Episode 52

Released on Tuesday, March 21st, 2017.

Episode 52

Episode 52 – This week’s guest is multi-Paralypmic gold medal champion, campaigner and crossbench peer Tanni Grey-Thompson (@tanni_gt), there is also Brexit stuff, Trump stuff, the PPB Question of the week returns and Tiernan takes a look at Dutch and Indian elections.

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Further Reading


Transcript

Hello and welcome to Partly Political Broadcast episode 52! I’m Tiernan Douieb and as former chancellor of the exchequer and Eugene Tooms stunt double George Osborne has now become the editor of the Evening Standard newspaper, I would like to announce my new job as editor of monthly magazine Parking Review. Now you’re probably thinking that I have no experience of journalism nor am I parking specialist, but I’ll have you know Trump supporting trolls on social media are constantly saying I’m stuck in my safe space so I think I’m made for the job.

Yes it turns out destroying the entire British economy is high on the what employers want list as George Osborne now has six jobs in some sort of desperate attempt to ensure that even post cabinet he can keep taking jobs away from hardworking people. A big criticism is that Osborne has received the job despite lack of journalistic experience, but with all the quantitative easing he did as chancellor to help bankers, he’s pretty capable of printing lots of paper that’s completely devoid of usefulness for most people. Considering how upset many are about Gideon’s new job it seems in both the economy and the Standard Osborne is pivotal in lowering interest rates.

Apart from George Osborne who’ll probably balance being an MP and an Evening Standard Editor, investment manager at Blackrock, public speaker for Washington Speaker Bureau, Kissinger Fellow, Northern Powerhouse Chairman and lead inspiration for the TV series V by being massively shit at all of them then writing a terrible editorial about it – the rest of the Conservative Party weren’t having a fun week last week. Chancellor Philip Hammond may soon be looking for a new job too, after u-turning on his budget policy to increase national insurance contributions for the self employed just a week after he announced it. By going back on this policy it now leaves a £2bn funding debt in the budget plan, a black hole that needs filling with something more than Hammond’s grey head as he tries to find somewhere to bury it. Maybe the Evening Standard can do one of their fundraising schemes? Meanwhile the Electoral Commission have fined the Conservatives £70,000 after an investigation mainly started by Channel 4 showed they failed to declare nearly £300,000 in campaign spending. 11 police forces have referred Conservative MPs to the Crown Prosecution services which could cause the overturning of election results or more by-elections, which is good as otherwise the Conservatives main concern over the Electoral Commission’s fine would’ve been what notes to pay it in petty cash with.

Secretary of State For Exiting The European Union David Davis told a parliamentary panel on Brexit that there was no government plan if they get no deal from the EU. He suspect tariffs would raise on food, drink and things non-lizard people need and had no clue about pass porting rights for businesses or EU health cards for British citizens travelling or living there. I bet David Davis likes to tell his family he is treating them to a mystery trip, gets them all in the car, drives into the middle of nowhere then blames them for not knowing where they were going or packing provisions when they get horribly lost.
But it doesn’t matter now as Theresa May’s spokesperson informed press that Article 50 will be triggered on March 29th, in line with the Ice Queen’s long term plans of destroying spring and eventually killing Aslan.

Across the pond Hate Gibbon President Trump had his all new not at all improved travel ban blocked by a Hawaiian judge prompting many of Donald’s supporters to exclaim online that they should send all refugees to Hawaii, which is by far the nicest thing they’ve ever suggested. Yes after escaping a war zone and being subject to such prejudice they probably could use a luxury holiday. Meanwhile Trump refused to shake Angela Merkel’s hand during his meeting with the Chancellor of Germany because as we all know he has tremendous respect for women. Merkel apparently read a Playboy interview with Trump from 1994 in order to prepare for the meeting. Makes sense. What other publication would give you such in depth knowledge of dealing with a massive fake boob?

Oh and the Labour party are infighting again but I guess at least they’re trying to be an opposition against someone eh even if it is sadly themselves, yet again.

