18/05/2017 This Week

Diane, it's 1145 PM, maybe 18. Five miles south of Question Time, 12

miles left of Newsnight. Never seen so many has beans in my life. As

Andrew Neil would say, I'd rather be here than on ITV.

My log has something to tell you about the manifesto.

It is happening again, the return of the thing you thought you'd said

goodbye to in the 1980s, the nanny state, brought to you by Theresa

May. Young people are not what they seem.

Perhaps their engagement could yet change everything.

Welcome to This Week, where tonight we launch

Well, everybody else has one, so why not This Week?

We will be resolutely for the few, not the many.

We are unstinting in our support of lazy families who break the rules

We will not nationalise the water companies.

What need of water when every tap will deliver ice cold

We will legalise drugs, in the hope that students

will forget we voted for the tripling of tuition fees.

For those of you who say we're ignoring the big issues,

we have a unique solution to global warming.

All buildings will be instructed to reposition their air

If that doesn't cool the planet, nothing will.

We nicked that idea from the Monster Raving Looney Party.

But if Theresa May can pinch half her manifesto

from Ed Miliband then we can be a bit light-fingered too.

We will treble taxes on all politicians who fail to answer even

That should bring in a few trillion and finance all our spending plans,

We'll ask Diane Abbott to do the sums.

And finally, we will cut immigration to zero.

And how will we manage that, I hear you ask?

We'll make this such a miserable place to live nobody in their right

Speaking of those who have long deterred sane folk

from visiting our shores, I'm joined on the sofa tonight

by the Yesterday Men of British politics.

I speak of course of Michael #choochoo Portillo,

Your moment of the week, Michael? Well, the changes to the financing

of social care promised by the Conservatives in their manifesto. If

you are a middle-class couple, maybe you have ?1 million in assets,

including your house, you go into residential care, or you are cared

for at home. Your assets can be Ridge used to ?100,000. And that is

money that your offspring were counting on to be there inheritance.

-- your assets can be reduced to ?100,000. Quite a lot of people will

be browned off by this, and it represents an enormous shift of

responsibility away from the state and onto individuals, which actually

strikes me as rather a Conservative thing to do. I think probably we

have seen this week the beginning of the end of the Trump Administration,

with the tweets from the President, but it is a general election so I

will choose a British example. The general secretary of Unite, Len

McCluskey, declaring that 200 seats would be a victory for Labour,

partly because it is significant and shows there have all as been some

people around Jeremy who did not think winning a majority was the

most important thing. But it may be that in an odd way, for Labour

voters who were clearly worried about whether they could vote Labour

and whether it meant voting for Jeremy Corbyn to Prime Minister, he

is basically saying to them, it is OK to vote Labour. Didn't he changed

his mind the next day? Well... People are allowed to do that.

When Margaret Thatcher was faced with a fracturing Left in the 1980s,

she moved to the Right and introduced a series of radical

reforms which became known as Thatcherism.

Theresa May's response to today's fractured Left has been

to move to the Left, Right and Centre.

Now doing the political splits three ways can be

But most pundits think that by spreading her tanks across such

a wide range of political turf she's on track for a landslide.

The most recent polls still show a comfortable Tory lead but not

by as much as a week or two weeks ago and some even show

And some on the Right are not happy with Mrs May's

Here's James Delingpole with his take of the week.

Theresa May is so she has a vision, but what does it look like?

You might expect it to mirror the instincts

of the Conservative Party and the post-Brexit electorate,

This election is going to hand the Conservatives

It is their once in several generations opportunity to complete

the free-market revolution unleashed by Margaret Thatcher.

But Mrs May doesn't seem to be much interested

in smaller government, lower taxes and personal

She doesn't want to be The Iron Lady.

Rather, she has chosen to model herself on one of the most dismally

useless Tory Prime Ministers is in recent memory,

the disastrous nanny state meddler Ted Heath.

The lesson of the European Union is that big government doesn't work.

