Reform Government?

[00:00:00] The Why Curve, with Phil Dobbie and Roger Hearing. Triumphant in the local elections. All the polls say they're on the way to forming the next government. But who are Reform UK? We know they're anti-immigrant and anti-Europe. But what's their view on the Middle East? And the health service. And the tax system. And who are their supporters? Are they far right? And is this the party of just one man, Nigel Farage? What is this new force in British politics? The Why Curve.

[00:00:29] Never quite know, you know, is it Farage or Farage? It's Farage. It's Farage, no. Definitely, as in garage. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you see, up north you have a garage, so it should really be Nigel Farage if he wants to get the north. Yes, man of the people, absolutely. But who are they? Who is, well, we know who he is because he's been around forever. But it is a weird thing that we're now seriously thinking in two years, maybe, they're going to walk into Downing Street. And you think, well, it's odd. They are Donald Trump, aren't they?

[00:00:58] Basically, they are doing a good job. And you might detect a bit of bias. I do apologise for that today. But we're not on the BBC. Well, no, we're very, very unbiased on almost everything, aren't we? We are. But just looking at it objectively, they are Donald Trump in that they are trying to convince the common man to do stuff which is against their interests, which will somehow benefit the well-off who just happen to be the people who are running these parties.

[00:01:24] And you look through their policies and you go, well, OK, do you want to, for example, ease off regulation on landlords? Why would you want to do that? Well, maybe because they've got, you know, some of them have got substantial shareholdings in businesses which are property portfolios. But yet, yeah, they are popular. I mean, the thing is, if there must be something they're saying, is it just they're not like the others? Is that all it is? Or is it that there are some policies they have?

[00:01:51] I mean, attitudes perhaps more than policies, which really chime with people? Yeah, I don't think so. I think you're giving people too much credit there. I think we're in a situation, and you can see that because we have been through so many prime ministers in such a short period of time. We are now, you know, we're challenging Italy for being ungovernable because people just say, oh, we want change. I think if you ask reform voters to name three or four of their policies and they'll go, oh, we're going to stop the migrants. OK, how are they going to do that? And beyond that, what's the next policy?

[00:02:20] People don't know what the policies are. They are. They're just going, well, we don't feel happy with what's happening now because their wages are not keeping pace with inflation. They feel worse off than they were years ago. And so they're not happy with any government. They weren't happy with the Tories. Now they're not happy with Labour. So it's all just we want change. Yeah, but if he's got it. Let's just let these people have a go. Let's just have a go at running the country. And if it destroys the country in the process, well, at least we tried. And that seems to be the attitude of most people. But the thing is, they're going to be in government potentially.

[00:02:50] I mean, it's a strong possibility, perhaps no more than that. It's going to happen. And then, so, you know, we wake up in the morning and I say, well, what on earth are they actually going to do? Because there will be these things, these things in their intray. You know, are they far right? That's the interesting question. It's not only there's any doubt about it. They are going to be in power. Labour is not going to be delivered because we're an ungovernable country. And they will be in power. And they will. And the country will be even worse off as a result of it. And take my advice. Chuff off to Australia. That's what I'm doing. Yes. OK.

[00:03:20] Well, not all of us can do that. I thought it was mainly criminals we sent to Australia anyway. Yeah. I know nothing. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's talk to someone who has at least studied what it is that reform is and what it does and what it wants to do. And he's Dr. Vladimir Borton. He's a lecturer in politics at Oxford University. And he joins us now. So, Vlad, do you think it is just a simple case of, as we are seeing with populist policies, parties all over the world, that people are just thinking, look, we've tried everything else. It's not worked. Let's just give them a shot.

[00:03:50] I think that's a big part of the explanation. And I live here in Newcastle. And apart from Newcastle, most local authorities that had elections last week went to reform. Sunderland, Gateshead, South Tyneside. And this is after decades of voting Labour. So, I think there is a clear connection there between this illusionment with the current Labour

[00:04:15] government and a feeling that the government is not delivering on precisely what you mentioned, economic conditions, material living standards for ordinary people. And there is a shift in this direction. Not as much because people like reform. I don't think they know much about reform's economic policies, to be honest. Partly because reform doesn't like to talk about its economic policies.

[00:04:44] And we'll see maybe in a bit why. Also, the mainstream media doesn't talk enough about reform's policies and prefer to focus on their immigration. That's very much, Vlad, why we want to talk to you, because we want to sort of dig into this and say, well, the current polling suggests they might win the next election. So, it's reasonable to say, what on earth will they actually do? What are their policies? What is their politics? What is the colour of their politics? Before we get on to that, it's interesting being in the North East.

[00:05:13] Sorry, but it's interesting that you're in the North East and you're saying, you know, that there's a lot of support for reform up there. Because, of course, I know the North East quite well. There was a lot of support as well for Brexit in all of those places that you've just mentioned. As though it's the whole, well, let's blame the foreigner. Interesting, because in the North East, actually, I'd say they've got less migrants than most other parts of the country, but they seem to be most fearful of them. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:05:38] Actually, I think the areas, there was an interesting stat that came out yesterday or the day before, showing that reform mostly won in areas with over 80% population being white British. So, it's almost, it confirms what we know from sociology, political sociology, and other social science literature that people who don't interact with foreigners and immigrants

[00:06:06] are more likely to fear them and therefore vote for this kind of parties. You can see it even in London, the contrast between Hackney and Havering. Yes, Havering obviously went reform, as we know. And in other places, they went green, of course, so a completely different direction. But I suppose the point in all this, and picking up on what I was saying earlier, is that is this a reflection then of Brexit? This is a post-Brexit party and an anti-migrant party.

[00:06:35] And if you ask most people in the street, that probably were the only two things that they know that reform stands for. Yeah, absolutely. I think we've seen reform an example of what the literature has shown to be the two driving forces of far-right populism in recent years across the world, not just in the UK, not just in Europe. On the one hand, cultural grievances against immigration, against multiculturalism, against globalization more broadly,

[00:07:04] but also economic grievances against the precarity of life, against rising living costs, rising rents, and so on and so forth. And of course, we can't neatly separate these two. They interact with each other, no culture and economic grievances. And that's why reform is able to appeal to a cross-class coalition of voters. Both working-class voters disillusioned with the Labour Party,

[00:07:32] who are mostly driven by economic grievances, but also to a middle-class or, if you want, a petty bourgeois section of society that is mostly driven by cultural grievances, but also by economic grievances. Because small-medium enterprises have suffered a lot in the UK in the past few years because of the pandemic, because of the energy crisis on the background of the war in Ukraine, because of various policies,

[00:08:03] tax policies implemented by previous governments. And this is a social class that traditionally voted Conservative, but they felt abandoned by the Conservative Party, just like working-class voters have felt abandoned by the Labour Party. And they are also giving a big chunk of support to the Reform UK Party. And actually, most of their, let's say, party cater, their kind of rank-and-file members who join the party to stand in local elections,

[00:08:33] but also in general elections, tend to come from this class, from the petty bourgeoisie, not from the working class. So we know what they're against. I suppose that's what you're saying. They're against the current situation. They're against price rises. They're against migration, probably against better links with Europe. But what are they for? I mean, what is positive? What could a future Reform administration actually do? What policies? Well, let me answer that question,

[00:09:01] because they are for whatever stops all those things happening. So, you know, you look at the Reform UK website, stop the boats, secure and defend our borders, deport illegal migrants, scrap industrial relations reform. So they are against all of those things that they see, people see as being put in the way from them having a better life. So it is migration, but it's also regulation and tax.

[00:09:30] They are going to traverse this magical future where we all pay less tax, we have less regulation, and everyone is better off as a result of it, as though the tax wasn't needed, the regulations not needed. So just get rid of it. That's what they're for. They're for this dreamlike world where all of these things will be achieved. Vlad, is that really true? Is that all it is? Is there nothing else? To be honest, I think you hit a nail on the head there. If we look at their economic policy proposals

[00:09:59] from their manifesto in the 24 elections, we see a bunch of pretty standard neoliberal economic proposals. Tax cuts across the board, for example, reducing corporate tax from 25% to 15% within a space of three years. They want to cut taxes for SMEs. They want to virtually abolish inheritance tax. They want tax breaks for landlords.