So here I am, episode 52 and there you are still listening like bloody champs, undeterred by me having to record last week’s show under an unfeasibly warm duvet in the North East. Well this week’s show has no duvet related content although as per usual the political climate is full of sheets and it appears for many people they are having to get in a bed that someone else made a mess in. So a very exciting guest on this week’s show. But firstly a big thanks to Olivia who donated to the ko-fi page at ko-fi.com/parpolbro and Daniel who became a patreon at Patreon.com/parpolbro and if any of you would like to head to those pages and throw some dosh my way it’ll mean I can avoid unnecessary featherdown recording studios for the near future. I’ve finally sorted out when I’ll be recording a video for the Patreon which turns out is on March 29th, same day as the Article 50 triggering. So yes, two era changing happenings in one day that with both, a large amount of the people didn’t want. Also if you do donate to the ko-fi account, John who donated last week has his donation held for several days because he’d mentioned he liked the ISIS so good they named it twice joke about Trump that I did two episodes ago and paypal thought he might be a threat. Because as you know, the main way these terror attacks are organised is through messages on donations to obscure podcasts obviously. So feel free to donate mentioning various offensive or concerning terms and we’ll see just how good the MI5 or CIA are. That way it’s not only useful to me, but very useful to the safety of our society. Or you know, a great way to get us all arrested.

Right, other admin this week. The #trypod initiative seems to be working, for this show anyway, so if you’d like to recommend this show to other people do, and if you’re on Twitter why not stick the #trypod hashtag on it to join in with March being the month to get more listeners to the world of podcasts. My trypod’s for this week are lots of podcasts I’ve also been on and one I wish I was one. So the Lolitics podcast which is political comedian Chris Coltrane’s monthly podcast of his live shows in Camden. I’m on a fair few of them too. Also the Box Set Pod where they discuss various TV shows. The most recent one which I’m yet to catch up on is on Girls. I presume that’s the telly show and not just an hour of confused men. Also Worst Foot Forward which is very funny comedian Ben Van Der Velde’s podcast about the worst ever of that category. The week I was on was protests. They have had tons of much better comedians on there too. And lastly The Bugle which hopefully you all listen to anyway. The granddaddy of political comedy podcasts. Now without John Oliver but Andy Zaltzman instead gets excellent guests on to fill the gap and Andy’s wonderfully surreal political humour constantly makes me laugh. On the subject of podcasts, if you like, please vote for this show in the British Podcast Awards Listener’s Choice category. I’m fairly sure it won’t win but stranger things have happened and so is a season two of stranger things so I may as well ask. Head to britishpodcastawards.com/vote and pop Partly Political Broadcast in the box and you never know I might win whatever it is you can win. Probably an overly warm duvet knowing my luck. Oh and do give the show a review on iTunes or Stitcher or in some sky writing if you like.

Last thing I always forget to mention this as it’s a me thing rather than a podcast thing, but if you fancy hearing me do stand-up live in your ears straight from my face then join my mailing list at www.tiernandouieb.co.uk on the contact page or the bottom of any page. I only send them out once a month or more often if there’s something specific and last minute to let you know about, and I fill them with nonsense, links you probably don’t want and any good gigs I’m doing. I could really do with 4 more subscribers just so it creates a nice rounded number and an unnecessary part of my psyche I don’t understand can feel minutely calmer.

Ok! So on this week’s show I speak to multi gold medal winning, campaigner and crossbench peer the amazing Tanni Grey Thompson. I’m so very chuffed to have her on the show and I asked her about disability rights, sports investment and what exactly peers do and she gave brilliant answers to all those things. Also some Trump stuff, some Brexit stuff, a look at how the Netherlands told a far right replicant to fuck right off, and the return of the question of the week. But, phew, first there is of course, this:

HEADLINES

Conservative Electoral Fraud

So it seems the Conservative Party are guilty of failing to declare £275,813 of spending on their 2015 election campaign. You know, the one they won, proving that whole phrase about cheaters completely wrong. They also failed to keep their records for explaining the amounts they invoiced to three 2014 by-election candidates, because you know it’s so hard when you’re a main political party with proper resources to not delete an excel spread sheet or not find a shoebox to stuff all those receipts in. Yes, I’m assuming they do their expenses like I do mine, so judge away, but I’ve definitely never lost a whole batch of them so maybe I should give the Tories some tips. So this lack of records and failure to declare expenses contravene three Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act codes and the Electoral Commission states that £118,124 of the amount was recorded incorrectly as party spending rather than individual candidate spending. Remember the 2015 Conservative Battlebus? The blue megabus that had ‘a better future for you, your family and Britain’ on one side, a hilariously incorrect message with hindsight, and Vote For Change on the other promising that’s all you’d have in your pockets if you voted for them? Well that was a party bus used to promote individual candidates. The Electoral Commission concluded they was a realistic prospect that this enabled candidates to gain financial advantage over opponents because nothing swings voters like a big blue bus which in the seat Farage was aiming for in South Thanet, probably would’ve swayed a few of his voters because let’s face it, I doubt they require much persuasion about anything. 11 police forces have submitted files to the Crown Prosecution Service, and Tory Treasurer Simon Day has been referred to Scotland Yard and not in a good ‘hey why doesn’t he do your accounts way’. Of course the Conservatives say it’s all administrative error, an excuse they also used in 2008 when they registered £47,000 in donations from the teenage daughter of a foreign arms dealer, and in 2015 when Northampton Conservatives failed to register £10,000 of donations for MP David Mackintosh’s election fund. May keeps reminding us that we shouldn’t trust Labour with the economy but it seems you can’t trust the Conservatives with admin which is way more damning. Even I can do admin and I keep my receipts in a shoebox. So we’ll have to wait and see what happens but it’s a pretty big deal if the Conservatives were misusing funds to give them an electoral advantage. If it turns out to be deliberate, that could be 11 seats up for by elections or a sudden general election. Then again it could be all, as BBC Political reporter Laura Kuenssberg tweeted ‘election expenses mistakes.’ Sure, just like the Bernie Madoff mistake. Or the Enron mistake. In fact if any of you don’t mind me making the odd mistake, do send your credit card details to the usual addresses and I’ll endeavour to make a lot of mistakes using your account.

While I have no idea where to begin with the story that former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is now editor of the Evening Standard, I know that due to his total lack of journalistic experience, he wouldn’t know either. Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian Oligargh who owns the Independent, the completely unwatched because it looks like it was all filmed on a camera your dad bought in 1992 London Live and the Evening Standard has announced George as the new editor of the latter replacing Sarah Sands, a mate of Boris Johnson and someone’s who’s name sounds like a warning that a theatre is on fire. Perhaps this is a tale about how anyone can do anything regardless of skill, as long as they’re rich, or maybe it’s an investigative piece on how karma is dead. But while I’m curious as to whether Osborne’s editing style will have the paper overrun with uppercase while lowercase goes neglected, most of it in the gutter and loads and loads of white lines, or whether it’s right that the only paper that ruins the idea of a free press now has an even more obvious political bias than it already had when it backed Zach Goldsmith’s mayoral campaign despite it being more dog whistle than a sheepdog trial championships, but the biggest issue right now is that Osborne is still an MP. Is it remotely possible for him to edit the Standard, manage investment at Blackrock, give speeches in Washington and even remember the people of Tatton, his constituency, exist? Though to be fair Osborne often looks like he’s on the sort of drugs that’d make it seem possible. To be more fair, the people of Tatton probably weren’t sure what he did for them in the first place. There are three investigations into Osborne’s new job conflicting with his old one. One by the Committee in Standards on Public Life, one by the parliamentary commissioner for standards and one into the Whitehall body that approves jobs for ex-ministers. In Parliament Osborne said that his job as ES editor would ‘enhance’ parliament, an ill choice of words considering past stories about him. A number of Conservative MPs backed him including Sir Oliver Letwin who pointed out that no one complained when Osborne was an MP at the same time as being Chancellor of the Exchequer. Yeah but mate, Headline! Look how that ended up. Here’s my hot take: As Osborne doesn’t have any experience in doing it, it’s up to those investigations to thoroughly check the proof.