The lesson of history is that big government doesn't work.

So why has Theresa May decided to give us more big government?

The Conservatives are supposed to be the party of low taxation. Today,

thanks to Mrs May, we are heading towards the largest tax levels in 30

years. Not even Dave, the heir to Blair, Cameron, was guilty of that

kind of socialism light. When Ed Miliband first proposed an energy

cap, the Tories branded it Marxist. Today, it is part of Theresa May's

industrial policy, along with worker representatives in the boardroom, a

higher minimum wage, some politically correct nonsense about

the gender pay gap, the kind of thing that must make red Jeremy

Corbyn wonder why he bothered. His work here is done.

Thanks to Gala Bingo in Tooting for use of their hall of mirrors.

The Spectator's very own, legs eleven, James Delingpole is here.

Welcome to the programme. Are we agreed that Theresa May is not a

Thatcherite? No. I would try and remember what Margaret Thatcher was

really like. She had a top rate of income tax at 60p in the pound until

the late 1980s. She inherited 83. She did not get near to 40 until the

late 80s. She still had the dock worker regulation act until the late

1980s. In her 1979 manifesto, she promised no privatisation. There was

no privatisation to speak of in her first parliament, only the second,

and she was dragged into much of that. She was always intervening in

British industry to make sure that, for example, defence companies got

big contracts not in competition with Americans or other foreign

companies. And she was constantly going around the globe trying to

shove armaments down the unwilling throats of other governments. She

was hugely interventionist and would not countenance, for example, the

privatisation of British Rail, or the Royal Mail, in the latter case

because they had the word "Royal" in it. The idea that Theresa May is a

red Tory is a smoke screen. But is she the air to Thatcher or not? It

is a different period, clearly. There is a different inheritance.

The reality is, if you take what she is doing, for example, on social

care, that is a move away from society collectively pulling the

risk and helping everybody, and saying you are on your own. It is a

complete, there is no such thing as society, moment. If you are above a

certain level of assets. Yes, but if you are above that level, you could

lose an enormous amount of money, all based upon luck. The whole point

of the Dilnot Commission 's was that we would share that risk together.

That was a collectivist thing to do. This is on your own. Isn't the idea

of a Thatcher Mark two unrealistic? The crash of 2008 tarnished the

market for many people. Free markets have become synonymous with

globalisation and huge inequality. Surely Mrs May is responding to

that. I think that she has a once in several generations opportunity. She

has the Conservative label, and free markets do actually work. Time and

again history has shown that. But there is no appetite for them. You

don't need appetite when you have a large majority. She might not have

one. I would not buy into that. This election is hers for the taking. You

are a lone voice. If you speak to the Tory right, they might not like

a lot of this blue-collar conservatism, but they think she

will deliver on Brexit. They think the union is safe in her hands. They

are going to put up with a lot for that. Reed she has bought them off,

basically feeding them this big piece of red meat called Brexit.

They are accepting that. But if you read the Conservative comments area,

they are up in arms, the people who think about Tory ideology, who

understand economics, which she clearly doesn't, they are very

concerned. And I am concerned. It is sad that the Conservative Party has

been hijacked. You can't imagine Theresa May throwing down the road

to serfdom on the table and saying, this is what we believe. Does this

red Tory stuff amount to a row of beans or is it all spin and position

huh? I think it's mainly spin and posture which may be quite

effective. From what I've read of the proposals for workers on the

boards, you know, it's no such thing. It may sound pretty good. I

would have thought it would be a pretty minor inconvenience to

companies. They all add up though all the minor inconveniences, don't

they? Let me take another point. She's no longer saying she's

committed not to raise income tax or VAT. Now, you can go to... She is

committed to not raising VAT? It's Nat insurance and income tax? You

are absolutely right. Two of them. There is a prior Conservative

principle that you have to be prepared to do whatever is necessary

to run the economy properly and that means, for example, keeping public

borrowing within certain limits. Now, it distressed me to see the

Conservatives before committed to not raising taxes because it meant

in certain circumstances they were committing to being irresponsible in

the management of the economy. You could say that by failing to promise

these things, she becomes a responsible Tory to what's gone

before. This should be coloured red. It's the Tory manifesto? Yes. It

says, what is this about a national productivity investment fund and

there is a section that says confronting burning injustices.

