Springtime for Rishi

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers.

I am Andy Zaltzman, and welcome to issue 4308 of The Bugle, a special edition of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world, recorded at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London as a UK 2024 election special.

Why was that?

Well, Buglers, because, as you may have heard, on, for example, the Bugle, the UK is on the cusp of a truly momentous election, where 14 years of Tory stewardship may,

and when I say may, I mean may,

I don't know what to say will, be coming to a soggy end.

I was joined at the Bloomsbury by Nish Kumar, Tiff Stevenson, and Anuvab Powell, plus the 500 remaining Londoners not at Taylor Swift's Wembley Show.

Let's get on with the show.

Strap yourselves in.

It's election time.

We are performing and recording on the 23rd of June 2024.

Not a year that gets a lot of whooping and cheering, to be honest.

It's been a bit of a shit year, to be honest, and frankly a prick of a decade and what's turning out to be a bit of a of a millennium.

But there we go.

And

it's still a week and a half

until, oh, actually to be more precise, what time is it?

6.15.

Polling starts at 7 a.m.

on the 4th of July that's 252 hours and 40 minutes away from the often crucial voting stage of the election that's

1.50 weeks it is a week and a half

that's 0.0029% of a millennium away from voting for those who like to keep track of these things so rather than looking at things that happened on the 23rd of June we're going to look at the 4th of July and why SUNAC chose the 4th of July for this election because these things are always always tactical aren't they like the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 they chose the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn hoping that it would inspire patriotic vote which I don't think is how democracy should work and if any of you when you vote find yourself sitting there with the pencil of democratic destiny in your fingers and you find the way you're about to vote being influenced by the result of a battle from 700 years ago

put the pencil down and get the f out of that polling station that is not your game

I'm think that's pretty much word for word what's in the Reform Party manifesto.

Pick the pencil up, remember something that happened 700 years ago, and then have a wankover Farage's Wiki.

Maybe Andy, it's an important day in the history of hedge funds.

Well, it's possible.

On the 4th of July, of course, it is a famous day.

Have you got any Americans in?

Yes, welcome.

Are you

the USA t-shirt on there?

We should be clear for the listeners, it's a USA football shirt.

There's not just a person here wearing the USA, whatever the USA t-shirt is.

Isn't it

an eagle and some kind of that's a USA t-shirt, right?

An eagle?

It's an eagle shooting a gun at a child.

And also an eagle ripping the liver out of the concept of hope on a daily basis for all eternity.

Whereas a British t-shirt is no t-shirt.

It's just some shit someone found in a river.

But of course, 4th of July, a famous day in American history, 4th of July 1776, the Declaration of Independence was ratified, a day when things really started falling apart for both the USA and the UK.

I think with the started.

I mean, I think the time has probably come to ask, has it worked for either side?

I mean, what do you think now?

Would you be in favour of rejoining Team GB?

The rebooted Empire?

We'll get there.

That's like asking someone if they want to board the Titanic.

Yeah, but

it's asking someone if they want to board the Titanic who is on another ship that's also sinking.

Our ship has better accents.

So that

might be a factor that Sunak, I don't know, subliminally just thinking of America and the day of 4th of July came into his head.

We don't know.

On this day, on the 4th of July 1837, the world's first long-distance railway opened between Birmingham and Liverpool.

Yeah, some confusion in the crowd here of the idea that an infrastructure project could have been finished.

That a Norse.

Was there a replacement around Manchester?

On the 4th of July 1862, Lewis Carroll told Alice Liddell a story that would become Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

So I guess elections are all about texts of fantastical imaginings with no sense of realism.

So you can see why I might wanted to tap into that as well.

And in 1954, on the 4th of July, food rationing in Great Britain ended after the war with a lifting of rations on meat.

That was 14 years after it began.

So I don't know the symbolic significance of

14 years of darkness coming to an end.

Who knows?

So, those are the maybe the reasons are we're looking at.

And also, on this day, on 4th of July 2004, Greece beat Portugal in the final of the Euro 2004 football competition.

A victory for a team who no one fancied to win, that wasn't particularly good, but which ultimately triumphed against the odds through a potent cocktail of good luck and remorseless negativity.

So, you can see why that might have appealed to Tory high command.

So, as always, a section of the bugle is going, Where?

It's going, where, London?

It's exactly like being at Taylor Swift.

Yeah, exactly.

Anytime you want to start a wave in the audience or whatever, you can get that going.

Maybe with a f ⁇ you, Chris, it would be good to get a...

You know, my concern is it'd be very concerning if in the middle of the Taylor Swift concert there's a pun run.

God, I didn't know Taylor was such a fan of cricket.

Oh, no, come on, she's doing American football pun run, surely.

You think so?

They're usually at the end, Anahab, not in the middle.

Just bracing you for what you're about to endure.

So this week for our election special, in the bin, which is also, I think that was the working title of the Tory Manifesto,

we have a history of democracy section.

