Becoming a Distraction

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.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Hello, Helen here.

Before we get going with the episode proper, I just wanted to deliver a very important message of my own.

New episodes of Strong Message Here are available every week on Thursdays.

But if you want to be notified as soon as a new episode appears, make sure you're subscribed to the series on BBC Sounds and you have your push notifications turned on.

That way, you'll get to hear the latest pearls of wisdom from me and Amando as soon as is humanly possible.

Thank you for listening.

Now, here is this week's episode.

Okay, Amando, you're going to kick this one off, aren't you?

Yes.

Cake implies a level of energy that.

Come on.

Woo!

Yeah, and some.

Did you see...

Did you see Kiostama switching the Christmas tree lights on yesterday?

That's the level of energy that you're bringing to this.

Okay, fair enough.

Two, one.

One.

Yay.

Christmas.

Great.

We're going to have a lovely crit.

I should save this, really.

This is gold.

This is gold.

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.

It's Helen Lewis in quarantine at home.

And it's Omarian Uchi, Intrepidation of what's about to happen to me since I'm feeling a bit iffy, but in the studio and as far away from Helen as possible.

Good, always a good call.

This week we have become distracted by the phrase becoming a distraction.

But first, Amando, I want to ask you about how does it feel now that your life has changed utterly, now that you are.

a man of the year.

I'm now a GQ man of the year.

Yes, I went to the ceremony.

Is it a ceremony?

I mean, it was a dinner.

It was a loud dinner in a long, narrow room attended by footballers and trendy actors and me and people wearing the most extraordinary outfits.

See, this is why I said, I think I said before that the only reason why I went was because my family just thought it was the funniest thing ever and it kind of was.

I always suffer from this imposter syndrome.

For years I've arrived at events, Shobi's events, just behind the likes of

Ricky Gervais

and,

I don't know, Dame Judy Dench.

So I'm used to, you know, hearing the outburst of shouts and exclamations from all the press and photographers as they want to get a picture of Dame Judy.

And then I arrive and you can actually, you could bottle the audible

from everyone as I step on.

And that's, I've just kind of got used to it.

I've just kind of got used to it.

There's one event I was at when I was in America.

I was, this is now turning, I'm so sorry, you asked this question.

And it's now turning into, you know, my showbiz gossip now.

But I do like, no, I always, I'm always here for an episode of Armando's Showbiz Tales all right well two Showbiz Tales one is you know I was at the Oscars

because for In the Loop was nominated for the script and the red carpet somebody showed at Armando and I looked over and there was a camera and I went over to the camera to talk and the cameraman went get down

and I ducked because he was actually filming Sandra Bullock

and the guy who'd shouted Armando was actually a Radio 5 live reporter who was crouched down at foot level.

So I had to bend down and do a live interview and my wife took the photograph of me bending down to do an interview with Sandra Bullock in the background.

And that's

that's okay.

So you were kind of at sort of Hobbit level and she was like sort of some kind of lavishly coiffed gandalf looming over you.

Exactly.

Yes.

Yes.

Subterranean stardom is my category.

And my big question about the Oscars is, did you get a gift bag?

I've heard about people getting sort of vampire facial gift bags.

No, I mean, this is where I...

Okay, I'm now about to tell you about my two panic attacks because this is where I had my first panic attack.

There is a thing where you're invited to a gifting suite.

and it's a very American thing because you go in, declare who you are, and what you've achieved.

So, you know, I'm a man Judushi.

I've been nominated for best adapted screenplay for a film that you have not seen.

And they announce you.

And then you go around all these stalls and they say, Well, we can gift you this.

And normally, if you're a you know clunie, you get plasma screens and a yacht.

But because of who I was and what I was there for, we came away with four small socks with grips for puppies so that they don't slide on your marble floor.

We don't have a marble floor, but we thought we ought to come with it.

That's what I thought anyway.

But that's where I had a panic attack because eventually it became so loud that I just turned to Rachel my watch.

I said, get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out.

I said, get me out of here for about five minutes repeatedly.

I think Americans are very up for that sort of thing and kind of they're much more happy to be very open about status rankings than the kind of, you know, sad little knifey passive aggression of the British class system.

I got my American visa and I got an O visa, which is an extraordinary talent visa, which again, my family find very funny.

But I got to the front of the queue at the American embassy and I hand over all my forms and the guy goes, and what is your extraordinary talent?

