Boris Johnson’s political career ‘finished’ by PMQs

Boris Johnson arrived at the dispatch box and did not tell the truth. If he had done the opposite, if he had come and said: look, do it clearly, it was a terrible mistake. We should never have done this. Everything got completely out of control. We were. I didn't think clearly and apologized profusely. He would have survived. I don't think he would have done it. I think he would have survived. Yes, here we are again. So this is how to win elections. Your privileged guide. The great

political

year ahead. I am united. as always by new Labor brain Peter Madson Polly McKenzie is politician McKenzie former

political

director of Nick C and Tory brainbox Danny Finlin.

If you would like to get in touch and send us your questions, you can email us at how to win. times.co.uk or Whatsapp 033 2353 as many of you have done for this week's special questions episode, are we all alright, alright? We had a lovely weekend, well, happy Easter and all that, yeah, and I bought you each an egg, uh, yeah, leftover from the Easter festivities here you are there Dan see you oh you should have the lib Dem orange one Polly oh yes and you can have it you can move it matches your jacket I could have the UK kit one yes lovely well thank you for that. okay, is it ethical?

Sauce, of course, fair trade. It was made from it on his own land in Wilshire. Is there a small gift inside? Oh no, it's empty. All that promise was shining in the new workforce waiting for that. Can I just say this? It's very low quality chocolate, you didn't spill it, not this, I'm afraid it was the kids' leftovers, well no, I'm not impressed, I didn't even touch it. I'll save it for later, low coconut, but you'll be. dis you might be disappointed in your own time uh lovely Lov basically it's my ridiculous diet thanks to you for your gratitude thanks Peter that was that was lovely you said you've had you've met another fan, yeah, I met another fan.

I was wandering around Regent Park looking for a taxi and suddenly a cyclist coming running startled me and said, great Peter, I love the podcast, wow, and he went off and it was like that. someone who worked for Kama uh no I think the Kissa people aren't that enthusiastic about podcasters maybe the cyclist in the Park AR regions alright well that's part of they don't need to know how to win elections they don't need to let them listen. Anyway, many thanks to the rider if you're listening, yes, well, well, get in touch in all the usual ways, as Rowan has done.

This is another first for the podcast. We have people playing the topic in their heads. and on various musical instruments, this is the first poem about winning an election. I have written you a poem about how to win an election. Strike Up the Band cries times Matt from the radio, the hardest working political podcaster who even fasted like Sunac Peter saw it in everyone Gordon even convinced him with yogurt and, as Lord president of the council, he could have carried the sword not a penny more, not by Danny, he still hasn't been persuaded that much will move the dial ding ding ding goes Matt's Bell, but it's based.

On the facts, Danny says with a smile, here's Polly McKenzie, the artist formerly known as Nick Brain Clicks, which must have seemed strange on LinkedIn, but better than some of Peter's nicknames, we get the inside scoop on premenstrual syndrome. Polly was towed by Theresa May, who had told her. Danny there was no early election and then he ruined Matt's vacation the flat furniture Bromance didn't happen Nick kle wasn't even his friend and Dave wouldn't have shown it to Dany if half of it had been made by liberal democrats so come and listen to the podcast and be fair to Ed miller and this is how to win an election Strike Up the Band a At first I thought it was going to be a rhyme and I was thinking God, that's not very, but I actually think it was a lot better for the fact. that did it, there was a slight rhyme, I thought it was yes, no, I thought it was very accomplished and also incredible attention to detail, yes, there are parts I had forgotten, yes, absolutely, yes, yes, yes, really, very well, that's how it was.

I would love to have carried Penny Morning's sword, could you? Oh God, did you know that was part of the job? The only time I did something like that was during the state opening parliament, uh, but I didn't have a sword to carry, didn't you think about crowning Tony? You know, he crowned himself many times, didn't he, but no one? -drizzled chicken, thanks Matt, what did you think of the poem Polly? Well, I mean, maybe the scan didn't do it. The pacing was a bit unconventional, it wasn't quite Julia Donaldson, no I'll say that, but the attention to detail genu like yeah, I blocked some of that out let alone forgot it, yeah, yeah, yeah, well thanks Rowan .

