Quiet Riot

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith talk through the week's news, with a focus on Trump and Musk's assault on federal government - and how it might just turn against them.

A detailed report by Frontier Economics AND a megapoll by YouGov, commissioned by Best for Britain, outline stunning growth opportunities - if Starmer goes for the right UK-EU reset. The public is fully behind the idea.

Plus, as Reform UK continues to gaslight the country about Brexit and ride high in the polls, there may be a giant chink in their armour.

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“What we’re seeing is an overall strategy of moving so fast and doing so much that the judicial system, the Democratic Party, any media still inclined to scrutinise the Presidency, they simply don’t have time to react to all of it.”

“USAID has a tiny budget. $40bn in the context of a $7 Trillion annual federal budget is nothing. It gets Trump and Musk nowhere near the trillions they said they would save. It is performative, chosen precisely because of the ripple effect in so many sensitive areas.”

“If the UK pursues deep alignment on goods with the EU, you're looking at between 1-1.5% GDP growth. So clawing back about a third of what the OBR says we've lost as a result of Brexit. If you do deep alignment on goods and services, it's between 1.7 to 2.2%. Clawing back more than half of what we will have lost. The cost of inaction is that we continue to atrophy and we recover none of that loss growth.” 

“When you do UK-EU deep alignment, on goods in particular, you get the greatest spread of growth outside of London. It disproportionately impacts non-South-East. West Midlands and the North get the biggest boost. Why? Well, that's where what industry we do still have tends to be located and they have been the most negatively impacted [by Brexit].”

“All this ‘shock and awe’ from Trump and Musk can feel overwhelming. But forced to defend all of this will stretch them thin. We have to be considered and strategic. Once the challenges start coming, it is them who will have to prioritise what to defend and what to junk. So take a breath and hold the line.”

CALLS TO ACTION AND LINKS:

You can see the full BfB/Frontier report on UK-EU growth here.

David Frum's article for the Atlantic is here.

Our bookshop featuring many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot

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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.

Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

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Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith (fresh from Brussels) welcome special guest Rachel Shabi to discuss her new book on antisemitism, Trump's proposed cash + ethnic cleansing deal, Starmer trying to make himself invisible, while negotiating with Europe, and the general fever dream we seem to be living through.

Plus a stunning audio letter from Arthur Snell in Israel.

And of course 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin And Share It'.

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“The only way to stand up to Trump is collectively and the UK finds itself outside that large European collective bloc. It is particularly unfortunate and how the Labour gov’t can square that, I don’t know, but they have to find a way.”

“Trump is looking for people to punish, but also for a country to reward, to show the others what happens. And his rhetoric about Starmer is different than any other European leader. So, maybe the UK is weirdly manoeuvring itself into a sweet Goldilocks deal.”

“When you’re talking to Europe, while showing this much ankle to the US in general and in particular Trump, I think your ability to progress negotiations with the EU will be highly constrained.” 

“I don’t think there’s any point in second-guessing a chaos-merchant, who likes to throw chaotic statements into the public space, precisely for the purpose of sowing chaos. And I don’t think there’s any point in treating [Trump’s Gaza comments] as some strategic move.”

“The realities of antisemitism are messy. The conversations we need to have are messy. It takes time and the building of trust that means not automatically assuming bad faith. The problem is we are trying to have those conversations in the midst of a political and media environment that is obnoxious and divisive.”

CALLS TO ACTION LINKS:

You can buy Rachel Shabi's 'Off White' here.

You can buy Chris McGreal's 'American Overdose' here.

Our bookshop featuring many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot

You can see the full results of the BfB polling on prioritising Europe here.

You can find the Medical Aid for Palestinians charity here.

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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.

Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

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Naomi Smith and Kenny Campbell discuss Trump's vile comments on the Washington air disaster and his economically illiterate view of tariffs. Also, the atmosphere in Germany, with three weeks to the election, could not be more febrile. Plus 'Grin And Share It'.

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“Is there any evidence that people with, to quote Trump, ‘severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities’ can become air-traffic controllers? Or is it more likely that they just end President of the US?”

“The right-leaning Tax Foundation in the US found tariffs levied by Trump during his first term, were paid by US businesses and their customers. Goldman Sachs projects there will be a 0.1% effect on inflation for every additional 1% of tariffs.”

“Merz was cruising to victory, but he got greedy. He broke convention, riled up Angela Merkel, and split the CDU. And what did he achieve? He’s basically given people an argument to vote AfD.” 

CALLS TO ACTION LINKS:

Join Best for Britain's list to get the big news coming in the next couple of weeks.

