Deep Disillusionment in This Country (with Stewart Lee)

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Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to Strong Message Here from BBC Radio 4, a guide to the use and abuse of political language.

Speaker 1 I'm Armanda Yanucci, or if you're listening to the Spotify transcript of this program, I'm Amanda Younucci, and I'm joined again by Stuart Lee.

Speaker 1 And this week, we're going to talk about quote the deep disillusionment in this country unquote words from Wes Streeting who's actually in the government why did the health secretary feel the need to say that

Speaker 1 he wants he wants someone to do something about it yes he's having a stiff word with himself

Speaker 1 but before

Speaker 1 we dig deeper into disillusionment

Speaker 1 immersive

Speaker 1 a lot of things are this is a word I'm seeing more and more on posters yeah the word immersive it makes you think the thing is going to be better because it's going to be immersive yeah but it's an artificial I mean basically I've seen it you know the legal immersive experience and then there was one about a volcano Vesuvius the immersive then I the reason I bring it up is I've now seen one that says the Titanic an immersive experience

Speaker 1 that's wrong you shouldn't go on that no that lend really badly if there's one thing if there's one fact we all remember about the Titanic it was fully immersed well two things on that you know, not everything has to be immersive.

Speaker 1 No. You know, there's a vogue at the moment for taking

Speaker 1 artworks that were painstakingly created by the greatest artists of all time to be seen in two dimensions and making them into three-dimensional immersive experiences that you walk through, therefore defeating the entire point of what Monet was trying to achieve with the water lilies.

Speaker 1 He was trying to make you use your imagination to feel like you're an immersive experience. And if he had had the opportunity, he wouldn't necessarily have created one using 3D technology.

Speaker 1 That's right, because if you want to do turn that into a 3D thing, then you might as well go to the place that he was trying to

Speaker 1 just go to the place trying to turn into art. Well, that's the thing, though.
Life is immersive if you choose to view it as such.

Speaker 1 I mean, I, you know, if you, if you, if you wander around, look at things, smell things, get into random conversations with strangers, touch stuff, you can have a really great immersive experience all the time.

Speaker 1 I've always thought when, when, uh, it tells you how old we both are,

Speaker 1 when the phrase virtual reality first became a thing, I thought, but yeah, the clues in the word virtual is nearly reality. Yeah, do you know? It's almost reality.
But you know what is reality? What?

Speaker 1 Reality is. Yes.
And you can just have that anyway. I know.
Look at that. Look at that.
That's really good fun touching that. You've just for the listeners, he's just fondled these microphones.

Speaker 1 That was an instrument.

Speaker 1 This is the way you have to approach the world. But this is now, this is a thing on this, well, it's been going for a while now.
This noises close up to what's that called? Not ADHD.

Speaker 1 It's something like that.

Speaker 1 ASMR, I think. ASMR.

Speaker 1 It stands for Armando Strokes Microphone.

Speaker 1 So yeah, so I thought actually, you know, the one thing I would go and see a buoyant experience of the Titanic, not an immersive one. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, if anything, the people on the Titanic themselves were desperately trying to avoid that immersive experience.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And sadly, no longer with us. No.

Speaker 1 Good. That's cheered everyone up.
Just in time to talk about deep disillusionment in this country, which was something Wes Streeting said

Speaker 1 at the weekend. He was immersive disappointment, immersive disillusionment.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, so the UK at the moment is if you're into like a broken country, you should go to the immersive UK experience at the moment, where

Speaker 1 you can chant at uh a travel lodge, uh, you could chant terrible things at a travel lodge, you can uh

Speaker 1 you can be home secretary for the day, you know. Um,

Speaker 1 that's really funny, Frozen chanting Chanting at a Travel Lodge. It's really

Speaker 1 people will look back on this era.

Speaker 1 It was the era of chanting at the Travel Lodge. Yeah, the

Speaker 1 Summer of Travel Lodge chanting. That sounds much better.
Because I'm going to talk about the Summer of Flags. I find that slightly intimidating.

Speaker 1 Imagine chanting at Travel Lodge. It's kind of a beautiful idea.
Right, we've told our own.

Speaker 1 We should actually be advisors to Wes Streeting, who went on to say there is a growing sense of despair about whether anyone is capable of turning this country round. Well, he'd know, wouldn't he?

Speaker 1 Because he's right at the center of the organisation whose job is to turn it around. That's right.

Speaker 1 And of course, you know, Farage has said, you know, Britain is broken.