Rowan, thanks for sending it well done, if you want to send us a poem please, we'll enjoy it even. if Polly doesn't do it 0332 353 if you want to record it uh sure uh what are we going to turn our attention to now uh an email from Stephan now because we're in the middle of recess for some reason they're having the best part of three weeks off so there is no

pmqs

, but Stefan got in touch to say I recently discovered this podcast. I'm still up to date with all the episodes. I love the fact that people have gone back to the beginning as if they were friends. or Breaking Bad or something like that, let me tell you, I really enjoy it and it's great to witness that reasonable political discussion between members of different parties is still possible in these very politically divided times on the issue of civility and political discourse.

My question is. What is the weekly shouting match known as

pmqs

really for? Most of the questions are, in my opinion, a partisan blame game or to underline the glory of the respective MP's own party. Some questions are real concerns raised by the MP's constituents. I'm not a voter in the UK but if I were I don't think I would be influenced by anyone watching what's going on there, please explain, thanks and regards from Germany, Stefan Polly, what's the point of pmqs? Well, I think it plays a big role in just forcing a prime minister to come to Parliament and answer questions to be aware of his mandate to know what's going on and, you know, there aren't many other countries that have that much kind of scrutiny. structured forensic or that of a prime minister or a president.

I think that's valuable. My personal experience with this is quite limited. I mean, I used to be part of the team that briefed Nick CLE for pmqs when he had two questions, so this is in the works. -until 2010 I was asking questions, he was when I was asking questions, yeah, and it was um, I went into the chamber once and it's absolutely horrible, like a viscerally unpleasant experience, the way the braying and the noise and the toxic stuff is horrible. . energy that you don't experience I think if you look at it if you see it on TV it's like, oh, why are these horrible people yelling at each other?

You walk into the room, it's definitely a really painful experience for me. at the bottom, yeah, there's kind of a side table, um, for the observers, that and I, I would never, I swore never to go in again, never to go in again, yeah, I've prepared a lot of prime minister's questions and Um, it's not. my way of speaking, uh, but I found myself embarrassingly, uh, having a knack for helping people, um, produce this guy, he was good at it, yeah, um, but I realized that there's actually a hidden importance, which is because you can ask the Prime Minister. a question about anything, they have to be on top of everything, as Polly pointed out, but that means they keep an eye on every department, so what happens a lot of the time is someone suggests that you know the leader of the opposition or the Prime Minister.

You can say this U, you know, you can ask this question to the Prime Minister. What will you answer? The Prime Minister then assesses what a department is giving him in response and says that is not an answer. I can not say that. go back and tell them to find me a better answer or ask them so that they, Theresa May, certainly, I think this was true for dve Cam would tell you the same thing, she used the Prime Minister's questions to make sure she was all over the department and Sometimes, she would call a minister to help her prepare a question that she thought was obvious.

Jeremy Corin, by the way, was a little difficult because with other people you could tell what they were going to ask, whereas Jeremy Corbin could literally ask anything and usually likes it. with Two Ronnies I would ask the question I should have asked the week before, so that's what made it harder to prepare, actually, the answer, unfortunately, rewards, so the unfortunate thing is that it rewards, you know? ability to get a joke right, which usually involves anticipating what's coming in One Direction so you know what spontaneous joke to put in the other direction and if you're good enough at it with the joke and the anticipation you can make. it really works and that does matter, but the good side is that, as you'd expect me to say, you can be very successful in pmqs and it doesn't really move the dial like it didn't with William, ha ha. he was excellent at that, um, but I think he missed a point, which was Tony Blair, he was also excellent and he was very good at the answers.

I, I, um, you know, I would argue that it's important with your members, so William Hag would tell you that I felt that at times when there was literally nothing else going for them, it was the only thing that united their own side, um and as much as I've always argued that people should sit quietly while other people say things on camera, that's my opinion because that's how you engage in proper speech and discussion, the truth is we're not going to have that and so this kind of toxic stuff that you talk about about Polly, but it's interesting the point that you make about William, people say, oh, him.

He was very good at it but he didn't win the election, but it actually could have been worse for him if on top of everything he had been bad at p there are some things that don't move the dial in terms of winning the election but still keeping him in the game. post. I remember, I remember that once Dominick Cummings had this kind of vision, you know, he understood how little he actually moved the dial electorally and he certainly thought that he had good relations. or not with the prime minister's wife it was one of those things that obsessed the press eh but it didn't matter at all and yet there he was on the steps of Downing Street with a cardboard box that was the product of his argument with the wife from the Prime Minister, so he certainly found that it did matter in that sense: what happens in Westminster and who rises and falls in politics and whether you are strong with the parties that can be affected by things like the Prime Minister's questions or Rouse with the wife of the prime minister, yes, the pmqs have much more to do with Westminster and within the Beltway in the bubble than with the general public of the country.