Are you fans of it?

Let's do this by vote.

Raise your hands if you like democracy.

Keyton, raise your hands if you don't like it.

So even, well, yeah, but even in that vote, when all you had to do to express your opinion was take the trouble of lifting a single limb,

we said only managed about a 63% turnout.

A couple of people flipped us off, which I think counts as a spoiled ballot paper.

No, only if you, as long as you keep your flipping off within the box, it's fine.

Let's go right back to the beginning.

And of course, democracy got off to a bit of a rocky start in 13 billion BC, when moderates proposing a medium-sized bang were out-voted.

Sparking an era of over-the-top high-octane chaos that continues to shape our universe to this day.

The ancient Athenians are generally credited with being the inventors of modern Western democracy as we know it, although evidence from cave art suggests that the Bison Party campaigned pretty fing hard for tens of thousands of years.

Solon, have we got a picture of

Solon?

I mean, was that just a random ancient?

That is www.google.com forward slash what does a picture of Solon look like?

Why does it look like a white version of me?

I'm assuming.

There's a snip slip there as well.

Sorry, I keep making it sexual.

I mean, that is my uncle's Tinder profile photograph.

I was wondering why we paired up.

Anyway,

so this is Solon, apparently.

Solon, the pin-up boy of the early fumblings of Athenian democracy in the early 6th century BC.

Apparently, and by apparently, I mean according to Wikipedia, which is the same these days

he attempted to satisfy all sides by alleviating the suffering of the poor majority without removing all the privileges of the rich minority how's that going you fing tunic bothering woaster and let the free markets do their thing

unfortunately the Athenians for all their phenomenally mind-blown creative and technical brilliance their naked wrestling and their very rude vases couldn't get the f ⁇ ing thing to work democracy with only 30,000 sodding voters, so it didn't bode too well for us.

Greek democracy thus sadly withered away, hamstrung as it was, by a failure to embrace newspapers, social media, and TV news channels as a means of misinforming the electorate, and also a reluctance to put cronies in lifelong positions of unscrutinised power.

But pretty naive, to be fair, but they could sculpt a willy with the best of them, so swings and roundabouts.

Democracy in the UK evolved gradually when Julius Caesar invaded in 55 BC

the future assassination victim of the year and pincushion impersonator.

He found a general election in full swing,

writing that the people were covered in woad, producing a blue colour.

He did land in Kent, and historians now assume that he wrote that whilst passing through the Tunbridge Wells area.

Before our current parties evolved, for a long time, parties campaigned by carving their logos into the sides of chalk hillsides, the Horse Party, very successful for a long time, until being challenged in the West Country by the naked man with a stonking plonker party.

And finally, today voting is in fact one of the most popular hobbies in the United Kingdom.

Do you know this?

With 30 million people flocking to vote at church halls, school gyms, tarted up illegal dogfighting arenas or temporarily repurposed sex dungeons to write the letter X in a box and hope their candidate doesn't win so they have car blanche to moan their f ⁇ ing asses off for the next five years, which is what we fought all those wars for.

So

that's in the bin, also in the bin, the hopes and dreams of an abandoned generation.

And that was the bleakest laugh I've ever heard in my life.

And a free commemorative, silent howl of despair at what we have become.

So those are in the bin.

Top story this week.

The election is just, as I said, ten and a half days away.

A momentous, momentous time.

As the old saying goes, a week is a long time in politics.

And ten and a half days to go before an election in which experts are predicting will lead your party to its heaviest defeat in over 200 years

must stretch ahead like an endless throbbing ache for Rishi Sunak, like a two-month lock-in for a vegan at an abattoir.

He's still putting himself out there.

He's putting his furrowed brow in front of the camera on an almost

minutely basis.

To me, Sunak at the moment is like a zookeeper trying to shove his hippopotamus back up a bobsled run.

And you can admire the tenacity and the efforts, but you still have to ask, how has it come to this?

Nish,

I mean, you are the Bugles British politics correspondent.

Explain what the f ⁇ 's going on and why.

I'll tell you what the f ⁇ is going on, Andrew.

Rishi Sunak and I are two men with a huge amount in common.

We're both under-talented, over-promoted British Indian men who are desperately hoping this election will end.

And we're both being told that we'll be out of a job afterwards, something we're pretending to be sad about while secretly looking forward to it.

So

the latest scandal to do it is the idea that people keep saying the wheels have come off this campaign suggests that the wheels were ever on this campaign.

This campaign is the equivalent of Rishi Sunak sitting on an accountant called Darren and shouting Vroom Vroom all aboard the Darren Mobile.

So the latest scandal for this is betting-based.

So

a series of Conservative MPs and people associated with the Conservative Party have been accused on betting on the election date.

So this started last week when the Guardian newspaper uncovered that Craig Williams, who's the Prime Minister's private parliamentary secretary, who became an MP in 2019, placed a bet with the bookmaker Lad Brooks on Sunday the 19th of May in his local constituency.

