Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart sneaker
Speaker 1: every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play
Speaker 1: the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's
Speaker 1: on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Tuesday, June twenty five.
Speaker 1: The Albanese government is to tell the Aboriginal Justice Service
Speaker 1: NAJA to show leadership on family violence. That's after The
Speaker 1: Australian's revelation its chairman beat up his pregnant partner. The
Speaker 1: lead author of the government's Defense Strategic Review has warned
Speaker 1: the debate over Peter Dutton's nuclear energy plan has the
Speaker 1: potential to run off the rails and turn Australians off
Speaker 1: nuclear all together, a threat to the Navy's future submarine program.
Speaker 1: That story is live now at the Australian dot Com
Speaker 1: dot a U. A fresh scandal is engulfing the UK's
Speaker 1: Conservative Party, with allegations five people, including a police officer
Speaker 1: with links to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, bet on the
Speaker 1: election date before Sunac announced when it would be. Voting
Speaker 1: is in just two weeks and everyone's betting Labour's Keir
Speaker 1: Starmer will be PM. But there's something about Starma, a
Speaker 1: dashing former human rights barrister that might surprise you.
Speaker 2: Hello, darling, how's it going.
Speaker 3: Your mother's trying to fix you up with some deforce.
Speaker 2: Human rights parris.
Speaker 4: Pretty nasty beast apparently, who deem Tom?
Speaker 1: Maybe this time Mom had got it right. Come on.
Speaker 1: One of the greatest characters in modern movie history is
Speaker 1: Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth in the Bridget Jones's
Speaker 1: Diary franchise. He was a charming, handsome, almost unbearably pompous
Speaker 1: lawyer named after Fitzwilliam Darcy, the hero of Jane Austen's
Speaker 1: eighteen thirteen masterpiece Pride and Prejudice.
Speaker 5: Mother, I do not need a blind date, particularly not
Speaker 5: some verbally incontinent spinster who smokes like a chimney, drinks
Speaker 5: like a fish, and dresses like a mother.
Speaker 1: His nemesis and rival for Bridget's affections was suave TV
Speaker 1: executive Daniel Cleaver played by Hugh Grant, a cad for
Speaker 1: the ages there fight scenes two men who don't know
Speaker 1: how to fight, reveling at each other our cinema classics.
Speaker 5: Do you have any idea? What's centruy we actually live in?
Speaker 2: Are you gonna sit outside. I'm not gonna have to
Speaker 2: drag you.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna have to drag me.
Speaker 1: They fall into a fountain and have the least dignified
Speaker 1: brawl ever caught on film.
Speaker 6: Do you know what, mate, if you're so obsessed with
Speaker 6: Bridgete Jones, why don't you just marry her?
Speaker 4: Because then she definitely shagged me. It has long been rumored,
Speaker 4: ever since it came out that Keir Starmer was the
Speaker 4: inspiration for mister Darcy, the handsome but slightly stuffy human
Speaker 4: rights lawyer who is the great love of Bridget Joins
Speaker 4: and Bridget Joins Diary.
Speaker 1: Richard Ferguson is the Australian's National Chief of Staff. We
Speaker 1: should note that Helen Fielding, the author of the Bridget
Speaker 1: Jones books, has denied basing Mark Darcy on Kiir Starmer.
Speaker 4: I think it's hard not to see him as a
Speaker 4: kind of mister Darcy figure. Keirs Starmer has led an
Speaker 4: incredibly interesting life. He was very much a lawyer rather
Speaker 4: than a politician, never really involved in student politics, ended
Speaker 4: up in the Chief prosecutor in England.
Speaker 1: He is how Britain's Channel four News framed it.
Speaker 3: I've used to run the Crown Prosecution Service. Fire was
Speaker 3: Director of Public Prosecutions. Director of Public Prosecutions. He wants
Speaker 3: you to know about these five years in his career,
Speaker 3: the job for which he was knighted.
Speaker 5: I've taken down terrorist gags in my path.
Speaker 4: Had some controversies. For example, you know he never prosecuted
Speaker 4: the terrible BBC personality and later revealed mass pedifile Jimmy Saville.
Speaker 1: The evidence is now overwhelming that one of Britain's most
Speaker 1: beloved entertainers, the late Sir Jimmy Saville, was also a
Speaker 1: predatory sex offender.
Speaker 4: But he was considered to be a very tough on
Speaker 4: cream prosecutor, went for big sentences, and then he joined
Speaker 4: the Labor Party got into parliament in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: That was when David Cameron's Conservatives scraped into coalition government,
Speaker 1: leaving Labor ed Miliband and Starmer on the opposition benches.
Speaker 4: So he thought he was joining kind of the new
Speaker 4: ed Meliban government after a ruckety coalition between the Tories
Speaker 4: and the Liberal Democrats. Instead, he's been forced to Levey's
Speaker 4: years in oppositionion and Levi's years in oppossession under Jeremy Corbin.
