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Peter Bone's avatar

Very good on lots of counts, until you start generalising about older people. We are not all wealthy, we don’t all have huge houses worth millions, and we don’t all support the Tories or Reform. This 70 year-old is terrified about the prospect of a Farage-led government, and extremely despondent at the total lack of understanding that Starmer & co seem to have about how to stop it.

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Nick Cohen's avatar

Fair enough, Peter, and mea culpa. But there is a striking gap in attitudes between the young and the old

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Peter Bone's avatar

That is also true, Nick. And that is a good thing, generally speaking. But ‘generally speaking,’ though it is the basis of much discourse, can be problematic!

Anyway, it was a very interesting, if rather worrying discussion. Cheers.

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Kathleen Weber's avatar

Nick, you won the podcast sphere today. Votre idee explique tout! But don't speak that Frenchified English!

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Nick Cohen's avatar

Erm????

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Kate Decker's avatar

thoroughly enjoyable and interesting interview. Learned a lot. I wonder if the kind of political populist with a liberal message that was indicated by the speaker is someone like the young almost unknown politician who just won New York City's Mayoral race.

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Kate Decker's avatar

This is a thoroughly enjoyable and most interesting interview. I wonder if the sort of political populist with a liberal message that is needed in order to overturn the surge of interest in far right politicians like Farage (if I understood the interview correctly) exemplifies the needed type: plain message that actually says what people need and want to hear: what people's real problems are on a daily basis and how the politician speaking to us will fix them. After all, this is exactly what Donald Trump did, (he was lying about it all, but he did promise, which was enough to make people vote for him).

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RMS's avatar

Very good Nick.

How, though, if you want to lean into solidifying the left vote, do you cauterise the immigration and wokery issues? Don’t those two strategies contradict? I don’t have an answer. The best I can come up with is you aim to cauterise those issues and then rely on the left solidifying in the face of Farage at election time. Is there a better strategy?

Very much agree at the end re wealthy pensioners. Why why why why why (sorry) doesn’t Starmer introduce compulsory voting along the lines of so many other countries to dilute the Grey Vote? Not a panacea. But every little helps.

Lastly, I very much agree with James re your last point. The endless Telegraph delirium as loons like Heath shrug off failure after failure they’ve promoted never ceases to cause me wonder. But they believe themselves, as I guess you have to if you are them.

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Kate Decker's avatar

How can I erase the first message below and leave the second one?

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Kathleen Weber's avatar

If you are commenting on a smartphone, there's no way to edit. If you are commenting on a laptop or desktop, look for the box at the upper right hand corner above your comment, and click on the three dots. You will see an option to delete or edit your comment.

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Kate Decker's avatar

Thanks. I did hit the three dots, but nothing happened. I lived in Holmes Chapel, by the way, and shopped in Manchester. Where in Cheshire are you from?

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Kathleen Weber's avatar

Actually, I live in Houston TX. What led you to think I live in Cheshire? Left clicking on the three dots works for me.

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