In a way it’s lucky Theresa May is in politics rather than say, game shows, because her catchphrases would really not do well there. ‘That’s right ladies and gentlemen you know what they say, Brexit means….’ And now to add to that is ‘Now is not the time’. May used it several times over the weekend to show that she would reject a second Scottish Independence Referendum before Brexit, ignoring that they probably wouldn’t have it right now as these things take a little while. They can’t all be rushed through like the Brexit one. May’s reasoning is that it would be unfair to the people of Scotland that they would be being asked to make a crucial decision without the information they need to make that decision. Now before you fall off your chair laughing, either this is so self aware and it means there’s some level of learning that’s happened from Brexit or as is more likely the more I realise people really aren’t that capable of self awareness often, Theresa May is completely unaware of the hypocrisy of trying to get Scotland to avoid a referendum on a union based on lack of information as we leave a union due to a vote based on a lack of information. May hasn’t ruled out a referendum after Brexit though and First Minister for Scotland Nicola Sturgeon has said that they are prepared to wait. So great choice for Scotland if they wait for Brexit to happen. Either stay in a union that doesn’t listen to you and has made decisions you wouldn’t that you have to stick by, or leave and still be out of the European Union and with even less stuff than before. Scottish parliament vote this week on whether they should have a second referendum or not. If they vote for one then as Nicola Sturgeon told the SNP conference last week Scotland’s future is in Scotland’s hands which is fairly strong catchphrase compared to the Prime Minister’s. Then again maybe I’m being unfair and maybe when Theresa May said ‘now is not the time’ it was far more self aware meaning that now is lot more like pre-1707 when Scotland was it’s own country because Brexit didn’t mean anything to them.

INTERVIEW PART 1

So this week’s interview is a bit of a different one as usually I talk to someone about one specific issue for ages. However Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson is so actively involved with so many campaigns and with so many areas of politics, that I felt that I had to ask her about a number of issues. As I’m sure many of you will know, Tanni has had an incredible career in wheelchair racing winning 11 paralympic gold medals and two World Championship golds, as well as many others that considering how we talk about medals I should mention but I don’t have time! Basically if things get really difficult after Brexit, she can probably melt them down and bail us all out. She was made a Dame in 2005, retired from sport in 2007, was made a life peer in the House of Lords in 2010 and was named one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK by Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. Tanni has sat on the board for the National Disability Council, the Sports Council, the Mission 2012 panel and the English Lottery Awards panel and she is currently on the board for the London Marathon, Transport for London, the London Legacy Development Corporation, ukactive and is the patron for so many charities I feel like we should set up a sponsorship donation page so she can have a weekend off. I’m not saying that I’m too unhealthy to speak to such a champion sportswoman but just reading through the list of all the important areas Tanni is involved in makes me exhausted. She’s a very inspirational person indeed.

So I was honoured, yes honoured to have Tanni agree to let me chat to her in a rare spare hour she had. As you can probably hear in my questions I’d remember every now and then that I’ve watched Tanni on the TV since I was a teenager and would completely mess up what I was saying. So apologies for the odd incoherent sentence, but all of Tanni’s answers are fascinating and clear. Also I promise I didn’t mean to talk about Brexit much but of course, it barged its way in like Boris Johnson at a Japanese schoolchildren’s rugby match. Anyway, much is discussed and so I’m very pleased to bring this chat to your ears.
Enjoy:

We’ll be back with Tanni in a minute but there’s been some stuff going on in that there world:

PARTLY GLOBAL BROADCAST

It seems having a populist with stupid hair in America isn’t a great advert for having one of those anywhere else. Last week in their general election the Netherlands shunned now I guess unpopulist and far right xenophobe Geert Wilders, and instead chose to re-elect centre right Leader of the People’s Party For Democracy and Freedom Mark Rutte as their prime minister. Not that dissimilar to our 2015 elections with the Tories and UKIP. But I mean, the Netherlands isn’t that far away and Dutch for thank you is dank u, so there’s bounds to be some similarities. But in fact despite what a lot of British press suggested, Wilders was never a front runner and the real story in the Netherlands wasn’t that the man who looked like Mr Freeze had a lovechild with Doc Brown, but more that with an 82% turnout in the vote, the Dutch Labor party didn’t went from 38 seats to just nine, a huge difference from the 2012 election. The diminishing of the red lit area would suggest that left wing European politics has popped its clogs, but then the Greens took two seats including Amsterdam and the centrist party D66 took 3. Even Mark Rutte’s winning party the PVV lost nine seats and while Geert Wilders didn’t do as well as media expected, his party did gain 5 seats. Dutch Labor have some lessons to learn and they are looking to give their chairman who refuses to step down a vote of no confidence – sound familiar? – what seems most clear is that the Netherlands proportional voting system shows that there is no one national mood, that moderates are more popular than populists, and that actually pro-EU parties got more gains than anti-EU ones so there’ll be no Nexit anytime soon. Which is good for Netflix as I worry they’d have branding confusion. Where there is concern is that Wilders has already influenced national mood with his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and Rutte has expressed similar, if lesser rhetoric himself. Again, sound familiar? It’s almost as if a 45 minute flight from Southend airport doesn’t land you somewhere ideologically miles away. The hope is that with the rise of D66 and the Greens in the Netherlands, they can also influence Dutch politics. No that doesn’t sound familiar. You’re right. I guess that bit comes from the Germanic part. In France Le Pen’s ratings are not dissimilar to Wilders and his defeat in last week’s election won’t be great for her campaign, so it’s looking increasingly like a Macron victory in May. Great news for Europe but terrible news for making us and the US look like the worst again. Trust the French and the Dutch to be too cool to humour a current trend that’s popular everywhere else. Typical.