On the 22nd of May, Sunak made the the announcement that the general election would be held on the 4th of July.

It's understood that this red flag was automatically raised by Lad Brooks because the bet was put in Williams' name and he was potentially placed as a politically exposed person.

The bookmaker was cautious that rules might have been broken.

That means the Conservative Party has been lectured on morality by the gambling industry.

What next for this outfit?

Will they be lectured on spreading bullshit by us at this podcast?

Perhaps they'll be lectured on levels of sewage by the British River Shitters Alliance.

Or will they be lectured on high levels of child poverty by a paedophile?

These are the questions that the modern Conservative Party is being forced to ask.

So then,

once that scandal had settled, the watchdog then started to examine bets placed by Tony Lee, who's the Conservative Party's campaign director, whose wife, Laura Saunders, is the Tory candidate in Bristol North West.

Tony Lee has been put on a leave of absence from running the campaign, which for him, presumably, is sweet relief.

Because would you want credit for this election campaign?

It doesn't seem like something you claim credit for.

It seems like something you accept responsibility for, like a divorce or a terrorist attack.

One of the Prime Minister's close protection police officers has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office over allegations that they also placed bets.

That police officer failed to observe the fact that if he was as a police officer he'd simply bashed Rishi Sunak over the head with a club, he'd have been less likely of being arrested by the police in this country.

Nick Mason, who's the Tories' chief data officer, has been informed by the Gambling Commission that he is also part of an inquiry into bets on the election day, as being reported by the Sunday Times today.

After being approached, the party is told the newspaper Mason had taken a leave of absence.

In short, this story, much like Russell Brand's career, is something that started badly and somehow got considerably worse.

Yeah, I mean, the rumour is that Sunak himself put a bet on but got the date wrong.

He put the date on for the 6th of July because he'd read it wrong in his calendar, and that's marked out in his calendar as sunning myself in California.

Yay!

Now Andy, as a visiting person, I was looking for just a newspaper article that sort of summed up where the British elections were and I found this and I thought for me this was this sort of summed up everything.

It was a newspaper headline that said the key issue affecting voters in Henley-on-Thames was which party was promising the least excrement.

And apparently it has, it's, it's no metaphor, it's something to do with feces in your rivers while people swim.

Yes.

And the party that said there'll be least feces would win.

Well, I mean, you've got to vote in your own self-interest.

That's why I voted for Brexit, because I was very much against it, but I'm a British political comedian, and it's basically funding the next six decades of my career.

So, I mean, the sewage, I mean, it does encapsulate.

Well, we'll just get back to the betting in a bit, but the sewage does encapsulate the state of the.

I mean, the numbers are extraordinary.

There's this thing called Dry Spilling, which is also a small village in the rural Gloucestershire Gloucestershire constituency of Whippage under GIMP.

Also, Dry Spilling is the name of a South African blindside flanker as well, Dreis Pullock.

But it's also a controversial process of blasting untreated sewage into rivers during periods of dry weather, which you might think is obviously not a good idea.

But that's a very old-fashioned way of looking at things because it is, in fact, necessary due to the fundamental British value of massively under-investor-investing in infrastructure over decades and assuming everything will be okay because the private sector knows best and we won the Cold War.

So it's a lovely British euphemism as well, dry spilling, spill.

I mean that's

that is euphemistic, isn't it?

That's like saying, oh, he spilled his drink, meaning that he urinated on your uncle's coffin as it was lowered into the ground at his funeral.

That's a bit more than spilling.

I know they're obsessed, aren't they?

The Tories with trying to bring back this kind of Victorian level of poverty and like bring back good stuff from the Victorian era.

What they're bringing back is like Legionnaire's disease and shit in the water.

Like, bring back cool stuff like top hats

or like slapping someone around the face with a glove when you want to have a fight.

I feel like that's fun.

Or, you know, initially didn't seem great, but if you were a woman in the Victorian era and you were depressed and you went to your doctor, they assumed it was hysteria because of your womb.

So then they would bring out a giant vibrator.

And a man with a twirly moustache would have a go at it.

So if you're going to bring anything back, bring that back, I reckon.

Yeah, but imagine the NHS waiting list.

Don't go private for your dildos if you have a shred of belief in this country's institutions.

I like that we got from that to dildos

pretty swiftly.

Sorry, family show, everyone.

Can I just say this seems like a great month to be in Britain?

Well, yes, I mean, it is

genuinely a

historic town.

It's been a fing long time.

Are you in the five stages of election yet, Andy?

Do you know what they are?

No, no, no.

So there's denial, it's not next month, is it?

Anger, I feel like Brenda from Bristol.

Do you remember her?

What are you doing, Teresa?

She was great.

Bargaining, is there a party I actually like?

Depression, f it, we're already out of the EU.

Acceptance and voting labour.

That's pretty much.

I'm not familiar with all the betting laws in your country, but I'm just curious.