And I, because I'm British, A, I was crippled with anxiety at this.

And the second thing is that every fibre in my being wanted to say, give me three ping pong balls and I'll show you.

But being asked to sort of say out loud,

I just need to tell you that I'm actually extremely special and I should be allowed into your country to demonstrate my specialness is not something that you should force a British person to do in my view.

It's so unbritish.

And yes, you're right.

It's lauded in America, which again explains the Trump phenomenon because he is wealthy and a lot of people just go, yeah, he's wealthy.

Well done him.

He's got my vote.

I'm complicatedly happy for him that he succeeded in life, which is very, again, very un-British.

Tell me about your second panic attack.

Well, it was at the GQ men of the year what

again, the red carpet was looming and again I could hear the baying, shouting photographers.

And I looked to see who was in front of me getting papped.

And it was Usain Bolt.

And I thought, this isn't going to work.

It really isn't going to work.

And I could hear the palpitation, feel the palpitations.

And I literally ran away.

I ran out the room and went round the back of all the press and found another way into the dinner because I just thought, I can't do this.

There's something about the man of the year.

Also, just celebrating being a man.

I've never, I've never, I always feel like I'm a child.

Um,

I think most people do feel like that.

They feel like at some point, like the grown-ups will arrive.

I think it's actually when we're talking about government, you hit you talk to lots of people in government who sort of assume that at some point they'll be let into the special room where all the grown-ups are making the big decisions and they'll understand where power actually lies.

Yes, and then they have a terrible realization at some point that, oh, no, it's it's them,

they have to make the decisions.

Yes,

they're the grown-ups, there is no establishment.

I once uh researching for In the Loop, I spoke to an ex-CIA guy

who lived up to tight and insisted we met in some really trashy barbecue joint miles out of Washington where no one could find us, which was quite depressing, really.

And he did say, you know, he spent four years behind a desk at the CIA thinking one day someone will come up, tap him on the shoulder and say, you know, the room with the screen's in.

It's through there.

Do you want to come?

But it never happened.

That reminds me, my boss once told me that he met an ex-mafia informant who now lived in Florida as I think is the law if you're an ex-mafia informant and the guy asked to meet him at Disney World.

I think they may have possibly even gone on like one of the little teacup rides together, which is what it would just, that's what you get into journalism for, basically.

The guy who ran the teacup ride was he then threatened with like

a horse's head was put into the teacups.

Yeah, I was £20 short last week.

What's going on?

I want more kids and more teacups.

Well, I don't know if I've told you this before, but there is a place that lots of CIA previous enforcers have retired to in Florida, and they ran a local newspaper.

And I've always wanted to write a sitcom set in the local newspaper run by former CIA people.

Since we're going down this spy rabbit hole, I was once invited to give a talk to MI5.

Now,

of course, of course.

Of course.

And now, it wasn't about security policies.

They probably know it better than me.

I think I can talk about this now because they're much more public.

But at the time, because of what they do, they do all their social events as a group.

So they go in theatre groups together and they go, you know, to the zoo, maybe Disneyland, I don't know.

And they have speaker evenings.

So they wanted me to talk about comedy.

and politics.

And I did actually, funny enough, in contrast to the CIA experience, it was in M's briefing room.

It was a huge room with screens.

I didn't even have to touch a button.

I just had to put my hand over a button and the lights would go dim.

I thought for a joke I'd start with, I'm going to tell you about comedy and then I'm going to have to kill you.

And he got some laughs.

And then they did

questions at the end and then someone put their hand up and said, thank you very much for coming, Mr.

Uniti.

And now I'm afraid we are going to have to kill you.

I mean, I respect that.

Yeah.

In our household, that's known as the high-stakes lol.

And I think if you're a spy, you can go for that.

We probably should.

we have got distracted.

That's all for this week.

So next week we'll be

talking about something that actually happened.

No, it just turns out it's very easy to get distracted.

Distraction.

That's right.

Becoming a distraction.

People who step back because of becoming a distraction.

So the proximate cause of the podcast is Louise Hay, who was transport secretary until very recently.

She stepped down because she pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation in 2014.

Basically, she was robbed.

She said her work mobile phone was taken.

She later says that she discovered that she still had it, but her former employer had basically had her prosecuted for fraud.

She also says that she told Keir Starmer this many moons ago.

So I think it was a really interesting one where the initial reaction was, well, hang on a minute.

Why is she being made to resign if her party leader knew about this?

