Further Reading

Linear liner notes

As the UK trickles out of the EU – sort of, kind of, but still sort of there – its ok as we all have 50ps and thanks to Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadker, a weird notion that the next 11 months will be like a football game involving 510 million people. Phew, it’ll be fine. Plus a chat with Xander Snyder (@XanderSnyderX) from ReconsiderMedia (@reconsiderpod) about US politics and all the geopolitics too as well as a very very wee look at the Labour leadership contest.

Links and sources of info from Xander’s interview:

• • Xander Snyder on Twitter – https://twitter.com/XanderSnyderX 
• • ReConsider on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Reconsiderpod
• • ReConsider website – https://www.reconsidermedia.com/
• • Washington Institute on Twitter – https://twitter.com/WashInstitute
• • Middle East Institute on Twitter – https://twitter.com/MiddleEastInst
• • Jacob Shapiro on Twitter – https://twitter.com/JacobShap
• • List of UK think tanks – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_think_tanks_in_the_United_Kingdom
• • List of US think tanks – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_think_tanks_in_the_United_States

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:

• • Twitter – twitter.com/ParPolBro and twitter.com/TiernanDouieb   
• • Facebook – www.facebook.com/groups/ParPolBro 
• • Website – www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/podcast
• • Donate to the Patreon – www.patreon.com/parpolbro
• • Buy me a coffee – ko-fi.com/parpolbro
• • Review the show on iTunes – itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/partly-political-broadcast/id1075342863?mt=2 
• • Review the show on Stitcher – www.stitcher.com/podcast/partly-political-broadcast
• • The Last Skeptik – www.thelastskeptik.com
• • Kat on Twitter – https://twitter.com/chronicleflask
• • Buy Kat a coffee (go on, spread the love) – https://ko-fi.com/katday

Transcript

Episode 172

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast Podcast, the comedy politics podcast that is the home of truth, but unfortunately, it’s not in right now. Few weeks back it said it was going on a bender because no one cares about it anymore and it hasn’t been seen since. I’m Tiernan Douieb and the UK is in its last few days officially within the European Union before 11 months of transition like saying you’re leaving a party then it taking 2 hours to say goodbye to everyone, or having your last day at work before having to come in next week to train your replacement. Chancellor and the moon from The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask Sajid Javid has unveiled a commemorative 50p coin to mark the occasion because nothing says Brexit like ruining British money for a completely arbitrary reason. The coins say ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations’ which is a great message to publicise when three of the four countries in our own United Kingdom have rejected the withdrawal agreement and one of them is trying to leave and go independent but can’t because Westminster has tied them to a radiator. A more appropriate message would’ve been to have half of the UK’s 50p coins say ‘stick a croissant up your arse’ and the others with ‘you’re all small minded twats’ printed on them, while all pound coins feature the Queen trying to eat her own face.

The withdrawal agreement has been signed by the European Council’s president and secret member of the Bluth family Charles Michel, and European Commission president and someone that will likely be played by Tilda Swinton in a dystopian sci-fi in years to come Ursula Von Der Leyen. Michel said that things will inevitably change but our friendship will remain the same, because it turns out international politics is not unlike a teen drama where everyone is naïve about reality. Afterwards, Prime Minister and oh that’s what happened to Kasper Hauser Boris Johnson signed it saying he hoped it would bring an end to far too many years of argument and division, a large of amount of which was caused by him. It’s like saying you hope road repairs will fix a dangerous dual carriageway that’s caused many accidents after you and your pals spent a week smashing up the tarmac with pickaxes and covering it in spike strips. So, all done now and it’s just all the rest of it to go. What sort of excitement does the future hold? Irish Prime Minister and manager of a retail park carpet store Leo Varadker said the EU has a population and market of 450m people while the UK only has 60m so if the two teams were playing against each other in football, who do you think would win? Has he ever watched football before? You’re only allowed 11 players, so I think if both brought their entire population onto the pitch they’d be quickly disqualified. Varadker’s point was meant to be that the EU will be the stronger team in trade talks, but trade talks aren’t really like football either, otherwise the UK would actually be positive about the idea of players from abroad instead of trying to get rid of them. These sorts of comments come from Varadker as he has an election this year and has to look all tough but it doesn’t really work if you’re pretending you’ll be great at a game you don’t understand. He may as well be boasting that the EU has 27 countries so as the UK is only 4, they’d be worse at the luge. The Taoiseach doesn’t think trade talks will be done by the deadline, but Johnson insists that he’ll be able to wrap it up by the end of 2020, though that could just mean he’s regifting it at Christmas so he doesn’t have to deal with it anymore.

