean, well, it's not sad, really.

I mean, what I did was I recorded an interview for a BBC obituary of a certain figure.

I'm not going to name that figure because they're very much alive.

And it's a weird thing because you have to talk about them in the past tense.

I suppose now if I don't name them, people will be trying to work out if they know me.

Is it about them?

Is the BBC making an obituary about them?

But it struck me that as I came out of doing it, I thought, I've done this before.

I remember a while back doing an obituary, again, talking about someone in the past tense, but I can't remember who it was.

And I can't remember whether that person is dead or alive now.

That's the weird thing.

And the fact that I have no emotional connection to whoever that was means it must have been about a politician.

I remember when I used to work on newspapers, there was quite a significant problem.

Sometimes, obviously, people live a really long time, a lot longer, you know, great for them.

But it's a real problem because you would quite often go into the obituaries file and you would find an obituary for someone written by someone who was themselves dead.

Right.

And I think it was interesting when someone like Henry Kissinger died to go and look at the number of obits that had contributions from people who, who, you know, 30 years ago when he was 70 had gone, well, he's probably not got that long left.

I'll just knock something out.

And of course, he then just went on for another, you know, several decades.

Yes, I was half expecting when I went into do the recording whether they'd say, okay, do one as if they're dead just like last week.

Do one as if another 20 years have gone by.

And do one as if at the end of their career they suffered a terrible scandal that didn't entirely see them cancelled, but still hangs heavily over their legacy.

Yes, and we'll just mark them

genial and nasty.

Right.

And I think nothing would alarm me more if somebody came up to me and said, oh, it's nice to see you.

I've just done your obituary.

I had a similar problem.

What I've actually been doing this week is signing off the covers for my book about genius, which is coming out this summer.

But when I started writing that in 2020, I knew that I wanted to write about Elon Musk because the end section is all about how our kind of template for genius now is really the kind of innovator, the tech disruptor.

And I did find myself thinking, I'm just going to give this a little bit longer.

And then, you know, once the pages have all gone out and the drafts have been done, I was only like, no, I'm just going to go back.

And I had to silently update.

He has fathered 10 children too.

And I thought, I'm just going to go with, he has fathered at least a dozen children.

Like, let's not put a cap on that between now and June.

Only a new mathematical symbol just to signify the amount of children that Elon Musk has fathered.

Exactly.

But yeah, I just thought, I'm not going to leave any hostages to fortune by saying it's 14 because

a new one pops out every other week, it seems.

The Musk mark.

Right.

But we are going to, we will often dance around Elon Musk, but today we're going to stare him full in the face and say

for his quote and his proximity to the real character at the center of all this.

So just to put things in context, the Polish foreign minister was talking about supporting Ukraine and aid to Ukraine.

There There was an indication that might be switching off of the Starlink

system around the world.

And Musk tweeted to him or ex to him, be quiet, small man.

The wind-up to it was quite interesting, too, because I think Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, who sort of everyone keeps trying to sell him as like he's the sensible one.

And you do see photos of him in that infamous Oval Office meeting with Vladimir Zelensky.

Mark Rubio sitting next to J.D.

Vance on the sofa with the thousandest of thousand-yard stairs.

Yes, yes.

I remember someone writing under it,

the photo of Vance and Rubio.

Both these people are going to hell and only one of them realizes it.

But it was a real record scratch.

You're probably wondering how I got here.

You know, he just looked like he was regretting all of his life choices.

But he had previously said, be grateful.

He was using this sort of thank you meme that for some reason the US administration thinks is going to win the favor aboard going, have you thanked an American lately?

Don't get me started.

Well, I am going to get you started because that's the point of podcasts.

So start.

Well, no, I was was watching.

I mean, first of all, the cheer incongruity of, you know, you're in the middle of negotiating a peace settlement for one of the bloodiest and most horrific conflicts to have emerged in Europe since the Second World War.

You are known for an administration that is very aggressive, arrogant, insults all its enemies and indeed its friends.

So it's known for its totemic rudeness.

Yes.

