 So it's fair to say that British politics over the last several years has been increasingly defined by the unexpected. It's had many twists and turns which pretty much nobody foresaw. From the 2016 Brexit vote to the resignation of David Cameron, he'd previously seemed like a very strong Prime Minister, the first Tory to win a majority since 1992 in the 2015 general election. To the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, to Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister and then of course potentially to a no-deal Brexit this October. But one story for me actually stands out above all of those as being counter-intuitive, something which is almost the complete opposite of what you're frequently told. And that story is this. The Liberal Democrats don't want to stop Brexit. They certainly don't want to stop no-deal. Now how can I say that after all their entire political brand is based upon stopping Brexit? Well I'm saying that purely by re-articulating the words they themselves have said over the last several days. It's one of the least well-kept secrets in Westminster it seems, that there'll be a vote of no confidence, a motion of no confidence in Boris Johnson's government. As soon as parliamentary recess is over and MPs come back from their summer holidays, we'll see if Johnson and his government can command a majority in the House of Commons. If they can't, then a new government will have to be formed. And if that can't happen, there would have to be a general election. What's key, however, isn't just obviously a motion of no confidence pass in Boris Johnson but also that there is confidence in a successor. Now right now the second biggest party, by quite a long way, is the Labour Party and that's led by Jeremy Corbyn. But what we've seen in response to that possibility over the last several days, specifically from Liberal Democrats, an unnamed Liberal Democrat sourced the apti Joe Swinson and more recently Chuck Romana, is that they would actually prefer a no-deal Brexit than a Labour-led government with Jeremy Corbyn at number 10 Downing Street. If they were given a choice, they would choose no-deal and Boris Johnson. Like I say, I'm only going off what they themselves have said. Take this quote given to the Financial Times by an unnamed senior Liberal Democrat sourced who said, I can't conceive of any circumstances under which we would put Jeremy Corbyn into number 10. He's not only dangerous for our national security but for our economic security too. So what's interesting about that line about the national security and economic security is it's the precise same phrase which was used by the Conservatives against Ed Miliband in 2015. What's more, I find it rather strange that the Liberal Democrats would talk about economic security given they were part of an austerity government between 2010 and 2015, which saw flatlining GDP per head growth, which saw actually productivity fall, which saw wages fall, which saw 120,000 people die as a result of austerity. So for these people to call Jeremy Corbyn a threat to economic and national security is outlandish to say the least. And it does speak volumes that they are repeating Tory attack lines, which were generated by the likes of Lyndon Crosby. Maybe they're not that progressive after all. To repeat, he couldn't see any conditions under which Jeremy Corbyn could be the Prime Minister with the support of Liberal Democrats, even if it could stop Brexit or no deal. Seemingly not. Those comments were compounded by Joe Swinson who said, Corbyn's Labour don't want to work with other parties to stop Brexit because the truth is they want to deliver Brexit. Then there were the comments of Chuck Romano on the Today program. Speaking to Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4, he more or less repeated the same political line and it was pretty clear what his preference was. The problem there is with the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn taking up the role of leading an emergency government is that he cannot command a majority amongst his own MPs, never mind others like Conservative rebels, who would refuse to give him confidence. I know because I've spoken to them that there are a substantial minority of Labour MPs at the very least who simply would not countenance Jeremy Corbyn being the Prime Minister of this country. So the question is, is there a figure who as an alternative could command a majority? We need people to put their party in political interest to one side. And the problem is Labour's priority is a Labour government. It isn't to stop Brexit. So all these people seem to be talking about instead, because of course the Liberal Democrats with 13 MPs get to call the shots in a parliament of 650 seats, is that we should have a national unity government that this national unity government would command the numbers not just to vote down Boris Johnson in terms of emotional confidence, but also to replace him and that it would be a letter-writing exercise effectively. It wouldn't govern in any meaningful sense. It would just depose Johnson and pass the legislation for either a referendum or a general election or both, depends who you talk to. This was put out there by Polly Toynbee in an article in The Guardian talking about the need for a national unity government. She suggested of all people Margaret Beckett. I find that quite strange, but there you go. That was somebody