Speaker 1 All this, I think, reached a head when the prisoner, Hadush Kabatu, was mistakenly released on Friday instead of being taken to be deported and then arrested on Sunday.

Speaker 1 That's when Farage said Britain is broken.

Speaker 1 But I also thought there's an unrealistic expectation from all of us that everything should be working in perfect order by those who have been in power for just over one year.

Speaker 1 Or for example, the Justice Secretary, David Lammy, who's been in charge for six weeks.

Speaker 1 And yet the response to what happened was Chris Philp, the Chris Philp, which I think is a Dickensian name, Chris Philp, the shadow Justice Secretary, said that he was shocked that this inept Labour government let him out in the first place.

Speaker 1 I think David Lammy came up up with the keys and went, Are you for going? Or yeah,

Speaker 1 are you for staying? I think just go over to the train station. He's £65.
He's £65. Some things about that.

Speaker 1 First of all, Chris Phipp is a very useful person for the opposition because he's kind of like a dog with a firework tied to it.

Speaker 1 You can send him off into a situation. The things he will say will be contradictory.
It will not be able to maintain a consistent position and they won't make sense.

Speaker 1 What he's guaranteed to do, like a dog with a firework tied to it in a crowd of people, is just create confusion that then distracts from whatever

Speaker 1 the problems are or whatever faults there are in his own party.

Speaker 1 He's really, really useful character. I think that's why he's still there.
The thing about Chris Philp, Phip, Phips, Philps, is that

Speaker 1 as well as being like a dog with a firework tied to him, his name just sounds wrong, which is why, whenever he's talked about, people call him by a variety of different names. That's right, yes.

Speaker 1 Philps, Phipp, Philips, Flips, Philip.

Speaker 1 Philip, Flips. The reason I said he sounds Dickensian, because it's in Old Curiosity Shop.
There is a character called Quilp. Oh, right.
So every time I see Chris Philp,

Speaker 1 I think of the villain in the Old Curiosity shop. I think he should change his name to Fris Kilp.

Speaker 1 Because that's what you nearly say all the time. Secondly,

Speaker 1 they should never have allowed the prisoner's release.

Speaker 1 But they clearly didn't do that, right?

Speaker 1 It's some kind of error at the grassroots level. And to his credit, I mean, I don't like sex offenders any more than the next person.
He didn't run, he came back.

Speaker 1 There's a lorry driver who was waiting to drop something off who described seeing him go back four or five times in a very confused state, only to be turned away by prison staff and directed to the railway station.

Speaker 1 Yes, we're talking here about Kabato, not Chris Phillips. Yeah, yeah, but Chris Phillips could equally well, could equally well have been in.

Speaker 1 The other interesting thing about Chris Phillips was he was put through a bit of a racist mangle this week in that there was a reform MP, Sarah Polchin,

Speaker 1 who talked about over-representation of black and Asian faces in advertising, saying,

Speaker 1 It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people full of Asian people.

Speaker 1 That's what she said. She then apologised for that and said that she misspoke.

Speaker 1 I've got on to Nigel Farage's response to what she said, but Chris Philps

Speaker 1 didn't want to say that those remarks by Sarah Polchin were racist. And then later on, he then did say it was racist, I think after having had a word from Kemi Badenock.

Speaker 1 So he then got into another sticky mess and tried to explain how what Sarah Polchin said was entirely different to what Robert Jenrick said about the lack of white faces.

Speaker 1 And in the end, it just struck me that we're kind of slightly getting diverted here.

Speaker 1 It all becomes a debate about whether you label something racist or not, rather than what are the actual views and opinions you're expressing here yeah what's caused you the upset yeah and is this is this normal or is this something slightly suspicious yeah about how you're framing this yeah well they didn't get to the nub of either situation like advertising agencies are driven by profit companies are driven by profit so on some level it must be working for them putting too many black people in adverts right it must be working for them maybe black people buy a disproportionately large amount of stuff who knows but the advert advertising companies wouldn't be be doing it unless it worked well so that so they need to ask a question and we've seen as soon as Trump said scrap DEI all the companies in America scrapped it so they're not they're not driven by ethics or anything

Speaker 1 funny enough it was I think it was in the Guardian on Tuesday quoting a large global advertising study done in 2024 saying that ad campaigns that were more inclusive actually had a positive impact on profits right 392 brands analyzed across 58 countries claimed there was almost a 16% increase in the long-term use of those brands when they used inclusive advertising okay well we can't afford the economic hit that removing black people from adverts would do without the debt we can't lose another 16% of some industry yeah if if the black people being in the adverts is helping to sell stuff let's put more in that's what I say then if and every white person that is in an advert is a drain on the economy so let's see them let's see no white people in adverts let's try and maximize us whatever effect that is having for economic growth for economic growth yeah yeah I want to pick up on how Nigel Farage dealt with Sarah Poachin's remarks.