Having said that Danny mentions Tony Blair, I remember the first pm Blair made after the 1997 election. By the way, what he did was change the entire format; It had been 15 minutes twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for eons. Can you imagine the amount of Prime Minister's time it took for two days of a five-day week where he had to prepare for absolutely anything he could be asked about any aspect of government affairs and be well informed about it? , so he said no, come on, let's do it half an hour in a day, that's a better use of the prime minister's time.

He arrives at the dispatch box, puts aside his enormous ring binder and never picks it up, stands in the dispatch box, and for half an hour I always remember him being incredibly civil, the number, the wide variety of questions he was asked from all over the country. the house was extraordinary and just delivered this fluidity, flawlessness, lots of facts, lots of arguments and really set a very, very important tone for him and for the government, um, and I think what William was doing at the end. he was kind of bouncing off Blair the whole time, I think you'd say, uh, William was very good and he was very smart and very funny, but he bounced off Blair, honestly, in the end, I mean, interestingly, um, I feel like a documentary was made. on William Hagen, part of it included some of William Hag's preparation for Prime Minister's Questions and it was a bit of a mistake because after that I think Tony BG took more action, he, he. was exceptional and basically William did very well within the constraints of the fact that Tony Blair is an exceptional political talent and he was actually really good.

Can I just say on the issue of details that he understood? You know that was one of the things that really impressed me about Theresa May, who has other things that you can say are not great political skills, but in terms of her ability to accumulate information and be able to implement it she was completely brilliant and Boris Johnson was not. Spending time on the Prime Minister's questions, I think he spent 1 hour on Wednesday mornings, he didn't really familiarize himself with the files. People often accused him of lying, but I actually noticed that when they did it was usually because he used a figure that was by this point he's outdated, uh, he wasMainly because I didn't know.

I mean, imagine asking the Prime Minister questions about all these things, if you don't know the answer it would be a horrendous experience, so you probably just winged it, it wasn't a figure that brought him down, I mean, famously, I just said, I think you know the pmqs are for the bubble and have no impact on the general public well the lie is that's what happened to Boris Johnson the pmqs brought down Boris Johnson ended his

career

as prime minister because he didn't say the truth was that there were no parties he didn't tell the truth I agree that it wasn't about and at a time when people were really focused on covid U, especially since many of us were at home looking for something to watch on TV , you know, people became more attuned to pmqs, followed them more during that time period, less now.

I suspect Boris Johnson came to the dispatch box and did not tell the truth. If he had done the opposite, if he had come and said, look, do it clearly, it's a terrible mistake, we should never have done this. Everything came completely to light. We weren't thinking clearly and I apologize deeply, he would have survived. I don't think he would have done it. I think he would have survived, but pmqs fundamentally rewards discipline, breadth and understanding and the exact opposite of Boris Johnson EXA, you know. The fundamental problem with Boris Johnson, which is visible through pmqs, but was not limited to that, is that he did not take the job seriously.

He thought of the job as acting like storytelling and bombast and and and there's a part of the role of a prime minister or a mayor that is just being a figurehead, but it's also a job that requires gravitas and discipline and that he never brought anything of that, he discovered, he was, let's be. Of course he was a very, very talented person politically, Boris Johnson, but not in this um and um and you know you're right, he didn't fit and in fact what's interesting is this discussion because what it illustrates is that there are certain things who are involved in the Prime Minister's questions, which are the essence of being Prime Minister, being on top of the job, being on top of the details and the Prime Minister's questions, despite all the points that Staffan raises, despite Of all the things you say about the toxic atmosphere, in some ways it's I think we're almost establishing it through this chat.

In some ways it's bringing up something essentially Prime Minister, which means if you're not serious about the job, you can't do that part and often when you watch too. Go back and think about how many times when I was reporting in the gallery you would walk in and think this is a terrible moment, whether it's Tony Blair or Gordon Brown or David Camin, there's no way they can get out of this moment in the one that the opposition is going to kick them around the pair and, in fact, the ability to answer those questions and then get out of them David CER in particular.