She's got her ideas from The Guardian society pages, not from

anything else. What do you say It sounds like the reformation of

Neddy. The national and economic development council 1961 Harold

Macmillan. The reality though is... The language about parasite wasps.

That won't move you away from the free market about the elite in

Westminster. That owes as much to Nigel Farage as it does to anybody

on the level. When you look at what she's proposing to do on social care

and Tax Credits for working families and the bottom four December isles,

they are going to be hit harder than anybody's been hit in the last 20

years. The idea this is a shift towards the left is nonsense. You

may think she's insufficiently a free market or Thatcherite, that's a

different point but the thought it's a move to the centre ground, I don't

buy it. She's not just in the vote to leave the Europe European Union,

that was also a cry from a lot of the country that things are not

working well for us. The Metropolitan classes have all done

fine, but we living in the Midlands and the north, have not done so well

and she's responding to that. I would take the opposite view. She's

saying yes, I hear you want Brexit and I understand what you want, but

she doesn't understand because she was a remainor for starters and

secondly, people voted brex to it gain their independence. What she's

giving them is more of the micromanaging nanny status. They

didn't vote Brexit for a Jefferson yank... Says you. They wanted to be

free and get away from all the regulation. They wanted more things

to help them share in some of the prosperity. We were great once. We

had the open sea and we could have it again but she's denying us. There

will be a clear majority of people who voted to leave the European

Union who'd also vote to renationalise the water industry and

the rail industry. We can debate whether that's a good idea or not, I

don't feel ideological about it. It's not necessarily The idea that

it's somehow not the kind of thing that people who voted Brexit would

support, it's a nonsense. I think we'd agree reports You sound a

remainor to me. People would like prosperity. That would be good. I

think she's going the opposite route to prosperity and that's worrying.

