Quiet Riot

Here is the full - AND VERY FRANK - conversation between Alex Andreou and More In Common's chief Luke Tryl on all four Conservative leadership hopefuls.

And if you think “why should I care?” - this is why: our entire political system, for good or ill, is adversarial in nature. The quality of the opposition to the government shapes policy. Ideas that have had their tyres properly kicked, will always be better ideas. 

Luke: "What we hear from our focus groups is that Kemi is refreshing."

Alex: "So is an enema."

Luke: "You're being mean."

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Oh, we are Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with SandStone Global. But you knew that. x

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An absolutely jam-packed episode on the Tory leadership contest and the US Election VP debate. Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell are joined by Guardian quill-wielder Zoe Williams, US omni-expert Brian Klaas, and More In Common gros fromage Luke Tryl to dig out the genuinely interesting stuff from these debates (and there is plenty of genuinely interesting stuff). We craft two political silk purses from a couple of sow's ears. We're also knitting – see how seamlessly we stitch such disparate subjects together?

On both sides of the Pond, important debates; on both sides of the Pond, vaguely competent performances but not so much excitement.

But what can we glean from the US Vice-Presidential clash, if it can be described as a clash, and what are the takeaways from the Tory leadership speeches in Birmingham?

Brian Klaas: “What is striking about [the VP debate] is what it tells you about the campaigns’ goals. Normally, when a campaign thinks it’s down in a race, they come out swinging… But both campaigns think they’re in a safe position, which is very odd, because one of them is wrong and we don’t know which one.”

Brian Klaas: “A lot of professional political analysts misunderstand the public, because they think the public views politics in the same way they do. Which is that you win arguments by having better facts and making appeals to policy. A lot of politics is impressionistic. 

Zoe Williams: “Kemi Badenoch’s pitch is: I’m going to be as unpleasant as I can possibly be and then deny I said it. That is extraordinary. There are huge swathes of the political class in which, to deny outright that you said a thing, which you did say, is disbarring. She’s singing to a different hymn book.”

Zoe Williams: “Jenrick is not that clever, that’s the problem. He does wrong-foot himself constantly. A huge amount of his most controversial output is accidental.” 

Luke Tryl: "Our research shows that Reform voters might actually be the hardest group for the Conservatives to win back. Only one-in-ten would even consider voting Conservative again during this parliament.

Calls to Action

Check out More In Common and their fantastic work to build a more inclusive world.

Grin and Share It: What happened when Denver treated migrants with respect ? Good things, that's what.

Subscribe to Brian Klaas' fascinating Substack, The Garden of Forking Paths. Consistently great writing on consistently captivating topics.

Want some more? You can track us down on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod, or hop over to Bluesky for our starter pack action. If email is your thang, our address is [email protected]. And we even have a website, www.quietriotpod.com. Amazing.

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Oh, we are Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with SandStone Global. But you knew that. x

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Alex stays up all night to bring you the quickest, freshest, and most sleepless, reaction to the VP debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance. The answer of who won will surprise you.

A special thank you to everyone who has helped Quiet Riot smash through the 500,000 downloads milestone (smilestone?) in just four short months. If you want more, find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

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

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How can Britain begin to undo the damage to our freedom of movement that Brexit inflicted? Well, we could start with a positive outcome from this week's Brussels meeting between PM Keir Starmer and EC President Ursula von der Leyen.

Naomi Smith bangs the drum for musicians, studies the situation for students and ... well, you get the idea. Post-Brexit travel restrictions have been a pain for all and a disaster for many, including those trying to come into Britain as well as those of us trying to slip out of these punch-drunk islands.

Naomi's impassioned plea to the PM is backed by some beefy statistics from her team at Best for Britain – in short, Starmer could do everyone, himself included, a huge favour by starting to dismantle some of those travel barriers that have been thrown up so carelessly in recent years. Might even be that rarest of beasts, a vote winner.

Call to action

Find the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants HERE and give them your backing!

A special thank you to everyone who has helped Quiet Riot smash through the 500,000 downloads milestone (smilestone?) in just four short months. If you want more, find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

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

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Naomi and Alex discuss Baroness Warsi's resignation as a Tory peer and whether that Party is now lost to islamophobia. Plus, why does right wing politics find climate action so difficult. All this, and a BOMBSHELL revelation from Naomi about her undeclared relationship with Lord Waheed Alli. (Also, you must listen to the end. Trust us.)

If you can afford to help, you can back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

CALLS TO ACTION

Best for Britain's tree-planting donation is here.

Baroness Warsi's apology to the LGBT+ community.

Baroness Warsi's full interview with James O'Brien.

Alex's 2014 piece on the floods.

MET Office's rain research. is here.

Compernicus's heatwave research is here.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

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

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Naomi downloads ALL THE GOSSIP from Labour Party Conference - and juicy it is too - before Alex chats to guest, former Middle East diplomat Arthur Snell, about the situation in Lebanon, Ukraine, and the first UN General Assembly for David Lammy and Keir Starmer as Foreign Secretary and PM respectively. Plus a hilarious WOKEY DOKEY and brand new feature GRIN AND SHARE IT.