[00:10:26] They want all this kind of deregulation of fossil fuel industry, of fracking in particular, which is interesting because fracking is mostly opposed by farmers, who are also one of the main constituencies of reform. So that's an interesting internal contradiction to see how it will play out. They want to deregulate the crypto industry, and they started to accept donations in crypto, which has been banned recently by the government.

[00:10:56] And interestingly, all these deregulation targets map very neatly with the kind of big donors that they have at the moment. Crypto... So that's interesting. What you're saying is they're a business party then, really, rather than anything else, at least in terms of what's pushing policy. Or not even just their donors, but themselves. So Nigel Farage had a farm, so obviously he wants to get rid of regulations

[00:11:25] about gentleman farmers and an inheritance tax. Richard Tice has substantial shareholdings in Quidnet, Tyson Investments, Quidnet Capital Partners, another company as well, and Enjoy Your Retirement Limited, which are all investment property firms. So obviously they are very keen that you should be able to deduct the interest payments on your mortgages, which is what they're proposing, because they want to pay less tax. So for all of these things, a bit like Donald Trump,

[00:11:54] we all know Donald Trump is doing rather better from his own policies, and so is his family. These guys are after the same thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm working now on a paper with a colleague from Edinburgh, Theo Bourgeron, who also co-authored a very interesting book on the financial interests that backed Brexit called Old Finance. And I've looked at the donations to Reform UK for the past five years,

[00:12:23] and 61% of their donations comes from people with investments in the fossil fuel or the mining industry. And this is reflected in their economic agenda. There's also a high share of donors from the real estate, like you mentioned earlier. Richard Tice is one of the big real estate developers in the UK. Their treasurer, Nick Candy, who's a former Tory,

[00:12:50] he just sold the most expensive property in the history of real estate in London. Now, a few weeks ago, he sold a house in London for £175 million. So these are the people leading the party, funding the party. Sometimes they are the same people because Richard Tice also donated to the party before he became a deputy leader. So you can see how these interests

[00:13:19] are mapping on the kind of policies they are putting forward. But Vlad, the interesting thing here, what you're talking about, obviously, is a kind of a rentier almost set up of people essentially making money from policy. But if you look, you call them far right earlier on, I think, or we did anyway. The far right traditionally has not been like that. It's been more angled towards seeing a lot of big businesses actually something to tackle on behalf of these people that they represent.

[00:13:49] It seems an odd mix, populism, but sort of far right, but not traditional far right. Yeah, that's a very interesting point. And I think there's a lot of historical comparative research that needs to be done on this. But if we look at the fascist parties of the 20th century, now both the fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany, they kind of, before coming into power, they use this superficial anti-capitalist, anti-big business rhetoric

[00:14:18] only to reinforce the domination of big monopolies when they came into power. So actually, the big cartels in Germany benefited immensely from the Nazis' rise to power. So there's something one thing they say rhetorically to mobilize the masses in their support. And then there's a very different thing they do once they get into power. At the same time, there is this clearly this Pujadist element, you know,

[00:14:49] the Pujad movement in France in the post-war era. I'm so glad you mentioned that, Vlad, because that was a name I was playing with earlier, thinking it sounded a bit close up in terms of political science. But Pujadism, I love that term. We should perhaps just explain a French 1950s politician who sort of represented shopkeepers, really, for a while. Yes, and this is what reform represents to some extent. And actually, in a paper

[00:15:17] that is currently under review with my co-author Aaron Reeves from LSE, we show that when their candidates in the 2024 general elections, almost 40% of them come from this kind of petty bourgeois background. Small business owners, shopkeepers, landlords, farmers. So they constitute if you're on the base or the core of the party. But the leadership of the party is very different. It comes from this kind of big business,