And so everybody then became immediately suspicious.

There was actually a bit more to the story.

There were suggestions later that, you know, perhaps she hadn't told Starma everything.

Perhaps, you know, she'd, there was some suggestion she'd reported the work phone stolen because she actually wanted a new phone and that she'd use the old phone to call her friends in the period where she supposedly thought it was stolen.

But because she resigned, we didn't get any, you know, we won't get any answers on whether or not that's true.

And that, to me, encapsulates the beauty of the resignation by saying, I've become a distraction.

And we've spoken about Matt Gates before, the Trump's nominee for Attorney General, who had this big report into him that was due to come out.

He's resigned from being a congressman, so that didn't happen.

And then when it became clear he wasn't going to get through the nomination process without having to answer some pretty hard questions about allegations that he slept with a minor the same thing happened that he's he said well i've become a distraction and so two you know different cases of alleged offence there but the same thing happens which is i have become a distraction is basically like i don't want to answer any more questions about this but i'm not going to admit that i've done anything wrong well it is so this is the phrase that uses that i do wonder though whether in the in the particular case of louise haig she resigned because she had become a distraction do you know what i mean actually saying i have become a distraction is is actually she's touching on the reason she she had to go which is, and again, I'm just speaking purely conjecturally.

I don't know the details of what she may or may not have said or may not have done.

But isn't there a rule in politics that actually, if you do become a distraction, no matter how unjust you think it is or unfair, if you're creating bad headlines, you have to go.

That is the central tenet of, you know, from Alastair Campbell onwards, really.

You know, you've got to, the government has to be in control of the narrative.

And if you're doing something, similarly sue gray step step back and then down and then away um because you were in distraction yeah it was like a sort of an irish jig by the end of the day really it is so back to the pubs you ran

it's almost like headlines reach a cumulative mass that become a kind of fact against you I think it's very hard maybe for people outside the media to understand because I think even people inside the media don't really understand this sort of alchemical process by which a kind of everybody sort of sense, you know, it's like sort of sharks, basically, you sort of smell blood in the water.

And therefore, if it feels like the whole story hasn't quite come out, that makes people very excited.

And now we have the kind of corollary of that, which is the same thing happens online and everybody has kind of appointed themselves an amateur detective, right?

Well, I'm not sure I believe the police's statement on this.

I'm not sure I believe what the royal family is saying on this.

And so, you know, I think it's, you know,

it's not a coordinated attack.

It doesn't happen in this sort of way that everybody gets together in some smoke-filled room and plots it out.

They're all going to pay attention to the same story.

But there is a feeling of like, oh, this is something that the next person to break a news story relating to this will get a bit of professional credit.

You know, what else is going on?

And sniffing around.

And there is the added complication.

At Coldwater Creek, we take a thoughtful approach to design, giving attention to what matters most to you.

From quality fabrics to the fits you love, to artful details that captivate, Coldwater Creek caters to to your wardrobe in every season, for every occasion, and in every size.

We create comfortable, confident styles with endless versatility that reflect the life you live.

Pure, natural fabrics and soft textures that move with you throughout your day.

Each garment tells a story of craftsmanship and care, created with a purpose and designed with precision.

We celebrate what makes you unique with silhouettes that flatter and styles that let your authentic self shine through.

Discover why Coldwater Creek is the sought-after choice in women's clothing.

For seasonal looks, shop ColdwaterCreek.com.

Suffs!

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

We demand to be home!

Winner, best store.

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.

In that it used to be that

the government could say, if there hadn't been enough headlines in the press about whatever the issue was, they could think, oh, well, we've gotten away with it.

But now what happens is if a kind of momentum builds up online, that gives the newspapers the opportunity and the excuse to then start talking about it as well.

So if it's a very trivial, slightly silly story that it might be beneath the Guardian or The Times to look at, if it suddenly becomes all the talk of Facebook,

it then gives the Guardian, The Times, the excuse to run stories about it becoming a story.

And it's then the stories about it becoming a story, that becomes the story, which then means that you're now a distraction.

Yes, I I think that's very true.

And I think it often looks kind of like there is some sort of grand master agency hand behind it when it actually is a big kind of swirling vortex of lots of people all acting in their own kind of self-interest.

But, you know, I think also the other thing that happens in these cases is that sometimes people step down as a kind of strategic withdrawal.

So, okay, I'm going to run past you.

I have a taxonomy of political resignations.

