Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s11e16 Episode Script
UK Elections
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.
The U.S.
suffered a massive heat wave,
Team USA
unveiled the Olympic uniforms,
which don't say "professional athlete"
so much as "my stepmother
sent me away to boarding school",
and Putin visited North Korea,
where, after signing a defense pact,
Kim Jong Un waved him off,
like a parent sending a kid
away to summer camp.
"Bye! I left a note in your backpack!
Don't read it until you get there!"
But we're gonna start in Louisiana,
which this week made some history.
This morning,
Louisiana has become the first state
to require the Ten Commandments
be displayed in public classrooms,
from kindergarten
to publicly funded universities.
If you want
to respect the rule of law,
you gotta start from the original
law-giver, which was Moses.
First, Moses was not
the original lawgiver.
That would be,
say it with me, Ur-Nammu,
king of the ancient
Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur.
That's right,
it's something we all know!
But more importantly, it is true,
Louisiana will now require
the Ten Commandments be displayed
in all public classrooms,
even kindergartens.
Which is absurd.
Kindergarteners don't need
"Thou shalt not covet
thy neighbor's wife"
next to their cubbies,
that's not a thing they do.
And even if they did, who cares?
They're five.
If you're that worried about your wife
running off with a five-year-old,
your marriage
has problems no god can fix.
And if you noticed some commotion
behind Governor Landry there,
that is because, just a second earlier,
one of the kids behind him collapsed.
And Landry never once turns around
to see what's going on.
And I'm happy to say
that she's okay.
That is a perfect encapsulation
of the Republican Party today,
loudly pretending to care
about the well-being of children
while completely ignoring
the literal well-being of a child.
And during the debate
before the law's passage,
its sponsor didn't seem troubled
by some pretty basic questions.
You don't believe
that this alienates students
who are not Christian or Jewish?
No ma'am, I don't.
This is about a moral code
that our country was founded upon,
and they can simply turn their heads,
I suppose.
They can simply turn their heads,
you suppose.
The thing the governor of Louisiana
seems completely incapable of doing
when a child falls right behind him.
This is clearly unconstitutional,
and the ACLU has already said that
it'll file a lawsuit against Louisiana,
and you would think that they'd
stand a good chance to win that,
especially as Kentucky actually
passed a similar law decades ago,
only for it to be struck down
by the Supreme Court in 1980.
But the truth is, as this
constitutional expert points out,
this time could be different.
On its face, it is certainly contrary
to Supreme Court precedent,
but as we know,
precedent isn't what it used to be.
Yeah, that is putting it mildly.
Precedent used to mean justices
had to have a really good reason
to reverse course on settled law,
and one much better than just
"My billionaire friend said
they'd take me to Barbados next time".
And this fight is just
the latest in a series of conflicts
over public displays of symbols,
this year, legislators
in Tennessee, Florida, and Utah
all introduced bills
to ban Pride flags in schools.
And while those bills failed,
more are undoubtedly coming.
Meanwhile, Denver's school district
is facing a lawsuit from a parent
over its display of Pride flags,
after he unsuccessfully demanded
they display "a straight pride flag".
Which is apparently
"a black and white striped flag
with a linked male and female
gender sign on it".
If you're having trouble picturing
that, this is the straight pride flag,
which to be honest, really screams
"heterosexuality is a prison".
That is just a failure
of marketing right there.
The Pride flag
is a joyous explosion of color,
and you're gonna try to counter it
with something that looks, at best,
like the Hamburglar's
wedding invitation?
Good luck with that!
But it's not just one weirdo parent
in Colorado doing this shit.
The state Republican Party
is right there with him, too.
A fundraising email
from Colorado's Republican Party
called for LGBTQ Pride flags
to be burned,
and described LGBTQ Americans
as "godless groomers".
That email was signed
by Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams,
and the same message
was also posted on X.
There is a lot to unpack there,
from the hot Jesus looking like he just
got bitten by a radioactive wise man,
to the instruction
to "burn all Pride flags this June".
And again, that is the state
party's official account,
Colo-GOP, which, to be honest,
looks like someone was trying
to spell "colonoscopy" and then died.
Flag controversies
have even risen to the Supreme Court.
Last month, we learned
that just after January 6th,
Justice Alito's house
displayed an upside-down flag,
a symbol associated
with the Stop the Steal movement.
Alito quickly blamed
that on his wife, saying:
"My wife and I
own our Virginia home jointly.
She therefore has the legal right
to use the property as she sees fit,
and there were no additional steps
that I could have taken
to have the flag
taken down more promptly".
While on the one hand,
that's a surprisingly progressive take
on a woman's right
to choose from Alito,
he does make it sound
there like he's trapped
in a fraught and joyless marriage,
and luckily,
I have the perfect flag for him
to be able to express that feeling.
Alito's wife was recorded recently
talking about that controversy,
and in the conversation, volunteered
her own thoughts on the Pride flag,
and they are intense.
I want a Sacred Heart
of Jesus flag.
I have to look across the lagoon
at the Pride flag for the next month.
And he is like:
"Please don't put up a flag".
I said: "I won't do it,
because I'm deferring to you.
When you are free of this nonsense,
I'm putting it up,
and I'm gonna send them a message
every day, maybe every week,
I'll be changing the flags".
They'll be all kinds.
I made a flag in my head.
This is how I satisfy myself.
I made a flag.
It's white and it has yellow
and orange flames around it.
And in the middle
is the word "vergogna".
"Vergogna" in Italian means "shame".
Vergogna.
V-E-R-G-O-G-N-A.
Vergogna. Shame, shame,
shame on you. You know?
"My hobby is telling other people
that they should feel shame
through depictions of fire
and the Italian language".
This woman is operating on a level
of Catholicism never before seen.
And the way
she's saying "vergogna" there
sounds like she's trying
to cast a curse.
Every time you say "vergogna"
like that, an angel gets its wings,
and then a bunch of mean Italian nuns
start hitting it with rulers.
The point is, it seems safe to say
that a man who lives in a house
that's this close to flying
a flaming "shame" flag
isn't going to have much of a problem
with the Ten Commandments
being forced into classrooms.
And none of this
should be surprising.
Conservatives love to rail
against cancel culture
while trying to ban
any speech they don't like.
When it's someone else's symbol,
it needs to be burned or banned,
but when it's theirs,
it can be mandated by law,
and anyone who doesn't like it can
just turn their head and not look.
I would say that that
is a shameful position to take,
except thanks
to this vindictive flag queen,
I now know that there is
a much better word: vergogna.
And now, this!
And Now:
Happy Pride from Jim Cramer.
You could have a chance
for a real run the next day.
I've staked my career
on being able to spot bottoms and tops.
One of CNBC's finest.
Always use that 10-to-one ratio
to call bottoms,
including the generational bottom
that he nailed.
In February and March,
the TD combo model
absolutely nailed the top
and then the bottom.
Larry's the guy who called the bottom
in April 2020.
Williams was the one who nailed
the bottom in the spring of last year.
He's the one who called the bottom
in March of 2009.
Sebastian managed to nail the bottom
when we talked to him about it.
David Demshur came on this show
and basically called the bottom.
Sure enough, he nailed it.
Remember, I said,
if Apple bottoms, we bottom.
You don't have to nail
every short term top and bottom.
Everyone was giving up at once.
That's textbook bottom behavior.
I think we need to experience
more pain,
before we get the big bottom
that we're all waiting for.
Let's go to Joe in Ohio.
It's almost impossible
to perfectly nail the bottom.
You can always nail the bottom.
Bottoms accompanied by bad news.
Last year's bottom
was very sneaky.
When can you be sure
that you have a real bottom in hand?
That's the question everyone's
pondering right now, right?
And you've come
to the correct place for the answer.
I've been spelunking for bottoms
for 40 years.
Moving on. Our main story tonight
concerns the U.K.,
the number one study
abroad destination
for Americans
who refuse to learn a new language.
It's also, fun fact, where I'm from!
Even if I never opened my mouth,
I feel like you could still tell.
The U.K is in the middle
of an election right now,
which its prime minister,
Rishi Sunak, called back in May,
for some reason,
in the middle of a torrential downpour.
At a damp Downing Street,
with few moves left to play,
it was time to roll the dice.
Earlier today,
I spoke with His Majesty the King
to request
the dissolution of Parliament.
The King has granted this request,
and we will have a general election
on the 4th of July.
What are you doing, Rishi?
It is pouring rain,
and you're literally in front
of the house where you live.
Just pop in and grab an umbrella!
It frankly says something
that a British person
trying to reclaim the 4th of July
as a day of potential victory
is the second-weirdest thing
about that announcement.
This election was something
of a surprise, though.
And if you're confused
how that can be, in Britain,
the prime minister can call
an election whenever they want,
as long as there is one
every five years.
Like many things,
the way Britain operates
is kind of like the U.S.,
but whimsically worse.
The last election
was back in 2019,
so Sunak had to call one
before the end of this year,
but he chose to do so right now,
something that even members
of his own party were blindsided by,
as these reporters pointed out later
that same day.
This morning, amid all the speculation,
nobody could really believe it.
- How has it gone down with his MPs?
- Badly.
Yeah. And look, first, I don't want
to read too much into this,
but the fact that they both of them
were holding large umbrellas there
feels like a pretty clear dig to me.
But second, I get why Sunak's
colleagues were mad.
It must suck to have to suddenly
go home and tell your spouse
"Sorry, love, I know we were
supposed to go to Italy next month,
but my wet boss gave a speech
and I have to spend the next six weeks
running around fighting for my job".
Sunak's party,
the Conservatives, or Tories,
are currently wildly unpopular
in Britain.
They got trounced earlier this year
in local elections,
and they're currently polling around
20 points behind their main rival,
the Labour Party, with one
projection model suggesting Labour
could win around 450
of the 650 parliamentary seats.
Some have said
that this election
could be an "extinction level event"
for the Tories.
And it's not like they're projecting
confidence or competence right now.
Nearly 80 conservative MPs have
stepped down ahead of the election,
a postwar record.
And that is on top of the resignations
that've taken place
over the last couple of years,
including this MP,
who admitted to using cocaine
but claimed that he was set up,
saying "It was very late"
and he'd "been drinking tons
of incredibly potent Japanese whisky",
another, who admitted to groping
two men at a private members' club,
and this guy,
who resigned after he was found
to have watched pornography
on his phone in the House of Commons,
and his excuse for that
was genuinely amazing.
The situation
was that I, funnily enough,
that it was tractors
that I was looking at.
But I did get into another website,
that had a sort of a very similar name.
And I watched it for a bit,
which I shouldn't have done.
But my crime, my biggest crime,
is that on another occasion,
I went in a second time.
- And that was deliberate?
- Yes.
That is incredible.
"Yes, I looked at porn,
twice, but the first time,
I was just trying to look at tractors
on the internet".
That is very much the "Japanese
whisky tricked me into doing cocaine"
of internet porn lies.
But what makes it
even more unbelievable is,
why would anyone need to seek out
porn, if they're looking at tractors?
You've got everything
you need right there,
and you don't even
have to flip off SafeSearch.
Why go to the bakery,
when we've got cake at home?
I'm not saying I'd fuck a tractor,
I'm saying I would let this tractor
fuck me so hard I sprout corn.
And on top of all this,
Sunak himself seems to be
almost trying to lose the election,
given one of his new,
bold campaign ideas
is to "bring back mandatory
national service" for 18-year-olds,
a plan that drew almost
immediate blowback,
to the point that he felt
the need to talk to teens
in a way
that he hoped they'd understand.
Hi, TikTok, sorry to be breaking
into your usual politics-free feed,
but I'm making
a big announcement today,
and I've been told that a lot
of you already have some views on it.
So, first thing: no, I'm not sending
everyone off to join the army.
What I am doing is proposing
a bold new model of national service
for 18-year-olds.
They'll be able to choose
to spend 12 months
at a full-time military commission,
or one weekend per month volunteering
in roles within your local community,
like delivering prescriptions
and food to elderly people,
or in search and rescue.
Okay! So, it's not
bringing back the draft.
It's bring back the draft, or forcing
teens to do GrubHub for grandmas,
or search for bodies in the Thames.
Just classic things
18-year-olds love to do.
The Tories are in trouble.
Which is a remarkable downfall
for a party that's been in power
for the last 14 straight years.
This could be a massive
couple of weeks for the U.K.
So, given that, tonight,
let's look at the U.K. election.
We're gonna focus on a few things:
some of the choices on offer,
why people are so mad
at the Conservatives,
and why they are
absolutely right to be.
And let's start
with some of the contenders,
there's the Liberal Democrats,
the traditionally centrist party.
They are unlikely to win overall,
and because of that,
seem to mainly
be focusing on having fun.
One Lib Dem official has said
"as a smaller party, we have to find
a way to break into the news cycle".
And that has meant
pushing their leader, Ed Davey,
to do multiple stupid stunts
like going down a waterslide,
falling off a paddle board,
and doing "look ma, no feet"
on a bike.
He tried to conduct a policy interview
in the weirdest imaginable place.
- What about the economy?
- We've gotta get it growing again.
That'll be helped by cutting
the NHS waiting list
also by getting a much better
trade deal with Europe
and by investing in the skills
of our young people.
We've got great policies for our
economy including the cost of living!
I'm glad Ed Davey's having fun,
but the fact is, his party
is still going to lose the election!
Then there is the much less-endearing
far-right Reform U.K. Party,
the punchable face
of which is Nigel Farage.
He's been out
on the campaign trail,
running on a hard
antiimmigration platform,
and getting
the exact reception that he deserves.
Reform U.K.'s attracted attention,
with bold promises on reducing
legal immigration levels
and stopping
small boat crossings.
For all the support,
it seems not everyone's
a fan of their approach.
Nigel Farage was covered in milkshake
on the campaign trail.
Spectacular. Also, just a bonkers
use of the passive voice there.
"Was covered in milkshake".
Who threw it, exactly?
I'll tell you who: the dairy queen who
made this perfect Fibonacci spiral.
Just look at her! You can't erase
this icon. Look at those lashes!
No need to force the youth
into serving their country,
this legend is doing it for free.
And do you have any idea how unlikable
you have to be to get milkshaked?
No one just casually has
a milkshake on their person or thinks
"I better grab one in case
I encounter any assholes today".
No. They think "You know what
I haven't had in a while but deserve?
A milkshake. A treat".
Yet despite that, Nigel Farage
is clearly so much of an asshole
that this hero was willing to get rid
of her possible birthday milkshake
having decided
"This is a better use of it".
And frankly, she was right.
Especially as this wasn't even the
first time that Farage got milkshaked.
It happened to him back in 2019, too,
and just look at him there.
Look how sad he is,
wearing his stupid little ribbon.
He looks like he threw up on himself
after winning a spelling bee.
And if you have the tiniest
flicker of sympathy for him,
know that he followed his recent
milkshaking by releasing this video.
My milkshake
brings all the people to the rally.
I hate that man so much!
There is,
and I am not exaggerating,
no one on Earth more deserving
of being milkshook than Nigel Farage.
So, clearly,
neither of these two wet boys
are likely to be
the next prime minister.
But why isn't this one
going to win?
As prime minister, he should have
the advantage of incumbency.
But the truth is,
Sunak's never been popular,
and for multiple reasons,
including the fact that,
after marrying the heir
to a multibillion-dollar fortune,
he's now got more money
than the king.
It says something that,
the very day
it was announced that Sunak
would become prime minister,
one news report
featured this fun graphic.
How would you describe
Rishi Sunak in one word?
Savanta Comres,
a polling research company,
came up with a word cloud,
and people sent in their thoughts,
and this is the conclusion.
"Rich" is the overwhelming word,
alongside
"capable", "okay",
"good", and "clever".
Do you know how much of an
out-oftouch wang you have to be
for people to think that your vibe
can be summed up by the word "rich?"
Elon Musk
is the richest man on Earth,
and it's not even the first word that
comes to mind when I think of him.
That would be "apartheid".
It's also not the first word that comes
to mind when I think of Bill Gates.
That would be
"howmanytimeswasheonepsteinsplane"
which counts as one word
if you say it really fast.
But perhaps the most notable thing
there isn't how big the word "rich
it's that that word cloud also includes
the words "twat" and "cunt".
They put that on the news!
Enough people called the prime minister
a cunt that it made the news.
It almost makes me feel patriotic.
And just for the record,
"cunt" in the U.K. isn't as harsh
a word as I know it is here.
I know that here in the U.S.,
it's used by red-pilled basement
boys toward powerful women.
But in the U.K., it's a non-gendered,
multi-purpose insult
like "dodgy", "tosser",
"numpty", "wanker",
"dicksplash", "fuckletoes",
"pillock", and "cockwomble".
Only one of those is made up
and it's not the one you think.
But perhaps the clearest sign
of how unpopular the Tories are
is that they're about to be defeated
by the Labour Party,
currently led by Keir Starmer,
and fun fact about Keir:
there aren't any.
When pollsters asked voters
to describe what Starmer stands for,
the responses included "nothing",
"not sure", and "don't know".
His most notable attribute may be
having no real notable attributes,
as this pollster
delicately points out.
For Keir Starmer,
still over half of the population
don't really perceive
that they know what he stands for,
and only one in five people
say that he's good in a crisis
or indeed has a personality.
And so, there are some areas where
he needs to see further development.
Okay. Set aside
the brutal personality slam there,
you know how hard it is
to have less than half the population
know what you stand for,
in the modern age?
Thanks to social media,
I know what my chemistry teacher
thinks about vegans who eat honey.
I know my brother's
roommate's ex-girlfriend
thinks Lee Harvey Oswald
couldn't have acted alone.
And I know that Shaq doesn't fit
in the seats at Knott's Berry Farm,
because he tweeted, and I quote,
"I'm at Knots Berry Farms
and my butts too big
to fit in the seats on the ride.
Ahhhhhh, that's me yellin'".
That was 15 years ago,
and it'll be the last thing
I think about before I die.
The point is, we know too
much about everyone on Earth,
making it incredible that British
people don't seem to know much
about the man on the verge of running
the sixth largest economy in the world.
To the extent we do know anything
about Starmer,
it's that he's
a pretty bland centrist.
Perhaps the perfect symbol
of that is the fact that he unveiled
his party's middle-of-the-road
platform earlier this month
standing next to the word "change"
in the smallest font imaginable.
He's also done things
like tell his cabinet members
they should not show support
for striking rail workers,
which is a little hard to take,
given their party's name is "Labour".
And on a personal level,
he's been repeatedly challenged
to come up
with interesting facts about himself,
and so far, has only managed
to come up with one.
Tell us one interesting
or surprising thing about yourself
that we don't already know.
I did violin lessons with Fatboy Slim
- Is that true?
- That's absolutely true.
I will admit,
that is definitely notable.
Though it's not great when
the most interesting thing about you is
"I was once in school
next to someone more interesting".
Yeah, Keir!
We assumed that!
So, how are the Conservatives
at the point where they're about
to have their asses handed to them
by Fatboy Slim's violin partner?
The answer is, everything
they've done over the last 14 years,
in which time they've had
five different prime ministers.
And it's worth briefly
revisiting all of them.
And let's start
with David Cameron,
three-time winner
of Britain's Least Lips.
He took over in 2010, at a time when
Britain was running record deficits,
and chose to tackle that
through what's been called
"one of the biggest deficit
reduction programs
seen in any advanced economy
since World War II".
And while much of Europe focused
on raising taxes to close budget gaps,
Cameron relied heavily
on a program of austerity,
essentially, making brutal cuts
to government services,
and attributing Britain's struggles
not to the 2008 financial crisis,
but to years of "frivolous
spending" under Labour.
And he explained
his cuts like this.
Reducing spending
will be difficult.
There are programs that will be cut.
There are jobs that will be lost.
There are things the government does
today that it will have to stop doing.
Many government departments
will have their budgets cut
on average by 25%
over four years.
Now, we will get
into the impact those cuts had,
but before we do,
let's address what might've been
the most savage cut of all there,
and that is the camera cut
from David Cameron to this guy.
It is strange to suddenly show
this haunted business thumb at all,
but especially right
after David Cameron said
"There are things the government
needs to stop doing".
But maybe it was strategic.
Maybe they thought
"Look, we're cutting programs,
people will lose their jobs,
so when I say 'the government
is gonna stop doing stuff'
make sure you cut to Weird Dave.
He's so odd looking, people might think
'Is that the government?
I definitely want him to stop doing
everything he's doing, immediately.
Turn off the lights
and put him somewhere damp.
He looks like a fan of the damp.'"
But those cuts were brutal.
In their first 10 years,
central government funding for local
authorities fell by as much as 40%.
And the way they were structured
meant that the most deprived areas
had to cut their
spending the most.
And poor families and kids
were hit hardest,
as Cameron's measures included
reducing housing benefits,
cutting grants to pregnant women,
and freezing benefits
for working-age families,
even as inflation was rising.
But the move that ultimately
doomed Cameron wasn't any of that.
It was his decision to appease
Eurosceptic members of his party,
by calling the Brexit vote,
a decision one of his own
cabinet ministers has called
"the greatest blunder ever made
by a British prime minister".
And that is including this look.
And by the way:
buzz, buzz bitch.
The "Bee Movie" called - it's 2007
and you have six years left to live.
The idea was the Brexit referendum
would lay to rest the question
of whether Britain
should leave the EU.
And the infuriating thing is,
Cameron himself didn't
support Britain leaving,
and only called the vote
because he thought it would fail.
But, of course, it didn't, and he
immediately resigned in disgrace,
leaving his successor,
Theresa May,
who had also opposed Brexit,
to deal with the mess.
She spent three years trying
to hammer out a Brexit deal,
while also overseeing
yet more austerity measures
like the so-called
"two-child cap"
which restricted the child
tax credit and other benefits
to the first two children
in most households.
Even if you had five kids,
you only get benefits for two of them.
Which does make sense.
Everyone knows that after the 3rd kid,
they don't really have to eat.
And May wasn't exactly
a charismatic leader.
Beyond Westminster, despite
her attempts to laugh at herself,
Theresa May never really
connected with the public.
She was also weakened by episodes
like the party conference speech,
where everything
that could go wrong did go wrong.
Well before
her decision to step down,
critics said the wheels
were coming off her leadership.
I gotta say, it's a pretty bad sign
when you're literally standing
in front of a pretty bad sign.
May couldn't hammer out a Brexit
deal that her party would support,
so she gave way
to this fucking guy,
whose time in office
was a total shambles.
Because while Boris Johnson
did finally get a Brexit deal done,
and Britain left the EU
on January 31st, 2020,
that was the exact same day
Britain's first cases
of the coronavirus were announced.
And Boris' handling of Covid
was an unmitigated disaster.
At first, he reportedly dismissed it
as "the new swine flu
and just a scare story",
with one of his advisers
saying that he seemed to think
"Covid is just nature's way
of dealing with old people".
And one of Boris' top aides,
Dominic Cummings,
later testified about just how badly
the government handled Covid,
in a hearing featuring readings from
messages that he'd sent at the time.
You called ministers
in emails and WhatsApps
to your professional colleagues.
Do you feel that you expressed
your views too trenchantly,
that your opinion of ministers and of
the cabinet overstated the position?
No. I would say, if anything,
it understated the position,
as events showed in 2020.
Just to be clear,
what was bleeped there
was Cummings calling his colleagues
"useless fuckpigs" and "cunts".
And that is completely unfair.
Not the "cunt" part. That does apply.
I'm talking about the term "fuckpigs".
Because for the record,
there has only been one actual
fuckpig in Downing Street,
and that is David Cameron,
whose unauthorized biography,
lest we forget, told us that,
as a student at Oxford,
he apparently once put his dick
in a dead pig's mouth.
Thing is, he probably would've
gotten away with that, too,
if someone hadn't squealed,
not the pig, of course.
The pig couldn't squeal,
it was dead.
Plus, its mouth was full.
David Cameron put his dick
in a dead pig's mouth.
Ultimately, Johnson was undone
by a series of scandals,
including his efforts
to cover up parties
his government repeatedly
held during the pandemic,
in violation
of his own lockdown rules.
So, he then gave way
to Liz Truss,
who had the shortest tenure of any
British prime minister in history.
We've talked before about her
disastrous proposed budget
full of tax cuts for the rich,
which caused a mini economic crisis,
and we talked about
her weird speaking style,
so there's really not much point
in even showing you a clip of her.
But given how weird she was,
I'm gonna go ahead and do it anyway.
My mother
took me on protests.
I went on marches.
I made banners.
I stayed at peace camps.
What is happening there?
She speaks like a kindergarten teacher
during story time,
but with no book, no page turning,
and, crucially, no kindergarteners.
She's like if "hold for applause"
was a person.
Anyway, Truss was
gone in less than two months,
which finally brings us back
to Sunak the Wet,
a man who literally doesn't have
the sense to come in from the rain.
It's objectively fun to look back
at what a collection of weirdos
ran Britain for years.
But it gets considerably less fun
when you look
at what they did to the country.
And let's start with the most obvious
calamity, and that's Brexit.
The pitch for it was that it would
free British businesses
of Europe's onerous restrictions.
But instead,
what ended up happening
was, for U.K. businesses
looking to trade with Europe,
especially small businesses, the red
tape has multiplied exponentially.
Remember, when we were part
of the single market,
you could throw a box of tea
or a packet of bangers into the back
of a van in Birmingham
and drive it to Barcelona, or Bonn,
or Brussels without let or hindrance.
Now you can't do that.
We were told that we would have
the most amazing deal.
We're gonna get our sovereignty
and we were going to keep
all the advantages of being in the EU.
As a business, we were dumb enough
to believe that.
Come January last year,
we got an order from Italy,
we shipped it, as normal,
thinking there'll be a little bit
of paperwork and we'll figure it out.
And it sat for 12 weeks
in different customs' houses.
So, the reality was very different.
That sounds like a total mess.
But I just want to go back
to that guy naming cities there,
'cause I really did not want him
to ever stop.
"You could throw a box of tea
or a packet of bangers
into the back of a van in
Birmingham and drive it to Barcelona,
or Bonn, or Brussels, or Bratislava,
or Bern, or Bucharest, or Budapest,
or Belfast, or Berlin, or maybe
as far away as Bergen, or Bilbao,
or Brest, or Bologna, or even circle
back through Badhoevedorp.
You could just drive".
The point is, trading goods
with the EU is now so onerous,
lots of U.K.
businesses, like that woman's,
have opted to relocate
into mainland Europe,
which is not good news
for the U.K.,
and helps explain why Brexit
is estimated to be costing
the U.K. economy
about 100 billion pounds per year.
But while Brexit's the story
that made international news,
austerity might be
the more insidious legacy
of Cameron and his successors.
Because it has, in so many ways,
obliterated the social safety net.
Take the NHS,
the U.K.'s healthcare system.
Years of underinvestment
have left it gutted and understaffed.
Just watch as the father
of one sick child
tried unsuccessfully to convey this
to Boris Johnson back when he was PM.
There are not enough people
on this ward,
there are not enough doctors,
not enough nurses.
It's not well organized enough.
The NHS has been destroyed.
It's been destroyed.
It's been destroyed, and now you
come here for a press opportunity.
Actually, there's no press here.
What do you mean there's no press?
Who are these people?
What an amazing lie
to even try to get away with.
The thing about
denying the press is there is,
the press tends
to catch you doing that,
because the press
is fucking there!
But that man's anger
was fully justified.
Waitlists for NHS treatment
have exploded,
more than seven and a half
million people
are waiting
for nonemergency treatment.
That is up from two million
when Conservatives first took office.
It's gotten to the point where
significant numbers of British people
are now going to Europe and paying
out of pocket to get treatment.
This surgeon in Lithuania
apparently has a booming business
treating British patients.
Last year, we did about
400-something, 500, maybe, surgeries.
And about 80%,
they are from U.K.
People from the U.K.
come because of the waiting time.
And also, excellent quality here,
of course.
Okay.
First, I really don't know
what's more surprising there,
the cheerful hammering,
or the fact he's doing it
in the middle of an interview.
But the fact 80% of his patients
are now from the U.K. is staggering.
The only foreigners I expect
to be flocking to Lithuania en masse
are people from New Jersey wanting
to see this actual Tony Soprano statue.
This is real.
It's in a train station in their capital.
Here it is from another angle!
The thing is huge!
And much like hundreds
of British orthopedic patients,
it doesn't make any sense
that it's suddenly in Lithuania!
But it's not just the NHS.
The Tories have literally
starved the country.
In 2010, the largest network
of food banks in Britain
operated just 35 nationwide.
Today, it runs more than 1,300.
And 20% of people
referred to their food banks
are in working households.
Meanwhile, "More than 800,000 patients
were admitted to hospital
with malnutrition
and nutritional deficiencies last year,
with doctors even seeing
cases of scurvy and rickets",
and British five-year-olds
are now a full centimeter shorter
than they were in 2010.
And it's pretty hard for Conservatives
to say they're working toward
the future growth of Britain,
when its future generations
are quite literally shrinking.
The unending parade
of austerity cuts
has relentlessly harmed
the most vulnerable in Britain.
Take Alexander Doodle,
who has multiple disabilities,
including a degenerative condition
in their hands and feet.
A few years back,
they invited a camera crew
to see the impact that cuts to things
that the government used to provide,
like home health aides,
prescription drugs,
and accessible housing,
had had on them.
It just feels like every area
has been infected by cuts.
The government changed things
on some of your prescription stuff,
so at one point, I was having to pay
for four or five medications
and I'm just not buying them anymore,
I can't afford it.
Again, because of funding cuts,
there's this huge waiting list
for a wheelchair, electric wheelchair,
which is kind of fundamental
for disabled people
to be able to get about.
And so, then, I sold my TV
and I had a secondhand laptop
that I sold
and I had a little yard sale
at the front,
trying to just sell items
and cutlery and plates and stuff
and it was still nowhere
near enough.
That is appalling.
They're having to sell
their fucking forks to survive.
And now, when you think back
to David Cameron blithely saying
"There are things
the government does today
that it will have to stop doing",
it makes me even madder at both
him and MP Slenderman here.
But that is the natural endpoint
of austerity right there:
punishing people for circumstances
completely beyond their control.
And Sunak is now promising
to introduce what he calls
the "next generation
of welfare reforms",
including yet more cuts,
justifying it by saying
"I worry very much about benefits
becoming a lifestyle choice".
Which is a rich fucking statement
from a rich fucking man
who'd probably go into anaphylactic
shock if he ever had to fly coach.
And the thing is,
none of this was inevitable.
The Tories will argue
that they've faced headwinds
of financial crises and a pandemic,
but other countries had that too,
but made different choices,
and as a result,
on a per person basis,
economic growth
has been slower in the U.K.
than in the U.S. and the EU
since the 2008 financial crisis.
So, it is no wonder Britons
want a change.
And personally,
I would want the changes to be
a bit more sweeping than some of
what Starmer is currently proposing,
which includes maintaining
Conservative tax and spending plans
until growth returns,
and keeping
the two-child benefit cap.
That isn't the kind of bold political
courage I would like to see
from someone who, remember,
took violin lessons with Fatboy Slim.
And it does say something
that even as Starmer appears poised
to sweep into office in a landslide,
Britons don't seem
that fired up by him.
- Keir's campaign in one word!
- Dull.
No one really cares,
'cause we all know he's gonna win.
So, he kind of gets
a free pass on most stuff.
There seems to be a lot of shrugs
going on at the moment,
but maybe that's just
where we are as a country.
I mean, maybe that is true.
After everything you've seen tonight,
you can probably understand
why people
are much more concerned
about who's leaving
than who is coming next.
If a wild badger
broke into your home
and fucked everything
up for 14 years straight,
tearing absolutely everything apart,
you might think, well, you know what,
we'll argue
about redecorating choices later,
right now,
that badger's got to fucking go.
If the U.K. can successfully
rid itself of the Tories next month,
that is not a cause for a shrug,
that's a cause for a celebration.
Celebration is not something
that comes naturally to Britons.
The country's most famous
motivational slogan
is "Keep Calm and Carry On",
and even that morale booster
basically amounted to
"I know you're about to die,
but there's no need to make a scene".
That was supposed
to get us through World War II.
If Britain can extricate itself from
the party whose unremitting cruelty
has stained the last decade
and a half of British life,
that does deserve to be marked.
I know dancing in the street doesn't
really fit with the British character.
So, instead, why not celebrate
what's hopefully about to happen
with the single most British symbol
imaginable: a rainstorm.
Because on July 4th, Britain
has a chance to wash itself clean
of 14 miserable years
of Conservative rule.
And it's a chance
it simply must take.
If I may quote Bill Pullman,
yelling about aliens,
if we do this, the 4th of July
will no longer be known
as just an American holiday,
but also as the day when Britain
looked at the Conservatives
who've driven the entire country
into a ditch,
and said in one voice,
loud and clear:
"Fuck off into the sun,
you cunts, fuckpigs, and weirdos.
You tossers, wankers,
dicksplashes, and cockwombles.
If Britain stands together,
this July the 4th,
it will finally celebrate
its Independence Day!"
That is our show.
Thank you so much for watching.
We're off for the next few weeks,
back July 21st. Good night!
Give us freedom!
Wash these fuckers away!
Wash them away!
I'm John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.
The U.S.
suffered a massive heat wave,
Team USA
unveiled the Olympic uniforms,
which don't say "professional athlete"
so much as "my stepmother
sent me away to boarding school",
and Putin visited North Korea,
where, after signing a defense pact,
Kim Jong Un waved him off,
like a parent sending a kid
away to summer camp.
"Bye! I left a note in your backpack!
Don't read it until you get there!"
But we're gonna start in Louisiana,
which this week made some history.
This morning,
Louisiana has become the first state
to require the Ten Commandments
be displayed in public classrooms,
from kindergarten
to publicly funded universities.
If you want
to respect the rule of law,
you gotta start from the original
law-giver, which was Moses.
First, Moses was not
the original lawgiver.
That would be,
say it with me, Ur-Nammu,
king of the ancient
Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur.
That's right,
it's something we all know!
But more importantly, it is true,
Louisiana will now require
the Ten Commandments be displayed
in all public classrooms,
even kindergartens.
Which is absurd.
Kindergarteners don't need
"Thou shalt not covet
thy neighbor's wife"
next to their cubbies,
that's not a thing they do.
And even if they did, who cares?
They're five.
If you're that worried about your wife
running off with a five-year-old,
your marriage
has problems no god can fix.
And if you noticed some commotion
behind Governor Landry there,
that is because, just a second earlier,
one of the kids behind him collapsed.
And Landry never once turns around
to see what's going on.
And I'm happy to say
that she's okay.
That is a perfect encapsulation
of the Republican Party today,
loudly pretending to care
about the well-being of children
while completely ignoring
the literal well-being of a child.
And during the debate
before the law's passage,
its sponsor didn't seem troubled
by some pretty basic questions.
You don't believe
that this alienates students
who are not Christian or Jewish?
No ma'am, I don't.
This is about a moral code
that our country was founded upon,
and they can simply turn their heads,
I suppose.
They can simply turn their heads,
you suppose.
The thing the governor of Louisiana
seems completely incapable of doing
when a child falls right behind him.
This is clearly unconstitutional,
and the ACLU has already said that
it'll file a lawsuit against Louisiana,
and you would think that they'd
stand a good chance to win that,
especially as Kentucky actually
passed a similar law decades ago,
only for it to be struck down
by the Supreme Court in 1980.
But the truth is, as this
constitutional expert points out,
this time could be different.
On its face, it is certainly contrary
to Supreme Court precedent,
but as we know,
precedent isn't what it used to be.
Yeah, that is putting it mildly.
Precedent used to mean justices
had to have a really good reason
to reverse course on settled law,
and one much better than just
"My billionaire friend said
they'd take me to Barbados next time".
And this fight is just
the latest in a series of conflicts
over public displays of symbols,
this year, legislators
in Tennessee, Florida, and Utah
all introduced bills
to ban Pride flags in schools.
And while those bills failed,
more are undoubtedly coming.
Meanwhile, Denver's school district
is facing a lawsuit from a parent
over its display of Pride flags,
after he unsuccessfully demanded
they display "a straight pride flag".
Which is apparently
"a black and white striped flag
with a linked male and female
gender sign on it".
If you're having trouble picturing
that, this is the straight pride flag,
which to be honest, really screams
"heterosexuality is a prison".
That is just a failure
of marketing right there.
The Pride flag
is a joyous explosion of color,
and you're gonna try to counter it
with something that looks, at best,
like the Hamburglar's
wedding invitation?
Good luck with that!
But it's not just one weirdo parent
in Colorado doing this shit.
The state Republican Party
is right there with him, too.
A fundraising email
from Colorado's Republican Party
called for LGBTQ Pride flags
to be burned,
and described LGBTQ Americans
as "godless groomers".
That email was signed
by Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams,
and the same message
was also posted on X.
There is a lot to unpack there,
from the hot Jesus looking like he just
got bitten by a radioactive wise man,
to the instruction
to "burn all Pride flags this June".
And again, that is the state
party's official account,
Colo-GOP, which, to be honest,
looks like someone was trying
to spell "colonoscopy" and then died.
Flag controversies
have even risen to the Supreme Court.
Last month, we learned
that just after January 6th,
Justice Alito's house
displayed an upside-down flag,
a symbol associated
with the Stop the Steal movement.
Alito quickly blamed
that on his wife, saying:
"My wife and I
own our Virginia home jointly.
She therefore has the legal right
to use the property as she sees fit,
and there were no additional steps
that I could have taken
to have the flag
taken down more promptly".
While on the one hand,
that's a surprisingly progressive take
on a woman's right
to choose from Alito,
he does make it sound
there like he's trapped
in a fraught and joyless marriage,
and luckily,
I have the perfect flag for him
to be able to express that feeling.
Alito's wife was recorded recently
talking about that controversy,
and in the conversation, volunteered
her own thoughts on the Pride flag,
and they are intense.
I want a Sacred Heart
of Jesus flag.
I have to look across the lagoon
at the Pride flag for the next month.
And he is like:
"Please don't put up a flag".
I said: "I won't do it,
because I'm deferring to you.
When you are free of this nonsense,
I'm putting it up,
and I'm gonna send them a message
every day, maybe every week,
I'll be changing the flags".
They'll be all kinds.
I made a flag in my head.
This is how I satisfy myself.
I made a flag.
It's white and it has yellow
and orange flames around it.
And in the middle
is the word "vergogna".
"Vergogna" in Italian means "shame".
Vergogna.
V-E-R-G-O-G-N-A.
Vergogna. Shame, shame,
shame on you. You know?
"My hobby is telling other people
that they should feel shame
through depictions of fire
and the Italian language".
This woman is operating on a level
of Catholicism never before seen.
And the way
she's saying "vergogna" there
sounds like she's trying
to cast a curse.
Every time you say "vergogna"
like that, an angel gets its wings,
and then a bunch of mean Italian nuns
start hitting it with rulers.
The point is, it seems safe to say
that a man who lives in a house
that's this close to flying
a flaming "shame" flag
isn't going to have much of a problem
with the Ten Commandments
being forced into classrooms.
And none of this
should be surprising.
Conservatives love to rail
against cancel culture
while trying to ban
any speech they don't like.
When it's someone else's symbol,
it needs to be burned or banned,
but when it's theirs,
it can be mandated by law,
and anyone who doesn't like it can
just turn their head and not look.
I would say that that
is a shameful position to take,
except thanks
to this vindictive flag queen,
I now know that there is
a much better word: vergogna.
And now, this!
And Now:
Happy Pride from Jim Cramer.
You could have a chance
for a real run the next day.
I've staked my career
on being able to spot bottoms and tops.
One of CNBC's finest.
Always use that 10-to-one ratio
to call bottoms,
including the generational bottom
that he nailed.
In February and March,
the TD combo model
absolutely nailed the top
and then the bottom.
Larry's the guy who called the bottom
in April 2020.
Williams was the one who nailed
the bottom in the spring of last year.
He's the one who called the bottom
in March of 2009.
Sebastian managed to nail the bottom
when we talked to him about it.
David Demshur came on this show
and basically called the bottom.
Sure enough, he nailed it.
Remember, I said,
if Apple bottoms, we bottom.
You don't have to nail
every short term top and bottom.
Everyone was giving up at once.
That's textbook bottom behavior.
I think we need to experience
more pain,
before we get the big bottom
that we're all waiting for.
Let's go to Joe in Ohio.
It's almost impossible
to perfectly nail the bottom.
You can always nail the bottom.
Bottoms accompanied by bad news.
Last year's bottom
was very sneaky.
When can you be sure
that you have a real bottom in hand?
That's the question everyone's
pondering right now, right?
And you've come
to the correct place for the answer.
I've been spelunking for bottoms
for 40 years.
Moving on. Our main story tonight
concerns the U.K.,
the number one study
abroad destination
for Americans
who refuse to learn a new language.
It's also, fun fact, where I'm from!
Even if I never opened my mouth,
I feel like you could still tell.
The U.K is in the middle
of an election right now,
which its prime minister,
Rishi Sunak, called back in May,
for some reason,
in the middle of a torrential downpour.
At a damp Downing Street,
with few moves left to play,
it was time to roll the dice.
Earlier today,
I spoke with His Majesty the King
to request
the dissolution of Parliament.
The King has granted this request,
and we will have a general election
on the 4th of July.
What are you doing, Rishi?
It is pouring rain,
and you're literally in front
of the house where you live.
