Thank you, thank you.
It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that
there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister and
I've agreed with Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of our Backbench MPs,
that the process of choosing that new leader should begin now.
So I want to say to the millions of people who voted for us in 2019,
many of them voting Conservative for the first time, thank you for
that incredible mandate, the biggest conservative majority
since 1987, the biggest share of the vote since 1979.
And the reason I have fought so hard in the last few days to continue to
deliver that mandate in person was not just because I wanted to do so,
but because I felt it was my job, my duty,
my obligation to you to continue to do what we promised in 2019.
>> And so as they say, including other audience, them's the breaks,
I guess, you just saw a political leader for the most part in most ways step
down as a result of scandals and poor performance and
the terrible explanations for the actions and a whole lot of things,
there were actual consequences, they can still exist if only in the UK.
Now, Boris Johnson who is apparently planning to stick around and
will get in some ways into what exactly he might be doing that for and
what he might be getting out of that as resigning as both Prime Minister
of the UK, as well as the leader of his party.
He says that he tried to persuade his colleagues that,
it would be eccentric to change leaders currently,
noting that the Tories are only a few points behind the polls.
Because I regret I was unsuccessful in those arguments, blaming the party's,
herd instinct, for his defenestration, one of my favorite words, it's so
rarely used these days.
But anyway it follows a couple of really bad days for
him in terms of people jumping ship, 59 members of his ministers had resigned
at the time of his remarks and that began like less than 48 hours ago.
And we also recently found out that he had named a conservative MP to his government
despite apparently being aware of previous sexual misconduct allegations.
That is apparently a thing that like in America will not necessarily stop
you from getting a position,
but unlike in America it's something bad enough to be used against you.
It's a scandal that people actually would care about and
might result in you stepping down.
So in any event, even as late as last night he had been saying he planned
to stick around, they always say that up until literally the sentence where
they resign, it doesn't mean anything, but he is leaving.
So Ben, what do you make of that?
>> Yeah, I don't know, I mean it's gonna be really interesting,
I guess the most interesting component of this to me is where
the Labor party is gonna go in the UK.
Because they've taken a pretty hard right turn and
unfortunately seem to be learning the wrong lessons from the Democratic Party
in the United States by squeezing out more left figures like Jeremy Corbyn.
And I think this might be an instance of labor failing upwards [LAUGH].
I'm afraid they might take this as evidence, that it was a good idea
to sort of squeeze out the more left elements within their party as opposed to
just recognizing it to be the failure of the conservatives in the UK and
purely the failure of the conservatives in the UK.
So, maybe they go into this sort of brinksmanship that we see in
the United States where the left and
right both challenge each other to see how terrible they can get [LAUGH].
>> That'll be fun, yeah no I think that's a good read.
Look I would say I guess to some extent this is good,
I suppose is a counter reaction to even the historic
winds that he was talking about there.
By the way, I get that you would do this,
what he said at the close of those remarks that we showed you,
but it feels a little bit less deranged but a little bit Trumpy to me,
you're stepping down right now dude, so pointing out that things had gone well for
you just a couple of years ago, that makes it worse not better.
If you had won a very narrow tenuous majority and
then were forced out a couple of years later, that's bad enough.
But you overwhelmingly were never forced, do you see how that makes it worse Boris?
But apparently not, he's an eternal optimist I guess.
And look there's a lot that I don't know about Boris Johnson,
I would say virtually everything.
I would say, look obviously his enthusiastic support for
splitting apart the UK and
that to me is enough to celebrate at least a little bit from stepping out.
But there's nothing I like more on the damage report than admitting when
I've reached the limit of my knowledge of a topic and
I've never considered myself much of an expert on UK politics.
And I'm gonna be completely honest to those living in the UK right now,
things have gotten so bad here in America for
the past couple of years that even I, a person who tried to stay abreast with
the politics of a number of other countries, who in graduate school took
quite a bit of international relations classes, I have a harder time
focusing on it considering how dire things have gotten here in the US.
>> Yeah it's like being on a [CROSSTALK] plane you gotta put your own mask
on first and we're just living that every single day.
>> And it's a bad thing by the way, we need solidarity now more than
ever probably and so it's it's an impulse that I try to fight.
But anyway, really fast, I wanna give you a couple more details just that we've
got prepared and I think our fun asked, who should replace him?
One MP said anyone, my mum is free, I love that.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Anyway and then finally I just, God, I love this so much.
So, why stick around?
It's like a caretaker or whatever for a few months until September,
until October or whatever the timeline is supposed to be.
Well they say, one potential explanation is that,
he and his wife want to host a party at Chequers,
this like 16th century Manor House, is that why?
That couldn't possibly be why, it's so small minded, it's so personal,
that couldn't possibly be.
Well now that actually tracks, I can sort of see that.
I can see Trump doing that here, why not?
Sophie is saying, the invitations have already been sent Shawn.
Well then I guess sure, then in that case I mean you can't reschedule, you can't,
aren't they digital, couldn't you just update the location?
But apparently that's why and I assume that right now, I mean there's a scramble
going on both inside of the Conservative Party and then obviously,
as you were pointing out in the opposition to put something together,
it's gonna be interesting to see where that goes, any other thoughts?
>> No, I don't know, I just think that's funny, that's just so funny.
We gotta have a party first, right?
We gotta have a party first, real priorities right here.
This is you can tell he's somebody that was
always prioritizing the average working class person in the UK.
>> Well it is sort of perfect specifically for Boris Johnson,
that if this is the reason then it would be his desire for
a massive party would be causing the stick around considering the skins and all that.
But that said, we do want to, we've given our perspective on this development,
we wanna give the American rights perspective.
So to that end, here's a bit of conversation from Fox and
Friends about this.
>> What has happened over the last number of months and
years is the British people did not trust him.
He would say one thing and would do something else and
then pop up in the tabloids.
And then with this thing, it's a question of integrity, he has refused to go
even though people have been calling for him to hit the pavement for a while.
>> Yeah and if there's one thing that Fox and Friends can't take, it's a politician
who has received a clear message from the voters that they're not wanted anymore,
just trying to stick around, they won't accept that Ben.
>> It's literally the Spiderman meme, right?
But that's all of politics right now, I feel like all of politics in the UK and
the United States is just the Spiderman meme,
where everybody's pointing at each other.
And if it's not that then it's the hot dog costume, it's the we're trying to find
the guy who did this and that's just the entire political atmosphere right now.
>> Yeah and it's like some might say, well, you gotta be fair,
what about the Democrats?
Okay, well, what about, first of all,
we're gonna be talking about Biden just a minute but
seemingly nobody wants Biden to run again and he's not getting the message.
They don't care, they're in it for themselves,
they will stick around as long as they want.
And along the way, the responsibility that we would have,
I would say in our capacity and also people like Fox and Friends is,
maybe like understand the context a bit, identify differences and similarities.
So for instance, if people gave a huge mandate to Boris Johnson and then started
have an issue with him because of his weird scandals, need to party
constantly which gives across the idea that he's not taking things seriously,
giving a strong signal to the voters that he doesn't take sexual misconduct among
the people in his employee seriously, not taking COVID seriously and
also making a weird and self destructive break with the international community.
If they start to decide that all those things are bad in the UK maybe we can
understand that people might not like it here in the US either.
And so if you're shocked to see that the people could turn on Boris Johnson,
maybe it's not so impossible to imagine that they would turn on Trump for
basically those exact same reasons.
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