 As many of you know, there was a huge general election taking place in the UK, everyone who watches the Humanist Report, of course we were rooting for Labour and Jeremy Corbyn to become the next Prime Minister. Unfortunately, at the time I'm recording this, exit polls show that that is not going to happen, they show that basically there's a Tory landslide. So I want to talk through some of the implications and with me, I have someone from the UK, his name is Connor, you know him from the Cavernacle on YouTube. And he is here to basically vent with me about a really, really disappointing election. Thank you so much for coming on Connor. Yes, it's no problem. And it's the best way to really deal with these things is get it all out. I was going to record my own video, but I think that this will be for now just getting out with you and your audience should be good. Yeah, there's going to be lots of days of like reflection and analysis, but this is kind of just us reacting. Immediately after, you know, finding out the results, I know Connor, you probably found out before me, I found out about an hour ago. And I basically like wanted to just roll into a ball and die. But we'll all kind of like deal with this together. So there's a lot going on you. I saw a tweet and I think you summed this up pretty well. This is basically the Trump moment. Maybe there's a light at the end of the tunnel in the sense that you guys can get some political movement. What are you feeling right now? The thing is I always say I'm Irish English. So I feel like I'm not always connected to this country as much as other people are. And I feel like sort of with my family being like immigrants, this country, it's sort of you can understand things a bit better. So there's an Englishness in this country. And I thought Brexit was the indicator of this sort of mindset. And then this just confirmed it to me. It is whole attitude English people have. And I'm a half English myself. It's this British Empire. We're the best. We're the greatest. We don't need anyone. Let's vote for Brexit. And this nationalist rhetoric, which I thought wasn't very comparable to the US, is very, very prevalent here. And what I was describing to someone while Labour does get a lot of votes, when you're doing a general election like this and you're having seats, it's not really proportional representation. So London is heavily Labour. It's the most populated city in the UK, about 8 million people. But when you look at the Brexit map, most regions, especially in England, all voted to leave. So when you divide that up by seats, it's not surprising. And the Brexit pie aims to Labour vote. So it's really, Brexit has warped everything and people don't know what they want. So I'm very disappointed. And I have mixed feelings because I always, I try and have some empathy about where you grow up and what media you have to consume. And how that warps your mindset about the same time. It's very frustrating seeing such an inadequate candidate like Boris Johnson said, said some just awful things about Muslim women and gay people and black people. Historically racist, pretty much a shat. And I think the biggest opportunist we've had in this country since the Israeli in the 1880, just no morals, no policies. And it's just depressing that is rewarded. It's just, you know, typical, a bit of white male privilege going on there that you can mess up as many times. You want like Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, you can still get all the power. So you're very disappointed with my country and not feeling very like a lot of the country at the moment. And it feels very similar to after the Brexit referendum as well. But it feels a bit worse, to be honest, because we've had time to reflect and we're doubling down. So it makes me feel so much worse about the whole thing. Yeah. What really stood out to me when you when you made your tweet about this kind of being your guys's Trump moment is that, you know, that was in the end of like progressivism, like after Trump, we got the squad. Maybe you guys will see more political movement. But I'm kind of curious because there's a lot of factors right now and we're already seeing a lot of American political commentators point to Jeremy Corbyn and Labor's loss and saying, well, look, they ran a very far left campaign and they got wiped out. So maybe we shouldn't do, you know, that here, maybe Bernie Sanders shouldn't be the nominee. And we're going to see that, but there's a lot of factors that led to this. So basically, I want you to talk through the role that Brexit played because it's very complex. I know that Labor was calling for a new vote because they're trying to basically bring in the Remainers and the people who wanted to exit. And then you have the Tories who are basically saying, let's exit. Talk through the role that that played because I felt like that really did change the dynamic of this election and it wasn't centered on like class politics. Yeah, sure. So the Tories essentially the only only policy was that get Brexit done a very horrible policy like that. But basically the problem lies with Jeremy Corbyn is old school socialists. Socialists do not like the EU traditionally back in the day. Back in the day, it was a socialist socialist movement in Britain that campaign against joining the things to common market, which turn into the European Union. So they're saying it was a way for big business to really have less restrictions and go