Speaker 1 Just to remind you, she said, it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people.

Speaker 1 Farage said, her words were without doubt ugly and taken in their own could be very unpleasant indeed.

Speaker 1 However, it was in the broader context of DEI madness in the advertising industry, which anyone with half a brain can recognize has been going on. So I take her point.

Speaker 1 So I just want to look at those two quotes again. So, Polchin said, it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people.
Farai said,

Speaker 1 that's fine because what she's doing is in the broader context of DEI madness in the advertising industry.

Speaker 1 But if you analyze what DEI madness in the advertising industry means, it means it's mad that there are more black and Asian faces in adverts, which is exactly the point that Sarah Polchin was making.

Speaker 1 And yet, somehow, by him

Speaker 1 technically describing what she did, it somehow justifies. Okay, he rephrases the issue and then agrees with the rephrasing but not with the original part of it.
That's what he did.

Speaker 1 And he's been doing that for years and years. And it just goes on and on and on.
Because what is then quoted as his rephrasing, and he does it confidently. That's the thing.

Speaker 1 So it sounds like he's really thought about it.

Speaker 1 And we're kind of impressed by the confidence with which it reminds me.

Speaker 1 I used to, there were people in the entertainment industry in America who I just remember the tone they adopted when they were caught out about something was quite persuasive.

Speaker 1 So you actually started to doubt yourself. So if I said, I don't know,

Speaker 1 why weren't we told they didn't want any more documentaries?

Speaker 1 They would say, yeah, I did not know that. I'm going to find out about that.
And I remember thinking, the way they said, I did not know that, it doesn't sound like, oh, I don't know.

Speaker 1 That sounds like, oh, you're at fault. But if you go, I did not know that, that implies that the bit of information didn't reach them for someone else.

Speaker 1 Someone else has failed. Yeah, someone else has failed.
I did not know that. And I think once I remembered that, I thought that's what Farage does.

Speaker 1 He does a kind of,

Speaker 1 there was a quote he did about

Speaker 1 council spending, making cuts in council.

Speaker 1 He said, can we give council taxpayers better value for money? Yes. How big a chunk of percentage that will be? I don't know the answer to that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which means, which means the first part is essentially no. Yes.
In that case, yeah.

Speaker 1 He says it in that case.

Speaker 1 He's another person that uses something which I think we were going to talk about differently, but while you're on the subject of him, you know, when he was saying that migrants were eating swans and the Royal Park said there have been no swans eaten, he said, maybe they are eating swans, maybe they aren't.

Speaker 1 We don't know. Well, we do know, but

Speaker 1 he'll try to leave the suggestion there because the suggestion, the speculation gets him onto the thing he wants to say.

Speaker 1 But he can't get to the thing he wants to say without the false piece of speculation. I think he said something like

Speaker 1 we don't know if it happened. Yeah, we don't know that they aren't eating salsa.
So we don't know that it didn't happen. That's right.
Yeah, we don't know that it didn't happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but which you could say about anything. You can say it about trying salsa.
You could say it about anything.

Speaker 1 You can say we don't know that that didn't happen about anything, and that can get you into the bit of the argument you want to be in. Yeah.
It's a kind of caving in of language.

Speaker 1 And the speculation, the speculation is now a technique. You speculate, and then you get from the speculation into

Speaker 1 the fact. The guy from

Speaker 1 a new made-up thing, concerned alumni of the Oxford Union, James Price, he's from the Tufton Street Think Tank Centre for Policy Studies.

Speaker 1 He was saying there may have been donations withdrawn from the Oxford Union because the bloke criticised Charlie Kirk. There may not be.
But

Speaker 1 if there have been,

Speaker 1 and then you're into that. And we need a new name for this.
And I would like to call it fabulous.

Speaker 1 Fabulous speculation.

Speaker 1 Fabulous speculation, yeah, where you can speculate about something that you have no evidence for because the fabulous speculation gets you to the insubstantiated point that you want to make.

Speaker 1 Yes, and if that insubstantiated point then becomes real for a lot of people because it sounds real. So I would suggest factal speculation.
Facto speculation. Factal, fabulous speculation.

Speaker 1 Facto speculation is the second, is the result of fabulous speculation. So we're approaching it.
We're coming up with a whole new grammar here to get through political language. But it's too late.