India

India has also had elections recently. I know! It’s almost as if our media only deems white western countries to be of importance! But it turns out that the state of Uttar Pradesh, an area so big and so populated that were it a country not a state it’d be the 5th biggest country in the world, has had an election that is pretty much on par with that of Trump or Brexit in it’s unexpectedness but because they Brexit’d ages ago no one in the UK seems to care. The Bharatiya Janata Party, who’s leader Narendra Modi is the current Prime Minister for India, won 80% of the state assembly and an absolute majority. This is seen as overwhelming support for Modi and his policies despite one of them being demonetizing 500 and 1000 rupee notes overnight supposedly to crack down on counterfeiting but ultimately leaving India with severe cash shortages. Modi is a Hindu nationalist and holds little favour with the Muslim Indian population, even more so now that he has appointed Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh someone who has made many hate speeches against Muslims, has criminal charges of rioting, attempt to murder and carrying deadly weapons amongst others and thinks that anyone who opposes yoga should leave India. So you know, pretty middle of the road kind of guy. Though maybe this is why Western media doesn’t bother with Indian politics because how on earth are we meant to grasp that someone can be charged for attempted murder and be so into yoga? What did someone do to make him that angry? Ruin his meditation with a wet willy?

Now I have no grasp of Indian politics at all, and hope to get someone on the politics to give us a 101 but what I do know is that son of a tea vendor and self made man Modi is riding on current anti-elite and anti-liberal agenda partly based on the corruption charges of the government before him and the huge wealth gap in the country. So self made man, he’s not got a great record on gender equality, he’s not exactly friendly with Muslims and he inflicts devastating policies without warning. Remind you of anyone? Though the major difference is it took Modi nine years to get a visa into America, something Trump would probably commend. And while Modi has admiration for Trump, he seems more than willing to fix connections with China too in order to bring back more global manufacturers to India. And now Uttar Pradesh was an utter whitewash against his opponents Modi can pretty much do what he likes until the elections in 2019, which it looks like he’ll win too.

And of course ulcer with a wig President of America Donald Trump. The week started with MSNBC saying someone had leaked Trump’s tax returns from 2005 to them, but only 2005 and nothing else and it didn’t happen to contain anything too exciting despite hope’s it’d be full of fines paid directly to Putin for everytime he said something he did was great in Vlad’s presence. Trump had written off $100m in business losses due to a tax loophole he used in the 1990s, and overall paid 25% tax rate which is lower than the 27.4% tax rate but for someone who boasted during his campaign that he was smart for not paying his taxes, that was fairly impressive in the way you’re impressed when your cat shits in the plant pot instead of it’s litter tray but at least that’s better than going on your bed like it’s done for years. There was quite a bit of speculation that Trump leaked the files himself as his 2005 tax return had to be clean for his wife Melania’s citizenship application as she needed 3 years of tax returns if married to an American citizen. 2003 and 2004 she submitted her own as she was single. In 2005 it was joint ones with Trump. So he had to play by the rules or he probably would’ve had to deport her as an illegal immigrant just 12 years later. Though adversely in fact the largest amount of federal income taxes Trump paid in 2005, $31m was paid under the alternative minimum tax, which he now wants to abolish to stop wealthy Americans paying no income tax. Trump boasted after the leak that he knows more about tax than any other US president has, but I suppose that’s because in order to defeat your enemy, you have to understand it.