Though to get a better idea of what post Brexmas will be like, just look at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, where global and Bond villians alike meet annually to tell each other how they plan to block out the sun this time around. The big story from this year’s event was pintsized protestor Greta Thunberg telling the conference that they needed to act like they loved their children above all else, a comment that was lost on US President and leather wrapped round an air horn Donald Trump, as that’d mean he’d have to love something more than himself. He was no doubt further enraged by Thunberg’s comments to forget about net zero, we need real zero, as Trump disregards everyone that he ranks below a 7. His response was during his speech to reject predictions of the apocalypse and told people to stop listening to the prophets of doom, making everyone wonder if we need to take him to a beach when there are warnings about sharks so he can decry them then go for a swim. Trump did say that he was a big believer in the environment though, which is handy as he lives in it, and it’d be hard to do so if he wasn’t sure it was there. He insisted he wants the cleanest water and the cleanest air but wasn’t clear on if anyone else should get it, like say, the people of Flint, Michigan. While all this was happening, Westminster sent along Chancellor Sajid Javid, presumably because after hearing Greta’s message about acting like you love your children, Boris Johnson was too busy trying to find out who his are. Javid was there to do big talk about how the UK won’t back down from its new tax on tech giants despite the US Treasury Secretary and star of Brain Age Steve Mnuchin saying it was discriminatory you know, to all those incredibly rich companies who don’t want to contribute to the economies they operate in. Poor them, who will stand up for these guys who only want to steal your data then make a profit from it? Well luckily Steve Mnuchin has threated the UK with taxes on car companies, which feels like a self-own. Making sure it’s too expensive for people to actually go anywhere while allowing those who pretend they are somewhere else to avoid fees. Maybe the UK and US should meet somewhere in the middle and insist everyone working for a tech giant within our country has to live in a car that’s constantly moving? The US say they want to reach a trade deal with the UK this year, so it could mean that we still let Google pretend it’s only virtually in big buildings in the UK, while the US buy just 18% of our cars as manual gears confuse them.

The government has announced a fast track to attract all the world’s leading scientists because nothing says we’re interested in research and fact-based evidence quite like Brexit does it? Also getting a fast track is the HS2 railway, despite costing a lot more than initially proposed, as the Brexit Secretary and man who doesn’t exist unless people remember to think about him, which is rare, Stephen Barclay, said that the HS2 is necessary for levelling up the country. There’s that phrase again, said by a bunch of people who don’t understand how computer games work otherwise they’d be wary that by levelling everyone up, they’ll be more able to take down the boss by the time it comes to the next election. Considering Boris Johnson had to hide in a fridge from a reporter with adequate journalist skills, he’ll really struggle against several million people with enhanced strength, defence, shield and magic abilities. Health Secretary and Jimmy Neutron’s thick twin Matt Hancock has declared that the UK is well prepared to deal with the rapidly spreading Coronavirus, which means he’s spent a lot of public money getting someone to design an app that tells you when you’ve died from it.