Speaker 1: Corbyn was the hard left Labor leader whom Starmer would
Speaker 1: eventually replace after a thumping defeat of Labor at the
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen election.
Speaker 4: And it has made him a ruthless figure, but also
Speaker 4: a very safe and sometimes people would say slightly gellibella
Speaker 4: figure when it comes to policy.
Speaker 1: In particular, Starmer is promising to rebuild the public health
Speaker 1: system a clean energy transformation, and he's sent a chill
Speaker 1: through the middle classes with a plan to put the
Speaker 1: broad based VAT tax on private schools.
Speaker 4: It's a very Daniel Andrews esque policy. It's essentially putting
Speaker 4: up what we would call a GST on private school fees.
Speaker 4: Now private schools have a little bit of a different
Speaker 4: relationship I think than here in Australia. I think a
Speaker 4: lot more people use private schools Australia than they would
Speaker 4: in Britain. But it has slightly dented his attempts to
Speaker 4: portray himself as somebody who supports aspiration, as somebody who
Speaker 4: supports people who want to grow wealth. And after Jeremy Corbyn,
Speaker 4: who is a Marxist, admitted that by his own admission,
Speaker 4: he had worked very hard to try and re establish
Speaker 4: Labor as a party that can work with business. Is
Speaker 4: a more kind of classic labor corporadist sort of socialist left,
Speaker 4: probably a little bit like Anthony Albanezy.
Speaker 1: So he's not going to tear down the establishment.
Speaker 4: He's definitely not going to tear down the establishment. He
Speaker 4: does have a knighthood, after all, he is Sir Kiir Starmer.
Speaker 4: He's really made a point of trying to reintroduce patriotism
Speaker 4: into the Labor Party. Of course, Jeremy Corbyn famously didn't
Speaker 4: sing God Save the Queen, was an avid Republican, turned
Speaker 4: up to tripping the color in donkey jackets and things
Speaker 4: like that. He is very much portrayed himself as a
Speaker 4: supporter of the king, obviously a supporter of the late Queen.
Speaker 4: He does want to make changes to the House of Lords.
Speaker 4: He wants to stop all lords over the age of
Speaker 4: eighty being active participants in the Second Chamber, and we
Speaker 4: want to get rid of head reditary peers and people
Speaker 4: who become lords by birth. The manifesto is that eventually
Speaker 4: the House of Lords will be abolished. I mean this
Speaker 4: has been the opinion of Towny Blair and Gordon Brown
Speaker 4: as well, but it's about Lake the Republican Australia for
Speaker 4: the Labor Party. It mate saying didn't theory, but I
Speaker 4: think when it comes to the practice, they're less keen
Speaker 4: to run into it. But I think that's another example
Speaker 4: of how this is not a prime minister who's going
Speaker 4: to tear down the establishment anytime soon. This is nor
Speaker 4: Jeremy Corbin.
Speaker 1: This campaign kicked off last month in a downpour. It
Speaker 1: was the campaign launch a snap election called by pam
Speaker 1: Rishi Sunak in an attempt to get the jump on Labor,
Speaker 1: complete with a Churchill esque speech out the front of
Speaker 1: ten Downing Street. But Sunak's team clearly forgot to look
Speaker 1: out the window first, and seconds after Sunac opened his mouth,
Speaker 1: the heavens opened and he was drenched.
Speaker 3: Over the next few weeks, I will fight for every vote.
Speaker 3: I will earn your trust.
Speaker 1: And then someone with a loud speaker started blasting Sunac
Speaker 1: with things can only get better, the nineteen nineties anthem
Speaker 1: and the Labour's unofficial theme song.
Speaker 3: China is looking to dominate the twenty first century by
Speaker 3: stealing a lead in technology, and migration is being weaponized
Speaker 3: by hostile states to threaten the integrity of our borders.
Speaker 1: I think your take out from his appearance in the
Speaker 1: reign was that he was a bit of a drip.
Speaker 1: Now as his campaign improved it all since the beginning.
Speaker 4: No, he's not just a DREP. He's a whole stalking puddle.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's lost in the puddle. It may be
Speaker 4: the most disastrous political campaign and modern Western politics since
Speaker 4: oh who knows. I mean, he mikes bell short and
Speaker 4: entries of me looks like campaign geniuses. Makes Hillary Clinton
Speaker 4: look like a competent campaigner.
Speaker 6: You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put
Speaker 6: half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket
Speaker 6: of deplorables, right the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic, you
Speaker 6: name it.
Speaker 4: It's been a terrible campaign and it's not all of
Speaker 4: his fault, but a lot of it is his fault.
Speaker 4: He has no eye for politics. Unfortunately, the skipping of
Speaker 4: d D was a completely not disaster, which I think
Speaker 4: Kelder's campaign stone dead.
Speaker 1: That's where Sunac flew home early from D Day commemorations
Speaker 1: in France to give an interview to ITV that delivered
Speaker 1: one of the most toe curlingly awkward moments in modern politics.