And yet you say, have some manners.

Have you ever said thank you?

Have you heard of a mimophant?

A mimophant.

A mimophant, which is a great description for this style of person.

Yeah.

Which is somebody who has the kind of hide of an elephant when they're trampling all over other people, but the delicate, fragile skin of the mimosa flower when they're being criticised themselves.

Yes.

And so that is a mimophant.

And I think that J.D.

Vance is a classic mimophant.

He's just like, look, I hate you.

You're rubbish.

Oh, no.

Someone was mean to me.

Oh, I know.

That's right.

There is no one more snowflakey than someone from the alt-right who it talks about you know freedom of speech we should be able to say people you should be able to withstand it you should have a thick skin when they are joked about or when they are dealt with a counter-argument they suddenly melt you know they they say that's a ridiculous question get out of here or they report you yeah well aggressive or abusive language there has been a very interesting case playing out of a guy who was a pro-Palestine activist who has been very disruptive in New York with some of the student protests.

Now he's holder of a green card.

He was taken away by the immigration detention, and they said, We're going to revoke his visa.

And then it turned out he wasn't on a visa, he was on a green card, so he should be entitled to extra rights.

But there was then a very profound split in MAGA world between the administration people, who said, Well, we don't think he's committed any crime, but we're going to use him as a template anyway of saying, you know, you can't speak out against America's foreign policy objectives and expect to stay in this country.

And Coulter, who, if you remember, is, I would say, to the right of Genghis Khan, did an extraordinary post that said, I'd like to deport basically everybody, but I can't see that this man has committed a crime.

And there was just a real break in the fact that, oh no, some people genuinely are worried about free speech, and then some people just didn't like the fact that they weren't allowed to say the things that they couldn't say, but they're very, very happy to use the full force of the law against people who are on the other political side.

And there is that moment when America had withdrawn all its aid and intelligence and indeed supportive arguments from Ukraine, where a US senator, Mark Kelly, ex-astronaut, probably current astronaut, I mean, once an astronaut, always an astronaut, I assume, was visiting Ukraine and tweeted about how there was a need now more than ever to support them.

And Musk responded, you are a traitor.

Yeah, I mean, it was an extraordinary moment.

We're talking about ideas of strength this week.

And there's two versions of strength.

One is, I contend, I've been up into space, objectively, very frightening, takes a lot of courage to do.

I flew combat missions in the Gulf War.

Again, whether or not you think that war was right or not, objectively a very courageous thing to do, put your life in in danger for a country and an ideal you believe in.

And also his wife is Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head.

It's their American version of a kind of constituency surgery.

He nursed her through that.

That is a man who is just of obvious giant personal, physical courage and commitment to the idea of America.

Yes.

The other type of strength is Elon Musk sitting at his keyboard going,

you screw up.

You're a traitor.

Yes.

I'm ashamed to say that I responded to that.

It's not big.

It's not clever.

You should never think about.

It's kind of enjoyable as long as you don't do it all the time.

Also, he's probably reading it.

That's the other thing that's very fascinating about both him and J.D.

Vance.

J.D.

Vance has been a big craze for posting memes of him looking like a sort of chubby schoolboy.

And he replied with one of his own.

I would have thought being the vice president didn't give you a lot of time.

Whereas Donald Trump, there was an analysis of his media consumption, and he is still very firmly getting his talking points from TV.

He's a TV era.

Well, I've been told that people like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, when he was announcing the changes of moderation policy at Facebook would go on a certain show.

That's why he went on Fox, yeah, exactly.

Fox News and I think it's Fox and Friends because he knows that's the show that Trump watches live.

But it's also interesting about, I was thinking this morning, so the Dow Jones dropped dramatically the American stock market this week.

And the two times that Trump has really, I think, been in severe trouble are related to strength because they are both the COVID virus, which was not susceptible to bullying, and the stock market, which again, you can't shout at it until it goes up again.