Over in opposition town there are now just three contenders left in the Labour leadership race after Jess Phillips’ favourite Jess Phillips Jess Phillips dropped out, saying that she had to be honest with herself and say that the next leader had to be able to unite the party and that leader wasn’t her, Jess Phillips. Now she can focus on spending more time telling everyone if it had been her, she’d have been the best at it. That leaves Dora The Explorer Lisa Nandy, who is through to the final and round and who said that the UK should look to Catalonia for lessons on how to defeat Scottish nationalism, which would help Labour reclaim their highland seats but by terrifying violent force and oppression. No wait, actually, knowing the Scots, no, no it really, really wouldn’t. Keir Starmer aka smart cheese string, has also got into the final round, and is vowing to end the Westminster monopoly, which is tricky as then you’d go straight from Bow Street to Pentonville Road, unless you land in community chest, the electric company or in jail. Rebecca hyphen hyphen Long hyphen Bailey hyphen is close to qualifying after being backed by trade union Unite though several anonymous MPs have told the press they’d leave the party if she won,  which shows she’s definitely the candidate to unite the party but only because the ones that are left after she gets in might actually get on with each other. Then hanging on is Emily Thornberry, someone who I assume would swear in front of kids because they have to learn sometime, but she still needs more Constituency Labour Party groups to back her. But she has also caused anger in Scottish politics after declaring at a hustings that she hates the SNP and thinks they are Tories in nationalist clothing, which is a silly thing to say as most of the Tories are already Tories in nationalist clothing.

Events have taken place to mark 75 years since Auschwitz was liberated. Boris Johnson said he felt a deep sense of shame that anti-Semitism continued in the UK today, but obviously not that deep or he’d have expelled three of his new MPs already. This week the government will be deciding whether to allow Huawei to suppy elements of the 5G network. The telecommunications giant are insisting they would never take orders from the Chinese Government but if that’s true, how to any Chinese state officials buy things online? Plus the NHS funding bill is being debated as I record which Matt Hancock says will inject the largest and longest cash settlement ever granted to the NHS, but doesn’t say if it’ll get a bed while it has the injection or will have to sit in the corridor while it waits to be seen by a number of extra nurses that are actually already there and busy with other things.

And lastly the Doomsday clock has moved to just 100 seconds to midnight meaning that according to scientists we are now closer to catastrophe than we ever have been since its creation in 1947. Although it was set at 7 minutes to midnight when it started and has gone back and forth since then, so actually I think they need to get someone to check it or at least replace its batteries. What about swapping it for a 12 hour clock, then we’re just nearly at midday and soon we can all chill and have lunch?

ADMIN

Howdy howdy, lets get rowdy. It has not been an exciting week of politics has it? Instead it’s all been coronavirus related which I think you can survive by just popping a lime in your mouth. Ha! The joke everyone’s done this week but someone wrote a blog about how it’s a hugely unoriginal joke but credited me as the first writer of it in a tweet back in 2013. So apparently coronavirus isn’t new at all but is making a comeback which means it’ll probably just do the same old hits and a few tv appearances before disappointing everyone and slinking off into obscurity again. I do wonder if I need to go back through my tweets in 2013 and see what else I predicted just in-case. This is the last Partly Political Broadcast that is recorded and edited from inside the EU which is odd isn’t it? Sure we’ll be in the transition period next week, but I’m hoping now we’ll be free from all the bureaucracy of unelected officials that aren’t all the unelected officials that we have in the monarchy or the Lords, just you know other ones that eat nice things and have better weather and were, in large part, elected, that maybe, just maybe this podcast can get some sweet deals with listeners in, er, I dunno, the Faroe Islands. Or maybe the US, where I’ll have to make some sacrifices by increasing the working hours I do on this show, reducing the holiday and probably pouring chlorine over my microphone which will cause me to have weird flashbacks about having to swim in my pajamas in order to pick up a brick. Something that feels like a nightmare anyway. It’s very rare, what with me living near a big road in North London, that I’ll suddenly find myself in my pajamas with a need to dive to the bottom of a watery space to collect building materials. What were they teaching us as kids? Or was it very forward-thinking climate change disaster survival? In the future, when everything is flooded and building work is more hazardous and er, clothing is more relaxed because we’ve all stopped giving a shit as we’re too busy fighting robot tigers. Who knows? What was I talking about? Yes, last week of EU times. I sort of feel I should do something like eat more cheese that I like or repeatedly say chorizo like an arsehole or something. Mini Douieb gets taught 1-10 in different languages at the Diddy Dance class she goes to, and she’s started telling us that she can count in Spinach, before vaguely saying ‘uno, dos, tres’ etc etc, which is both adorable that in her mind there is a land of Spinach where they have their own language, perhaps to warn each other of Popeye attacks, who knows? But also a bit sad as she’s learning it just before we’re never allowed in Spain again. No, not because of Brexit, I just shouldn’t have sent all those letters to the Spanish government threatening them that me and the kid will eat them in a quiche.