I remember that probably most of you would walk in and think there's no way he can get around the fact that I don't. I don't know, Ian Duncan Smith is resigned, there's Rebellion in this and there's that Scandal, whatever it is and somehow through from the skill of being in dance, he made his way tap dancing, but that means it's a great skill, yeah, it's a great skill and uh, so you know, and it's real, it helped too. I think at that particular moment, I don't think Jeremy Corbin remembers asking about Ian Duncan Smith, which was helped a little bit by the fact that they worked with Ped.

He had resigned due to cuts at WF and forgot to bring. Yes, I remember Blair's last questions when I think I'm pretty sure that Ricky young Ross, the MP for Outh Outh in Li, in the West Country, that's why Polly was looking at me, yes, exactly, you know all about the Western country, he asked. a question which I think had something to do with faith schools or the role of religion and society and Blair just sighed and said "I can't be bothered to sit down" and that was the moment, yes it was, I think I could have said something like I think I'll leave that or something, but he basically just left it, leave it to my successor, it was a glorious moment of true statesmanship and then he closed the book and said, that's it, bye, yeah, and he . he received an ovation he received an ovation he was what the future wants and all that next we are going to talk about uh, going negative works negative campaign works that uh and what difference will the support of the newspapers make in an election in 2024 do that to continuation on how to win an election, so this one came from Joe, she says, uh, hi, I really enjoy the how to win podcast.

I believe it. I consider it the cozy crime of political podcasts. Crime. I do not know what that means. it means politics brand and podcast brand no, it's a TV show brand brand and uh with the midway murders B oh like just murders in the building I love that one, I love that one, yeah, we like that one, no , probably not as fun as that one. It was probably more like a few murders, well we could hope for that, but that makes you the Young Man. The Young Man is the beautiful young woman who deals with the two men in the block of flats, yeah, yeah, sure, okay, that's SED, uh, okay, thank you.

You, Joe, uh, I'm a trauma psychotherapist and I find it very relaxing to listen to, although based on your exit interviews on your other podcast, I'm sure the

career

in politics is very thematic. I especially enjoy listening to Peter's muffled tones. adorable and I always look forward to Pol's optimism. To be honest, I have real questions about Joe. And Danny believes nothing moves the needle other than maybe focus groups. My question we are finally there. Joe says my question is: Are you campaigning negatively? It really works and obviously in the last week we have had excellent examples of this, thanks to the brilliant brains of the Tory propaganda machine, this is the Tory video about London.

London, a city full of history, but tonight it is ancient. the streets are witness to a different story, a story not of kings and queens but of crime and despair, there we are, well there are two problems, well there are two problems with this ad, it is very negative, it also used some images of New York in which I've had to address the broader question, Danny, or maybe in that video specifically, the negative campaign works well. It's actually a good example of when it works and when it doesn't, so one of the things that the Conservative party is facing at the moment.

Right now there is a very strong narrative against them and in those circumstances they have to perceive that people are not laughing with them, they are laughing at them, and this means that if you make a video that you think is funny, like me, without no doubt, no doubt What they did with it um pasti um they assumed people would laugh um and they didn't for two reasons: one is that it wasn't really that funny um but secondly people aren't in the mood to laugh with them uh and then um that kind of a humorous view of negative campaigns was never going to be like that for that reason beyond that, although negative campaigns are also based on a positive foundation, people have to feel good, I'm, I'm willing to agree to take it away, you're basically making a better argument out of the devil you know and if you improve the argument out of the devil you know, you have to be a better devil than the people you're trying to make look terrible, so there's no point, e.g. have a great campaign. again about the other party's spending plans, if their own spending plans don't stand up to scrutiny and not only that, but people feel that way, then the answer is a negative campaign.

I think it works. That is. You can try to build a negative campaign. narrative, as you know, I think it works within the context of the importance of campaigning, which I think people tend to overestimate, but it has some, it can have some impact and I think that, um, negative people, people basically have an aversion to losses, so negative campaigns work. better than a positive Campa campaign, although everyone says I hate negative campaigns because people are much more worried about the things they lose than the things they gain, so yes, it works, but it has to be done on a positive basis and it also has to be done. be very careful, use humor in all circumstances, it has to be funny and many times it is not and this was not um, but also you have to laugh not only at all but also with each other.