And I think that is one of the fundamental problems with his version of strength is it's it's very human it can only be moderated through him intimidating people that's right yes that's right and we'll get on to that in a second but while i just remember the have you ever said sorry i was trying to think what is this like you know you're in the middle of the heat of battle you're negotiating you know the peace of the northern hemisphere potentially it's like a fireman taking someone out of a blazing building going down the stairs and saying i haven't heard a thank you until i do i'm going to put you just down here i'm just i'm just stopping now until i hear a thank you and it's worse than that actually because Trump is very transactional.

So it's also like the fireman then saying, by the way, once this is all sorted, could I have the use of one of your rooms?

Because I rather like the look of it.

That'll be $600.

Thank you.

Do you know what isn't strong this week is sales of Tesla's cars, which have plunged.

That is obviously the brand owned by Elon Musk.

And you can tell it's serious because one of the weirdest spectacles I've seen in politics in my lifetime, Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the little Minnie Musk X came out with a whole panoply of different Tesla cars.

Trump holding a list of the different pricing options was really like

QVC stuff.

He bought one and that made me just think, oh my God.

But he can't drive.

This is the thing.

He says, it's been so long I've drive.

I'm quote not allowed to drive.

And then he got in it and he said, and this is so classic, funny Trump line.

He said, look at this.

Wow.

Everything computer.

Right.

And it's true.

If you look at a Tesla, it's like watching the, in some ways, very beautiful piece of engineering.

I find the fact that you have to pop out the door handles very annoying because it takes a lot of time.

But the sinister side of all this is now that Donald Trump is now just one person away from having access to quite a lot of people's steering wheels.

Right, but it's different types of strength, isn't it?

Obviously, Donald Trump is very strong at bullying strength, very strong at marketing strength.

Although the problem is that he's got, is that because he wants to play anti-woke, he wants to play the idea that electric vehicles are silly environmental nonsense.

But that's a problem.

So we'd often see him in his speech on the campaign trail going, electric vehicles, what's that about?

Apart from Teslas, which are great.

And he also not tweeted, what do you call the act of putting something on truth social?

He truthed.

He truthed.

I mean, we truthed.

He truthed that the boycotting of Tesla is illegal.

So actually, it's not obligatory for people to buy a Tesla.

That's the implication.

It's strength through name-calling, really, isn't it?

But also economic strength as a way to counteract him, right?

In the sense that what people are doing is voting in Europe anyway, appear to be voting with their wallets that they don't like Elon Musk.

And this is

using the free markets.

Well, exactly.

Yes, exactly.

That would make Jeff Bezos, who has ordered the Washington Post opinion columns to be in support of free markets, surely very happy.

It made me think about the fact that something I'm writing for The Atlantic this week is about the fact that Trump's bullying has actually strengthened the mainstream parties in Europe and in Canada.

Well, in Canada's.

Canada being the obvious example, that the Canadian Liberals were sort of on their deathbed under Justin Trudeau, predicted to go down in a landslide.

They now have Mark Carney in charge, who British listeners will remember as the former governor of the Bank of England.

Not anyone's idea of a spunky puncher.

That's not a happy phrase, but you know, I mean, a pretty dry technocrat.

On Sale at Ryman's.

But seems to have found quite a lot of mojo, shall we say, in standing up to Trump.

And I think this has happened across the world.

You can tell it irked because Liz Truss, on the appointment of Mark Carney to be Prime Minister of Canada,

said the system, the British state is completely rigged on the basis that he used to be governor of the Bank of England.

King Charles is still technically the head of state in Canada, so maybe he had a word.

Maybe this is how deep the conspiracy goes, Liz.

In between making his podcast episodes, he means that's interesting.

It's something we've always said, which is there is a lot of bluster, there's a lot of

loud talk

from strong leaders, especially from Trump.

It's the language of strength and, you know, violence and aggression.

But what happens when it hits reality?

When the stock markets go down, when people stop buying Tesla cars, and we've got this peace deal that he's talking about coming up, what happens when the reality is Putin saying, no, I want all of Ukraine, or no, you can't have any Western troops in Ukraine, or I want them to have another election that I can then have some sway over.