Well, that actually puts you in prime position to run for office for the Conservative Party, Halloween.

I think that's the only qualification.

Now, is there a way to place a bet on how many people will bet on this election

in the government?

Well, I'm not sure.

I mean,

I mean, it is a bit of.

Yes, I mean,

it was a surprisingly well-founded bet wasn't it on the the surprisingly early date of the surprisingly early election.

So you can see why suspicions might have been aroused as as Nisha.

Michael Gove

God rest his soul

if if it is ever located

Michael Gove talking about this he said the percept there's the perception that we operate outside the rules that we set for others and he compared this betting scandal with the Party Gate and this perception that the government operates outside the rules.

And unfortunately, for Gove, I mean, we do, I think, have too much based on perception in politics.

But unfortunately for Gove, that perception is entirely based on reality.

So

it's a tricky one, isn't it?

It's got that vibe that says, like, if you went away, that he'd look after your girlfriend, like, for a few weeks, then tries to slip at the tongue.

It's got that sort of vibe.

Someone went, oh.

He's got the vibe of someone Will Smith is investigating for being an alien in Men in Black.

Every time I see a picture of Michael Gove, I assume his face is going to open and an old alien is going to be steering his body.

There is no practical difference.

If it being in a bookies feels similar to the polling booth, though, isn't it?

It's just a small pencil, piece of paper, an inevitable feeling of disappointment.

So,

yeah, I mean, last time I actually spoiled my ballot paper because I love democracy so much, I really spoiled it.

I took it out for dinner, went to a jazz club,

folded it into an origami flamingo, and floated it past Parliament on the Thames.

So,

Tiff,

so what other bets do you think we should be looking at now?

Because obviously, you know, it matters more when there's money on it, evidently.

Yes.

And please gamble responsibly, particularly particularly if you are a close personal advisor of the Prime Minister.

I feel like we should get ideas on this, but one that I had was what will be the next food or beverage to be launched at Farage?

Because we had the milkshake, but I sort of hoped that I secretly hoped that it was a breast milkshake

due to Farage's obsession about women breastfeeding in public.

But I think that would be a waste of what they call liquid gold.

So it's very unlikely.

I'm going to say 16 to 1 on a cabbage,

2 to 1 on a Great British pint, 4 to 1 on a bread roll.

Once again, someone at one of these live shows has attempted to bread roll me, which is obviously in of itself very funny.

For people not familiar, I was bread rolled at a gig and I discussed it on the bugle and then wrote an 80-minute stand-up show about it.

So I think it's fair to say I got my money's worth.

Unfortunately, and this is said with nothing but love to the listenership of this podcast, none of you are physically capable

of getting a bread roll anywhere near the stage at the size of venues we are now booking out.

Listen, I love you all, but often a comedy podcast will build an audience in its image, and as such, you've been built in our image, and none of you are what we call physical specimens.

And a 20 to 1 on a paper boat, which he will try and personally stop.

So that's my last one for that.

Also, my other one idea for a bet is chance of Rishi ruining an item of clothing you previously enjoyed.

That a three to one that he may ruin something by Prada or a pair of Adidas trainers or just, you know, anything

anything.

Anything that he wears.

So yeah.

But I don't know if others have ideas.

What I'd I mean, what ought to give me on the next thing being thrown at Nigel Farage being an inflatable Vladimir Putin sex doll

just to see how he reacts.

Immediate boner.

I mean I'm sorry, I think we know this.

It's immediate boner.

He'll have his trousers down faster than you can say, Nigel, please.

How can you even find it anymore?

Andy, I I just read something, you know, as visitor called the contract of the reform.

Oh yes,

and it basically says they're going to spend one hundred and forty billion pounds.

So if he does that, at some point he'll have to come to the country and say we have no money.

It's sort of like one of your great novels you guys have from the 1700s, where the patriarch of some landed gentry goes and tells the son, you have to become a clerk in India, because I've lost everything to fornication in French brothels, betting heavily on cockfights and investing in palanquins as a means of rapid transits.

Well, the Bugle is well known for being entirely representative of the electorate of the UK as a whole, so maybe he's not doing quite as well.

The Ukraine comments this week, essentially, saying that the West provoked Putin,

not really in tune with the modern trend for perpetrator blaming.

The former Conservative Defence Minister Tobias Elwood said Churchill will be turning in his grave.

Well, to be honest, looking at the state of the Conservative Party and the nation as a whole, I think Churchill is just in a permanent spin cycle now.

Given some of Winston's other views, the sight of me and Anavab on a stage is

probably sending him into a bit of a spin.

Is the manifesto for reform just a picture of the Cliffs of Dover?

Well, in fact, with the word white written on them.

Well, in fact, interestingly, white Cliff of Dover was the average Brexit voter.

That is one of my all-time favorites, Oltzman jokes.

I feel the same way as Taylor Swift fans will be when she plays Shake It Off.