[00:15:47] finance capital, hedge funds, fossil fuel, and so on. So it's this kind of cross-class coalition between the Pujadist base but a big business capital leadership. But at a local level, I mean, that's the idea that you've got local business people who have been successful helping to run your local electorate is an appealing proposition to people, isn't it? It's like saying, well, yes, I've been successful,

[00:16:16] I'm here to help you through your lives as well and I know how stuff works because I've made money and I'm going to help you do the same. I mean, that's a winning combination. That's exactly the kind of social mobility narratives that they employ in presentations that we analyzed and we call it entrepreneurial performativity. So this idea that I succeeded so I'm entitled to run the country because I can run the country like I ran my business

[00:16:45] and make the country as successful as my business. And interestingly, this gives rise to certain conflict of interest. You know, I think in one of the councils they've been leading in Lancashire, they attempted to privatize the council care homes and one of the councillors reportedly is the owner of a private care home. So there is a direct material interest there as well.

[00:17:42] Yeah. the east, all kinds of things. What are those? Do we have any idea of how a reformed government would actually tackle any of that? Well, sorry to interrupt again. NHS, let me tell you, because they have basically said they are going to approve the NHS by working to redirect funding from the back office bloat back into frontline services. So the only problem with that is there was a University of York report last year, the Darcy Review,

[00:18:13] that basically said pure play managers make up less than 2% of the staff in the NHS. So most of the administrative function is done by staff who are doing other things, just like doctors, nurses, people saving lives. They're doing the paperwork as well. So that back office function is largely being done by people who are doing other stuff. Only 2% are pure play managers, whereas if you look across the broader economy, about 9.5% of the workforce are in what you'd call managerial functions. But even so, they're going to reduce that 2% by even more

[00:18:42] and still have a functioning NHS. They're going to do that on day one. So I look forward to all of these things happening. Yeah, but that's in a way kind of tinkering with it. I mean, there's a much bigger issue with something like the NHS. Well, it's not tinkering. That is their main proposal. That is what they're saying they're going to do to protect the NHS. Well, what is it's not tinkering? That's how they're going to save the NHS, Roger. Well, anyway, Vlad, what about the wider questions? I mean, you know, OK, maybe not NHS, but what about education? What about housing? You know, do we know anything about what they would do? Well, we know they want to introduce

[00:19:12] tax breaks for landlords and to deregulate housing permits, but there's no clear housing policy and there's no clear policy on most key sectors in society and in policymaking. For example, in their 2024 manifesto, they promised a lot of tax breaks and since then they had to withdraw some of those proposals. They've hired a head of policy in the person of James Orr. You might be

[00:19:41] familiar with him, a former corporate lawyer and then he became a professor of theology at Cambridge and now he heads their policy team and he's also one of the strongest links between Reform UK and Trump and MAGA. JD Vance called him, called Orr his British Sherpa. So, interestingly, James Orr brought a more, let's say, prudent approach

[00:20:11] to these tax cuts, acknowledging the fact that they would create a huge hole in the budget that they wouldn't be able to account for. But, interestingly, what the policies they scrapped were the policies that would have favoured the ordinary people. power. So, just one example, one of their flagship policies was to raise the income tax threshold from £12,000 a year to £20,000 a year,

[00:20:41] which, by the way, disproportionately benefited the richest households in Britain. But, nevertheless, they scrapped that policy. And, arguably, that was the only policy that was directly aimed at poorer households in the country. So, now, they really don't have anything to offer. They want, like you mentioned earlier, they want to scrap the Employment Rights Act introduced by the Labour government. So, they don't have

[00:21:10] any kind of vision for how to tackle the housing crisis, the living cost crisis, and other socioeconomic issues that many people are facing. But, all of these things are going wrong because of foreign people, though, aren't they? So, if we can stop the foreign people, all of these issues will be resolved. It's the housing, it's all the foreign people who are coming in on boats