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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.

Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

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Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith with special guest migration, policy one-woman army, Zoe Gardner ask what happened to the sunlit uplands, the magical cake, the oven ready pie - and all the other things we were promised in 2016. Also, a frank discussion about Britain's true immigration problem: that numbers are dropping off a cliff. Plus 'Wokey Dokey' and a Dramatic Reading of Daniel Hannan.

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“The arguments for Brexit were masking something much more sinister and deeper in the ideology of those who were advocating for it.”

“The same people are now saying let’s leave the ECHR. It will never be enough. There will always be another thing, another right that we as citizens can give up, to pursue this agenda of wiping out the diversity of our country.”

“PEM is the right direction but it’s not a game-changer. We have a rare opportunity for a limited conversation about what we need from the EU and we need to prioritise full beneficial alignment.” 

“People who are secure about their identity don't tend to worry about foreigners. Brexit triggered an identity crisis. English nationalists had to redefine theirs, to cohere. For decades, being against the EU had acted as a proxy. The moment that was removed, their identity fell apart.”

“There is a massive performative element [to Trump’s deportations]. So much of our politics is done in the media that image is everything. Those deportations were taking place under the Biden administration, but it is Trump who has released the imagery.”

“There is no reasonable Right, any more. It doesn’t exist. Don’t kid yourselves. We should not be compromising. We have repeatedly thought we can compromise with these people who hate us and split the difference and we can’t.”

CALLS TO ACTION LINKS:

Sign the petition to provide better routes for undocumented migrants to regularise their status.

Join Best for Britain's list to get the big news coming in the next couple of weeks.

Subscribe to Zoe Gardner's YouTube channel.

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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.

Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

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Alex welcomes special guest, former diplomat Arthur Snell to discuss the future of NATO, Ukraine, Gaza, Syria - and whether The West, capitalised as one entity, may be coming to the end of the unity of purpose which has sustained it since the 40s.

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Arthur's Behind the Lines is here.

Conclusive video evidence that Trump is definitely the same height and weight as Gavin Newsom can be found here.

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“Trump picks these crazy appointments, partly to rile sensible mainstream people, but it’s partly because then they’re totally loyal to him, since they have no standing of their own, to be at these jobs.”

“NATO and European security are in a fundamental crisis now. Because the whole idea was that North America took a view that European security is integral to their own. That idea is collapsing at the moment.”

“Putin is in a rather advantageous position. He can carry on fighting - let’s say for another thirty days - grab a few more towns and strategic ground, then announce that he is ready to come to the negotiating table. What Trump is doing, is to say: you carry on as long as you need to and when you’re done, there’s a deal here for you.” 

“I’ve noticed people in the West, generally, and here in the UK starting to blame Ukraine and suggest that really the problem is they didn’t mobilise enough troops. If we look at the casualties they’ve suffered, I think that is a cynical and, frankly, cowardly position.”

“The ceasefire [in Gaza] needed two things to happen in America. It needed the tireless work of the Biden administration to negotiate, but it also needed the threat of someone like Trump willing to do crazy things.”

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Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.

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This is a paid advertisement by BetterHelp: Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/QUIETRIOT and get on your way to being your best self.

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Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith with special guest USA Politics Guru, Dr. Brian Klaas, look at the flurry of executive orders and try to sort the wheat from the chaff. And how should Europe respond? Which fights are not worth fighting and where the red lines should be drawn.

Plus 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin and Share It'.

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“Donald Trump simultaneously says we should execute drug dealers and pardoned the largest drug market creator in human history. And so he is creating one of the hallmarks of authoritarian rule, which is a tier of justice that says: if you’re my friend, if you’re an ally, the rules don’t apply.”

“The Republican Party, when it goes on to legislation, it’s in trouble. The stuff that they’re proposing, with the exception of immigration, some of the domestic policy proposals they have are toxic.”

“The economy is the one area where the political laws of gravity could apply. You cannot tell people that their grocery bill has gone down when it hasn’t. But the motivated reasoning of ‘now Trump is back, everything is good’ - that will get him through for quite a while.” 

“Musk could have the world’s best information service at his fingertips. Information is the crucial part of good decision-making in life and he could have the single best private intelligence agency in the world. And instead he’s getting his news from idiot zealots on X.”

“There’s going to be things that the Trump administration is able to do internationally, by throwing around American power, which is formidable. The question is whether that is a good strategy over the long run. You can get people to do things because they’re afraid of you, but there’s a view that, long term, this erodes American power.”

“If [as a European gov’t] you pull your punches all the time, you’re going to end up with the worst of every world: you’re going to end up undercutting your own dignity and power on the international stage, and you’re not going to get Trump to change.”