Just pop in and grab an umbrella!
It frankly says something
that a British person
trying to reclaim the 4th of July
as a day of potential victory
is the second-weirdest thing
about that announcement.
This election was something
of a surprise, though.
And if you're confused
how that can be, in Britain,
the prime minister can call
an election whenever they want,
as long as there is one
every five years.
Like many things,
the way Britain operates
is kind of like the U.S.,
but whimsically worse.
The last election
was back in 2019,
so Sunak had to call one
before the end of this year,
but he chose to do so right now,
something that even members
of his own party were blindsided by,
as these reporters pointed out later
that same day.
This morning, amid all the speculation,
nobody could really believe it.
- How has it gone down with his MPs?
- Badly.
Yeah. And look, first, I don't want
to read too much into this,
but the fact that they both of them
were holding large umbrellas there
feels like a pretty clear dig to me.
But second, I get why Sunak's
colleagues were mad.
It must suck to have to suddenly
go home and tell your spouse
"Sorry, love, I know we were
supposed to go to Italy next month,
but my wet boss gave a speech
and I have to spend the next six weeks
running around fighting for my job".
Sunak's party,
the Conservatives, or Tories,
are currently wildly unpopular
in Britain.
They got trounced earlier this year
in local elections,
and they're currently polling around
20 points behind their main rival,
the Labour Party, with one
projection model suggesting Labour
could win around 450
of the 650 parliamentary seats.
Some have said
that this election
could be an "extinction level event"
for the Tories.
And it's not like they're projecting
confidence or competence right now.
Nearly 80 conservative MPs have
stepped down ahead of the election,
a postwar record.
And that is on top of the resignations
that've taken place
over the last couple of years,
including this MP,
who admitted to using cocaine
but claimed that he was set up,
saying "It was very late"
and he'd "been drinking tons
of incredibly potent Japanese whisky",
another, who admitted to groping
two men at a private members' club,
and this guy,
who resigned after he was found
to have watched pornography
on his phone in the House of Commons,
and his excuse for that
was genuinely amazing.
The situation
was that I, funnily enough,
that it was tractors
that I was looking at.
But I did get into another website,
that had a sort of a very similar name.
And I watched it for a bit,
which I shouldn't have done.
But my crime, my biggest crime,
is that on another occasion,
I went in a second time.
- And that was deliberate?
- Yes.
That is incredible.
"Yes, I looked at porn,
twice, but the first time,
I was just trying to look at tractors
on the internet".
That is very much the "Japanese
whisky tricked me into doing cocaine"
of internet porn lies.
But what makes it
even more unbelievable is,
why would anyone need to seek out
porn, if they're looking at tractors?
You've got everything
you need right there,
and you don't even
have to flip off SafeSearch.
Why go to the bakery,
when we've got cake at home?
I'm not saying I'd fuck a tractor,
I'm saying I would let this tractor
fuck me so hard I sprout corn.
And on top of all this,
Sunak himself seems to be
almost trying to lose the election,
given one of his new,
bold campaign ideas
is to "bring back mandatory
national service" for 18-year-olds,
a plan that drew almost
immediate blowback,
to the point that he felt
the need to talk to teens
in a way
that he hoped they'd understand.
Hi, TikTok, sorry to be breaking
into your usual politics-free feed,
but I'm making
a big announcement today,
and I've been told that a lot
of you already have some views on it.
So, first thing: no, I'm not sending
everyone off to join the army.
What I am doing is proposing
a bold new model of national service
for 18-year-olds.
They'll be able to choose
to spend 12 months
at a full-time military commission,
or one weekend per month volunteering
in roles within your local community,
like delivering prescriptions
and food to elderly people,
or in search and rescue.
Okay! So, it's not
bringing back the draft.
It's bring back the draft, or forcing
teens to do GrubHub for grandmas,
or search for bodies in the Thames.
Just classic things
18-year-olds love to do.
The Tories are in trouble.
Which is a remarkable downfall
for a party that's been in power
for the last 14 straight years.
This could be a massive
couple of weeks for the U.K.
So, given that, tonight,
let's look at the U.K. election.
We're gonna focus on a few things:
some of the choices on offer,
why people are so mad
at the Conservatives,
and why they are
absolutely right to be.
And let's start
with some of the contenders,
there's the Liberal Democrats,
the traditionally centrist party.
They are unlikely to win overall,
and because of that,
seem to mainly
be focusing on having fun.
One Lib Dem official has said
"as a smaller party, we have to find
a way to break into the news cycle".
And that has meant
pushing their leader, Ed Davey,
to do multiple stupid stunts
like going down a waterslide,
falling off a paddle board,
and doing "look ma, no feet"
on a bike.
He tried to conduct a policy interview
in the weirdest imaginable place.
- What about the economy?
- We've gotta get it growing again.
That'll be helped by cutting
the NHS waiting list
also by getting a much better
trade deal with Europe
and by investing in the skills
of our young people.
We've got great policies for our
economy including the cost of living!
I'm glad Ed Davey's having fun,
but the fact is, his party
is still going to lose the election!
Then there is the much less-endearing
far-right Reform U.K. Party,
the punchable face
of which is Nigel Farage.
He's been out
on the campaign trail,
running on a hard
antiimmigration platform,
and getting
the exact reception that he deserves.
Reform U.K.'s attracted attention,
with bold promises on reducing
legal immigration levels
and stopping
small boat crossings.
For all the support,
it seems not everyone's
a fan of their approach.
Nigel Farage was covered in milkshake
on the campaign trail.
Spectacular. Also, just a bonkers
use of the passive voice there.
"Was covered in milkshake".
Who threw it, exactly?
I'll tell you who: the dairy queen who
made this perfect Fibonacci spiral.
Just look at her! You can't erase
this icon. Look at those lashes!
No need to force the youth
into serving their country,
this legend is doing it for free.
And do you have any idea how unlikable
you have to be to get milkshaked?
No one just casually has
a milkshake on their person or thinks
"I better grab one in case
I encounter any assholes today".
No. They think "You know what
I haven't had in a while but deserve?
A milkshake. A treat".
Yet despite that, Nigel Farage
is clearly so much of an asshole
that this hero was willing to get rid
of her possible birthday milkshake
having decided
"This is a better use of it".
And frankly, she was right.
Especially as this wasn't even the
first time that Farage got milkshaked.
It happened to him back in 2019, too,
and just look at him there.
Look how sad he is,
wearing his stupid little ribbon.
He looks like he threw up on himself
after winning a spelling bee.
And if you have the tiniest
flicker of sympathy for him,
know that he followed his recent
milkshaking by releasing this video.
My milkshake
brings all the people to the rally.
I hate that man so much!
There is,
and I am not exaggerating,
no one on Earth more deserving
of being milkshook than Nigel Farage.
So, clearly,
neither of these two wet boys
are likely to be
the next prime minister.
But why isn't this one
going to win?
As prime minister, he should have
the advantage of incumbency.
But the truth is,
Sunak's never been popular,
and for multiple reasons,
including the fact that,
after marrying the heir
to a multibillion-dollar fortune,
he's now got more money
than the king.
It says something that,
the very day
it was announced that Sunak
would become prime minister,
one news report
featured this fun graphic.
How would you describe
Rishi Sunak in one word?
Savanta Comres,
a polling research company,
came up with a word cloud,
and people sent in their thoughts,
and this is the conclusion.
"Rich" is the overwhelming word,
alongside
"capable", "okay",
"good", and "clever".
Do you know how much of an
out-oftouch wang you have to be
for people to think that your vibe
can be summed up by the word "rich?"
Elon Musk
is the richest man on Earth,
and it's not even the first word that
comes to mind when I think of him.
That would be "apartheid".
It's also not the first word that comes
to mind when I think of Bill Gates.
That would be
"howmanytimeswasheonepsteinsplane"
which counts as one word
if you say it really fast.
But perhaps the most notable thing
there isn't how big the word "rich
it's that that word cloud also includes
the words "twat" and "cunt".
They put that on the news!
Enough people called the prime minister
a cunt that it made the news.
It almost makes me feel patriotic.
And just for the record,
"cunt" in the U.K. isn't as harsh
a word as I know it is here.
I know that here in the U.S.,
it's used by red-pilled basement
boys toward powerful women.
But in the U.K., it's a non-gendered,
multi-purpose insult
like "dodgy", "tosser",
"numpty", "wanker",
"dicksplash", "fuckletoes",
"pillock", and "cockwomble".
Only one of those is made up
and it's not the one you think.