Isn't it ironic that, as Mrs May promises to take us out of the

European Union and that that project will be safe in our hands, that

she's really recasting the British Tories as a version of the German

Christian Democrats? That's exactly what we have been debating and I

rather doubt that. I mean, I don't want to labour this point on social

care too much but it's extraordinarily radical, it really

does mean that the people are going to have to... I mean you put it as

people being left to fend for themselves, I say it's about people

saving for a rainy day and hey when that comes they are expected to

spend the money they've saved for a rainy day. People have to be

responsible for themselves, what's not Thatcherite about that. I'm with

her on foxhunting. A bit of Adam Smith? No, there's no Adam Smith

there. I'm surprised about the foxes. Collectivist. They have to be

hunted down as collectivists. I find that surprising. The shocking thing

about this week from both parties is, we haven't really had any

discussion at all about what Brexit was going to mean. We heard from the

Prime Minister a very ego-driven statement which basically said, let

me decide what I'm going to do, without at the moment giving us any

indication of what that is. It may turn out to be something very

different to what you want. I think it's a squandered opportunity. We

could genuinely be an economic powerhouse. Even though we are

leaving Europe, we kind of want to have the same regulation and worker

protection and so on. It's not going to be good for us. Very well. Thank

you very much. Now, it's late, Donald Trump

flirting with Russia late. It's been a tough old week

for the Donald as he says, no politician in history has been

worse treated than him. And I think we can

all agree with that. Worse than Abraham Lincoln,

who was assassinated at the theatre. Worse than JFK, murdered

in a motorcade in downtown Dallas. And clearly much, much worse

than Nelson Mandela, But if like us, you've had quite

enough of injustice this week, worry not, because waiting

in the wingS is rapper and comic Doc Brown,

here to get down with the kids And as we're pretty hip

happening people, hit us up on the Facegram,

the instabook, the Snapper Now folks, only 21 long hard days

to go until the general election. Yes, in exactly three weeks time it

will be all over bar the results. No more leaders' debates

without the leaders. No more supposedly costed manifestos

built on a wing and a prayer. No more "We've been clear,

Andrew" when what follows Actually that will continue

after the election. Anyway here's Miranda Green with her

round up of the political week. Not a single customer all morning. I

thought this election fortune telling would be a sure fire money

spinner. It's not as if anyone believes the polls any more. It's

almost as if people think the election is a foregone conclusion.

Oh, my alluring sign has fallen down.

This was manifesto week and all three parties unveiled their plans

for the future. I see Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Leader going on a journey

to safe Labour seats. But what does he say? Well, yes, clearly we've

heard a lot of Labour's manifesto before. He confirmed pledges to

scrap tuition fees, increase public spending and promised a Society for

The many, not the few. The programme that is radical and

responsible. A programme that will reverse our national priorities and

put the interests of the many first. We will change our country while

managing within our means. And, will lead us through Brexit while putting

the preservation of jobs first. Corbyn predicted the Tories would

attack him on credibility. He said his policies were fully costed. Hang

on, predicted? So much more job preservation, you stick to your own

job Jeremy, this tent isn't big enough for the both of us. All this

is costed as the documents accompanying our manifesto make

very, very clear. Our revenue-raising plans ensure we can

embark on this ambitious programme without jeopardising our national

finances. We are asking the better off and the big corporations to pay

a little bit more and of course, to stop dodging their tax obligations

in the first place. Even Labour's most ardent backers

can foretell trouble ahead for the party. Unite boss Len McCluskey said

retaining only 200 seats would count as success. But then, cosmic Len had

another premonition. The stars aligned, the moon rose in Jupiter

and the future looked bright again. So I'm now full of optimism if I was

having that interview today I wouldn't be making those comments. I

think also the Labour campaign has been brilliant. It's outshone the

Tories. Jeremy Corbyn's come across as a real man of the people and a

real leader and I'm now full of optimism as to what will happen in

the next two to three weeks. The Tories are on their own journey

while Corbyn sticks to Labour territory, the PM is touring the

marginals making a grab for Labour votes and policies. I see a tall

dark stranger in the PM's future. It's just spread sheet Phil. Wait,

he's trying to tell us something. (BLEEP) economically illiterate

(BLEEP) strong... The future is looking murky for

Phil. If after June you are re-elected,

will you still be next door neighbours? The theme of today's

Tory manifesto was tough decisions. The title - Forward Together. Not

you, Phil! Elderly people will be expected to foot more of the bill of

their social care. It's a bold move to risk upsetting older voters.

You've got to hand it to her. This is the first time that we have seen

a proper long-term plan for sustainability of social care in

this country. This is one of the great challenges that we face with

an ageing population and it's right that anybody who wants to be Prime

Minister any party that wants to be in Government faces up to that

challenge and sets it out clearly for people. Surprises aside, this is

the Brexit manifesto, that means immigration. Mrs May recommitted

herself to the discredited Tory target to get migration down to the

tens of thousands. Is that achievable? Yes. We want to increase

the charge, skills charge, immigration skills charge. Then that

money can be put into ensuring that people here are being trained up to

take the jobs. I want to see people here having the skills to take on

these jobs while we still have a system that brings the brightest and

best into the United Kingdom. Tim Farron's manifesto is called

Change Britain's Future. Change the future? ! Tim, what have you been

smoking? The Liberal Democrats are promising more money for health and

education and one penny on income tax. At the heart of the manifesto

is a promise on a second referendum about Brexit. Ugh, that's brewed!

Let's have a look at the leaves. Or is it the remains. Or the remainers.