I think voters are in a permanent situation. state of suspension between hope and fear and you obviously, as a party, want to give people hope about the future and what they can do to improve their lives and fulfill the country and feed their anxieties about the alternative that you know that makes them fear. changes, so this is all just, you know, basic campaigns, um, you could achieve a balance of 6040 or 8020, you know, negative and positive, but everything continues, but this is the point about negative campaigns, it only works if It really feeds the fears. that voters already have, I mean latent fears that then come to the surface about the party you're attacking now, in the 1980s, this became a kind of highly professionalized art form that began in the United States under Reagan and then transferred. across the Atlantic, uh, from the Republican Party to the Conservatives and Sai and Sai and Mrs, that really made it kind of brilliant, not an art, it was a science, of course, the Labor Party in the 1980 was giving them enough to uh, attack, so we had a kind of almost relentless, emotionally driven tide of anti-tax, anti-government, anti-me, anti-communist, anti-the enemy.

Within whatever, you could galvanize public opinion against him and lump him in with the with w w with your opponents I remember going to the United States in 1988 to watch the presidential campaign of George Bush one Bush one and uh Michael dakis and Bush one they pulled out the most extraordinary attack hat that destroyed dakis I mean he was standing there man almost dematerialized in front of your eyes and it was about crime Bush one was uh George Bush one was uh for uh the death penalty he was tough on crime tough on first degree murder Michael D.

Carcus in contrast was a slightly softer liberal and one of the things he advocated for was one week prison passes for murderers. Well, now you would have thought that it's possibly a very good liberal, nice, objectively sensible rehabilitation policy, you know, for first-degree murderers. The problem was that one of these murderers, Willie Horton. if you remember this famous attack ad came out of prison, I met a couple stabbed, he raped them in a different way each over a period of an entire weekend and the attack ad that lasted only about 30 seconds placed all the responsibility and the blame Willie Willie Hy and What Horton and what he did with Michael De Carcus was crushing and I think British politics has never gone to that extreme, thank God and I think people in Britain would probably recoil if it was taken to that height type. of Menace like they did in the United States, but it worked, it destroyed Michael Dakis.

Clearly, as Danny says, people say they don't like negative campaigns, but it can work, but the problem is that it somehow works. It devours the enthusiasm for politics and politicians and the enthusiasm for people who run for public office, that feeling that you know that being criticized for the political decisions you have made is one thing you know and if you want to enter public life You expect to be held accountable for the things you've done, but there are times when I think this becomes deeply damaging to the sense that there are standards of behavior in public life and you know, we've seen that.

Recently, conservatives have run quite a few attack ads against G Starma because, for example, when he was a lawyer, he handled cases under the cabaran rule of "I don't know any apparently bad guys," but that's what you're supposed to do, because if you have a rule of law and a justice system, someone has to be the bar for the bad guys and we saw that there was controversy when Boris Johnson attacked K Armor for his alleged role with Jimmy Savil, which led to some key members of his staff resigned in a kind of horror that he could sink so low, I mean, and at the completely trivial end of the scale, you know, the only time I stood for election, which was, I think, in 200, 2004 um, at Lambeth Council, um.

There was another Liberal candidate who had been accused and I don't remember anything substantial about whether anything was ever found against her, but she accused Desent of having done wrong forms for the right to buy basically and therefore he was reported as if would have robbed a council house and it was just the Libdem candidate and it was distributed throughout the district, including my district, the neighborhood where I was standing and then I discovered that when I went to canvass the people he would accuse me directly at the door of having robbed a welfare house and you just you and I would be completely put off, it's just a lie, true, I haven't robbed a welfare house, but it's also that feeling that there is no honor or integrity in the way you behave withpeople who might deeply disagree with you about the content of your policies, but who have as much right as you do to run for public office, and I think those of us who want to get involved in politics sometimes have to think about it might work out short term, but what does it do to democracy?

For me to behave that way because ultimately in a Lo, particularly local council elections, you know the points of disagreement are: Should we have weekly or fortnightly elections? Do you know how much money we should have? we spend on local council services, eh, that should be what you're arguing about and not hurting one candidate and that actually then hurts every candidate and I mean my experience is totally trivial and completely, completely, nothing to do with the scale of attacks that we have seen against important figures in our political life, but you know, you think again. I don't agree with her on all kinds of things, but I like the attacks you see against Diane Abber.