across the continent exploiting people. And the problem with Jeremy Corbyn never liked the EU. It's clear. And so in the Brexit referendum, he said tentatively I'll be remain, but no one believed him. He didn't really campaign properly for it. And then obviously he did very well in 2017, the best election for Labor in like a decade. But the problem now is it's drawn on so long. And what the media says is Corbyn does not have a clear plan on Brexit. It was pretty simple. It was I'm going to negotiate the best deal I can with the European Union. And then I'm going to put it to a referendum. The options are going to be stay in the EU or you can vote for the deal. I think no deal might have also been an option as well. So that seems like the fairest compromise to a divided country. Whereas Johnson is like, I'm getting Brexit done next month. I'm doing it my way and I'm leaving no matter what we're getting this deal done. And it's a clear message. And what didn't help was the media like Corbyn so confused and his message so confusing. It was clear, but the media do not help themselves. And Johnson just hammered home Brexit. And it was the Brexit election, which is depressing because I'm my job is being a pharmaceutical journalist. I write today and I believe this. I thought the whole issue had been switched to the NHS. I thought Corbyn had hijacked the Brexit away from the toys. He's like, this is the election on the NHS, not Brexit anymore. And I really felt that, especially with the last couple of weeks of campaigning, Brexit retook a back seat. And it seems kind of pathetic that Johnson was keeping set. It's like a delusional man. He's like, let's get Brexit done. Let's get Brexit done. I won't address any of the other issues that Labour bringing up. So it just proves how big an issue Brexit still is. And it shows how ignorant people still are on the topic because what I was doing in the last year, I was also a journalist on immigration. And basically all my articles are covering how Brexit would hurt the country, and it's just depressing how this hasn't really seeped into the mainstream at all, that someone like Boris Johnson can just have this vague message of, get Brexit done. And that works for most of the country. It's just, you know, and like I'm saying, the Corbyn, they say it was a confused message. So people didn't buy it. You know, it's like Trump, make America great again. Nice and clear. It's not very substantive. You can repeat it loads. Same with Boris Johnson, get Brexit done. It's very, very similar. Just a nice little slogan you can say, don't get into the nuance. Who cares about how you're going to do it? Just appeal to people with like tribalism and base instincts, which is the person that still works in a standage, but there you go. It worked in America and it worked in the UK as well. Yeah. And part of our disadvantage on the left is that we have a message that is kind of complex. Like you can't really like put it on a bumper sticker. Like we're opting for like structural reform and changing people's lives, you know, changing the way that society functions in a way. And how do you like, how do you describe that adequately? You know, it's really, really tough. So yeah. And just as an outsider, the sense that I got was once that scandal came up with the NHS. And for those of you who don't know, there was a scandal that basically revealed that Boris Johnson was going to use the NHS as a bargaining chip, meaning that they would opt for privatization. Now nobody's, you know, expecting this to be a full privatization by next year. Like it's not going to happen like that, but they want to chip away at NHS. And I thought that this was basically a deal breaker for a lot of people. And I put out a video where I showed, you know, Brits reacting to costs of healthcare in the United States. And I kind of did my warning like, look, you have something that's phenomenal. The NHS is something that is a model for the rest of the world, protect it and fight like hell. And I thought that that would resonate. And I kind of want to hear your take on that. What was the general, just in your own anecdotal, you know, social circles, how much of that factor in that people really care about the NHS? Like, was it just Brexit just overpowered everything? Well, the thing with the NHS, like you're getting at, it's one of Britain's most popular institutions ever, like really high approval rate. And we even had a big display about it at the Olympics opening ceremony in 2012, directed by Danny Boyle, who's probably a bit more sympathetic to it. But at the same time, when these allegations came out, the media did an awful job. I really hate the BBC for their role in this election, but they would instead of really focus on what Corbyn was saying, it's like, well, technically Boris Johnson isn't selling off the NHS to America. Like, we're going to be like, here you go, US government, here's our NHS. Now, what was happening was US corporations are coming in and saying to the May government back in 2017, we want a hard Brexit so we can, you know, up our drug prices, because what the Americans keep saying, everyone else is benefiting from American innovation. Instead of Americans, you've probably seen us with Trump recently, instead of America reducing its drug costs like the rest of the world, let's make everyone put them up to benefit US corporations more. And that was the secret negotiations going on behind the scenes. And also they were