[00:21:40] and taking over these houses, so they're not available for everybody else. I think, was it, out of those people who are, claiming welfare, 1.5% of them are asylum seekers, the rest are not, but those 1.5% are having such a profound effect on the economy. Everyone's ideas on all of this are so out of proportion, not based on facts. My concern is,

[00:22:10] I'm having a go at them, but the media generally doesn't. They get away with it all because no one's asking the difficult questions. That's because I think the difficult question is what kind of project they have for this country. And if we look at who gives them money, if we look at the kind of policies they propose, if we look at what they've been doing already in local government, and if we look at the backgrounds of their leaders themselves, that you've outlined earlier as well, we see that it's not really a

[00:22:39] break with the kind of neoliberal framework that dominated British politics for the last 40-45 years. It's actually a deepening of that. It's a radicalization of neoliberalism. It's a radicalization of Thatcherism. It's the unfinished business of Thatcherism. And they want to go further than any previous government has gone in this direction of privatization, deregulation, tax cuts across the border, and so on and so forth. So what you're saying, Vlad,

[00:23:09] is that when we wake up on the 1st of June, this notional 2029, what we'll have is a more Tory government, effectively. That's what it will be. It's what the far right of the conservatives would have done if they could. Pretty much, yes. And I think if we also look at the migration of Tories to reform, it's mostly those who led the Tory right in previous years. But also there's a transfer of donors, big donors from the

[00:23:38] conservatives to reform. And it's the same people that pushed for Brexit, it's the same people that pushed for this hardline position on immigration, but of course, they want to make immigration the big issue, the salient issue, so people don't talk about their economic policies, which actually are not very popular with their own voters. voters. And there's a very interesting survey conducted last year by a think tank called Persuasion, and they

[00:24:08] surveyed around 5,000 reformed voters, and they presented them with various pieces of information about reform, randomly allocated, to see how they react, and whether that piece of information has an impact on their voting intentions. And the two pieces of information that put off those people the most from voting for reform were their ties to big business, and their ties to MAGA,

[00:24:38] to Trumpism. And these are the two things that they don't want to talk about because they know they are not popular. Because they debunk the very narrative they construct about themselves, that they are patriotic, and that they are for the working class, and they are neither. And actually exposing these contradictions is something that I think the mainstream media should do more. Well, certainly for the Labour Party, that's the Achilles heel that they can focus on. But this whole thing about it's Margaret Thatcher only more so, I mean, it's a lot more so, isn't it? Because,

[00:25:08] you look, and I was never a big fan of Margaret Thatcher, I was growing up in the northeast of England, where you are, and obviously the northeast of England, the economy was decimated under Thatcher because everyone should get on their bike and go and get a job in the south of England as industries closed shipbuilding and iron and steel industry closed around them. So she was not a big supporter of the northeast at all. But there were things that she did stand for which are way to the left of where reform is. Stuff like,

[00:25:38] for example, end income and unend income should be taxed the same to try and get rid of this loophole where you can use your wealth to try and accumulate greater wealth. Margaret Thatcher wasn't a big supporter of that. And yet they are moving way to the right of where she was. Absolutely. And I mean, she was the daughter of a shopkeeper after all now. And she represented this middling and petit bourgeois backbone.

[00:26:07] And this is present in reforms less social block, but they are not in the driving seat. Let's remember what finished her off. It was poll tax, wasn't it? Yeah. It was the fact that she was trying to introduce a tax where everybody in a council area paid the same as everybody else in that council area. And people were against that because it was not seen as fair. And that's what finished her off. And yet those same people

[00:26:36] now are the people who are supporting reform with a whole load of policies which are just not fair, but people are not seeing it. They're out in the streets campaigning for poll tax. Now they're out in the streets supporting reform. I mean, I wonder what has changed in the British psyche over that time which has enabled this shift. Probably also the shift of the Labour Party itself to the centre ground of politics, leaving this vacuum for working class representation. And we know from decades of

[00:27:06] research now on working class disengagement from politics. Yes, there is a shift of some working class voters towards radical right parties, far right populist parties. It's happening everywhere in the United States, in France, with the national rally, in Germany with the AFD, before that in Austria with the Freedom Party and so on. But actually the bigger shift is towards abstention, towards disengagement, towards political alienation.