Okay, I think there are three types of political resignation.

The first is the strategic withdrawal, which is, I think, what you would say that this one one was, which is, if I go now, I'm going to draw a line under this story.

People are going to lose interest in it and me.

Once someone has resigned, that in media terms is seen to kind of kill the story, right?

No one wants to now break, you know, it's not that interesting that ex-cabinet minister did X.

And then in a couple of years' time, you can come back and say, I'm back.

I want to be in government again.

And if anyone brings this story back up again, you can say, well, I think we dealt with that at the time.

I paid my price.

It's not new anymore.

I paid my price with ministerial severance pay.

Well, as it turns out, yes, cushioned by several thousand pounds, tens of thousand pounds.

And I think the classic example of this is: do you remember one of my favorite ever, very weirdest days in politics?

Do you remember when Pretty Patel was international development secretary and she was summoned home from a meeting in Uganda in order to be fired because she had been having off-the-books meetings with Israeli politicians?

On hard holiday, yes.

It was such a weird day because she was on a plane.

So there were 20,000 people at one point tracking the plane.

That's right.

And then everybody who had her phone number, because everyone in Westminster is on WhatsApp all the time, was sitting on WhatsApp waiting to see when she, well, like when her, you know, she'd go green again, to see when back when she was online again.

And it was a sort of kind of like very bizarre, like the world's most boring kind of TV watch-along as everybody watched this little flight go all the way up through Africa and then Europe.

I was sitting in a room again for research purposes in Washington, D.C.

that overlooked, you know, had a panorama of Washington before, and a huge military helicopter flew past the window, not right in front of the window obviously but in the distance from right to left and the person I was taking the meeting with said oh that would be General Petraeus going over to DC to get fired by Obama

that's quite glamorous if you're gonna get fired if ever I have a work meeting that goes badly I'd like to arrive by helicopter that would make me feel better about I don't want it by text I want to be there I want to I

I want to hover pod.

I want to come by drone.

I want to be fired out of a cannon into the meeting.

But anyway, Pritty Patel, a couple of years later, ended up back as home secretary.

So there was a kind of feeling that that was, you know, that was a good forced exit in the sense of that she was then able to say, well, you know,

I did my time.

It's like a kind of good resignation, a good clean resignation sort of boosts your career immunity from that sort of story.

You know, you've built up.

points, nectar points.

Nectar points.

Number one.

And then the number two is what we might kindly call the dramatic exit.

You might more cruelly call it the flounce or the huff.

And that is the kind of like, you know, darling, we're leaving, sort of, you know, I've had enough of this.

So Nigel Lawson resigned as Chancellor in 1989 in the kind of dying days of the Thatcher government, you know, kind of, I've had enough of this.

Rosie Duffield became the shortest, you know, lived MP resigning from the Labour Party just two months after the election over some of the things like the two-child benefit limit, that sort of thing.

But that is the kind of like, you know, I want everybody to know that I don't agree with this, that the direction that my party is going and my leader is going.

And that's the kind of the Heseltine fluence, isn't it?

Just storming out of a cabinet meeting.

Yeah, exactly.

Which you want to leave and you want everybody to know that you've left because you're doing it to make a point.

And then I think the third type of political resignation is what I think of as the kind of the hand grenade over the shoulder.

And that is most recent example probably be Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak within sort of half an hour of each other sparking a kind of cascade of resignations that eventually brought down Boris Johnson as prime minister.

And that's essentially the kind of, I'm going to give everybody else the cover if they also want to do something.

Like, lads, let's go all, let's all go over the top together, basically.

Yes, and there is that kind of look of panic as they go over the top and they realise no one else is there with them.

But it took a while, but then it suddenly, suddenly cascaded to the point where somebody became the shortest-lived cabinet minister ever.

Somebody became education secretary one day and then resigned from the post the next day.

Yeah, I believe that was Michelle Donnellan, who was sort of almost sort of like subliminally brief.

And there was a question about whether or not she'd get a portrait on the wall.

Sort of like, What you want essentially, instead of having a portrait on the wall, is basically a kind of, you know, a single frame of a camera as she runs out of frame, right?

Just to capture the sort of briefness of it.

We've painted you as a blur.

Is that all right?

Because that's just to be our impression of you.

Yeah.

And then there's probably, actually, now I think about it, there's probably one other type of political resignation, which is the this will help me in a future leadership election resignation.

Exactly.