asking, please liberalise the NHS to give us more access to US corporations. So it's not like we're selling off the NHS, I think. They got to walk really in the language of it. It's, yeah, we're not selling it, but we're carving it up and giving it to random different people. And like you were saying, we want to privatise it. No, the Tories have been privatising it for the last nine and a half years, but they've been doing it piece by piece by piece. And I think the strategy is you're not going to recognise it until it's too late, but then you probably will be used to how it is now. It's not like we'll just one day wake up and it's privatised. It's like, no, different things will be privatised. For example, I guess Americans might have seen you get everything in the NHS. I recently broke my nose and like cut my head open and I got this big bill telling me what it would have been, but the NHS paid for it obviously. But then they said like after, if your nose is still bad afterwards, we can offer you further surgery, but you're going to have to pay for it. And I think stuff like that will start to come in where it's like, if you break a bone, you're going to have to pay for it, but if you have cancer, we'll pay for it. And I think it will start to, things like that will come in. And also what will happen, I think, as it's privatised and put right to the brink, the Tories will say, look, it can't run like this anymore. It just, it's an ineffective system. Let's privatise it because, you know, what Americans say is corporations are just a better model of the free market and everything rather than you can't trust the government to run anything properly. So let's really hand it over to Richard Branson and Virgin Care and everything like that. So that's why I feel like it's going to go. It's not, it's definitely by a thousand cuts. I think someone described it on Twitter. So maybe in 15 years, it will be like the American healthcare system. But for the next five years, we'll probably won't notice it as much and let's keep it real. Most people don't use the hospital. So you don't realise until it's too late, until you get a lot older. You realise you don't have adequate care anymore because of years and years of Tory cuts. So that's really the problem with the NHS at the moment. But in the social circle, everyone young is passionate about this in London. But London is such a small bubble. So it's very diverse, very left wing and it is dominated by the labour movement. But that's the problem I think we have because we don't live in poor parts in the north. We don't live in poor parts in the south that are very English as well, which we don't understand the culture as much. So I don't know if they just don't believe Jeremy Corbyn when he says these things. And Boris Johnson, they just like him. He has a sort of cult of personality just like Donald Trump. And it's the same thing with Trump. Everything he says, they can get behind it even though it's really got no basis in reality. Whereas Hillary Clinton or her flaws, some of the stuff she said was substantive. Bernie Sanders is the same, but they'll still choose not to believe him. So the problem is cult of personality and just... It's just so tribal now. In one of my latest videos I said it's Trumpism coming to the UK because that's what it felt like. It felt like the US election. For the first time I voted in four elections now. This is the first time it felt like a US election. And it's really scary. And it's sad to see Boris Johnson is also colluding with Steve Bannon. So it's not surprise seeing that this has all happened. Yeah, that's a general take on it. But yeah, it's a really awful state of affairs. And hopefully the British people wake up one day, but you never know. But Bush destroyed the country and then they voted Trump in eight years. Do you know what I mean? There's no guarantees. It's like, will people ever learn? And what's crazy to me is that Boris Johnson and Donald Trump look so much alike as well. So it's like, come on people, you see how Donald Trump, how well he's doing. It makes no sense to me. So another thing that really stood out to me is this. And as an American, I kind of feel like our media is the worst in the world. But really this highlighted how horrible the media is in the UK. There's a massive, massive smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn that he's anti-semitic. And I think that first of all, this really highlights the need for more indie media in the UK. So we've got Cavernacle. We need more. And hopefully you can give us some recommendations. But also can you just talk through, because I don't think people in the U.S. really understand the scope of that smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn. Like we see it like with Ilhan Omar, but it's kind of like part of the news cycle for a week. And then we move on. This was an ongoing bombardment of claims of anti-semitism to where every single voter probably thought he was anti-semitic if they weren't actually politically savvy. So I remember writing about this in my second year of university. So that was back in the start of 2016. It's been going on for ages. And basically how it came about recently is I'm not going to deny there is some elements of anti-semitism in the Labour Party. For example, Ken Livingston, the former Mayor of London said, Hitler was a Zionist. There's just no basis for reality. Like why are you even saying something like that? Another MP