I feel like if I had a lighter, I'd have it in the air right now.

Can I just very quickly say on Winston Churchill?

I know that he was a big empire lover,

wonderful man.

He also said...

He also said, I mean, so a lot of very clever things.

One of them was the average argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

But one of the most interesting things about him is, of course, you know, there's a lot of people who don't agree with his empire policies.

And one of the things that have been argued is statues, right?

We need to remove statues.

Now, where I live in Calcutta, behind my house, there's a massive statue of Winston Churchill.

And while all of you are arguing about statues, In India, people have forgotten about the empire.

We have no idea who statue it is, so we're repainting it.

And recently, the massive statue of Winston Churchill became decrepit.

the plaque had fallen down, no one had any idea, so some feral youth went there and repainted the whole thing and put up a new plaque, and under it it said, Fat Englishman who liked his curry.

Which seems like an apt description of Winston Churchill.

Farage on Putin said

this, I said I disliked him as a person, but admired him as a political operator because he's managed to take control of running Russia.

Now,

I do think you have to ask questions about exactly how he is running Russia.

The same way when people used to say, oh, Stalin used to get the trains to run on time, you think, well, exactly where were those trains going?

Yeah, I've got a five-year planner.

It doesn't mean that I think his ideas were good.

I'm thrilled that at last he said something that would draw the condemnation of the two major parties.

Because if they imitated what he said about Russia the way they do about what he says about immigration, we'd have been in a situation where Keir Starva and Rishi Sudak would have been saying things like, well, I think we can all agree that Putin has lovely big muscles.

And the British people want to see pictures of him shirtless.

That's what they want to see on the rise.

It sort of is an embarrassment that this is the final thing.

And that's because he's finally said something that affects white people.

So at last, Nigel Farage has crossed the threshold of unacceptability in British politics.

Right, we are going to get our Bugle manifesto off the ground here.

That's the cabinet of the Bugle, the shadow cabinet still.

I thought, I do think

if all the other parties pulled out and we ran against the Tories, I think we'd have quite a good chance.

Right, I'm going to start.

Chris is going to keep notes on what's going to be in the manifesto and

we'll finish it at the end of the show.

So firstly, I would like the House of Lords to be replaced with a a bucket of eels.

Jellied or live.

Sorry, the Londoner.

He just popped out there.

Went, no, we put them in jelly.

And a guaranteed place in the top 50 of the world tennis rankings for all primary school children.

Which is unachievable.

It's the kind of promise you can throw around when you don't think you're going to get in power.

So, right, Anivab, what have you got to put in our manifesto?

Few things.

Number one, I think all controversial Empire people statues around London should be replaced overnight with statues of Bruce Lee.

Right, okay.

Some Bruce Lee statues.

It's very disturbing, gentlemen.

I think I would recommend Paddington for British Foreign Minister.

Anubab, I'm sorry to tell you this, and I didn't want to have to be me that told you, but unfortunately, Paddington Bear is on a plane to Rwanda.

i'm sorry you had to find out on stage in front of these people but unfortunately that filthy peruvian hippie had to go

it was things really started when he was filming that thing with the queen in the jubilee summer i think the trouble really started when he said are you still single

what i mean technically he could do it you don't even have to be an mp anymore right you just need to wang on about harry potter misquote it try and dodge some speeding fines.

That's the best kind of way to get into a foreign secretary.

Paddington for Rwandan Foreign Minister.

A couple of other things.

I'd set up a committee to investigate what exactly is in a vegetarian Sunday roast.

I'm a fan of it, I just don't want to know what's in it.

And finally,

Alan Partridge for Prime Minister.

Okay.

He basically is.

I don't know if you've seen Sunak on the campaign trail, but it is Partridgeian.

Tiff?

Oh, do you want all of them or just one?

Well, give us a couple and we'll come back to that.

Okay, so firstly, I'd like to set up a charity with a hotline for people who have been affected by watching the Rishi Sunak and his wife videos.

I don't think I'm on that OnlyFans channel whatsoever.

Who told you about OnlyFans?

I think you did, Nish.

Do you both think it's some sort of a cricket website?

Yeah, yeah, I assume that.

Can I direct you to OnlyFans and Horses?

Which is just nude pictures of Delboy, but it comes with a trigger warning.

Very good.

First palm.

First palm.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's at that point of the show, I wish I had just a bit of the cushion of a snooker table and a cue that I could just gently tap it like that.

I would also say abolish self-service machines because they come over here from China, they take our jobs

and I don't speak that language, that HTML Java bollocks, whatever it is they talk.

Get them abolished mate.

Oh hotties from history to be made a national holiday.

Right, oh anyway.

Yeah, yeah.

With a different hottie each year that we celebrate.

And then we all have to dress up as said hottie from history.

All right, that's a nice for that for longer-term bugle lists.

I might remember the hotties from history section, which was when that was that was probably before you even joined, wasn't it?

Yeah, yeah, we got rid of that filth when I was

yeah.