And that is something like Boris Johnson's resignation from the May government over the terms of the Brexit deal, which was basically this Brexit deal isn't hard enough.

And I think the party's appetite in the next election will be for something a little bit tougher.

And so I want to be on record as the one who, you know, who stood up.

You might say the same about Robert Jenrick and his resignation, too.

Yes.

It's to make a point and also keep your powder dry so that you're no longer, if you're on the back benches, when it comes to the leadership election, you can no longer be blamed for what happened in the government since you made a point of separating yourself from it.

That there's that.

The reasons for resigning have changed over the years.

You know, Lord Carrington, Peter Carrington, resigned because he was foreign secretary when the Falklands were invaded and he just thought it was the right thing to do.

But now, instead of saying, I'm really sorry, I made a mistake, it is this, I've become a distraction.

Clearly, the work of the government is important.

If I'm holding that up in any way, so it's you're not to blame for the problem, you're just there to take the blame.

You're happy to become a martyr for what really is a kind of more

a problem at number 10.

That's an interesting one.

Because I don't think people would do that now, right?

They would be like, it's all the more important for me to stay on.

Although, I guess actually, David Cameron did that the morning after the EU referendum, which was, I think, a perfectly reasonable thing to do, saying I campaigned for the other option.

I can't be the one that then takes us out of the EU.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then Theresa May, who had voted to remain and campaigned for remain, then thought that she could.

And actually, I think that was now in retrospect the wrong calculation.

You know, it needed somebody who had been a Brexiteer to be able to oversee that process.

Yeah, yeah.

And there is something something about the escalation of it as well, resignations, and that

they've moved from being the stately, you know, I stand down because I made a mistake to,

you know, they kind of slightly twee, I want to spend more time with, you know, my family.

I want to spend more time with the kids.

Or in Boris Johnson's case, I want to spend more time having kids.

Someone else's family.

And then you even lose that now and you just do the step backs type of way.

And the letters now are no longer, the official resignation letters are no longer the polite, you know i'm very proud of what i've done and and whatever they are i've resigned i've resigned because i think you're terrible as a prime minister and i disagree with everything you've done that was the sort of sulla braverman resignation style i become quite a connoisseur of those um resignation letters because they know they often have a like a three things of boilerplate guff about all the stuff that they've done so that will get printed in their kind of local paper right which is you know in my time as mp for little piddling on the wall i've overseen you know blocking 14 houses being built on the edge of town and an important renovation of the roundabout and you think I'm not sure that Rishi Sinek or Boris Johnson, whoever really cared, if I'm honest, cares about this.

But they're obviously a sign of the fact that resignation letters are, by definition, public statements.

For a while, MPs have tended to put them on Twitter.

Sometimes, if they're super aggressive, they put them on Twitter or now X as it is, before they give them to the Prime Minister, making it very clear who the actual audience for this resignation is.

Yes, and it's so that they can't be asked, could you change that phrase and that phrase and take that phrase out?

Because it's too late.

But there was a great crop of them over the summer because obviously lots of Conservative MPs stepped down and didn't seek re-election.

And an honest version of their resignation letters would be, I've looked at the polls and I'd rather not spend six weeks chugging around, you know, standing outside Sainsbury's or another supermarket making my case to people who hate me.

So I'd rather think about early about what job it is I'm going to get in the private sector.

But obviously no one could no one could say that.

I've seen the polls and it looks like I am going to be spending more time with my family whether I want to or not.

Whether they want me to or not.

But yes, the great thing about the resignation letter is that they are kind of these very rich coded texts.

They're often exquisitely boring, actually, on the surface.

And then everything else is kind of, you have to do kind of criminology to read between the lines.

So there is the, in the resignation letter, no, there is the dropping of the pretense then that it's, you know, it's all to do with the future of the country and the right thing, the right person in the job.

And I can no longer provide that service.

That's been dropped.

It's very, very open.

And also, I think we've dropped the pretense of thinking that it's in no way influenced by what the story is in the headlines and in the media, in that a lot of people picked up on the fact that Louis Hay resigned within the day of this story coming up, which normally drags on for about two or three weeks.

People say how refreshing it is that it was immediate.

But I think, no, that's just an acknowledgement of where we are now, in that the agenda moves that fast.

Same way that Matt Gates withdrew.

before even going in for his approval hearings with the Senate.

It's reading the signs straight away rather than any attempt to feel you can brave them out.