said, Narsha said, if the Israelis love America so much, let's move all the Israelis to America, which he's advocating for ethnic cleansing. But I think that something like that comes out of a position of ignorance. Jeremy Corbyn himself has never said anything anti-semitic. One time he was saying something about ISIS and Israel. He was like, we don't blame all Jews for the actions of the Netanyahu government. The same way we don't blame all Muslims for what ISIS do. That's a perfectly fair point. Picked up by the media, anti-semitic, he's saying Israel like ISIS and everything. And it just came, got stronger and stronger from there. It was relentless, really. And the problem was, the problem isn't reporting on this anti-semitism stuff. If you want to report on the Labour Party's anti-semitism, that's whatever. The problem is, the Tory party is institutionally racist. Boris Johnson uses terms like cultural Marxism, which is literally steeped in anti-semitic stuff dating back to the Nazis and the anti-semitic stuff they used to say about the Bolshevik Revolution. He trots that out, but because our media is not very, even if they don't want to challenge power, they're not very savvy on these issues anyway. They can't challenge them for that. And obviously, everything he said that's extremely racist doesn't get covered. When the Tories actually have instances of anti-semitism, it's barely covered. But when it's Corbyn and Labour, it is just relentless. So I think I'm not going to tell Jews how to feel about Corbyn, but as an individual who's fought against racism his whole life, recently I think there was an attack against one of the Jewish communities in London and he was the only leader to ring up the rabbi of that area. He clearly doesn't hate Jews. But of course, as you guys know of Ilhan Omar, if you challenge the actions of the Israeli government, who are so in alliance with the UK and US, of course, we are responsible for Israel existing, the British are, Balfour Declaration, Mandate of Palestine, and then the US came in a bit later after the Six-Day War. It's not surprising when you challenge this whole foreign policy apparatus that you're going to get a massive pushback and it's sad to see the media really going along with this. Like Donald Trump calling Ilhan Omar and all these people anti-Semites. And then he's, what was it the other day saying, Jews aren't law enough to Israel. And who gets portrayed as an anti-Semite? It's Ilhan Omar because she's obviously a Muslim woman. Donald Trump is the president. He can get away with saying whatever he wants. So it's the same in America. It's these people that never get held to account and most people in this country would say Jeremy Corbyn's a racist or as Johnson isn't. And that's how bad the media have failed on that. And the party that is institutionally racist has been for, since it's pretty much its inception, it gets let off while the Labour Party is seen as institutionally racist. It's just very, very frustrating and it shows how awful the media is and why it's so bad and unfair is because you don't have people from the left wing in the media. And that's why this happens. And it's why you can't get a pushback because you have people like yourself and me and loads of other people. But compared to our reach, it's relatively small. We can't push back against this narrative. And it just dominates. When you have something like the BBC, which is meant to be impartial when it's not, people watch that. They think, how can the news lie to me? It's BBC news. It's impartial. They're giving me the straight facts. Of course, Corbyn is an anti-Semite. So that's really the problem with it. And yeah, I'm trying to give some nuance saying there is elements of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, but it's become hysterical about, you know, if you really bore down the facts, it's clear. It's not even as anti-Semitic as the Tory party. And it's just really disappointing in the BBC, especially, which has disgraced itself as an election. So to your fans and watch the best colloquial way to say it, just think of Ilhan Omar. There you go. That's pretty much it. Yeah, that's the way. Yeah. And another thing is Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn aren't too different on their criticisms of Israel. I believe if Bernie Sanders wasn't a Jew, he would get the exact same treatment as Jeremy Corbyn. That's to keep it real. Yeah. I 100% agree with that. But we do kind of see some soft anti-Semitism against Bernie Sanders in the way that he criticizes Israel. Like he's a self-hating Jew, this implication. Yeah, yeah. He hates his own people. Like it's disgusting. Like they're going to find a way to smear because if you challenge and you're a threat to power, they're going to find something. So here's my question. And this is super, super early. So all we can do is speculate. But based on basically what you think the feeling is, is there still going to be a Jeremy Corbyn leader of labor? Do you think they're going to try to force him out? What do you think is going to happen with that? Yeah. This is probably the worst part of this is that in him losing tonight, a lot of people are going to see it as this type of politics is not sustainable in an election. Tony Blair obviously trounced the Tories in 1997 completely destroyed them. It was one of the biggest election victories ever. And Tony Blair was bringing labor to the center ground for this like new end of history