Speaker 1 Yes. It's too late because the lying has become normalized.
Yeah. We talked last time you and I were talking about this, we talked about how the entire country

Speaker 1 we give a lot of credence to basic people who are basically just failed apprentice candidates. It's that confidence in which they can say, so you know, if they say,

Speaker 1 there's an awful lot gone wrong with this country, this country is in decline. What are the solutions? Well, I'm sorry, but I don't have a clue how to fix this.
Okay?

Speaker 1 Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Okay.
People will say, oh,

Speaker 1 whoa, he knows what he's talking about. How much will it cost?

Speaker 1 They'll say, how much, you know, you know, well, I've got to say to you, in all honesty, any figure I give you will be plucked out of thin air. Thank you.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, if you just do it with that kind of emphasis and certainty. It's a certainty, I think, that we are.
But why are we...

Speaker 1 It's interesting because that language and that way of thinking is at odds with academia. It's sort of at odds with the left as well, which tends to interrogate itself and dismantle itself.

Speaker 1 Scientists and academics that people look to for facts will always say we can't be certain about it.

Speaker 1 This is the problem with the climate change debate, is scientists were going, it's 99% certain or it would appear that. And so whereas the people being paid by lobbying groups to discredit them.

Speaker 1 talk in that kind of certainty. So there was a clash between the certainty of language of those kinds of people and the professional caution of academics.
And guess what?

Speaker 1 This week, we know the safe climate change limit has gone. And partly why it went and was never, is because of those two worlds of language rubbing up against each other.
That's right.

Speaker 1 I encountered some more, now that we've got this new word. Yeah.
fabulous speculation. Fabulous speculation and then factofabulous speculation.

Speaker 1 There was an example of it, just to show the balance in the show, Wed Streeting himself, because in his round of Sunday interviews, he mentioned Brexit and the strain it's been putting on the economy.

Speaker 1 And he said, I'm glad that Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak.

Speaker 1 Implying that there's been a sudden revelation this week that Brexit has been a straight.

Speaker 1 But rather than the fact that he and his government, his party have for a long time been wary of blaming Brexit for fear of losing voters to reform.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's just explained that they know it was a disaster, but they didn't want to risk alienating those people, so they wouldn't say it.

Speaker 1 They've lost those people anyway, because they've all gone to vote, they'll all be voting for reform. So now,

Speaker 1 someone's thought, maybe if we can win back some of the voters, we're losing to the Green Party or the Lib Dems. That's what's happened.
So it just shows truth is entirely mutable to them.

Speaker 1 And it's only true in as much as what value does it have for winning voters back.

Speaker 1 They've gone. The Brexit people have gone.
You're not going to get them by not mentioning it. You might as well mention it and go, oh, Brexit was awful, wasn't it? Everything's gone wrong.

Speaker 1 You know, that's now policy.

Speaker 1 I do remember some weeks ago, an ex-Treasury official being quoted on Keostama saying he's the first prime minister I know who thinks his politics is a private matter. It's that

Speaker 1 sense of.

Speaker 1 But this is the issue. I mean, we talked about speculation.

Speaker 1 We tend to be living in a news agenda now that's driven not so much by reporting what's factually happening, but speculating on what will then happen.

Speaker 1 As if, you know, it feels like the starter pistol has already been fired on the next general election.

Speaker 1 And over the weekend, there was lots of speculation about what might be in the budget. but not only that, what business might make of what might be in the budget.
So there's several layers of

Speaker 1 potential being lined up there. And you get less of a sense of what's actually going on in the real world and more in the immersive world.
The immersive world of fabulous speculation.

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly, which already sounds like a massively successful London tourist attraction.

Speaker 1 Just outside Windsor or something.

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Speaker 1 Part of the problem with why speculation is exciting for news is because news increasingly is about just holding people's attention. You know, this is the difference.

Speaker 1 We grew up in a time where the BBC and the broadsheets were supposed to be fact, right?

Speaker 1 And fact wasn't generated to hold your attention. It was there to inform you.

Speaker 1 Whereas now, I've noticed in an online message board that discusses me has suddenly got AI-generated content that is there to hold people's attention, right? So they click on adverts and stay there.

Speaker 1 There's AI-generated sentences about me that start discussions off. What does AI make of you? Yeah, what gave it away to me is things like this phrase.

Speaker 1 It's wild how Lee's managed to evolve without losing that strange rhythm and bite that makes him so unique. Just people that like me don't say it's wild.