So yes, welcome back to a weird, not all that much to talk about episode but I’m pleased you’re here anyway. God, what we’d have given for one of these weeks last year eh? Oh well. But look, while you’re here, this show has now fallen off the Apple Podcast charts which I think means we’re in pod limbo, so if you fancy getting us back on there by recommending someone you know have a listen, please do that and thanks to those of you that have been. It is tricky as this is on the comedy charts even though it’s not all comedy and it’s on the news charts even though it’s not all news, so I guess it’s probably just annoying two groups of people so successfully they aren’t subscribing. Win! But yes, any recommending to others is appreciated, as is donating to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro or patreon.com/parpolbro sites or even writing a nice review on one of them podcast homes that you visit to steal its audio children from.

Other admin this week, the kids politics show I’ve been touring for the last year or so with Tatton Spiller from Simple Politics, is starting its 2020 run on February the 8^th at the Pegasus Theatre in Oxford, followed by Greenwich Theatre on 18^th Feb, West End Centre in Aldershot on 21^st, then loads more from March onwards including Chorley, Helmsley, and the British Library which sounds fancy. I know you’re all bored of politics really but this show has jokes in it, and is suitable for everyone aged 7+. Links will be in the pod blurb as per always.

This week’s show has a chat with geopolitics expert from the US Reconsider podcast Xander Snyder all about US things and global politics things in general, plus a mini-look at the Labour leadership. I know there should be a Brexit Fallout this week but I mean, there’s not all that much to say apart from a hope that it all somehow turns out ok, despite me being 99.9% that Johnson has absolutely no idea what to do next which means we could end up with an incredibly soft Brexit as he just sort of keels over and goes for the easy option, or a no deal as he charges out, clueless as to how to handle things and that’s when you realise NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE 2016. NOTHING. So we may as well talk about something else as I haven’t the energy to just do rain dances between now and Friday so that collapsed lung Nigel Farage gets pneumonia. Have it:

INTERVIEW WITH XANDER

It’s always been clear that the American view of the rest of the world can be a bit confusing for the rest of us, and yes, I understand that I’m saying that as a citizen of a country who still thinks it’s a mouse that can roar despite purposefully walking into a trap announcing that actually this bleeding to death will definitely lead to more cheese for all of us. But it’s often noted that the US baseball World Series only actually has American teams in it, somehow having decided that the rest of Earth doesn’t need to be included in this global competition. Yet when it comes to domestic politics in America, the whole rest of the world is automatically included with little say and little option for competition. In the first few weeks of this year, President and what if global hypercolor went out of business because they experimented on people Donald Trump, has had tangles with Iran and China all the while berating people who are concerned that the world is on fire an odd complaint when its coming from a man who always looks like he’s spent his life standing too close to one. The UK is directly affected by US policy at the moment, having been warned off taxing big US tech firms while insisting the UK is top of the list to trade with a country whose leader believes in America First. So yes, it’s in our and well everyone around the world’s interests to know about American politics, such as just what is happening with Trump’s impeachment trial and will it make any difference about anything and just which of the potential Democratic nominees might challenge Trump’s top spot. Will it be the man who looks like someone wearing make-up and talcum powder to make them look old for an amateur theatre production Joe Biden, who represents the sort of politics voters rejected to vote for Trump instead in 2016, Bernie Sanders, an socialist Doc Brown of the kind that just lost to a lying populist in the UK and Elizabeth Warren, a woman which sadly is enough for her to be considered un-voteable in various states that seem to have evolved straight from Margaret Atwood’s mind. Evolved is probably the wrong word, to be fair. Will this year bring big change to the US politically, or not? And how will the world be affected, other than maybe just being calmer in general if everyone knows they could be waking up in the morning not expecting to have to backtrack through a series of irate toilet tweets to find out why World War 3 has started?