But perhaps the clearest sign
of how unpopular the Tories are
is that they're about to be defeated
by the Labour Party,
currently led by Keir Starmer,
and fun fact about Keir:
there aren't any.
When pollsters asked voters
to describe what Starmer stands for,
the responses included "nothing",
"not sure", and "don't know".
His most notable attribute may be
having no real notable attributes,
as this pollster
delicately points out.
For Keir Starmer,
still over half of the population
don't really perceive
that they know what he stands for,
and only one in five people
say that he's good in a crisis
or indeed has a personality.
And so, there are some areas where
he needs to see further development.
Okay. Set aside
the brutal personality slam there,
you know how hard it is
to have less than half the population
know what you stand for,
in the modern age?
Thanks to social media,
I know what my chemistry teacher
thinks about vegans who eat honey.
I know my brother's
roommate's ex-girlfriend
thinks Lee Harvey Oswald
couldn't have acted alone.
And I know that Shaq doesn't fit
in the seats at Knott's Berry Farm,
because he tweeted, and I quote,
"I'm at Knots Berry Farms
and my butts too big
to fit in the seats on the ride.
Ahhhhhh, that's me yellin'".
That was 15 years ago,
and it'll be the last thing
I think about before I die.
The point is, we know too
much about everyone on Earth,
making it incredible that British
people don't seem to know much
about the man on the verge of running
the sixth largest economy in the world.
To the extent we do know anything
about Starmer,
it's that he's
a pretty bland centrist.
Perhaps the perfect symbol
of that is the fact that he unveiled
his party's middle-of-the-road
platform earlier this month
standing next to the word "change"
in the smallest font imaginable.
He's also done things
like tell his cabinet members
they should not show support
for striking rail workers,
which is a little hard to take,
given their party's name is "Labour".
And on a personal level,
he's been repeatedly challenged
to come up
with interesting facts about himself,
and so far, has only managed
to come up with one.
Tell us one interesting
or surprising thing about yourself
that we don't already know.
I did violin lessons with Fatboy Slim
- Is that true?
- That's absolutely true.
I will admit,
that is definitely notable.
Though it's not great when
the most interesting thing about you is
"I was once in school
next to someone more interesting".
Yeah, Keir!
We assumed that!
So, how are the Conservatives
at the point where they're about
to have their asses handed to them
by Fatboy Slim's violin partner?
The answer is, everything
they've done over the last 14 years,
in which time they've had
five different prime ministers.
And it's worth briefly
revisiting all of them.
And let's start
with David Cameron,
three-time winner
of Britain's Least Lips.
He took over in 2010, at a time when
Britain was running record deficits,
and chose to tackle that
through what's been called
"one of the biggest deficit
reduction programs
seen in any advanced economy
since World War II".
And while much of Europe focused
on raising taxes to close budget gaps,
Cameron relied heavily
on a program of austerity,
essentially, making brutal cuts
to government services,
and attributing Britain's struggles
not to the 2008 financial crisis,
but to years of "frivolous
spending" under Labour.
And he explained
his cuts like this.
Reducing spending
will be difficult.
There are programs that will be cut.
There are jobs that will be lost.
There are things the government does
today that it will have to stop doing.
Many government departments
will have their budgets cut
on average by 25%
over four years.
Now, we will get
into the impact those cuts had,
but before we do,
let's address what might've been
the most savage cut of all there,
and that is the camera cut
from David Cameron to this guy.
It is strange to suddenly show
this haunted business thumb at all,
but especially right
after David Cameron said
"There are things the government
needs to stop doing".
But maybe it was strategic.
Maybe they thought
"Look, we're cutting programs,
people will lose their jobs,
so when I say 'the government
is gonna stop doing stuff'
make sure you cut to Weird Dave.
He's so odd looking, people might think
'Is that the government?
I definitely want him to stop doing
everything he's doing, immediately.
Turn off the lights
and put him somewhere damp.
He looks like a fan of the damp.'"
But those cuts were brutal.
In their first 10 years,
central government funding for local
authorities fell by as much as 40%.
And the way they were structured
meant that the most deprived areas
had to cut their
spending the most.
And poor families and kids
were hit hardest,
as Cameron's measures included
reducing housing benefits,
cutting grants to pregnant women,
and freezing benefits
for working-age families,
even as inflation was rising.
But the move that ultimately
doomed Cameron wasn't any of that.
It was his decision to appease
Eurosceptic members of his party,
by calling the Brexit vote,
a decision one of his own
cabinet ministers has called
"the greatest blunder ever made
by a British prime minister".
And that is including this look.
And by the way:
buzz, buzz bitch.
The "Bee Movie" called - it's 2007
and you have six years left to live.
The idea was the Brexit referendum
would lay to rest the question
of whether Britain
should leave the EU.
And the infuriating thing is,
Cameron himself didn't
support Britain leaving,
and only called the vote
because he thought it would fail.
But, of course, it didn't, and he
immediately resigned in disgrace,
leaving his successor,
Theresa May,
who had also opposed Brexit,
to deal with the mess.
She spent three years trying
to hammer out a Brexit deal,
while also overseeing
yet more austerity measures
like the so-called
"two-child cap"
which restricted the child
tax credit and other benefits
to the first two children
in most households.
Even if you had five kids,
you only get benefits for two of them.
Which does make sense.
Everyone knows that after the 3rd kid,
they don't really have to eat.
And May wasn't exactly
a charismatic leader.
Beyond Westminster, despite
her attempts to laugh at herself,
Theresa May never really
connected with the public.
She was also weakened by episodes
like the party conference speech,
where everything
that could go wrong did go wrong.
Well before
her decision to step down,
critics said the wheels
were coming off her leadership.
I gotta say, it's a pretty bad sign
when you're literally standing
in front of a pretty bad sign.
May couldn't hammer out a Brexit
deal that her party would support,
so she gave way
to this fucking guy,
whose time in office
was a total shambles.
Because while Boris Johnson
did finally get a Brexit deal done,
and Britain left the EU
on January 31st, 2020,
that was the exact same day
Britain's first cases
of the coronavirus were announced.
And Boris' handling of Covid
was an unmitigated disaster.
At first, he reportedly dismissed it
as "the new swine flu
and just a scare story",
with one of his advisers
saying that he seemed to think
"Covid is just nature's way
of dealing with old people".
And one of Boris' top aides,
Dominic Cummings,
later testified about just how badly
the government handled Covid,
in a hearing featuring readings from
messages that he'd sent at the time.
You called ministers
in emails and WhatsApps
to your professional colleagues.
Do you feel that you expressed
your views too trenchantly,
that your opinion of ministers and of
the cabinet overstated the position?
No. I would say, if anything,
it understated the position,
as events showed in 2020.
Just to be clear,
what was bleeped there
was Cummings calling his colleagues
"useless fuckpigs" and "cunts".
And that is completely unfair.
Not the "cunt" part. That does apply.
I'm talking about the term "fuckpigs".
Because for the record,
there has only been one actual
fuckpig in Downing Street,
and that is David Cameron,
whose unauthorized biography,
lest we forget, told us that,
as a student at Oxford,
he apparently once put his dick
in a dead pig's mouth.
Thing is, he probably would've
gotten away with that, too,
if someone hadn't squealed,
not the pig, of course.
The pig couldn't squeal,
it was dead.
Plus, its mouth was full.
David Cameron put his dick
in a dead pig's mouth.
Ultimately, Johnson was undone
by a series of scandals,
including his efforts
to cover up parties
his government repeatedly
held during the pandemic,
in violation
of his own lockdown rules.
So, he then gave way
to Liz Truss,
who had the shortest tenure of any
British prime minister in history.
We've talked before about her
disastrous proposed budget
full of tax cuts for the rich,
which caused a mini economic crisis,
and we talked about
her weird speaking style,
so there's really not much point
in even showing you a clip of her.
But given how weird she was,
I'm gonna go ahead and do it anyway.
My mother
took me on protests.
I went on marches.
I made banners.
I stayed at peace camps.
What is happening there?
She speaks like a kindergarten teacher
during story time,
but with no book, no page turning,
and, crucially, no kindergarteners.
She's like if "hold for applause"
was a person.
Anyway, Truss was
gone in less than two months,
which finally brings us back
to Sunak the Wet,
a man who literally doesn't have
the sense to come in from the rain.
It's objectively fun to look back
at what a collection of weirdos
ran Britain for years.
But it gets considerably less fun
when you look
at what they did to the country.