What happens when you hit that reality?

And one thing I've noticed about Trump is instead of engaging with it, his default is to try and shut reality out.

It's the number of Republican Congress people going back to doing their town halls, being shouted by by constituents saying, you've just fired lots of people from the government, including my husband.

And their response to that is to no longer do town halls rather than to engage with it.

I think that's going to be an increasingly big problem because one of the things that's maybe underestimated about the US civil service is that America has an enormous military, but those people retire.

You retire pretty young as a soldier, and a huge number of them go and work in the federal government.

So there becomes a point at which Doge is basically now disrespecting veterans and that becomes a really big problem.

Absolutely.

When they're cutting the number of air traffic controllers and planes start falling from the sky, questions will be asked and it's then going to be a case of what will Trump do?

You know, he can't blame it then on

diversity or

he'll try.

Yeah, give him credit for that.

I think you're right.

One of the things that I think is rising in salience, it'd be interesting to see if this continues, is that anti-Americanism, broadly defined, is now becoming a really potent electoral weapon for all kinds of politicians.

So it was interesting in Britain across the political spectrum, uniting both people on the left who'd always hated J.D.

Vance and right-wing papers and politicians from all the parties.

When J.D.

Vance said, well, who's going to be doing this peacekeeping?

You know, it's random countries that haven't fought a war in 20 or 30 years.

And then tried to back out of it by saying, well, I didn't mean Britain and France, who were the only two countries who at that point had volunteered volunteered to do it.

You know, presumably, I meant piddly little Eastern European countries.

And at the point in which you're saying piddly little Eastern European countries, that's the bit in brackets.

Those countries go, hang on a minute.

And this comes back to Sikorsky and Poland.

Poland has dramatically increased its military spending because they're very aware of the threat of Russia.

Their borders, right?

They have one of the longest borders with regards to.

And they don't take very kindly to being told that they don't have any sort of stake in this and they're useless and tiny and unimportant.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting to try and work out what people think of when they say they favor a strong leader.

What exactly is the expectation there?

I think one of the most interesting interviews I've ever done was for actually Radio Force the Spark.

It was with a political scientist called Karen Stenner who studies something she calls the authoritarian predisposition.

And she says it's a latent sort of personality tendency in a lot of people.

Slightly more on the right button but cuts across.

And she says in good times those people are brilliant.

They prize oneness and sameness.

They prize stability.

And in good times, they are the people who will organise the local rotary club, right?

Who will do the village in bloom.

They are the backbone of society because they care about order.

However, when they feel that they're under threat, that transmutes into real like levels of fear and they want a strong leader because they like the idea that just one person sets the rules and there's really big penalties for not obeying those rules.

And that struck me as a quite a good way to explain it, as a kind of, you know, some people have huge openness to experience.

This is more correlated with being politically liberal.

And they like diversity and cacophony and they like the idea that people are disagreeing.

And there are other people who find that kind of overwhelming, and they would prefer to have more conformity.

It makes them feel secure and safe.

And those are just personality differences that you have to somehow find a political system where to get it.

And in large businesses, the ones that run into trouble are the ones that don't have a clear kind of chain of, you know, there are so many managers and sub-managers and people in charge of different areas and departments

that when something goes badly wrong, it's usually because no one person knew whether they were the ones actually who were meant to make the decision or who they were to pass the decision up to.

No one really likes hierarchies, but when you ever see the workings of a collective,

you'll be like, oh, I sort of see how this happens.

And I think one, we sometimes conflate, you know, strong leader with, you know, who can run a country the way someone can run a business.

But they're different things, aren't they?

Well, the fundamental thing is that businesses can fail.

You know,

but that's why I think Musk has not prospered in X and now the government may be in the same way that he undoubtedly prospered in the years of Tesla and SpaceX because those were mission-driven companies, right?

SpaceX was like, we're going to save humanity by putting them on Mars.

And then Tesla was, we're going to stop climate change because we're going to move to all-electric cars.