If you can afford to help, you can back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

Naomi: “I have never seen so much EU representation at a Labour conference. They were there in force. They see [Labour] as people they can do business with, for the first time in a long time. Officials from Brussels, member state reps, the EU delegation to the UK - they were present, happy… the level of excitement about what the EU and UK are going to do, was palpable.”

Alex: “The last time we experienced a leader winning an election, then going into No 10, without having already been in situ as PM, several ministers already at departments, and experienced staff ready to shuffle around, was 2010. It’s a steep learning curve. There will be a certain amount of finding their feet. The metric that matters is: is this a government that learns from its mistakes? And that is not a judgment anyone can make yet.”

Arthur: “Netanyahu needs another war. He looks at the Gaza situation and, ultimately, a ceasefire and return of the hostages might be getting closer. The Israeli public want the hostages back above anything else. If they get back to anything close to politics as normal in Israel, then attention turns to him.” 

Arthur: “What Zelenskyy is trying to do, as best he can - and of course his options are quite limited - he is trying to Trump-proof western support that he is getting, build some guarantees into it and certain elements of long-term commitment.”

CALLS TO ACTION

Best for Britain's tree-planting donation is here.

Arthur's podcast Behind The Lines is here.

Ukraine Smart Medical Aid is here.

UNICEF's Emergency Lebanon Fund is here.

Grin And Share It good news story from Barcelona is here.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com.

IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

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

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Alex goes on a (very calm and reasoned) MEGA RANT about the mass hysteria over a Labour peer giving a make-over to the top team for the election campaign. You don't expect to have the book thrown at you, when you do everything strictly by that book.

"We have a comically unserious top tier of political journalists. Most of them have spent the last fourteen years, in a scandal-rich environment, with their volume permanently on 11, where they filled all the air time and column inches they wanted with anonymous briefing, court intrigue, screengrabs of WhatsApp groups, and very little actual journalism."

"Starmer’s cardinal sin is that he is not Corbyn. He is someone who has dirtied himself by winning power. Nothing will ever placate the left of the Labour party."

"The right wing is using this confected outrage as a tool to reframe their own rule-breaking and venality of the last decade, through false equivalence. This is especially so for Johnson fans - both individuals and newspapers. There is a huge effort to whitewash BoJo’s failure hanging on this peg." 

Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.)

We make all of our content universally available for free. But we do need your support to keep making it. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

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

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Monica Harding is the hard-working Lib Dem who scared Dominic Raab (remember him?) clean out of the Esher and Walton constituency, and has just been rewarded with an International Development brief in Ed Davey's top team.

In our latest Quiet Riot Mini, Naomi Smith gets Monica's take on the Lib Dem conference and on life as a new MP.

If you want to hear more about how she took in a new dawn for the country with her family, or how she dodged asbestos in Westminster, then listen in for 25 minutes of insight and laughter from someone who has done plenty of hard miles in politics before being elected.

We make all of our content universally available for free but we do need your support to keep making it. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. This Thursday, our Ko-fi family will get the chance to take part in a Quiet Riot editorial meeting with Naomi, Alex and maybe even producer Kenny, so do head on over and sign up :-)

Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.)

IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex zoom in on the Reform UK Party Conference and consider whether it is possible for Nigel Farage to professionalise the party and rid it of bigots - as he says he wants to do - and whether that makes it more or less dangerous to the health of our body politic. Plus a whistle-stop tour of other news, including the allegations agains Al Fayed and Harrods and the extraordinary scandal engulfing the Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina. Plus - how to pack for a party conference! [TW rape and sexual assault.]

We make all of our content universally available for free. But we do need your support to keep making it. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

Alex: “It’s very hard to think there won’t be a clash between those very big male egos at the centre of Reform UK. You have Richard Tice, ploughing in all the money, while getting none of the spotlight, Nigel Farage who has this overwhelming air of I-know-best, and then you have Lee Anderson - a recalcitrant blabbermouth who refuses to be reined in. At some point those big alphas will do bloody battle.”

Naomi: “I sense that the mood is not going to be as jubilant as one would expect it to be, given it will be the first Labour Conference, post their landslide election win.”

Naomi: “I hate packing for party conferences. And I am someone who likes packing.”

Naomi's Guardian piece on the Canadian Reform Party's hostile takeover of the Conservatives, can be read here.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.)

IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

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

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A FUN mini edition of Poll The Other One, in which Naomi digs into the cross tabs and break points of a frivolous aspect of a very serious piece of polling: How does your favourite takeaway correlate with your age, location, party preference, and even newspaper of choice? Which are the only constituencies where 'chicken shop' is Top 3? What is a Sun reader's fave takeaway? And why will so few of us admit to loving a kebab?

A perfect 10-minute listen.

We make all of our content universally available for free. But we do need your support to keep making it. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

You can find the MUNCH MAPPER HERE.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at [email protected]. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.)

IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices