Liz Bates

You know, they were spending their time like genuinely job searching. because everyone just felt like it was done. And then it was one thing after another.

That would have been better. Can I just say, though, as somebody who works for Sky, I don't think there's anything sadder. than a child growing up without Sky. Shout out to my bosses.

Yeah.

I think it was. And I think the other thing is when a narrative starts around you, it's very hard to get away from it. So it was like, they're doing badly. Somebody said to me at the time, imagine if Zelensky had stood in the rain and made an announcement about something. Everyone would have, you know, in his kind of army,

If you're cool and you've got it going on and you've got the momentum, then you can kind of get away with anything. And if you stand in the rain, everyone's like, OK, that's cool. He doesn't even need an umbrella. He doesn't give a shit about the rain. But because it's Rishi Sunak, everything just suddenly became about what is he going to fuck up next? And that was the entire narrative.

And so everything that he said, you know, we picked out all the funny bits and it was, the government was so done.

I only learned about them half an hour ago, but that is a bukkake, if ever I've heard one. Ah!

No, I can't think of anything that that reminds me of.

I mean, it's a pretty strange type of scenario where there's really nothing that we can do about it. But the richest man in the world might decide to bankroll what is still, you know, they did get a big share and they do well in the opinion polls. in UK politics, but they're not hugely represented in Parliament and he's going to funnel cash into them.

I mean, usually I'm old enough to remember when people used to do this kind of behind the scenes because it wasn't considered legit to just throw money at a political party and try to swing an election. But apparently now it is. I think it will have a huge, huge sway on the next election. It's still a long way away. I could see a scenario where, you know, reform...

breakthrough in a big way in the UK. Like seriously. And the money that Elon Musk and people like him, I mean, Nick Candy is a big donor as well. that they will provide will be decisive in that. And so we're basically at the whim of billionaires and whatever they feel like, you know, I mean, Elon Musk feels like he's just in his kind of, I want to fuck with the world era.

And this is the way that I'm going to do it today.

No, I mean, look, not really. I mean, it won't hang over this government, I don't think. That's not the sense that I get. And I think what was going on was we were so used to constantly looking for scandals that this became the kind of Labour government scandal for... a few weeks, they took free tickets, they registered them.

You might think, as I do, our politicians need to stop taking so much free shit. I would really like to see less free shit taken.

But also, look, because I want to say, I love free shit. Like, I love free stuff so much.

Yes. Like literally, if there's like some free sandwiches going, I'm like, yes, I'll take, I'll eat 10 and take some home with me. But I just think the problem was there was a lot of false equivalence going on between what happened to Boris Johnson was it was all, he never declared anything. That was the problem.

So journalists were finding out like, hang on, like where did this money come from to redo the flat? Some fucking Lord that we never heard of. Like it wasn't all properly declared. And so there was this kind of, you know, There was a feeling that it was still going on, but it was actually a different thing. Maybe they shouldn't be taking so many Taylor Swift tickets.

I don't know why Keir Starmer's taking so many clothes from Lord Ali, but it was different. It's different.

I have a massive head both metaphorically... Not a surface area on that head for a bukkake if you wanted one. Oh my goodness me.

So they lent their votes to the person that they wanted to see him go against in the final round, basically, and they lent too many votes.