There was a similar thing with Homser Youssef's resignation as leader of the Scottish National Party, in which he basically sacked the Green Party from the power-sharing agreement and then sort of appeared to lose the ability to count, which then meant that there would be more votes in Holyrood against his government than for his government.

Well, that was one way you just sort of thought, hang on a minute,

did you not see this one coming?

But, you know, and his resignation again didn't go, it turns out I couldn't count up to 62.

That was, in many ways, my first error, but instead went through the kind of you know, the sort of usual boilerplate.

One of the things, yeah, that I think is also an unfortunate political tendency, and I understand why people do it, is they often invoke their identity characteristics.

And it has become fine, you know, obviously being the first female MP, the first black MP, or the first black female MP, these are quite interesting.

But we've now kind of had all of those firsts, but people somehow kind of still want to refer to them.

And you do get these finer and finer gradations as saying, you know, it's been the honor of my life to serve as the first XYZ MP.

MP.

But it's sort of, you know, the first kind of pansexual from the West Midlands.

And you think, well, hang on, what are we doing here?

Like,

ultimately, everybody is unique.

You know, we'd be like, I'm proud to be the first person called Helen Lewis to present a radio programme called Strong Message Here.

Eventually, it will just become indistinguishable from having a personality.

So everyone kind of gets a badge for taking part, really,

rather than

what they did in their five years.

Yes,

I think there is a bit of...

Also, I can totally understand the human impulse to kind of save face.

I still think about the sadness of Theresa May's resignation speech where they actually, the bit that she choked up on was the saying that she was proud of serving the country that she loved.

And then she said also, I'm very proud to be the second female prime minister.

And that was another one where it was like, okay, look, I'll give Margaret Thatcher, you know, breaking the glass ceiling.

The glass ceiling was already, you know, it had a few, it had been cracked already, really.

It was, you know, it was, it was, it was, it was halfway there.

What's left for Theresa May just

standing on lots of shards of glass.

Right.

And then Liz Truss can't really then roll up and say, say, I was proud to be the third.

I mean, we could do this until the numbers are equal, but by the time you get to the 120th female prime minister, it will become progressive.

There'll be some level of diminishing returns, I feel.

And isn't the problems with the Boris Johnson resignation and all the mini resignations and record number of resignations, they were all brought on by the fact that he tried to buck that trend and not go, didn't he?

He tried to work behind the scenes and...

salvage some kind of working arrangement where he could keep going as prime minister even though everyone around him knew it just wasn't going to to be possible.

So it's there was something which embarrassed a lot of people quite badly.

Because if you remember, Nadim Zahawi initially resigned and then unresigned and then re-resigned.

Re-resigned, yes, yes.

He was very proud to have been the Chancellor of the Chequer, which turned out to be, you know, for whatever it was, four days.

It was like a sort of tumble-dryer of politicians for like six days, wasn't it?

Just, I think ministers woke up on several mornings forgetting if they'd resigned or not.

It'd been that fast, you know, not quite knowing which ministry they should be going into.

What am I resigning from again?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like a sort of like a rocker, like it's Tuesday, you know, it must be Milton Keynes.

They were kind of like, right, it's Tuesday.

I must be, I must be Secretary of Education.

Yeah, sure, I am.

Yeah, I've done the others.

I would have loved it.

I would have think it would have been a very baller move if Boris Johnson had resigned by saying it's been the honor of my life to be the 20th Etonian Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

It's been an honour of mine to be the first big chump to hold this office.

I'm sure other big chumps are available.

Helen, at the end of every podcast, we'd like to bring in a word of the week.

Is it a word that's caught your eyes this week?

Well, I wanted to bring up the word Karen.

And I wondered if this was a word that you had heard or if it's only confined to the bits of the internet that I frequent.

No, I heard about it only because the amazing Rebecca Front was playing a character called Karen in my comedy Avenue 5.

And she was very organized.

She was the passenger who, if there was an emergency or a delay would stand up and start ticking control and say well we should be doing something about this and and this is for people trapped on a space station that's right just to be clear

on a space now i had no idea we just used the name karen we just thought that was a perfect but i hadn't realized that karen actually maybe more in america than here is the word used for that type of person Yes, I mean, I think it originally came from some guy's forum posts about his ex-wife, who was actually called Karen.

But it developed in about 2020 into this very American catch-all word for a sort of nagging, shrewish woman.