And people went on board with those companies and his aggressive management techniques and his hard-driving way because they have a mission and everything that you do that's unpleasant is in the service of that.

You know that big bargain detergent jug is 80% water, right?

It doesn't clean as well.

80% water?

I thought I was getting a better deal because it's so big.

If you want a better clean, Tide Pods are only 12% water.

The rest is pure concentrated cleaning ingredients.

Oh, let me make an announcement.

Attention Shoppers.

If you want a real deal, try Tide Pods.

Stop paying for watered-down detergents.

Pay for clean.

If it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be Tide Pods.

Water content based on the Leading Bargain Liquid Detergent.

Start your journey toward the perfect engagement ring with Yadav, family owned and operated since 1983.

We'll pair you with a dedicated expert for a personalized one-on-one experience.

You'll explore our curated selection of diamonds and gemstones while learning key characteristics to help you make a confident, informed decision.

Choose from our signature styles or opt for a fully custom design crafted around you.

Visit yadavjewelry.com and book your appointment today at our new Union Square showroom and mention podcast for an exclusive discount.

Now, meanwhile, Musk's theoretical boss gave a speech to Congress last week, which kind of illustrated for me what exactly is going on in his head.

And see if you can spot it.

I look at the Democrats in front of me, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy, or to make them stand, or smile, or applaud.

I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations or announce the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded.

And these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements.

So Democrats, why not join us in celebrating so many incredible wins for America?

I love that.

Why are you not cheering my imaginary wins?

Exactly, exactly.

It's how he posits something in the future that is amazing, gives so much detail to it that it almost becomes palpable and real.

And then you just make that switch from it being almost real to, oh, therefore, it is actually real.

So it sort of happened.

So, therefore, any criticism of it is criticism of something that's really good and that has happened.

That, which was not technically a State of the Union speech, but it was essentially fulfilling that purpose, was a very sad spectacle in a number of ways.

Um,

I mean, I'm talking about the Democrats holding up speech bubbles, uh, yes.

I was talking about the limp response from the Democrats who held up little ping-pong bats saying must glide and stuff like that, which was a bit, I mean, a bit pathetic.

The Democrats are picking up a little bit of their fighting spirit.

So the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has got, I don't know whether this will work, but I think it's very funny and worth trying.

He's now launched a podcast.

I'm against that, obviously.

No more men to have podcasts under my watch.

But he's inviting right-wing figures on.

So we had Charlie Kirk on, who's a big figure in MAGA, and trying to have conversations and trying to learn from what makes things go viral on the right.

causing enormous disgruntlement from people who say you shouldn't talk to these people.

They're basically Nazis.

But he's attempting to find middle ground positions.

He came came out and said, this is Newsom, that he doesn't think actually that biological males should compete in women's sports.

He's with about four-fifths of America on that.

But in the Democratic Party, that is completely unsayable thing to say, will cause big backlash from the interest groups.

So there is a bit of strength coming back to the Democrats.

Bernie Sanders has been on a big oligarchy tour in districts that narrowly went Republican.

So finding these points of weakness in the...

You say oligarchy tour, what's he doing?

Anti-oligarchy tours.

undergone a dramatic reversal but just finding these these attack lines and ways in which the democrats are strong after i think several months of licking their wounds and really being very weak stumps a lot of people outside america is that there is no real official opposition or leader of the opposition in america there is no one figurehead within the democrats who can answer every day to every move that the president is doing and you're right the thing that will hopefully happen in the next year or so is that a lot of democrats will remember that they'd like to run for president in 2028.

And, you know, they will have become self-appointed leaders of the opposition.

And they will pop up and make those statements in a kind of hello, hello, it's me.

If only you were looking for a strong leader, look, here I am.

I'm sorry, I wasn't around when democracy was taken apart over the last two years, but I'm here now.

Well, yeah, I mean,

that's the interesting thing.

But I think, you know, like Andy Bashir in Kentucky, Pete Buddigig,

although he might be running for a Senate seat or a governor position.

And then Gavin Newsom has got the Kamala Harris problem, which is how he's come up through California politics where you can never be too left-wing.