Then the rest of the week he managed to make Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny who’s not much loved in Ireland, look good. How? Well because Kenny did a speech about how accepting America was of Irish immigrants as Trump stood sheepishly next to him. Then on Friday he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and as well as refusing to shake her hand, possibly because at 5’4” tall, hers would dwarf his tiny baby mitts, Trump also insinuated that the one thing Merkel and he had in common was that Obama had wire tapped both of them, referring to when their were reports the NSA had hacked her and her advisors phones and to Trump entirely making up that Obama ordered wire tapping for Trump tower. Yeah, so that’s like saying me and Kanye have something in common because I once dreamed I made a rap album. Oh and the wire tapping that was supposed to have been ordered by Trump, yeah well Press Secretary and angry baked bean Sean Spicer said it was carried out not by the NSA but by British GCHQ something that brought top secret GCHQ out of it’s usual spy silence to say was ‘utterly ridiculous’. Something they’d only say if it definitely wasn’t because they are top spies and trained like that, or more likely, because it definitely was. I mean why they’d want to bother is beyond me when they can just watch Fox and Friends and find out what he thinks anyway. Fox and Friends always sounds like a Disney film that’s devoid of all morals and at the end the good guy loses because the baddie can shout louder. Either way human dust brush and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is on a diplomatic trip to the US to say sorry for saying that Trump was lying when he lied because apparently you can set up a trade deal based entirely on arse kissing. Johnson will be meeting with Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway to presumably swap racist comments and creative writing tips with each other.

Oh and Trump has now played golf nine times in seven weeks, all costing the US taxpayer, and despite criticising Obama when he was president for spending a day playing golf instead of dealing with America’s problems. Spicer said Trump’s golfing is different to Obama’s because of how he uses the game golf to advance US interests. By that I assume he means Donald demonstrates to his friends how all the handicaps he’s giving the country will ruin its ranking as a global player. Lastly while cutting funding to meals on wheels, after school clubs, arts, the environment and pretty much anything you can imagine that requires having a heart to understand why it’s needed, Trump has upped the budget on nuclear weapons. He says this is because he will consider nuclear reaction if provoked. This week he got angry at Snoop Dogg for shooting someone dressed as a Trump clown in his latest music video. Yeah it’s been great knowing ya’ll.

Now back to Tanni:

INTERVIEW PART 2

Thank you so much to Tanni for speaking with me. You can find her Trump smashing Twitter @tanni_gt and her website is at tanni.co.uk. The people she advised following are Baroness Jane Campbell who’s on Twitter @bnsjanecampbell, Mik Scarlet at @mikscarlet and the brilliant Liz Carr who is @thelizcarr.

As always if you have someone you’d like me to interview or an issue you’d like me to find someone to interview about, please get in touch @parpolbro on Twitter, the parpolbro group on Facebook, partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com or now it’s Spring, four large smoke signal wafts, followed by three smaller ones, then two large ones but make sure it’s a clear day and you’re not too close or it’ll set my smoke alarm off and that bastard is so annoying to turn off.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

This week, with George Osborne’s new job as editor of the Evening Standard I asked you, the good people of the free world, what ridiculous second or third jobs politicians could you see other politicians getting?

@PrincessofVP
@ParPolBro Surely Corbyn should have a regular slot on Gardener’s Question Time.

@magicdarts
@ParPolBro all those identikit safe seat Home Counties Tories could set up an Uber style business to outsource & place pub bores.

@UnrealMcKay
@ParPolBro @TiernanDouieb Jeremy Corbyn could try being Leader Of The Opposition alongside his current rôle.

@socgmac
@ParPolBro Tony Blair as a peace envoy. Not in a million years.
Michael Hesseltine as a part time dog walker.

@lindaheap
@ParPolBro ok then I think Boris Johnston would probably make a good clown

@MattHossComedy Mar 19
More
@ParPolBro Trump essentially writes The Onion.

Alex Grace Boris Johnson as Foreign secretary? Oh hang on ……

James Ross Philip Hammond as a Hammond organ salesman

Michael Gove working as a conductor for Govia Thameslink. No wait. As a ventriloquist.
Priti Patel as the principal boy in any given Blackpool panto

Diane Abbot as a Franciscan Abbot. Jeremy Corbyn as a beekeeper.

Niki Di Palma Gove earning some pin money doing a bit of supply teaching.
Philip Alexander George Galloway as a children’s author.