And let's start with the most obvious
calamity, and that's Brexit.
The pitch for it was that it would
free British businesses
of Europe's onerous restrictions.
But instead,
what ended up happening
was, for U.K. businesses
looking to trade with Europe,
especially small businesses, the red
tape has multiplied exponentially.
Remember, when we were part
of the single market,
you could throw a box of tea
or a packet of bangers into the back
of a van in Birmingham
and drive it to Barcelona, or Bonn,
or Brussels without let or hindrance.
Now you can't do that.
We were told that we would have
the most amazing deal.
We're gonna get our sovereignty
and we were going to keep
all the advantages of being in the EU.
As a business, we were dumb enough
to believe that.
Come January last year,
we got an order from Italy,
we shipped it, as normal,
thinking there'll be a little bit
of paperwork and we'll figure it out.
And it sat for 12 weeks
in different customs' houses.
So, the reality was very different.
That sounds like a total mess.
But I just want to go back
to that guy naming cities there,
'cause I really did not want him
to ever stop.
"You could throw a box of tea
or a packet of bangers
into the back of a van in
Birmingham and drive it to Barcelona,
or Bonn, or Brussels, or Bratislava,
or Bern, or Bucharest, or Budapest,
or Belfast, or Berlin, or maybe
as far away as Bergen, or Bilbao,
or Brest, or Bologna, or even circle
back through Badhoevedorp.
You could just drive".
The point is, trading goods
with the EU is now so onerous,
lots of U.K.
businesses, like that woman's,
have opted to relocate
into mainland Europe,
which is not good news
for the U.K.,
and helps explain why Brexit
is estimated to be costing
the U.K. economy
about 100 billion pounds per year.
But while Brexit's the story
that made international news,
austerity might be
the more insidious legacy
of Cameron and his successors.
Because it has, in so many ways,
obliterated the social safety net.
Take the NHS,
the U.K.'s healthcare system.
Years of underinvestment
have left it gutted and understaffed.
Just watch as the father
of one sick child
tried unsuccessfully to convey this
to Boris Johnson back when he was PM.
There are not enough people
on this ward,
there are not enough doctors,
not enough nurses.
It's not well organized enough.
The NHS has been destroyed.
It's been destroyed.
It's been destroyed, and now you
come here for a press opportunity.
Actually, there's no press here.
What do you mean there's no press?
Who are these people?
What an amazing lie
to even try to get away with.
The thing about
denying the press is there is,
the press tends
to catch you doing that,
because the press
is fucking there!
But that man's anger
was fully justified.
Waitlists for NHS treatment
have exploded,
more than seven and a half
million people
are waiting
for nonemergency treatment.
That is up from two million
when Conservatives first took office.
It's gotten to the point where
significant numbers of British people
are now going to Europe and paying
out of pocket to get treatment.
This surgeon in Lithuania
apparently has a booming business
treating British patients.
Last year, we did about
400-something, 500, maybe, surgeries.
And about 80%,
they are from U.K.
People from the U.K.
come because of the waiting time.
And also, excellent quality here,
of course.
Okay.
First, I really don't know
what's more surprising there,
the cheerful hammering,
or the fact he's doing it
in the middle of an interview.
But the fact 80% of his patients
are now from the U.K. is staggering.
The only foreigners I expect
to be flocking to Lithuania en masse
are people from New Jersey wanting
to see this actual Tony Soprano statue.
This is real.
It's in a train station in their capital.
Here it is from another angle!
The thing is huge!
And much like hundreds
of British orthopedic patients,
it doesn't make any sense
that it's suddenly in Lithuania!
But it's not just the NHS.
The Tories have literally
starved the country.
In 2010, the largest network
of food banks in Britain
operated just 35 nationwide.
Today, it runs more than 1,300.
And 20% of people
referred to their food banks
are in working households.
Meanwhile, "More than 800,000 patients
were admitted to hospital
with malnutrition
and nutritional deficiencies last year,
with doctors even seeing
cases of scurvy and rickets",
and British five-year-olds
are now a full centimeter shorter
than they were in 2010.
And it's pretty hard for Conservatives
to say they're working toward
the future growth of Britain,
when its future generations
are quite literally shrinking.
The unending parade
of austerity cuts
has relentlessly harmed
the most vulnerable in Britain.
Take Alexander Doodle,
who has multiple disabilities,
including a degenerative condition
in their hands and feet.
A few years back,
they invited a camera crew
to see the impact that cuts to things
that the government used to provide,
like home health aides,
prescription drugs,
and accessible housing,
had had on them.
It just feels like every area
has been infected by cuts.
The government changed things
on some of your prescription stuff,
so at one point, I was having to pay
for four or five medications
and I'm just not buying them anymore,
I can't afford it.
Again, because of funding cuts,
there's this huge waiting list
for a wheelchair, electric wheelchair,
which is kind of fundamental
for disabled people
to be able to get about.
And so, then, I sold my TV
and I had a secondhand laptop
that I sold
and I had a little yard sale
at the front,
trying to just sell items
and cutlery and plates and stuff
and it was still nowhere
near enough.
That is appalling.
They're having to sell
their fucking forks to survive.
And now, when you think back
to David Cameron blithely saying
"There are things
the government does today
that it will have to stop doing",
it makes me even madder at both
him and MP Slenderman here.
But that is the natural endpoint
of austerity right there:
punishing people for circumstances
completely beyond their control.
And Sunak is now promising
to introduce what he calls
the "next generation
of welfare reforms",
including yet more cuts,
justifying it by saying
"I worry very much about benefits
becoming a lifestyle choice".
Which is a rich fucking statement
from a rich fucking man
who'd probably go into anaphylactic
shock if he ever had to fly coach.
And the thing is,
none of this was inevitable.
The Tories will argue
that they've faced headwinds
of financial crises and a pandemic,
but other countries had that too,
but made different choices,
and as a result,
on a per person basis,
economic growth
has been slower in the U.K.
than in the U.S. and the EU
since the 2008 financial crisis.
So, it is no wonder Britons
want a change.
And personally,
I would want the changes to be
a bit more sweeping than some of
what Starmer is currently proposing,
which includes maintaining
Conservative tax and spending plans
until growth returns,
and keeping
the two-child benefit cap.
That isn't the kind of bold political
courage I would like to see
from someone who, remember,
took violin lessons with Fatboy Slim.
And it does say something
that even as Starmer appears poised
to sweep into office in a landslide,
Britons don't seem
that fired up by him.
- Keir's campaign in one word!
- Dull.
No one really cares,
'cause we all know he's gonna win.
So, he kind of gets
a free pass on most stuff.
There seems to be a lot of shrugs
going on at the moment,
but maybe that's just
where we are as a country.
I mean, maybe that is true.
After everything you've seen tonight,
you can probably understand
why people
are much more concerned
about who's leaving
than who is coming next.
If a wild badger
broke into your home
and fucked everything
up for 14 years straight,
tearing absolutely everything apart,
you might think, well, you know what,
we'll argue
about redecorating choices later,
right now,
that badger's got to fucking go.
If the U.K. can successfully
rid itself of the Tories next month,
that is not a cause for a shrug,
that's a cause for a celebration.
Celebration is not something
that comes naturally to Britons.
The country's most famous
motivational slogan
is "Keep Calm and Carry On",
and even that morale booster
basically amounted to
"I know you're about to die,
but there's no need to make a scene".
That was supposed
to get us through World War II.
If Britain can extricate itself from
the party whose unremitting cruelty
has stained the last decade
and a half of British life,
that does deserve to be marked.
I know dancing in the street doesn't
really fit with the British character.
So, instead, why not celebrate
what's hopefully about to happen
with the single most British symbol
imaginable: a rainstorm.
Because on July 4th, Britain
has a chance to wash itself clean
of 14 miserable years
of Conservative rule.
And it's a chance
it simply must take.
If I may quote Bill Pullman,
yelling about aliens,
if we do this, the 4th of July
will no longer be known
as just an American holiday,
but also as the day when Britain
looked at the Conservatives
who've driven the entire country
into a ditch,
and said in one voice,
loud and clear:
"Fuck off into the sun,
you cunts, fuckpigs, and weirdos.
You tossers, wankers,
dicksplashes, and cockwombles.
If Britain stands together,
this July the 4th,
it will finally celebrate
its Independence Day!"
That is our show.
Thank you so much for watching.
We're off for the next few weeks,
back July 21st. Good night!
Give us freedom!
Wash these fuckers away!
Wash them away!