So, this week I spoke to Xander Snyder. Xander has worked as a geopolitical analyst for Geopolitical Futures, an online publication that analyzes and forecasts the course of global events. He now co-hosts his own podcast and site called Reconsider Media, all about helping to find common political by providing people with all the information but no want to tell them what to think. So Xander was the perfect person to ask, what we need to know about US politics, current Geopolitics, and ways that might allow political divisions to heal worldwide. Xander was so well informed and so interesting to speak to, that, as you’ll hear, some of my questions where woefully prepared in comparison to his answers, and at one point I just completely forgot that Joe Biden exists. So excuse the noises that me, this idiot, makes throughout, but I very much hope you’ll enjoy all of Xander’s fascinating chat. Here he is:

And we’ll be back with Xander in a minute but first…

LABOUR LEADERSHIP

I’ve not said all that much about the Labour leadership on this podcast so far, because let’s face it, it’s going on until April, I can’t be bothered to write descriptions for everyone doing all of it and I didn’t want to waste it as a subject too soon. I mean look, what’s the news this week? Tech taxes, world economic forums blah blah blah, who knows what it’ll be like after this week when the government has banned everyone from saying Brexit, when the new BBC director general is somehow Stanley Johnson and every show is him doing 1970’s racial slurs and when the new budget involves no one getting any money except a pal of Boris’s who puts pop-up bars inside council houses where people are still living in them but are forced to stay outside everyday till the restaurant closes otherwise they’re just being anti-social. So really I should save Labour leadership stuff for when its needed but it turns out in a week where the biggest news was Sajid Javid holding up a 50p coin like he’d never seen one before and was dreaming about all the sweets he could buy with it, or all the arcade games he could play, let’s at least have a look at what it is that’s going on.

So, at the mo, the potential candidates for the next round of ‘well if they had anyone else in charge they’d win’ are Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long Bailey, Emily Thornberry and Lisa Nandy. Meanwhile running for deputy there’s Rosena Allin-Khan, Richard Burgon, Dawn Butler, Ian Murray and Angela Rayner. First up there was nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party and the European Parliamentary Labour Party which closed on January 13^th, between Jan 15^th and 14^th February constituency parties and affiliates can say who their favourite is, just in time for Valentines, oo-wee. And then on the 21^st February all the members and people who paid £25 and became a supporter can all vote until the 2^nd April. Sure, why rush? It’s not as if Labour can do anything to defeat any of the majority Conservative government’s votes anyway, may as well take their sweet ass time choosing whose likely to survive 5 depressing years without someone digging up something from their past that seems to show they once killed an endangered bird with a dropkick or something.

The issue is, what do Labour want to be next? Should they go more centrist? Something that the Lib Dem election battering seems to suggest isn’t exactly a popular route or stick to socialism something that was popular in 2017, but then wasn’t with voters in 2019 as apparently there was too much of it. Do they do socialism but with a bit less, or a takeaway box for later when you can’t finish it? Or was it still popular but they just didn’t like the leader so much it put them off? Do they keep the manifesto style but with a new face? Or was all of it Brexit which now isn’t an issue and it won’t matter what they do, they won’t be Boris Johnson so maybe it’ll be a breeze even if they just let a potato win? Though to be fair, everyone likes potatoes, so that’s probably not a bad idea. Do they finally need a female leader? Or just an 80s videogame character male one? Or has what’s been missing throughout been someone who’s willing to say ‘actually the entire system has been shit and we need something new, voter reform and a change in how we do everything in order to tackle the changing nature of jobs, climate change and us only being able to trade with Malta.’

I’ll go into all the candidates in a few weeks’ time but what is already clear is that everyone is being labelled as being centrist or left or right of the party, but so far, all of them have said and proposed things that mean they’re not as easy to pinpoint as that. Rebecca Long Bailey is supposedly the continuity Corbyn candidate, but she’s made some tricky comments on abortion limits. Lisa Nandy in her party history and a number of things she’s said, is to the more centre, centre right of the party but also wants to target big businesses to get them to pay a proper living wage. Keir Starmer is seen as centrist but backed Corbyn throughout his leadership and is also proposing some very socialist changes and Emily Thornberry’s housing change proposals are, as she says, more radical than Corbyn but then she also wants to keep Trident because maybe all the new social housing she wants have bunkers underneath them?