So, when is Florence Nightingale?

Just people from the past you want to bang, basically.

I mean, Cleopatra!

Come on, yeah!

Very specific reference.

Yeah, yeah.

Twelfth of May, I can recommend.

That's Florence Nightingale's birthday.

Florence Nightingale, more like.

Nish, what have you got for the Bugle Manifesto?

All campaign donations have to be made in cash and delivered in a briefcase.

Because

if we're going to essentially function with a political system based around bribery by oil companies, we should at least get to see it in physical form.

Cayman Islands get a vote in our elections.

We have so much of our aristocracy's money stashed there, it doesn't seem fair that they don't get a say in how we run our country.

And instead of spoiling ballots, you should be able to draw a cock and balls and those should count in the total vote.

So at the end of every constituency, they have to announce all of the names of the amount of votes they got and then they go, and then there's the cot count.

And

although the only concern with that is I do believe if the cot count wins, that means legally Boris Johnson would become Prime Minister again.

So maybe scratch that one from the record.

Nish, can I just say, you just mentioned the Indian elections.

I think I want to live in India.

That's what I want to do.

I think some of our newspapers want you to live in India as well.

Can I just be honest?

The bread rules are better there.

I say Nish Kumar statue.

Let's go alongside the Bruce Lee one.

So yeah, let's put a statue of me up and we'll take out most of the Conservative voter base from heart attack induced shock.

Another thing for the Bugle Manifesto,

voting should be weighted so that the value of your vote should be in inverse proportion to your age.

So

the older you are, the less your vote counts.

Obviously you'll have to factor in

expected life expectancy.

So, I mean, it might not work for parts of Scotland.

But, look, I think.

Let's just look a little bit more about the extent to which the Conservatives are going to have their asses handed to them on a series of plates.

I mean, it is, Nish, it does feel like this is a sort of a potentially momentous moment in this, you know, the two-party control of British politics that's basically been fixed for nearly 100 years could be coming to an end.

It could be.

The concern is who is going to step into that void.

Will it be the Liberal Democrats, a political party who seem to have organised all their campaign events with the co-production of a Japanese game show?

Because...

For some reason, every single Liberal Democrat event involves the leader Ed Davy slipping into a big puddle whilst wearing protective equipment.

It truly is the total wipeout of political campaigns.

It's a knockout, isn't it?

Look, it's a step up from the last time they revealed their manifesto.

I don't know how many people remembered this, but they were trying to get the youth vote.

So the Lib Dems revealed their manifesto in a nightclub.

No, remember this with bottles of WKD going around.

dropping them to big fish, little fish cardboard box.

So it's a step up from there, I guess.

You know, I have to say I love the words liberal democrat.

You know, it's exactly sort of the words a progressive 2024 democracy should have, right?

It sounds like flat white.

It's got two words that sound like, yes, I'll have that.

I mean, if they were called the provincial monarchists, they'd have a lot less love.

Flat white is actually also the Conservatives Tory, a key voter demographic.

Interesting,

the key voter groups in this election, according to the cephologists, obviously following Mondeo man, Aldi woman, Billiards mum, that goes back to the 1930s.

Lindo Man, that goes back even further.

This, you've got Hospice Gran,

golf skeptic step-aunt, who prefers yoghurt to heavy metal, bit niche,

furious Gerald, and

Leeds Rhino.

Can I just say I can never be accused of being a flat white?

And that is a joke about my boobs.

It's okay for you to laugh.

Look how uncomfortable this audience is, right?

Andy, all of those voter groups sounded like you were reading my Twitter mentions.

I mean, the opinion polls, I mean, should say they are just opinion polls.

And opinion polls are not always.

To me, an opinion poll is like a lot of ex-wives.

They're not always the most objectively reliable source of information.

But if ten of them are saying the same thing,

possibly something in it.

And possibly you've got to look in the mirror as to how it's reached that

point.

Just a quick question for you guys.

Now, all these mistakes that you're accumulating for the Tory Party and how they're campaigning, these are only mistakes if you're trying to win.

Yes.

I'm reminded of the movie Producers.

Well, I mean, even Sunak could lose his seat, apparently, according to the polls.

And I mean, look,

it's a tough job.

He's had a tough job.

He's not so much standing on the shoulders of giants as standing in the buttock-shaped ditch of buffoons.

But he could lose his seat.

Penny Morden could

lose.

Britt's already gone isn't he

she in the debates it was amazing because her hair was just getting bigger the more of her own hot air she blew into it every debate her hair's got bigger and bigger and she was a lot of pointing quite aggressive pointing from

Morden she hasn't learned how to do the politician I don't even know what it is it's kind of like half a fist it's like shit scissor paper stone innit?

It's like half like a little Rishi was doing a lot of it.

Maybe it's his wank.

Anyway,

I don't.

It's the thumb is the penis, and the finger is the condom.

That's how it works.

It's protected pointing.