Is it so monstrous? In reality, there are things she has done that we will all disagree with. There are things that, but turning it into a campaign that reaches out to the worst in us as humans, the worst in us as voters, can work. but we shouldn't do it sometimes, the reason it's important is because the basis of politics is trust, yes, you know, the belief in what someone, a party or a politician will do for you, your family and for the country, the confidence you can assume. to the letter what they are saying, that they really are sincerely determined to do it and carry it out and if the parties and the different politicians are taking negative criticisms from each other all the time, what you are doing is not just trust Destroy trusting each other is trusting anyone, you can't trust any of these people and that's when everything starts to disintegrate, that's true, but I, but people do it because it works and and I and um, it's destructive. in that. way, uh, but, but, but people are very lost, that's what's critical about it and therefore it raises something that you could lose by choosing a person.

X um is better than uh, more powerful than what you will do. win by voting for you you are talking about something like explaining what you can lose because you will have to pay more taxes or that you know that the streets may be less safe that seems reasonable to me it may be negative but reasonable to go back to the AV referendum, where you know, decide If we should change the voting system, the campaign no to AV, first of all, they made tech ads that said that with pictures of babies and incubators that said those babies would die if we had this different voting system because it's more expensive not because the incubators would be shut down because there wouldn't be enough money so they worked out how much it was going to cost to introduce the system and then they divided that by the cost of an incubator and then I came up with a number of how many incubators we wouldn't have, which I think is still It's based on politics rather than personality, but it's grotesque nonetheless, yeah, umv and they put up flyers too.

I remember having two separate ones. my door and I remember being deeply upset about it because clearly these noav um leaflets explained that Nick Kle had betrayed the country by putting David Cameron in office, it's a reasonable belief now, but I know for a fact that it was the Conservative party and the conservative party donors who had raised the money to present these pamphlets in order to send an attack message based on the idea that putting their man in office was betraying the nation and that when you do that you are simply destroying yourself the basic foundation of what the policy is based on.

Can I look into this for a second? Okay, I think we can all agree that absurd and false comments can be both unpleasant and scandalous. Okay, but the question is whether they are worse. They're more negative than positive, right, uh, and what's the argument that you're making, so I question that for a second, so I think doing that is bad to make false or biased statements or wild accusations, um speculative accusations. um because it's wrong to make tendentious and wild statements um but uh that's it but I also think it's legitimate to point out the flaws or dangers of choosing your opponent and if you ask me why I'm involved in politics one of them is to prevent things to prevent extremism For example, I don't disapprove, so it's a negative reason, indeed, a negative reason.

Are you suggesting that there's probably something about negative campaigning that makes wild and speculative things particularly bad or is it just that you don't like false and wild claims. I don't like wild, false statements, but what worries me are the visceral personal attacks on people that seemed to me almost designed to drive them out of public life. and to question the legitimacy of its existence, Polly, most of these nasty, vile, vicious personal attacks don't come from your CI political opponents, they come from the media, they come from tabloids and then, over time, to As they build up and the dam bursts and they get carried away by the broadcasters who think they have to do it, it's really, I mean, in the 1990s, when there was an endless week after week, kind of SLE scandal with the Tores Tony Blair said absolutely Untouchable for us, we are not going anywhere. close to this, well, he didn't need to get close because the press was doing it.

For us, we were approaching the '97 election and we were conducting about 40% of our campaign attacking the negative, you could say, pointing out the flaws and shortcomings of the Conservatives, the record of the government and what they proposed to do and it was a strong blow that was quite effective for us. I remember about nine months before the election. Blair comes to me and tells me I'm not very happy about this. I wish we were. to stop all the negative attacks, all the negative campaigns, I just want us to be completely positive and I said, you know, okay, thank you very much, I'll keep that in mind, keep that in mind, um, oh, yeah, you know that and I've been. . seen and then he came back and said look, you know, I've actually been thinking about this quite deeply and I actually think we shouldn't do this anymore and I said, well, look, but I'm afraid you know a BAL campaign.

It has to have a balance, it has to have a lot of ingredients and it also has to have momentum, uh, and attacking your opponents gives you momentum in the end, he said, look, attacking this government is like hitting a dumb animal and I think Va to begin to reflect badly on us. I don't think you need to do it anymore. You know, everyone can see the animal as dumb and half-dead. Doing all these things to themselves. The media is revealing one thing after another. I think we should be absolutely optimistic and positive and in fact we changed the campaign from 6040 to 8020.

