Ian Dunt & Daniel Squadron

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. We're on vacation, but we still have an amazing show for you today. The States Project's own Daniel Squadron talks to us about his new book, The Fourth Branch, How State Government Can Save Our Union. But first, the Origin Story Podcast host, Ian Dunt, comes by to talk about the sorry state of British politics.
Welcome, welcome, Ian, Ian.

**Ian Dunt** (0:35)
Thank you very much. Nice to be back. Although I only come here when something really catastrophic has happened in British politics.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:41)
Yes.

**Ian Dunt** (0:42)
I feel a bit like I'm the grim reaper.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:45)
Listen, the point of you is that you're brilliant and funny, and we always want to have you on, but nothing ever happens in your country, and so we never have an opportunity to. But you guys have gotten rid of another Prime Minister. It's your 20th in the last four days, and so discuss. Yeah.

**Ian Dunt** (1:04)
We're just sort of like Italy with worst food now. We've driven through them at speed, and we're going to give it another go. So we're going to try, we're going to get rid of Keir Starmer, who turned out to be quite disappointing and lacking in really any discernible qualities in a way that I think was frankly extremely surprising for a lot of us, including me. And we're going to go with a guy called Andy Burnham, who seems like he has some weaknesses, but at least some qualities, and therefore will put us in a better position than the one that we're in right now.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:33)
Now, let's talk first about Keir Starmer. Besides the fact that no one could ever figure out what his aim was, including myself and mostly myself.

**Ian Dunt** (1:43)
Is that just you?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:44)
Shut the fuck up.

**Ian Dunt** (1:45)
I feel like that's just you.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:47)
That's enough out of you, sir.
Oh, the connection is cracking up. That guy, what did he do wrong besides having a terrible personality go?

**Ian Dunt** (2:00)
Two things. So the first is political slash electoral, and the other one is operational. So electorally, he's done something that I think will have quite a lot of resonance with you. Just that he won on the basis of stitching together a coalition of progressive votes, centrist voters, some center-right, sort of fiscally conservative, socially liberal voters, but predominantly university-educated, living in the city's white-collar workers, typically speaking, socially liberal, some, and then some working class voters.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (2:29)
So the Biden coalition a little bit?

**Ian Dunt** (2:32)
It's not too far away. I mean, every time, you know, Americans and American journalists living in the UK who look at this, just sit there saying, well, this all just feels very much like home. So you manage to get that in place, and then you say to yourself, well, we're very weak on immigration, and particularly, we're weak on trans rights. What all of this means is that, you know, you've got a very powerful far-right party in the shape of reform under Nigel Farage, making a lot of noise as a huge amount of support in the right-wing press, which is pretty much all of the press. Then you start moving to the right on social issues like immigration, like refugees, like trans rights, and doing it in this really quite indignant offensive way. I mean, it's sort of got the sense of they wake up each day and think, how do you punch liberals in the most evocative manner possible? Which they did, and of course, most social scientists looking at this thought, you're really not going to attract any voters from the right, because if they want to get someone that's anti-immigration, they might as well get the full fat version rather than the skin version that you're offering. But you will offend and alienate voters in the center and on the left, which is precisely what they did. So you look at the local council elections, they succeeded in bringing over basically zero voters from reform, but they hemorrhaged voters to the Scottish Nationalist Party, to Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalists, to the Green Party, to the Liberal Democrats on the center. So exactly what was predicted and what was told to him would happen if you pursue this political path took place, and that was the political error. Operationally, his error was that he was just very, very bad at delivering policy. He was tedious, dull, very boring. So we thought, well, you're going to be good at it, right? The whole thing of getting a technocrat in is that they're technically very accomplished, and will be able to deliver on health waiting times, on education, on defense. He turned out to have almost no interest in policy at all. Insofar as he was interested in politics, he was interested in process, like the factory of how you make things. But he didn't really have any ideas, he didn't really have any values. So when it came down to the nuts and bolts, delivering better public services, delivering growth, making people feel like their lives have improved, he was very poor at managing that as well. Then of course, the third part is he had no charisma, he had no sense of presence. And by the end of it, you did look at him and think, well, you're politically ineffectual, you're operationally incompetent, and you're massively lacking in any kind of charisma or any of the qualities that make for a good leader. So exactly what is left for us to support in your project? The answer was nothing.