Speaker 1 No one that comes to see me thinks anything is wild. So I know that's a fake.
What word would they use instead to describe? How can you tell it's an authentic fan?

Speaker 1 An authentic fan would say it is a predictable element of the evolution of his approach.

Speaker 1 Nothing's wild. It pulls these things together.
And it's not a real discussion. It's about holding the attention of the people.

Speaker 1 And so this is why so much of the information that's on the internet of news is wrong. And this is why you have to fight it, right? When you do this, you're treated as if you're some

Speaker 1 sort of old-fashioned fool faffing about. So there was in 2019 when the Conservatives were faking news sites.
So this was doing, I think, the leaders' debate. Yeah, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corb.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they set up Fact Check UK. And if you look closely, you could see it was actually from the Conservative website.
That's right.

Speaker 1 The things people said about that are amazing because people complained about it, not unreasonably, because during the election, the Conservative Party HQ faked a news site.

Speaker 1 Yes, I think afterwards they said it was just a bit of fun. Dominic Raab actually said, this is exactly what he said.
He was interviewed on the news the next morning. He He said, no one gives a

Speaker 1 toss about social media. And he had a little think before he said toss.
And that's your fault because of the thick of it. It is.
They think they've got to swear now.

Speaker 1 And so he had to think. He wanted to say no one gives a F, but it was too early in the day.

Speaker 1 But then Lord Frost, the Brexit bloke,

Speaker 1 he said, you know, she's negotiating the Brexit. He said, withdrawal.
He wrote an article about it in the Telegraph when everyone was complaining.

Speaker 1 He said, our new establishment, academics, quangocrats, and the BBC are obsessed with misinformation and disinformation.

Speaker 1 They believe that you are too stupid to distinguish between the true and the false. And they think it's the government's job, or perhaps theirs, to do it for you instead.
Well, it is someone's job,

Speaker 1 unfortunately, because we're now in an immersive hellscape. But also, if you're calling it fact-check,

Speaker 1 you are sort of saying, you are fundamentally calling it, this is the truth. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 So what is he saying, right? And of course it's the job of the BBC. Things are going to have to fact check themselves.
Like, it can't just be you doing it all. Yeah.
Look how tired of it.

Speaker 1 I know, I know. And it's still the morning when we're recording this.

Speaker 1 I mean, I take it further because... Go on, then.
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 We've now reached the stage, I think, when we now doubt everything. We both believe everything and doubt everything because everything is sort of looks the same in terms of how it's produced.

Speaker 1 You know, somebody in, I don't know, Albania Albania coming up with a website that looks like the Washington Post next to the Washington Post front page delivers news stories that look as valid as what's in the Washington Post.

Speaker 1 It's difficult to tell what's false.

Speaker 1 And then you get, yeah, actually, the official sites of something like, you know, the White House press secretary, when asked about the plans for Donald Trump to build a ballroom in the White House and would it cause any damage, she said, I quote, nothing will be torn down.

Speaker 1 It pays total respect to the existing building. Days later, the entire East Wing was torn down.
The story at the moment is the East Wing's been torn down, but the story isn't.

Speaker 1 But they said it wouldn't be. Why is that not the story? Because no one that would ask that question is now allowed into a White House press corps.

Speaker 1 The Pentagon press corps now includes the bloke that said the Sandy Hook massacre was fake. You know,

Speaker 1 it's insane. Partly it's to do with what Cory Doctorow has called enshittification, which is a really great word that you should have thought up first.
You missed it. You got in there.

Speaker 1 There's a kind of thing you would have thought of.

Speaker 1 The truth is, I did think of it. And then he came and stole it off me.
And that is not a true. Yeah.
Well, it's partly because the internet is full of things that want to make money.

Speaker 1 For example, there are loads of sort of ticket sites now that if you Google me, Where Am I Playing, you come to all these like pages where you have to sign up for alerts and they pay to be put higher up the search engine than my actual,

Speaker 1 and you have to, you have to get through all those. And I don't want them to be there.
There's no need for them.

Speaker 1 But there's all these barriers created to information where the process is monetized by things that are sort of not quite true. Yes.

Speaker 1 I wonder, you know, if this, what's the word again? Fabio. Fabio speculation.
Fabio speculation and facto fabio speculation. If it reaches a critical mass, you know, will our news sources,

Speaker 1 even things like Fox News and the BBC News, will it be full of people just reporting hunches rather than facts?

Speaker 1 The 27-year-old who looks sort of shifty, that's what I

Speaker 1 said with utter confidence.