Or the re-levers. We don't just have to accept whatever deal we get back

from the Brexit negotiations but the British people, you, should have the

final say and if you don't like what Theresa May comes back with, you

should have the right to vote to remain. The Liberal Democrats are

the only people offering you hope that Britain's future could be

brighter and better. Ah, the Tartan warrior. Nicola Sturgeon celebrated

ten years of SNP control in Scotland this week by accusing Labour and the

Tories of stealing her ideas. Thieving people, just you wait. The

manifestos seem familiar policies in Scotland for a very good reason. The

SNP Government's already delivered all of them in Scotland. Even the

Tory who is spent the past ten years criticising council house building

and free prescriptions have now changed their tune. For the Welsh

nationalists, independence remains a distant dream. Dark clouds may be

gathering on the horizon, there is also a ray of hope. We can be the

voice of Wales. We can be that ray of hope. Now is the time to defy the

old and out of touch parties. To show that we believe in Wales. Poor

Leanne. Sing when you're winning... # It's all over the front-page

# You give me road rage. What about my fortune? What's this? Abject

poverty. Forced to work for This Week! I should have foreseen that.

Nothing's certain except death and taxes. Stuff the stars and this

mystic malarkey and you don't even work!

# She's just a devil woman # With evil on her mind.

And we're joined by former Green Party Leader, Natalie Bennett,

and by Polly McKenzie, who used to be Director

of Policy for former Liberal Democrat Leader,

How left-wing is the Labour manifesto, Ed? If you look at the

individual policies, there's quite a lot of policy in there which I could

sign up to which was in the last manifesto and one before. It was

undermined by Jeremy Corbyn immediately contradicting the

manifesto on the benefit freeze and saying in fact we are going to do it

and go ahead with it. It was exposed in a number of interviews. He could

have tragically, the left has been waiting in the Labour Party for

decades to have a manifesto and when they finally get one, it gets

totally overshadowed by a complete screw-up. Despite that which he had

to correct, couldn't it be said Mr Corbyn's having a pretty good

election? Well, in the end, the election will be decided by the

voters. Is that how democracy works? I never knew that. Is he having a

good election? The opinion polls look good. He's doing good at the

rallies but in the end what matters is what is happening on the ballot

boxes and the polls. Compared to Theresa May, he's talking to people

and getting out there wanting to have arguments and debates. He's

having a better election campaign than she is. Labour is also,

Michael, going into detailed costings and also where the revenue

will come from, now you can have an argument about whether the costings

or the revenues are realistic, but they have put figures down there

that show analysis. There are almost no costings, there is no table of

revenue-raising at all, just figures thrown out hear and there? Yes.

Labour has some big aspirations to renationalise and they are not

costed and, as you say, the rest of it is pretty arguable. But none of

this matters because the election's really about Jeremy Corbyn. When you

say he's having a good election, what is happening is that Labour

canvassers are going to the voters and saying, it's safe to vote Labour

because we are not going to win, so this election is not really about

Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister, it's simply about having,

you know, a respectable number of Labour MPs to provide some

opposition. That would be a strange definition of a successful campaign

for him. Is this election about Jeremy Corbyn?

I think it is about the future of Britain and what will happen in the

Brexit talks. Let's not get it down to personalities. I understand that

is what elections should be about, and although that may be what you

want, is it happening in reality, or is it about Mr Corbyn and Mrs May,

who is running a presidential campaign? I am finding on the

doorstep in Sheffield that people are talking about issues. Obviously

about Brexit, but also there is an enormous focus on education. There

are real concerns about what is happening in schools and education,

where schools are being turned into exam factories with pupils pushed

through the exam after exam, losing creative subjects. That is what

people are saying on the doorstep, really? They are saying, I am glad

you have knocked on the door because our schools are exam factories?