So what you are seeing him do is couldn't be a more heavily cargo tanker signalled pivot to the centre with all of this stuff.

He's bringing California

more to the...

More dragging it to the Midwest.

And if he manages to do it, that will be a show of strength, right?

Because he's saying things and doing things that are considered currently to be anathema to powerful groups within the Democratic Party.

And this comes back to this lion-tamer aspect of being a political leader, right?

You do need to demonstrate a certain level of power that you can do stuff and get away with it, whether or not it's go against your party or whether or not it's punch at your opponents.

Okay, so we're talking about lion-tamers.

In the UK, there's a pack of five wild beasts that have gone feral.

Well, yeah, okay.

So Rupert Lowe, formerly reform MP, gave an interview to The Mail, which was exactly concerned with this idea of a strong leader in which he said Nigel Farage is sort of too strong.

He's, quotes, a messiah.

He sees himself as a messiah.

And we are in danger of becoming a protest party led by a messiah.

This didn't go down very well with Nigel Farage.

It was Nigel Farage.

And they've been

well done well with the Messiah.

He was a very naughty boy.

Rupert Lowe is currently suspended from the party and posting a lot on X

about how aggrieved he feels about this.

It is the thing that we come back to, which is that Nigel Farage is a unique figure on the right of British politics.

When he left UKIP, UKIP collapsed.

It does technically still exist, but it is not a force in British politics the way it was.

I think he now regrets the pact that the Brexit Party made with the Tories in 2019, feels that the Tories welched on their half of it.

And as a result, reform has got really serious ambitions.

But the problem is that his strength is a kind of problem because the organisations around him are built entirely in his image.

That's right.

And he's always had a problem with getting his parties to become broader than that.

Yes, and you know, if you look at the whole history of Nigel Farage and his various guises, it usually ends with a punch-up somewhere.

Not with him involved, but Stephen Wolfe was sparked out by the gloriously named Mike Hookham, fellow UKIP MEP, on the floor of the European Parliament.

He's trying to replace the Conservatives, so it's not in Farage's interest to actually become more

move further to the extreme right.

Yeah, this again comes back to why I say he's a unique figure on the British right.

He knows where the line is and he knows that the constant problem of his party is that they will attract people who say overtly racist or anti-immigration things that actually are extremely minority opinions.

So Rupert Lowe has said not only he wants mass deportation, something that Nigel Farage said only earlier this week, he just doesn't think is logistically possible, never mind ethically desirable, but also Rupert Lowe says that because of the grooming gang scandal, he maybe needs, quotes, whole communities might need to be deported.

So people who are not even involved because they seem to have turned a blind eye to it.

I mean these are positions that have

dramatic support in some tiny corners of Britain but if you look at the polling are actually repulsive to lots of voters that he would otherwise need to be.

And that is that thing also of Farage if it's in his head if he's thinking we could conceivably be the biggest party at the next election I could conceivably be prime minister.

It then means he has to confront the reality of how things would be carried out because he knows those questions are going to be asked.

He has to disown anything that is not just unsavoury but undoable.

That's why I thought his interview, it was with Stephen Edgington who's a right-wing influencer when he's asked about mass deportations and he said, look, it's just not possible, was, I thought, one of the most interesting things that he said recently, because it was him encountering the reality of not just being a purely populist politician where you just promise things that you think are popular, but the idea that one day you might be held to account for some of this stuff.

And that does suggest who knows whether or not those ambitions are plausible, but he doesn't want to be a 25% party.

He wants to have a good shot of being the main opposition and maybe one day prime minister.

I think that's something that we kind of forget about the rise of the right or the alt-right or the extreme right or the wherever is they've succeeded I think in being the loudest about what's going on.

What they've done is turn it into a shouting match and in a shouting match it's the loudest one who wins.

Yeah there's this line that I wrote this morning which is that some of these people like I think Rupert Lowe think that they're the voice of the silent majority and they're actually the voice of the very loud minority.