Speaker 1 The man who was kind of funny in a way, then went into the building.

Speaker 1 But aren't we there?

Speaker 1 We're almost there. I mean, I kind of think

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 with something like when the Conservatives set up Fact Check UK and with all these that you're in a world where things look like news sources, but they aren't.

Speaker 1 And it reminds me of when I walk along Dolston High Road at night, I think, I wish I could have a Kentucky fried chicken. I have to negotiate Tennessee fried chicken,

Speaker 1 like Ken's fried chicken.

Speaker 1 All the ones when they've all got really similar logos and they're just trying, but there's only one Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe, and that's the recipe of truth.

Speaker 1 And we've got to get, we've got to find that recipe again would you like a truth bucket or uh i'd like you know what i'd like a bucket of truth a bucket of truth um i think on that subject of like we can't tell the difference between fact and fantasy and what's false and what isn't uh barack obama had this quote a while back of uh what a great quote you know the window we look into for our information he says no one tells us that window is blurred subject to unseen distortions and subtle manipulations all we see is a constant feed of content where useful useful factual information and happy diversions and cat videos flow alongside lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery.

Speaker 1 That was Obama, who actually we know is a lizard.

Speaker 1 He mustn't listen to what he says. He's a lizard.

Speaker 1 And all of us, including our children, learn that if you want to rise above the crowd, above the din, if you want to be liked and shared, and yes, go viral, then peddling controversy, outrage, even hate often gives you an edge.

Speaker 1 That man there, Barak Obama, has just, he's described in three short paragraphs what we've just spent a quarter of an hour waffling about trying to do.

Speaker 1 I make my point again. He is a lizard.
He is.

Speaker 1 Before we go, I just want to circle back to Wes Streeting at the start.

Speaker 1 He was really talking about Labour's loss in the Kerphilly by-election in Wales. and where the party stands.

Speaker 1 And I came across over the weekend in commentary on that, some interesting takes on what Kerr Stamer is up to.

Speaker 1 Apparently, he's been Stamer had been criticized about not engaging with his backbenchers, but apparently now various backbenchers just get a stray text from Stamer saying, can we have a beer?

Speaker 1 Which, yeah, it's kind of sad. Yeah, that sounds like one of those case studies of men in late middle age who've got no friends and are at risk from self-harm.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, like you see someone who looks kind of

Speaker 1 maybe on the bus and who's chuckling away to to something that you like and you just lean on and go, can you be my friend? Yeah, yeah. Actually, I sent a text very like that last night, actually.

Speaker 1 Oh, did you? Well, I was supposed to be meeting my daughter and she didn't turn up. So I sent a text to Kevin Eldon.
I said, do you want to go to the pub? And he said, no, I'm in Norfolk.

Speaker 1 That's my like sad Kiostama moment. Then I just sat in with my cats.
And then everyone was in the Labour Party.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't say energised, but they were relieved when Kiostama did a passionate speech at the Labour conference. He got a bit more emotional.
Started to lay out roughly what his priorities were.

Speaker 1 And then over the last couple of weeks, it's gone back to the robotic.

Speaker 1 We don't really get any sense of direction.

Speaker 1 And there was one MP quoted anonymously who said about this change, having managed to somehow stick his head out the hostage cell, Kia's captors have gone back inside.

Speaker 1 Which again is a sad image. But he's very quickly become like someone that you hope won't come to a social event that you're at because it will be embarrassing to have to talk to him.

Speaker 1 But because he is who he is, you do have to invite him. You have to invite him, yeah, but you kind of just, it kind of fills you with a sense of despair.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening to Strong Message Here. I'll be back next week and all of our previous episodes are available in our feed.
So make sure you're subscribed to BBC Sounds. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Thanks for having me. See you next time.

Speaker 5 Attention, animal lovers, haters and undecideds. A little birdie, a tit, told me that you're looking for a podcast just like Evil Genius, but without all those stupid humans.

Speaker 5 I'm Russell Kane, waddling onto your feed and squawking about my show, Evil Animals.

Speaker 5 Every episode, I'm joined by two human guests, or as I like to call them, ex-monkeys, passing judgment on all the creepiest crawlies and the biggest elephants in the room.

Speaker 5 Our vampire bats, terrifying giant mosquitoes. Our bottlenose dolphins, sex-obsessed savages, and we're going there.

Speaker 1 Domestic cats, evil or genius?

Speaker 5 Pig out on evil animals in the Evil Genius podcast feed first on BBC Sounds.

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