What is interesting is that CLP membership has increased a lot since December 12^th which means while those new members can’t vote in the CLP nominations, they can vote in the membership ones but reports are saying lots have joined to vote against the more left wing candidates, people who left under Corbyn, but are now back, and were hoping for Jess Philips but now may vote for Starmer or Nandy. But then the existing membership is very pro on keeping the party to the left, and Momentum are backing Rebecca Long-Bailey. So it’s hard to say who will come out on top and then how that may work when the leader comes to pick a new cabinet and wants to keep all members on board. It’s always sad Labour is a broad church, but with each new swing of the party it becomes more like a fat cathedral full of people that know they don’t like what the Conservatives are doing but hate what each other are doing even more. It’s looking likely that Thornberry will be out in this round, leaving Nandy, Starmer and Long-Bailey, and that for the Deputy it’ll likely be Rayner, Butler and Burgeon through to the finals. It’d just be nice if whoever wins, everyone says, cool, let’s give that a go and back them for five years because hey, what else are we going to do, I mean, look at Ed Davey, really? Hahahaha and whoever the Labour leader is, they have to be considerably better than having a Prime Minister who is basically the mind of a conceited 11 year-old popped into a bean bag.

And now, back to Xander…

INTERVIEW WITH XANDER PART 2

Thanks so much to Xander for that, and to Luciano at Oscar Hamilton for helping arrange it. Xander can be found on Twitter @XanderSnyderX and his podcast, website and all blogs at Reconsider Media can be found at reconsidermedia.com as well as all those usual podcast outlets where you might even listen to this show on.

You have been sending in some amazing suggestions for interviewees lately and I bow to your suggestive abilities. No wait, that sounds wrong. Anyway, I’ve got a few lined up but still more please, still more. There’s five years-worth to fill, so let me know what you’d like to hear more about, who you’d like to hear be poorly interviewed by me, and you can do all that @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast facebook page, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or why not have your suggestion engraved on a commemorative 50p coin and with the potential for it to circulate round to me taking years and years, as I’m trying to wrestle someone for it so I can add it to the scrap metal pile for smelting weapons with in the post-apocalyptic desert wasteland we reside in, I’ll glance at your suggestion and think, oh that might’ve been good if they weren’t eaten by a giant cockroach. So as always, probably just best to email isn’t it?

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Ta muchly to you and your goddamn crew for tuning in and remember, should you actually enjoy listening to this rather than, you know, persevering through it week in week out as some sort of self-inflicted punishment for all those ills you did, yeah we know exactly what you did, we’re all aware. But if this isn’t aural flagellation for you because that library book you never returned was the reason your local library shut down, that one book, and that biscuit you stole from that man in the café was the beginning of his descent as he questioned his own sanity when he was one biscuit less than he thought, then please do recommend the show to other people what you like and what like you, post about it on your socials, aggressively send the links to people, shout about it in the park, and maybe also review it on Apple Podcasts or elsewhere and donate to the ko-fi or patreon too.

Thanks, as always to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik for all the musics and Kat Day who does all the linear liner notes.

This will be back next week with the first PPB released outside the European Union meaning that you will of course listen to it exactly the same as always but feel excited about this time next year when you’ll be tuning in on all your devices that haven’t been PAT tested correctly and may explode in your ears.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was brought to you by Leo Varadker’s No-Evo Soccer, a brand new type of football game where you can pit teams of millions against teams of less millions on a pitch the size of Luxembourg. Where’s the ball? No one knows, is it even here? Maybe it’s been stolen by Russia. Does your team have the negotiating skills and sheer numbers to successfully score a goal or at least discuss how goals may be scored in the future against your opponents? No Evo Soccer, the power of trading unions but also you know, kicky stuff.

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