The only thing I would point out is that you then mocked William Ha with Margaret Thatcher's hair and flying pigs with Michael Howard's face. It was because they were very funny and we wanted to encourage people, very good, right, but you, you, you mentioned, uh, the newspapers, those were later campaigns that I could say it was okay, not directly, of course, uh, next, in fact, we will shift our attention to the press and the role that newspapers will play and the influence that newspapers could have when it comes to electoral newspapers in 2024, we will do next on how to win an election, so Peter, Before you were talking about newspapers. and how newspapers do one thing newspapers do one thing and the ads that parties can control do another uh this is a voice note we received from James Hi guys, I'm James in London and I love your podcast, this is an election year and the T Media outlets like the Telegraph GB News are attacking the Labor Party with all their might, but their right-wing readers are only interested in voting for the t or reform, so their impact on Labor will be much less than zero.

I don't think the telegraph Honestly, men have a big influence on the Labor vote because I don't think they have a large number of Labor voters reading their newspapers. I think they play a very important role in the internal politics of the conservative party. I think in a way they pit different wings, factions, groups and aspirants against each other and cause a lot of mischief, but the reason newspapers and their support for parties are less important is because the entire newspaper industry is less important than before. . It's true that there is now a proliferation of different types of media, all generating their own different forms of influence, and in fact I think broadcasters pay less attention to which way newspapers are leaning, but there will be a very interesting question when the news comes. elections. this at the end of this year, if not in January, p uh uh about where the sun goes because the sun is still the largest news newspaper in the country, whether you like it or hate it, that's what it is and its endorsement of the New Labor Party.

In my opinion, Labor and Blair in 1997 were very influential, so here's the question, given that the sun, you know, doesn't like to fly in the face of its own readers and would rather follow it and go in the direction its voters want and Given that pollster S John Curtis is now saying there is a 99% chance of Labor winning, the success of which will mean huge numbers of Sun voters voting for Labour, if true, what does the Sun in those circumstances? Keep going? lean to the right as your preference might be because you don't really trust the workforce or you say no, the country has to change, we need a new government, but you know, if it's okay, we'll continue to hold our feet to the fire.

So first of all, obviously, there's also a labor press, as well as a conservative press, and I think that's where the labor press is, well, the gatekeeper, for example, the labor press, and so is the mirror, and there is a reason to raise that, eh, because does the Guardian have influence over the conservatives, in the same way that you see the question that was asked about the conservatives and the workers and the answer is yes, because it sometimes publishes scoops extraordinary events that have caused, for example, the history of the party, the Answer the answer to your question is um, I don't think it makes much difference, uh, for the party to even be in Westminster, let's leave aside the question of how important It's the campaign, uh, when a newspaper just publishes an attack or an Oped, you know, what's an opinion column about politics, it's in the conservative press, I have a lot of difference about the work, but if an important story is revealed by those newspapers that look for stories to antagonize people that their readers don't.

I don't like it because in the case of men, for example, there is still a large number of conservative readers, so that can have an influence because it will generate a story that you will have to deal with for days, so I think that in the end uh, As Peter just pointed out, newspapers represent their readers and have no freedom of choice. You know, the Times, for example, did not have a completely free choice about what position they took on the European referendum. I think our readers would have found supporting Brexit to be a strange position for the newspaper to be in, given who our readers are, and the Sunday Times is going and the sun is going, did you know that?

And while we're all part of the same organization, absolutely Sun Times, I thought it was. unusual in the sense that I felt that their readers almost certainly didn't and the newspaper did, um, but it's not usual for those newspapers to reject what their readers think, the interesting thing about the sun. I think you already know something. The tension with the sun is simply due to the fact that the leader of the Labor party was director of public prosecutions and tried to jail several sun journalists and executives and I suspect that may influence them, whereas otherwise these natural forces could However, in part, even if we admit the fact that fewer newspapers are sold and that everyone is more promiscuous and reads news from a large number of sources instead of putting the printed newspaper on The Breakfast Table if the son supported k starma in sometime. point in the run-up to the election that becomes news, doesn't it?

Instead of a moderately interesting leaders column. Yes, I don't think anyone reads columns from leaders. Are they really? But I mean, obviously, I this, but the Western Daily does. You know? Obviously, for the benefit of the tape, I read every time like leaders every day, of course, of course, of course, it's in your employment contract, um, but it's one of these ecological systems stories. but while that doesn't necessarily mean that I reach millions of people who say oh yeah, I'll vote for workers because the sun says so and I should follow what it says in everything you know, that's not how people behave but the impact. that it can have in the ecosystem is important, it can give people a sense of confidence and ambition, it can also send, it could send conservatives tokind of a flat spin and that then has these kind of domino effects and Of course, part of the reason the son might elect CU workers, they don't like to back the losers and I think a lot of voters are a little bit like that too. , you know, kind of a strong vision of the horse, like you just want to, you want to be. on the winning side, and so the more this kind of momentum starts to crystallize, the stranger it will seem to a lot of individual undecided voters to want to stick with the guys who are about to get out, like why not.