[00:27:36] Working class people feel that there is nobody representing them. Both at the descriptive level, they don't see people like themselves getting involved in politics and ending up in Westminster, but also substantively, they don't see any policies that cater to their material interests. Which is, of course, a huge undermining thing for democracy as a whole. But there's another element, of course, in this, Vlad, which we haven't really mentioned as much, is that this is, in some sense,

[00:28:05] a one-man party. This is a party formed around one man who built it from nothing, really, based on his previous campaigns over Brexit. I mean, is this entirely Nigel Farage, really? What we get is what he wants, nothing else. I think there is clearly this personalist element to the project. And his, let's say, charisma is able to draw a lot of the appeal that the party enjoys at the moment.

[00:28:35] And it's in line with what we see in other countries. Erdogan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the United States, of course, even Orban in Hungary, who recently lost the elections, but was in power for 16 years. There is this strong, charismatic leader who identifies with the people. So this is a populist element of reform UK. But I think it's more than that. if we look at these patterns, what kind of donors they attract, there's a pattern there.

[00:29:05] We mentioned it earlier, extractive and rentier sections of big capital. There's a pattern in terms of which kind of people they attract in their local branches, these kind of small business owners and landlords. And this looks to me like a cross-class coalition that feels unrepresented politically. So it's not just the working class that feels unrepresented politically. It's also these more privileged sections of society who feel abandoned by the mainstream

[00:29:34] parties and are trying to recover some political power for themselves. With Farage as the main, of course, political entrepreneur charging ahead. But I don't think we can reduce reform UK to this person, just like I wouldn't reduce Trumpism to Trump himself either. There's also an element, I know they've got young supporters, but amongst the older supporters, I sense there's a lot of things were better in the good old days

[00:30:04] when Britain was Britain. It was a much more sovereign nation and things have gone wrong. We want Morecambe and Weiss back on TV doing their Christmas specials. Doctor Who has never been good since Tom Baker did it. We want Michael Caine back doing movies. We should all be driving Ford Cortinas. Life was much better in those days. People want to go back to that because they don't like change. Here's a party that's talking about we're going

[00:30:34] to make Britain great again. For a lot of people that means like it was when I was young. people think. There's a lot of nostalgia involved. If you think about some of the names of these far-right groups that have emerged. Reform of course but also Restore UK know that group led by Lawrence Fox his group is Reclaim UK. All these projects in their name we see this

[00:31:04] attempt to rebuild something, to recover something that has been lost. And clearly this nostalgia appeals to many people. And even AFD in Germany, despite being a very right-wing party on economic issues, there's a certain nostalgia to appeal about job security and security more generally, to appeal to voters in the former East Germany.

[00:31:33] So there is clearly this element but at the same time, if we look again at their kind of very transnationally embedded and networked donors and policies, it's not at all about regaining control. You know, it's actually about removing any control, removing any kind of national barriers and democratic So if we get to June 2029 again, mention it again,

[00:32:02] the government we will see, if indeed the polls are right, will be a more right-wing, more big billionaire-friendly government set up essentially to deregulate almost everything and essentially follow a Trump line in most cases in most areas foreign policy or domestic. Yeah, absolutely, and that's because they have strong connections to Trumpist coalition in America, not just the one I mentioned

[00:32:32] earlier through James Orr, but some of their own donors are embedded in sectors like tech and crypto and fossil fuel, especially fracking, that are largely dominated by US companies. So if reform comes into power, like you said, and let's say they deregulate fracking, who would benefit from that. There are not many UK companies who can do fracking, it will be US companies who will be benefiting from that. And actually there is already evidence in that direction.