So you don't get manifestos spaffed all over you.

Exactly.

I just think that's how hedge fund managers talk to poor people.

One of the things, well, two of the things that happened during the question time debate that I sort of enjoyed, someone questioning Sunak on the national service, kind of going, How will you enforce this?

And he sort of went,

no driver's license.

And then went, they do it in Europe, and suggesting that you would close people's bank accounts if they don't want to.

Yeah, yeah.

He offered a lot of things.

He said a lot of things that they do in Europe, to which the obvious answer is, that's exactly what we voted to leave, mother f.

I thought you hated Europe.

And is this, do we think as well, like, because it's so ridiculous, is it like an appeal for floating voters that sort of, I don't know if I should use the word floating when I talk about reform because

they're not a fan.

But

it couldn't have been more forage if Rishi had announced it in front of the White Cliffs of Dover, wearing a flat cap and tweed waistcoat, like an antique roadshow sedition.

I almost respect the degree to which they are trying to alienate young people now.

Like, it is incredible.

Suggesting that they do national service and then suggesting that if they don't do it, they will face a punishment is like they really have given up on the idea of anyone under the age of about 70 voting for them.

And if they want to alienate young people, why stop there?

Why not bang TikTok or issue sanctions on Sabrina Carpenter?

And yes, I did have to Google that name.

I have no idea who Sabrina Carpenter is.

I hope they're not some sort of terrorist.

I have no idea about Sabrina Carpenter.

The way that I found that name is I googled things young people are into, and yes, that also means I'm on a register.

Kendrick Lamar is preparing a diss track about me right now.

There's a young person there who can...

How old is that person in the third row?

The one sitting next to you?

Oh, that's my mum.

No, the one sitting...

Yeah, I'm blatantly not talking about the mum, no offence.

How old is that f ⁇ ing fetus there?

How old are you?

Thirteen?

Thirteen is too young to hear some of the things you've heard tonight, my friend.

Good lord.

Why are you here?

You should be on national service.

He's probably leaving for Burma tomorrow.

Was there not an age limit on this show, Chris?

Clearly not.

Anyone younger than 13 in the crowd?

This is how policies get enforced in Britain.

Listen, if the ⁇ 's good enough, he's old enough.

Welcome.

That was the show.

One of the comedians called a 13-year-old a ⁇ , but it seemed to be in a friendly way.

That's right.

Chris, you bleep that!

How dare you bleep that?

The woke mob.

turn the damn tears out of the damned out of my freedom of speech to call children.

Get these on national service!

It's the bugle Christmas special.

Chris has now run into the audience and given the child what appears to be a brown envelope filled with drugs.

He'll be the only one in Burma with a bugle t-shirt.

I mean, what do you think could be the next sort of anti-young people government policy?

Because I mean, I like to delve into it.

I mean, killing the firstborn,

is that too much?

I mean, was King Herod actually just a conservative politician looking at some wonky opinion polls thinking, I've got to shore up the grey vote?

I think that's.

This is scorched earth.

There's going to be nothing left because if Sumak has his way, they'll completely ditch the net zero.

That was one of his other sort of things where actually former Tory MPs are just going, well, I'm going to vote for Labour because he's abandoned this.

He's sort of prioritising oil and gas like a middle-aged man at a massage parlour.

I mean, it is.

They have so, there's so little for the Conservatives to sell in terms of policy.

Broadly, their policy just says, we'll give you tax cuts.

Because they've proved over 14 years that they are so fing incompetent that they might as well just give up trying to spend anything and at least let people have a bit of spare money to drink a solitary beer in an empty bath whilst they watch the country decline.

I mean, in terms of what the what Sunak can do,

I mean, he's and a lot of Conservatives are warning that a vote for reform is a vote for Labour.

The problem that they've got is that the flip side of that is that a vote for the Conservatives is a vote for the Conservatives.

And that's really not

hitting home with the electorate.

So he's not got many clubs in his political golf bag.

Well essentially he's got a broken putter, he's got a rusting toilet brush, he's got a toy saxophone and a frozen cobra emerging from a coma.

Those are his clubs and he's got to whack a 250 yard shot into the wind onto a tricky green and the ball is in a bunker behind the tree next to a crocodile and his his own caddy is saying, I'd just fing give up if I were you.

And by the looks of him, he's never played golf in his life.

In terms of what they've said, it doesn't really matter what's in the Conservative manifesto, really, because if they simply said in their manifesto, if all it was was just saying, we are going to cook one omelette,

then on the basis of the past 14 years, I think most voters would assume it will end up with a pile of dead chickens in the middle of a burned-out kitchen.

And based on current polling, it's not even certain they'd be able to beat the egg.

Listen to the reaction as the paying audience hears the closest thing to resembling an actual joke they've heard all evening.

In terms of labour, Anish,

I mean, they're not.

Well, actually, if we could just edit that down, that's absolutely perfect.

Yeah, of course.

In terms of labour.