@mrdavegill
@ParPolBro Well, Boris, Fox & Davis are doing a pretty good 3 Stooges reboot at the moment. And we could always use May as a scarecrow on the cliffs of Dover to keep the Europeans out. But we couldn’t use May on the other side of UK to keep Trump out, ‘cos she’d just roll over & make simpering puppy noises

@keirshiels
@ParPolBro Boris Johnson to become Executive Director of Relate. Jeremy Corbyn to be anything.

@budgie
@ParPolBro Oh my heavens, where to start? • Michael Gove to star in live action Pob movie • Boris Johnson to be stunt double for Trump. • Philip Hammond to run whelk stall, y’know, just to prove it one way or the other • Jeremy Hunt – Ambassador to the Arctic. • Corbyn – Doing the job that he has would be a fucking start • McDonnell – Accounts clerk (junior… no, more junior than that). • Nigel Farage – speaking shit for a living. No wait, you said an *additional* job.

BREXIT FALLOUT

The triggering of Article 50 has a date, and so let’s all act like concerned parents and hope that date doesn’t pre-empt a relationship full of broken promises and wasted time. March 29th, which is also adamant outspoken Remainer and former Prime Minister John Major’s birthday in the slyest fuck you from Theresa May I’ve ever seen. Yes, merely days after the clocks have gone forward, May will be turning them backwards dramatically more so and starting the process of the UK leaving the European Union within two years, so we’ll have left by March 29th 2019 though I can’t imagine anyone will come to our leaving do or that we’ll bother to turn up on our last day to train up Albania.

Then a number of things will happen. From the UK’s point of view, work will start on the Great Repeal Bill leaving the European Communities Act 1972, then turning thousands of EU laws into UK ones using 500 year old Henry VIII clauses to change old laws that have already been passed in parliament. They’re called Henry VIII laws because the law’s already been in Parliament so now it only has to go through government. It’s a Tudor policy. Geddit? No, I know that doesn’t really work. This does mean parliament doesn’t get to scrutinise it but it also means it won’t take as long as if they did. And why not rush re-installing laws that provide the fabric of British society? Meanwhile the EU aren’t really going to begin anything till after the French elections in May – typical French making everyone wait – then they’ll be negotiating with Britain about paying the Brexit Bill that we’ve already agreed to pay but are now being shitty about, agreeing EU citizens right to stay and British citizens rights in Europe, and making sure Ireland doesn’t all kick off. Easy right? I mean especially easy when David Davis told a parliamentary committee that he hasn’t really got a clue about what will happen with any of it, no guarantees about anything but that leaving without any deal at all is not as frightening as some people think. Well to be fair when, like Davis your hair resembles a cloud, it’s quite easy to have your head in it. Boris Johnson also said a no deal would be perfectly ok for Britain’s economy. Well sure, but only if he has some sort of secret plan to keep churning out bullshit like that so we can use it as self sufficient fuel.

Lastly the number of EU nationals registering as nurses in England has dropped by 92% since the Brexit referendum, with 2700 EU nurses leaving the NHS altogether in 2016. Well I suppose that makes sense. Many of those who wanted Brexit wanted it to hark back to the good old days. Well back then tons of people died due to insufficient healthcare, so I guess we’re nearly there. Nice work everyone.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast. Thanks again for listening. Do drop me a monthly quid or two at the patreon at patreon.com/parpolbro or a one off quid or two at the ko-fi.com/parpolbro. Give us a review on iTunes, vote for the show at the British Podcast Awards site and just think about the show from time to time when you’re in the throes of passion. That’s all I ask. Do drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the parpolbro group on Facebook which I’m trying to post interesting things on, including an article about French author Edourd Louis about the rise of the far right in France which is fascinating and not too long a read. Not like that piece about what’ll happen when the Queen dies. Did you read that? It’s called Operation London Bridge which is a terrible name for the plans for her death as it means they’ll be horribly overcrowded and half the events won’t happen. Or email me at Partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. The podcast will return next week when I’ll be saying ‘Welcome to Episode 53 of the partly political broadcast’ because you know that’s how I start every episode. Well not everyone with episode 53. Oh you get what I mean. Why are you making that condescending noise? Well be like that then. See if I care. Fine. Go away.

This week’s show was brought to you by the number 6 which is coincidentally the amount of jobs George Osborne currently has and also the minimum amount of swear words I usually use to precede his name.

Email Tiernan