globalized world. And then what happens in the end is that people get sick of this and then they either turn to the two alternatives far right or just real leftism. So I think the party will be done with him now. I think I'll get rid of him and just put in someone pretty round the mill. Let's not forget Jeremy Corbyn has been challenged multiple times while he's been leader. And he's won because the party, the membership like him so much. But the problem is they see Tony Blair like there was a guy who appealed to all these people. Murdoch liked him. Murdoch helped him win that election. And that's the way forward. It's these radical policies four day work week, Green New Deal, all these things. It's too much. Where are you getting this money from? It's not realistic. He doesn't like the monarchy enough. He's just not polite enough the establishment. So I'm hoping, even if he goes, which I think he will now, I'm hoping the movement can stay. And I think if the economy gets even worse, which you probably will, Brexit, I'm hoping this is where a lot of people will find, I guess like a new home when they realize how dupe they've been by the Tories. Again, I'm not hopeful, but I'm hoping this is our Trump moment. But the thing is you guys had Bernie to get behind again and he was, I wouldn't say he was like completely cheating in the sense that he, it was like proper. I don't want to say like he would have won anyway, but he was obviously cheated out of competitive race. I don't know if he would have won if it was fair, because you know what the super delegates and everything. It's not a very good system, but you had this guy who did so well coming from nothing. And then you could look to him later and be like, he would have been in Donald Trump if he was the nominee and we can get behind him for next time. Whereas Corbyn's eyes, he's been trounced by Boris. It's like this politics has failed. You've had your chance now. You had two elections. You didn't get a majority either time. You didn't get into number 10. So forget it. Back to centrists and back to Blair. Forget the Labour roots. And I think that that is what's going to happen. And it's very sad because we have the Lib Dems in this country. I don't need centrist Labour politicians. We have it covered by centrist Tories and centrist Lib Dems. Let's have a real movement for progressive change. And I was just thinking when I was on the train today, just long days, 30-hour days, and I'm thinking the Tories want me to do this until I'm 75. I'm pretty sure Tony Blair wouldn't object to that too much. Maybe reduce it a tiny bit. I want someone who actually cares about me as a person and that is why it's so awful that he's going to be kicked out and probably his type of politics is going to be removed from the party. And we're going to go back to pro-business centrism in the Labour Party. So who's going to represent us anymore? That's why it's so sad. So I'm happy for you Americans where it seems like your movement is actually taking over the party from the inside. Whereas Labour Party that we're going back to its roots and then it's been rejected seemingly by the electorate. So it seems like it's dead. I feel like it's not going to come back for a long time, which is very depressing for people like me. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like I feel it. That's one thing that is odd to me is that with the Liberal Democrats, like there is a centrist option. If you have this instinct to shift back to the center for Labour, it doesn't make sense. You'd expect theoretically them to just flee the party and go to Lib Dems. For those of you watching who don't really know, Liberal Democrats are basically like if centrists in the United States flee the Democratic Party and created their own party. We're talking about the John Carries, the Bill and Hillary Clinton's of the world. So it's just why do you need two centrist parties? It doesn't make sense. There's a whole portion of the electorate that is being galvanized, but Labour is one of two main parties. Yeah, it's a tough situation. And I think that there's this widespread sense of demoralization that I'm seeing everyone in America on the left feels gutted. I know you guys are all especially feeling gutted currently. It's just all around fucking sucks. This is a Trump moment. I don't know what else to say. Yeah, it's just that moment when you see the notification pop up on your phone and your stomach drops and you're like, I know how bad. It's like it's not like some of the other elections in the past where I'm like, I don't care too much because I don't feel like much is going to change. Corbyn did very well the last time and I was like, well, that's good. He can stop this horrible Brexit deal and that's good for him. But now it's like these guys have now got 86 in majority might be. They had no majority just before the election. They'd handled it so poorly. They had so many defectors from the Conservative Party. They lost their majority. They lost the backing of the DUP, the Northern Irish Unionists. And it was just looking good. Parliament was absolutely gridlocked for Brexit and now they can just do whatever they want. They got that. And that's what is so scary because people don't realise as well the EU law covers a lot of blind spots in British law. So here's one example. I just like to use to make it clear. There's no explicit protection for transgender people in British law, but there is protections in European