But that seems to be enough.

I think mainly the sort of labour vibe has been to say nothing, do nothing, and offer nothing.

And there is a sense that Keir Starmer's caution has manifested itself in his voice, because his voice permanently sounds like someone holding in a fart for fear of shitting themselves.

And at a certain point, he is going to have to let one rip and live with the consequences.

Otherwise, he's going to get a fucking ⁇ ing hernia.

Well they are widening the windfall tax so I guess that fits aren't they?

I mean they've said six and a half thousand teachers in key subjects

by which I assume they mean six and a half thousand drama teachers because that is the only thing that should be taught in schools to kids of your generation.

Just should be drama.

That's the only skill you need, the ability to pretend that you're living happy, unfulfilled working lives and will ever own your own home.

So I mean I think that's no no no.

I've seen Mad Max.

We should be teaching them hand-to-hand combat and driving with Nicholas Holt attached to the front of the car.

Oh, how to play a guitar that's also got fire coming out of the...

Exactly right.

I've seen your future and it stars Tom Hardy.

Actually, there is one thing that they've said they're going to do.

They're going to tighten, Labour said in their manifesto, they're going to tighten the taxation of non-doms, which I feel is unfair because why should submissives pay more?

So you've had your election, Anuvab, and Narendra Modi is

back in,

but not quite as convincingly as was expected.

And he got 36% of the vote.

And there was an article on the BBC website saying, will this turn Modi into a humbler leader?

Now, Modi and humility,

those are words that have traditionally gone together like penguin and hot weather altitude training

or hammerhead shark and pole vault.

So,

what impact do you think this will have on him and India?

Well, you know, he was so confident of winning that he gave an interview where he said he didn't think it was naturally born.

That divinity was involved.

So, I think if I have to explain this to you, you know, I'll have to explain the Indian elections not through me, but the voice of gods

that will speak through me.

So, and we've got 130 million gods, so my accent will change as we go along.

So he's had two previous landslide victories, right?

And this time he finished campaigning and went off to a remote cave in the Himalayas, saying, job done.

I want to meditate and then I'll come back and have 400 seats or whatever he wanted.

And because meditation is so deeply personal a journey for him, and it gives him solitude and nirvana, he carries an entire social media team with him, along with drone cameras to capture footage of him meditating, much like the Buddha would have done.

So very quickly, India's parliament is 542 seats.

He was hoping for 400 plus.

He came back down from the mountains, and he had plans to do fun things that he's learned from his friends, Mr.

Putin and Xi Jinping, like make elections every 15 years, remove the word secular from the constitution.

Turns out he was not sent by divine providence.

He's like the rest of us.

He won 260 seats out of 542, and with allies, he can still form the government.

But very soon, you know, I think Mr.

Modi will be like the rest of us.

He'll be drinking and ending up at a Punjabi roadside eatery at 2 a.m.

demanding a jal phrasei

and shouting obscenities at passing fancy cars.

And finally, we'll we'll all be able to relate.

He said in an interview with NDTV: I'm convinced that God has sent me for a purpose, and when that purpose is finished, my work will be done.

Surely, we can get the technology to have someone paint themselves blue and pop into his room at night and go, Narendra, you're done.

Just call it.

It's truly been a bad result for the man who puts the Hindu into the phrase, he makes me ashamed to be a Hindu.

They're asking if the coalition will turn him into a humbler leader.

But I think moderate Modi sounds like a diet plan.

I lost 30 pounds of useless fat by going on the moderate Modi diet.

I mean, look, he's a really nice guy.

He's a wonderful guy.

Oh, actually, yeah, I want to go to India.

I'm a big fan.

Honestly, I think he's really.

Whichever recording is going to him, please tell him I said this.

Just quickly on the rest of

world democracy, obviously you've got your American elections coming up.

There's the first presidential debate,

which I don't think is going to be one of the high points in human discussion for numerous reasons.

I mean,

just

81 years old against 77 years old.

I am not comfortable when any election campaign comes and the ages of the candidates make a snooker frame that has an unusual number of fouls in it.

It's too old.

In fact, I would go so far as to say I would rather see a 147-year-old taking on a newborn baby than this.

What a double insult to America to sass their electoral candidates by using a sport that none of them understand.

Well, that's it, Buglers.

I do hope you enjoyed our live election special.

I know you're now saying and thinking one of two things.

A, thank goodness Chris cut the puns, uh, or B, where were the puns?

Well, uh, given this record ran to nearly two and a half hours, the puns have been, shall we say, saved, but they will be released as a bonus episode in this bugle feed in just a few days' time.

Boo and or hooray, delete as applicable.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

Do find the wonderful works of my wonderful Bugle co-hosts wherever you want on the internet.

Book your tickets for my tour show, The Zoltgeist, beginning on the 1st of November.

And we will be back with a full Bugle show next week.

If you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep this show free, flourishing, and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Hi, Buglers.

It's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.