GRIN AND SHARE IT

Read - and watch video - about equal marriage being legalised in Thailand.

CALLS TO ACTION LINKS:

Brian's article on how volunteering makes one a supercitizen.

Kick your X habit, finally, by using one of three Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Packs. With one click, it will hook you up with, among many good accounts, Alex, Naomi, Kenny, and Brian.

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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.

Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

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Join us for some group therapy! Naomi and Alex welcome back 38Degrees CEO and former Obama campaign staffer Matthew McGregor with some first impressions of Trump's low-energy inauguration speech, his high-energy overflow speech, Melania's get-away-from-me-energy hat and Musk's chemically-enhanced-energy salute.

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"So much of it was about him. So much of it was about how he's the best and how he's suffered and how he's the victim. Contrast that with 'ask not what your country can do for you'. It was an extraordinarily self-centered inauguration speech."

"Once he was in the other room, he gave the speech he really wanted to. He wanted to talk about January the 6th. He wanted to open up old wounds. He will never ever let go of the injustice that he perceives happened to him back in 2020.”

"We should be outraged. We should stay angry. And we should be up for resisting what Donald Trump is going to try to do to America. But there's no point in pretending that he is a novice, an idiot, someone who is deranged. He knows what he's doing."

“John McCain said it's always darkest just before it goes completely black. I'm glad to be, experiencing the pain, with you both, in a group therapy setting.”

CALLS TO ACTION

To find out more about (and donate if in the US) to Planned Parenthood click here.

To find out more about and help Bloody Good Period click here.

To find out more about and help Level Up click here.

Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.

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Naomi and Alex look at the week's news, focussing on Starmer's visit to Poland and Donald Tusk's dream of a "Breturn". Also, the markets have made a remarkable recovery and the media, obsessed with gilt rates until last week, appear not to have noticed - it's almost like there's an agenda there. Plus, TikTok "goes dark" in the US, but has Trump changed his mind?

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“Tusk is successful where the Remain campaign was not. He makes the emotional appeal. He goes for hearts instead of minds. It’s not a coincidence that he is also the person reversing the trend for ever-further-right governments in former Eastern Bloc countries, by bringing together a broad coalition. He is pointing the way on a lot of this stuff.”

“Both the UK and the EU need to capitalise on current circumstances and bake in some stuff that is hard to reverse. They don’t know with whom they will be negotiating next time. I think Donald Tusk gets that and has gone out there and shown Starmer some pretty difficult-to-squirm-away-from love.”

Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.

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Alice Jolly taught at Oxford for 16 years ... until she had the temerity to complain about her pay.

Sacked from a job she loved, she took the university to court over her employment rights and won a famous victory.

But what are the broader lessons for the world of academia? In this Quiet Riot special, Naomi Smith talks with Alice, an award-winning writer and academic, about a sector that contributes £265billion to the economy yet where a deeply disturbing number of universities are running at a loss.

Are neo-liberal managers destroying the heart of Britain's higher education sector by prioritising areas such as property development over teaching?

‘When it is very difficult I remind myself that we are fighting for the future of higher education ... it is the basis of our civilisation’

'I loved Oxford University and the dream of that world’ 

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Find out more about the University and College Union

Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with SandStone Global.

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Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith with special guest Guardian columnist Zoe Williams assess Labour's first 200 days in power, in pretty frank, no-holds-barred conversation. And, as the Trump cabinet confirmation hearing stun Capitol Hill, the gang engage is some preemptive group therapy on how to survive the next four years of Trump.

Plus 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin and Share It'.

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“There is a real problem with Keir’s cabinet and Keir’s government… He will not let anyone go out and build their own brand, persona, ideas - anything. He won’t let anyone go out and be the person they want to be. And so when you get a situation like Reeves at the mercy of bond markets nobody looks at her and thinks: she’s got this.”

“Debt markets are a beauty pageant and you don’t want to be the ugliest contestant. What is happening now is not at all like Truss, because at that point everyone else’s bond markets were relatively calm and ours was the only one shooting up. That is a very different situation.”

“What is this government’s growth theory? I don’t know. Every government has one - it might be bullshit, but they have it. This one’s seems to be a Jack-And-The-Beanstalk theory: ‘I will take my desire for growth to the market and buy a bean and then let’s see what happens.’” 

GRIN AND SHARE IT

You can read about the amazing advance in battery technology here.

CALLS TO ACTION LINKS:

Zoe's piece about quitting Facebook.

The petition calling for an independent evaluation of the Cass Review.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD***

With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.

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