law. So you get rid of that and then there isn't actually any legal protection for transgender people in terms of fighting against discrimination. That's just one example. There's plenty of other economic ones and then it leaves a right wing or the hard right of the Tory party. It leaves them to rewrite a load of these laws to benefit themselves. And I think that's the scariest part which people don't really think about this Brexit stuff. We don't even need to talk about like trade deals and how awful that can be. So they can rewrite some of the laws of this country including our human rights as well, which I don't trust them to do, because we've subscribed to the European Union's human rights definition. So that's why it's so scary. And the strength of conservatives and it historically has been the strength of conservatives, they will back each other no matter how much they don't like each other. You see it in America at the moment. They've all fell in line. They hated Trump. Lindsey Graham saying the most awful things about Trump and now he's like his attack dog now. And that's the strength. The strength also is that they will stab them in the back and get rid of them quick and disassociate themselves. Like the Tories of the Market Faction, they ruled for seven years after they got rid of her because they knew it was time to get rid of her. And this always happens. They'll get rid of, got rid of May, got rid of Cameron, and they'll get rid of Boris when it suits them and they'll have someone else. And that's why they keep winning because they're just so united. Also they obviously have a lot of economic and media backing. But we've left this like, I don't think it's a bad thing because it shows we actually care about ideology. We fight each other a lot. So you've got Corbyn versus the centrist. And then that just recipe for disaster when you have people in his party coming out and saying, don't vote for him. And that's the real problem where you barely get anyone in the Tory party doing it. Maybe some old people like John Major, the old Prime Minister, but no one's coming out and saying, like Theresa May and David Cameron, people who hate them and not coming out and saying, don't vote for Boris even though he stabbed me in the back. They're saying, go out and vote for Conservative. Help us win again. And that's the problem really with how, you know, bankrupt they are, ideologically, is that they can just get together and really be strong in elections even though they've got nothing to offer. The same with Republicans in America. Yeah, totally. I mean, you're facing the same situation, you know, with Labour as we are with Democrats where the centrists and the left are supposed to share this party together when they're ideologically incompatible. And this is what ends up happening. You know, you've got to choose a side left or centre and then one side's going to win, the other's going to lose. And it just leads to situations like this. So yeah, all around really really disappointing, of course, those watching again, let me remind you this is preliminary results. So we're basing this off of our first impression of, you know, the exit polls and whatnot. So we don't necessarily know everything yet. But, you know, I just wanted to bring on Connor to have his take because, of course, I'm not from the UK, so I want to have him explain it. So, Connor, tell us where we can find you. Yeah, so I'm mainly on YouTube. So that is just the cavernacle. Luckily, it's a pretty unique name. So if you want to find me on social media, just the cavernacle, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I know people don't really do this, but I also advertise my Reddit. So if you want to follow me on Reddit, just to keep up with my videos, it's just u slash Tommy Cahill 1995. And if you want to find more concrete links, it's all in my channel to just search the cavernacle. And yeah, that's pretty much it on Patreon as well, if you want to take a look at that. But yeah, that's everything for now. Twitter is the best way to interact with me because I'm always on that. And yeah, so you appreciate you having me on. And it's just nice to talk about these things when you feel so passionate about them and it's gone so wrong. But the next couple of days are going to be hard. I'm lucky. I'm going on holiday to Ireland tomorrow. And I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of questions. I'm actually like, what have you done? But I'm just happy to be away. I wouldn't want to go into work tomorrow and talk with people who vote conservatives. I'm sure Americans can really relate when after the election, you do not want to go into a place with Trump supporters and talk about the election. It's just you don't even want to look at these people at the moment. It's just too toxic. And you just feel too angry at them for really ruining the country. I can barely talk to my brother who voted for him. Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. So I can fully empathize there. Yeah, I'm with you. So yeah, man. Thank you so much. We'll be in touch. You know, this is a shitty time. But we're going through it together. And that's kind of the best like chin up statement I got right now. It just sucks. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. It's all you can do. But yeah, I really appreciate and thanks a lot for having me on always happy to talk about British politics. If you need a talking head head for it. Absolutely. Absolutely.