who she viewed as being able to bridge the party divide using elder statesmen. Of course, this idea of a national unity government has been repeatedly put out there, particularly by people who otherwise wouldn't get anywhere near power. Ed Davie during the Liberal Democrat leadership race about a month ago, said he would happily see a national unity government led by either Yvette Cooper or Hillary Ben. Put your thinking hat on here. Hillary Ben, what has he done? He was at DEFRA in the Blair Brown years. He was a sector of state for DEFRA. He was a sector of state for international development. And all of a sudden he's now gonna be the prime minister. On what grounds? Cause he gave one good speech about bombing Syria. Really? Yvette Cooper, okay. Her credential is slightly more robust. Former Home Secretary, very credible, very well respected by the lobby, by the media, by her colleagues in parliament. But her seat voted 70% leave. What do you think they will do if she's the prime minister for an interim government which extends Article 50, which explicitly says it wants to stop it and which would call a second referendum? What do you think they would do to her? I would guess she'd lose that seat. Just a thought. The fact that there aren't other names being submitted shows this isn't really going to happen. And I view the narrative of a national unity government as the continuation of this idea of a new centrist party forming because Change UK tried that in their last month of polling before they came a cooperative or a federation of MPs or a platform or a network or whatever the hell they are, they were polling 0% in the poll of polls for that month. 0%. This was going to apparently remake the mold of British politics, was going to redefine what progressive politics meant. It didn't last even several months, which is actually what I said on the day it was launched. It wouldn't last several months. It was doomed to failure. People at Polly told me much the progressive commentary obviously said rather different things. They were wrong. We were right on the left. So the national unity government thing is an extension of a new centrist party. They couldn't do that. Now they're going to try to do this instead. And that holds true whether it's Chukarumana or whether it's Polly Tombe. It's not going to happen. Just like a new centrist party wasn't going to happen. There are also a number of Tories calling for it. Moderate Tories, right? You've got Nick Somes, Nick Boles, Ken Clark, Nick Somes was saying that, you know, we would have potentially Ken Clark as the Prime Minister. And you had Andrew Adonis saying that, you know, would it be John Major or Ken Clark? John Major isn't even an MP anymore. You know, we're now at the stage of sort of centrist fantasy cabinets where the sort of ideal Prime Minister isn't even an elected MP. You know, what next? Are they going to start saying we have to exhume the corpse of Pit the Younger? I mean, what great moderate would they want to, maybe Jeremy Bentham, get him over from wheel him out from UCL? You know, what next? He's not an MP. How could he be the Prime Minister? Yeah, of course, legally constitutionally, he could be. We haven't had a Prime Minister who didn't come from the House of Commons for a long, long time, for a long, long time since mon democracy. So that's just a non-starter. And think about it. If there was a general election fought after being called by a national unity government, okay? They've extended Article 50. They've called the general election. The Prime Minister at the top of that isn't actually recognized by much of the general public because most people could only hold two or three politicians' names in their head at any one time. Of course, in Westminster, Chuck Raman thinks that 90% of the public recognize him. No, they don't. Very few people will. Most people will know the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, probably the Chancellor, maybe the Foreign Secretary, maybe people like Nicola Sturgeon because of the Scotland question and Nigel Farage because that almost extends beyond two-party politics. Beyond that, they're not gonna know anybody. So what these people are proposing is you have a national unity government headed up by somebody nobody recognizes doing something which apparently is beyond the pale by extending Article 50, called the general election. What do you think would happen? It's the ideal set of circumstances for the Tories to win a majority on no deal and hard Brexit. And who do you think benefits from evacuating any legitimacy or democratic accountability in the political process? It's not liberals. It's not moderates. It's not socialists who benefit from that. It's the far right. It's the far right. So who would be the handmade of a far right conservative government of a correct narrative that quote, unquote, the liberal establishment are trying to undermine the will of the people which would only compound and confirm the worst prejudices which feed the far right and which allow them to have a veneer of legitimacy with the wider public? Who'd be the handmade for that? It would be centrists. It would be centrists. You don't gain anything from short circuiting the democratic process. Only the far right do. Very dangerous game to play. And like I say, I can't imagine a worst set of circumstances in which they would then have to fight a general election. But there you go. That's why they always lose. So let's go back to what I started this video with where I said the liberal Democrats aren't actually interested in stopping Brexit. How do I know that? What am I basing that on? Their own words. The unnamed senior liberal Democrat speaking DFT, Joe Swinson. In fact, Joe Swinson in 24 hours is becoming Lib Dem leader. Explicitly ruled out working with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party. But it's not just the Labour Party they've ruled out working with. It's also the SNP. Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael explicitly ruled out working with the SNP on the basis of the question of Scottish independence saying the SNP are on one side of another fundamental nationalist argument which is about Scottish independence. So no, we wouldn't be able to work with them. So it turns out this remain alliance, it's not actually a remain alliance, it's about boosting the Liberal Democrats electoral prospects. They aren't interested in working with the SNP or with Labour to larger parties but do want to utilise the goodwill of the likes of Plaid Cymru and the Greens. In other words, they only want to work with parties which are smaller than them which want to give them something. It's almost like they're not serving a greater cause and in fact, this is just opportunistic politicking. Who knew? And in fact, if you look at the most marginal Lib Dem seats, the sort of target seats they should be winning in the next general election or in any next general election, they're actually leave voting Lib Dem Tory marginals. Not entirely, there are some exceptions but that's broadly the kind of seat they want to win. Brecon was an outstanding example. Marginally voted leave, Tory held, the Liberal Democrats won it. Now they didn't win it because of trying to stop Brexit. In fact, their own campaign literature in Brecon didn't even mention Brexit. What they're trying to win over are soft Tories, the kinds of people who would normally vote Tory would have voted Tory in 2015, but probably find Boris Johnson a little bit unpalatable and certainly don't want no deal. And this is a real conundrum for the Liberal Democrats because so far, bollocks to Brexit has been an electoral tonic for them. It's been great, helped them in the European elections, it's helped them in their national polling but in terms of the seats they actually could win, it's not that great. And so when they move back to accepting Brexit, when they move back to what is viewed by much of their support base right now as being at odds with what they've said for the last year and a half, two years, Labour can really fill their boots. So that's the Lib Dems, that's the question of a national unity government but we are going towards no deal at this point, it's end of October, it could be that the Tories just forced it through. I wanna cast your mind back to the indicative votes a few months back in regards to alternatives to a no deal where we had Parliament trying to work out what had a majority of support in the House of Commons. Now the two closest votes that evening were a second referendum, which lost narrowly but even more marginal was the idea of our customs union, membership of our customs union after Britain leaves the EU. Now this would have been instructive, it wouldn't have been legally obligatory for the Tories to adhere to but it would have had real political force and it would have made a no deal, I would argue, I think many have argued that, close to impossible. It lost by three, customs union, would have stopped no deal, in my view, it lost by three. Who abstained, almost all the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davie voted against it, one Lib Dem voted for it but the rest abstained, it lost by three. Worse than that, Caroline Lucas voted against it, Chuck Romana voted against it, in fact all the Chains UK MPs voted against it. So if just Caroline Lucas and Chuck Romana had voted the other way, the customs union proposal would have had a majority in the House of Commons. It may have been enough to stop no deal. Why didn't they vote for it? Because they were after a second referendum instead and it's that single-minded dogmatism for a second referendum partly fueled by an absolute hatred of Jeremy Corbyn by people particularly within Chains UK and also the Labour right within Labour's backbenchers now, which has fueled this stuff, because it was seen as a way of undermining his leadership and its ultimate legacy is going to be, it seems, no deal. That is the ultimate legacy of Chains UK which was founded to stop Brexit. That is the ultimate legacy of the only Green MP in the House of Commons who voted against the customs union. That is the legacy of almost all the Liberal Democrats by one who either abstained or voted against a customs union. They virtually guaranteed no deal. So it is hard when you look at that, when you look at the comments of Joe Swinson, you look at the comments of Alistair Carmichael and working with the SNP, when you look at the comments of Chuck Romana on the today program about actually Labour MPs don't want Jeremy Corbyn, he still would prefer no deal to a Corbyn government. You have to look at all of that, the customs union stuff, the comments, the voting patterns more generally, the election literature and Brecon and actually you realise the Liberal Democrats don't want to stop Brexit. Perhaps they never did.