And if I put it to you like that, you might instantly clock there may be a little bit of a little bit of sexism going on because quite a few men in my life I feel have been nagging.

But

because of America's different kind of racial politics, it was, oh no, we're not saying something sexist about women, we're identifying something that's bad about white women.

And it just really came to me that obviously we don't have quite that same

kind of division in Britain in the way we talk about politics, but it was very reminiscent when Greg Wallace came out with his non-pology, where he said that he basically had been just a bit of a banterer.

And the people who'd complain were middle-class, middle-aged women of a certain age.

And it struck me that everyone kind of went, ooh,

I don't think you've helped yourself there, Greg.

But

to the extent that he's now apologised for his non-pology.

Yeah, right, exactly.

But four years ago, if he just simply said it was a bunch of Karens, he might have got away with it.

Because there was a brief moment where this was thought to be a very kind of right-on and progressive thing to do is to identify the fact that actually, yes, you're right, middle-aged women are quite annoying.

And thank God someone's finally said it.

Tell me, have any of our listeners talking about getting feedback?

Have any of our listeners written anything interesting to us?

Oh, yes.

Oh, they've written lots of things.

I want to say hi to Harry.

who lives in southeast London.

I mean, that's it.

That's it.

I mean, we can geolocate him.

I'm sure we can.

I'm sure.

I'm sure we can do it easily.

Has brought our attention to the something style, as in the increasing use of, when you talk about immigration, you talk with an Australian-style point system.

It really seemed to take off during the Brexit negotiations, where we're going to go with a Norway-style or a Canada-style trade agreement and so on.

We're now talking about French-style employment laws and London-style buses for other parts of the UK.

It's an overused shorthand simplification.

Is it a simplification or is it a clarification?

I wonder.

It certainly gave, I mean, Farage talked a lot about an Australian-style point system during the election on immigration.

That was very fascinating because, as people pointed out at the time, per head, Australia had more immigration than we did.

It's just that it was, you know, it was much more sort of skills-based, and also there was a quite a punitive regime with people being processed offshore.

And I also think that kind of in the popular imagination, and apologies to Australians, people think of Australia as being quite a tough country that's quite dry with lots of animals that want to kill you.

And I think therefore he invoked it as a sort of, you know, kind of like,

this is a tough style immigration system.

i always thought it was um i always thought people quite liked the idea of australia in terms of you know sunshine beaches outdoorsy you know so australia style sounds animals that are trying to kill you

clearly you're not a fan but um you know if you keep away from uh from the poisonous spiders and the um and and the uh drunk kangaroos then it's i think yeah i think for me it was trying to make it sound benign you know in a stray yeah or sensible i suppose uh i may have got that wrong but um, but it, but

that's interesting, but it is a way of kind of simplifying the argument, isn't it?

By just instead of going, uh, you know, a points-based system where this happens and this happens, this happens, it's like an Australiostyle system.

As if I don't need to kind of elaborate any further.

Yes, and there was a similar thing about whether or not Britain would turn into, if you remember the phrase Singapore on Thames, which is one version of Brexit, which was basically becoming a kind of very high-skilled, you know, loose regulation kind of offshore state on the borders of Europe.

I don't hold it against people that they want to try and simplify down complicated concepts.

It's just that quite often you don't.

Do we all agree what Australia?

Clearly, you and I don't agree what Australia is.

You think it's a lovely place full of koalas.

I think it's full of gators and things that are trying to eat you, and huge spiders as big as your hand leaping out from behind clocks.

And similarly, when you say Singapore on Thames, I just think of the remoteness of Singapore and the water quality of the Thames, really.

Well, there we go.

That is all for this week.

Thank you for 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.

Hi, I'm Ronald Young Jr., and I'm here to introduce myself to all of you who love listening to podcasts in the UK.

Welcome to my world on the other side of the pond.

I'm the host of Pop Culture Debate Club, the show that debates the important issues of our time.

Is West Wing better than Veep?

Does an iPhone beat an Android?

Such questions we battle over on Pop Culture Debate Club with comedians and pop culture commentators.

We'd love to welcome you all too.

It's a competition, but a really fun one.

You can find us on BBC Sounds and any other podcast provider.

You'd be so welcome to join us.

Sucks!

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

A Happy Place comes in many colors.

Whatever your color, bring happiness home with Certopro Painters.

Get started today at Certapro.com.

Each Certipro Painters business is independently owned and operated.

Contractor license and registration information is available at Certapro.com.