Speaker 2: Have you ever gone without something. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: growt My family emigrated here with very little, and that's
Speaker 2: how I was raised. I was raised with the values
Speaker 2: of hard work.
Speaker 5: What did you go.
Speaker 2: Without as a child? Lots of things, right, because my
Speaker 2: parents wanted to put everything into our education and that
Speaker 2: was a priority.
Speaker 4: So what sort of things had to be sacrificed?
Speaker 2: Lots of things, right, I mean, give me an example,
Speaker 2: all sorts of things, like lots of people. There'll be
Speaker 2: all sorts of things that I would have wanted as
Speaker 2: a kid that I couldn't have, right, But famously, SkyTV
Speaker 2: that was something that we never had growing up.
Speaker 4: Actually, this scandal where members of the top Tory campaign
Speaker 4: team are now being investigated for betting on the election
Speaker 4: date because they had found out the election date before
Speaker 4: the Prime minister announced, it has I think shocked people
Speaker 4: and it was reminiscent of the party Gate scandals under
Speaker 4: Boris Johnson and where people were having parties during COVID
Speaker 4: lockdowns and Tory staffers were having parties during COVID lockdowns,
Speaker 4: in which it seems to be one role for Tory
Speaker 4: staffers in one role for everybody else. His top cabinet
Speaker 4: ministers are basically out there admitting they're not going to
Speaker 4: win and that it's all about stopping Labor from having
Speaker 4: the massive majority. And he looks completely defeated. Ressisternaki looks
Speaker 4: as if he doesn't want to be there. I think
Speaker 4: he's thinking about his next job in Silicon Valley. But
Speaker 4: it's a very sad end for the Tory Party's fourteen
Speaker 4: years of power.
Speaker 1: There are predictions hard to fathom that the Tories could
Speaker 1: see their three hundred and forty four seats chipped down
Speaker 1: to just one hundred in Britain's six hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: seat House of Commons. That would be worse than the
Speaker 1: conservatives nadir the nineteen oh six election, when they were
Speaker 1: reduced to just one hundred and fifty six seats. Coming
Speaker 1: up the populist firebrand who's stealing all sun acts thunder.
Speaker 1: The Australian's full of expert analysis from politics to business.
Speaker 1: We'd love you to join our subscribers and always be
Speaker 1: the smartest person in the room. Check us out at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot a U and we'll be
Speaker 1: back after this break. There's certainly a dynamic voice on
Speaker 1: the Conservative side of UK politics. But it's not one
Speaker 1: of the Tories. It's Nigel Farage, the populist and europe
Speaker 1: campaigner who's now turned his attention to securing Britain's borders.
Speaker 4: Nigel Farage really came on the scene to advocate for
Speaker 4: Britain's exit from the European Union, really before it was popular.
Speaker 4: In many ways. One of the reasons that David Cameron
Speaker 4: called the Brexit referendum in twenty sixteen was to head
Speaker 4: off Nigel Farage doing what Nigel Farage appears to be
Speaker 4: doing no, which is completely gobbling up the Tory vote. No.
Speaker 4: He ended up doing very well when he ford something
Speaker 4: called the Brexit Party when Theresa mel was failing to
Speaker 4: get in Brexit done. And he ran again obviously in
Speaker 4: twenty nineteen, but didn't do very well because Boris Johnson
Speaker 4: managed to get a lot of that vote that he
Speaker 4: was taking back. But this time he's been able to
Speaker 4: really establish himself as a very very powerful voice. He
Speaker 4: has made a major stumble though, I think, and that
Speaker 4: he's basically revealed himself as soft on putting.
Speaker 5: Hang on a second, we provoked this war. Of course,
Speaker 5: it's his fault he's used but we provoked the invasion,
Speaker 5: and very interestingly, once again ten years ago, when I
Speaker 5: predicted this, By the way, I'm the only person in
Speaker 5: British politics that predicted what would happen, and of course
Speaker 5: everyone said I was a pariah for daring to suggest it.
Speaker 4: He said that the EU had a lot to blame
Speaker 4: for the situation in Ukraine, and I think a lot
Speaker 4: of traditional Tories who are very anti Russia and very
Speaker 4: pro Ukraine may be turned off by that. So I
Speaker 4: think that was a mistake on his part. But things
Speaker 4: are looking good for him. He's running in Clacton, which
Speaker 4: is a seaside town which has the second oldest population
Speaker 4: of ell the electorates in Britain, so I think he'd
Speaker 4: have a very good chance there. But famously he did
Speaker 4: say before he decided to run in this election, which
Speaker 4: was not a sure thing, he said, do I really
Speaker 4: want to spend every weekend in Clarcton? Well, they see
Speaker 4: what they've WoT to say about that.
Speaker 1: Richard Ferguson is The Australian's National chief of Staff. You
Speaker 1: can check out all our journalism right now by joining
Speaker 1: our subscribers at the Australian dot com dot au