It's a kind of pre-booking a place on the winning team and you just go with the flow and actually I guess the touch also depends on when it happens, so I remember that with the referendum, the EU referendum, the times are not they took a view. until a day or two before, I think, because we were actually under very strict instructions, we reported on the campaign and what the claims were and if they were right and no one that the journalists could say publicly we couldn't go on radio and television shows to say what they were backing because we wanted a proper report and then they gave their opinion at the end, whereas if the election is 6 weeks away, the son or the daily man decides that we are going into labor, besides being something interesting in itself, it means that you don't think that getting six weeks of buckets of you-know-what being dumped on you, that's actually true in terms of the news as well, is much more It's important about producing news that you don't have day in and day out, stories that they kick the stabber K, yes, but it also gives you what is the most important and valuable characteristic in any election campaign and that is momentum, small, M, momentum, uh, Big.

M the impulse is very different P what the evidence says that impulse really exists yes because if you have Newtonian physics, if you have done it like you have done it, you have fought in a campaign, you know what it does to your morale, you know that It gives you a kind of boost. You know that it boosts your sales, it is psychological, although it also exists, what is it? M, yes, I think so, CU, it affects your performance and more and more people you know watch a game and your leadership is talked about, they speak favorably to more people.

It's a kind of movement through the Ledger, moving in this direction, the cart and before you know where you are now, I think in the case of momentum, you either have it or you've lost it, there's no middle way, or you have momentum with you and empowering you and enforcing what you're doing or it just flows away from you and that's very important. Can I just ask that question? I'm not sure there's that much evidence to take, for example, C Mania famously you would say it was a push, all of a sudden the push was on the LI with the Lib Dems and it just didn't register on election day.

It could have been even worse for the Lib Dems if there hadn't been that push at the time. well, that's possible, that's possible, it's also possible that, uh, what did you call it, buckets of shit buckets? You didn't specify what buckets of buckets of nasty, disgusting things were that were tipped over, you know he was included for being a Nazi sympathizer on the front pages of the newspapers they accused him of having embezzled party money to fuel his personal lifestyle . I mean, absolutely made up, he also robbed that Council house, but come on, those are my Council's legal reasons.

Nick CL As far as we know, not exactly, but I'm just saying no, I don't know if there's actually an accelerated impact of a poy during an election that could be measured um and and I, so I would anticipate that social psychology would lead to it. say if you know you're more likely to support someone if someone else does and therefore, you know, and during the last election, for example, definitely in the red wall seats people looked at their neighbor and figured out people were going to vote conservative for the first time so they felt they had permission to see it so you would anticipate it so it makes sense that there would be this push the reason I asked the question is I just don't see but I think I think I hope that some pollsters will write it down and tell me if this is true or not, but maybe in the form of a poem in the form of but I think that when you ask people who they voted for Last time, several years ago, they often they do not remember well and there is some evidence to suggest that they are more likely to remember that they voted for the winning party.

I feel like I've read it in an election study in the past, but I may have made it up no, it's definitely true Dan says it must be some kind of reverse momentum, well, exactly, it's a kind of coal, yes, a coal , people want to feel associated with the winner and so I can hypothesize that that would have some impact. in the race actually you know it's the labor party you know you get the sun one week and then you get the hundred businessmen and that's happening and then you get a show we talk about celebrities some busy shows with that guy sensor, well, everyone is receiving. in the car, well, that's why people, in the midterms, in particular, people really want those Stak boards, you know, the big realtor-sized signs that say, uh, because you didn't understand the vibe that, oh, this is a place where everyone is voting conservative and what they want is for that push to be enough that maybe some of the other people won't bother showing up to vote.

CU think they will lose, well that was a great question. Thanks for that, James, and thanks also to Stefan, Joe and Rowan for your excellent poem. If you want to send us some questions, email us how to win at thee times.co, you can send us a voice note on 033 2353. uh, we'll be back at the same time next week, that's how to win the election with Peter Manison, Paully McKenzie, Daniel Finstein and me, Charie.