[00:33:01] Andrea Jenkins, now the reform mayor of Lincolnshire, she reached out to US companies, fracking US companies, to invite them over to see how they can explore the wealth that was found under Lincolnshire land. And if you think about deregulating crypto, who would benefit from that as well? So in many ways,

[00:33:31] we can see reform UK as a Trojan horse of US extractive and rentier capital within the UK that is trying to remove, again, NHS privatisation that you mentioned earlier. There's a bunch of US healthcare companies waiting to put their hands on the NHS. So I think this transnational dimension, US-UK kind of nexus is crucial to understanding the project

[00:34:00] of reform UK. So is there something more sinister at play here? Is the British population being played by a more sinister force by the United States to try and take more control? I think it's a very plausible hypothesis. Obviously, we would need more evidence for that and I guess the proof will be in the pudding. We would have to see what they do if they get into power. But I think there's a strong body of, let's say, anecdotal evidence and

[00:34:30] circumstantial evidence that indicates that this might be very well the case. Gosh. We'll be heading for a revolution if that happens, won't we? I mean, that would be the next phase. Well, maybe. One might hope, perhaps, in those circumstances that would be the outcome. But, Vlad, you do paint a slightly dismal picture, but thank you so much for taking us through what a reformed government might be like, and it might be around the corner. That's what we have to remember. Do you think it's going to happen, Vlad? Do you think they will actually gain control at the next election? I don't think

[00:35:00] so. I don't think so. So, to finish on an optimistic note, the optimism of the heart, as they call it, I think there is a strong argument that they have peaked already. If we look at the share of votes they got in the local elections last year, which was just over 40%, this is lower in the local elections last week, I think they got maybe 33% of the popular votes. This projected into the national

[00:35:29] stage, into general elections, this would be about 27% of the popular vote, which wouldn't be enough for them to gain a majority in parliament, I think. And there is still time for them to show their true colors in local government. That's the next stage of my research on them, to try and see what they've been doing in local government this last year since they, in 25, you remember they gained control over 10 local authorities and I want to research

[00:35:59] their track record there. So I think there is time to expose this party for the kind of pro-business elite project that it really is. It's also, it's not whether they're actually sinister in their aims in local government, but actually also whether they're actually capable of delivering anything, which is also going to be, you know, part of the big picture. Well, maybe we'll get that big picture from you, Vlad, when you've looked into that. It'd be very interesting to hear. But thanks

[00:36:29] very much for being with us today. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Vlad. It was lovely talking to you. Thank you so much for inviting me. Now, next week, I mean, we are told not to worry too much about the virus. The Hansa virus, yeah. Yeah, on the MV Hondias, which I think 11 people have been confirmed to have contracted it now. I don't think it came from a rat on board. Maybe not. It may have been from where

[00:36:58] they were before the whole thing set off in South America. We don't know. But the interesting thing is how quickly the World Health Organization, everyone else, sort of moved on it, I think, and saying, no, no, you don't need to be worried. And have we changed? Everyone thinks, of course, back to COVID. I wonder whether part of it is that they feel as though they've got to show to be acting so that we are reassured that when these things happen, things are in control. And it

[00:37:28] doesn't sound like this is anything we need to worry about. It's not going to spread beyond those 12 or 13. It will probably die out and we'll all carry on with our lives. That's what we hope. But it does raise the question, doesn't it? This has happened again. What if it was something which was more lethal, could spread faster? Are we ready to cope with it? Four years on, after COVID effectively died away at least, have we improved all our various ways of dealing with it? Have we

[00:37:57] woken up to the whole problem of what they call zoonotic illnesses, viruses? They seem to have come potentially from rats, COVID potentially from monkeys and bats. Are we aware of those risks and how good are we at dealing with it? How would the reform party cope? With their NHS policy. That's a whole other thing. So, yes, are we ready? It seems like the NHS is struggling to cope just now. Could it face the onslaught

[00:38:27] of another global pandemic? Are we doing enough to try and prevent it as well? Some of the core reasons, a big chunk of it was humans being too close to animals, expanding too close to animals. We haven't learned it. It's a fundamental question. Have we actually learned anything from every question when we come together again next week? Next week on The Why Curve. Join us for that. Thanks for joining us today. The Why Curve.