And I think that's one of the things that online can make you over assess your strength.

Before we go I have to ask, do you have any other words to bring to the table?

Well it's a quote actually.

It's about Liz Truss who

remember in a couple of podcasts ago we talked about her announcing in America that she was going to set up a new free speech media network

and asking how's that going to work.

There was a quote from a former number 10 advisor which kind of implies someone who used to work close to Liz Truss who is asked what are the chances of Liz Truss setting up a free speech media network.

And this is classic the voice of diplomacy when in fact

what it's conveying is something

more poisonous.

The unnamed advisor said, building these kind of institutions requires attention to detail, patience and hard work.

So I don't think anything will come of it.

Brutal.

Very brutal.

I brought along this week Politico, the US version, ran a very interesting piece about Democrats getting all sweary, which I thought reflected what we were talking about in the last episode very well.

In their reaction to the joint address to Congress, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee said, but brace yourself for this, go to hell, adding later on X, I said what I said.

Yeah.

Yeah, what about that?

But the other thing that was very obvious is that all the Senate Democrats did the same script of social media videos, which I thought looked quite cringe.

And they, this is a quote from Politico, launched coordinated social media videos fact-checking Trump, each of them calling his claims, quotes, shit that ain't true.

Which kind of works if that's your vibe.

If you're, bless you, a 90-year-old from Massachusetts, just

doesn't.

It's that thing of it's the shouting match, but on one side, you're a traitor, you should go to prison, you should be deported, you scum, you know, and go to hell.

Yeah, I just think that's it.

You know, it's not, it's not, they need to change the game.

You know, you're bringing a banana to a gunfight.

Right, but it is indicative of the fact that political language has become more demotic recently as a result of Trump.

And also has, you know, the kind of grading of swearing has gone up in the sense that, you know, things that used to register on the Richter scale

no longer do.

Yes.

And the joy of having newsreaders given permission, if it's to quote someone.

They love it.

They

love it.

It's like actors love playing Hitler.

Anyway.

I have one more thing to bring you, which is I have a metaphor to hang on our here, Starmer metaphor straight.

Starmer metaphor.

Yeah, great.

Spring is coming.

It's bursting into bud.

This one is from Chris Giles in Edinburgh, who says, in PMQs, Starmer said, we inherited a £22 billion black hole and we have now turned that around.

Anyway, I have a great addendum to this, which is that I texted Brian Cox, professor of particle physics and host of Radio 4's Infinite Monkey Cage, because I wanted to know, can you turn a black hole around?

And is that good?

That feels like that might be bad.

He says, The current theoretical understanding of black holes is that everything that falls in throughout its history comes back out again, encoded in Hawking radiation.

You just have to wait long enough.

Admittedly, long enough is significantly longer than the current age of the universe.

So it's good that Starmer got on that in his first term because that's going to be one of the longer term.

That's right, yes.

Yes, Rachel Reeves is about to publish her one zillion year plan.

Thanks for listening to Strong Message here.

We'll be back next week.

All our episodes are available in our feed, so make sure you subscribe on BBC Sounds.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

A new podcast series from BBC Radio 4.

In the first stage of a poltergeist haunting, the entity will confine itself to making noise, as if it's testing its victims.

The Battersea Poltergeist.

My name's Shirley Hitchens.

I'm 15 years old.

I live with my mum, dad, brother, Gran,

and Donald.

Subscribe to the Battersea Poltergeist on BBC Sounds.

Want to stop engine problems before they start?

Pick up a can of C-Foam Motor Treatment.

C-Foam helps engines start easier, run smoother, and last longer.

Trusted by millions every day, C-Foam is safe and easy to use in any engine.

Just pour it in your fuel tank.

Make the proven choice with C-Foam.

Available everywhere.

Automotive products are sold.

Seafoam!

The Mercedes-Benz Dream Days are back with offers on vehicles like the 2025 E-Class, CLE Coupe, C-Class, and EQE sedan.

Hurry in now through July 31st.

Visit your local authorized dealer or learn more at mbusa.com/slash dream.