Exactly. Are you sure you are not knocking on your own door? They are

talking about young people losing the opportunity to freely move

around Europe. They are worried about the future of young people. Is

the election about Mr Corbyn? The Conservatives are trying to make it

about Theresa May against Jeremy Corbyn. Almost every sensible person

thinks Theresa May would do a better job than Jeremy Corbyn at pretty

much anything, I think. As Michael says, the Labour Party is trying to

suggest there is no way that Jeremy Corbyn can win, and the

Conservatives are trying to say he might win. It feels like they have

put some unpopular policies in their manifesto, the weird decision to go

on fox hunting, just to narrow down the polls and give Labour a bit of a

boost so that in the last week they can hit that message, which they did

successfully in 2015, that there might be a coalition of chaos. At

the start of the campaign it felt so implausible that Jeremy Corbyn could

win, and now they are trying to push that message. What has gone wrong

with the Lib campaign? The Lib Dems have gained some votes from people

who are Remainers in core places that might do well, south-west

London or Cambridge, for example, but are clearly losing votes from

people who either voted Leave and have been exposed strongly to the

idea that the Lib Dems don't want to leave, and some people who don't

care and want to move on to education, or the NHS, or whatever

it is. The question for the Lib Dems is not the national polls but how

they do in individual seats, and that will never translate

international polls. I don't think we really know because only in terms

of canvassing returns is when you get that indication. But did you

read the mood of the nation, thinking you could tap into the mood

of Remainers, but although they were unhappy, many just want to get on

with it. There is a reasonable position which Tim Farron is taking.

Since the referendum the Lib Dems have been talking about a new

referendum and it was not clear what that meant. And now there is a clear

position which is, you go to Brussels, get the best deal you can

and then you can compare it with staying and the British people

decide. The truth is probably the British people would still decide to

leave. The thing is, they don't know where they are going. It is like in

Sheffield. That is your constituency. We can't keep talking

about your constituency. In a general election, you can't do that.

If we are driving north from London, how far you go, what heading you

take, there are many possible directions and the first referendum

told us to go north. It did not tell us what direction. If people get to

the final destination and are not happy, if politicians are allowed to

do a U-turn, people should be allowed to, too. Theresa May's point

is that we cannot have a Scottish referendum because we do not know

what Brexit looks like yet. So it is perfectly reasonable to be able to

say, let's give people another look at that, instead of just parliament.

Is it, Michael? No. But I think we moved beyond this weeks ago. I think

that is the big misconception of the Liberal Democrats. You are right

when you implied that people have moved on. They know Brexit is going

to happen. The two main parties are saying it is going to happen. Just

to go back over the arguments, if we were to say to our European

parliaments, if the deal is not acceptable, we will have another

referendum and rejected, of course we would be given an unreasonable

deal. People understand that, which is why Tim Farron's position is

ridiculous. To go back to where we were, there is nothing improper or

strange about an election being about the two candidates for Prime

Minister. It is fundamentally what it is about. Whether it is Churchill

against at least, Michael foot against Margaret Thatcher, William

Hague against Tony Blair, that is what it is always about, and

absolutely right that it should be. Are the best days of the Green Party

over? Absolutely not. That point shows how out of date and hopeless

and undemocratic power system is, because people do not find Theresa

May or Jeremy Corbyn on their ballot paper. They vote for their local MP.

But people can make that logical leap because they are not stupid.

They are also making choices about who they want to elect locally on

local issues. The whole thing is a mess. We have a government elected

with the support of 24% of eligible voters. Let me tell you in all

humility that I very much discovered that when I won, it had nothing to

do with me. And when I lost, it didn't have that much to do with me.

I think it did! You are wicked! It is all to do with the party they

want to be the government. The Greens are not standing in 171

seats. The best you can hope to do is retain the one seat that you have

and maybe win one more. That is clay seal progress, even if you do. I

don't agree. I guess I am not allowed to mention the other seats

we might win as well. In 2015 we got 1.1 million votes. In a fair

electoral system... But you have the electoral system that you have. In

Germany, which has aways had the strongest Green Party in Europe, the

Greens are in serious decline. If you look at the results in North

Rhine Westphalian, they are struggling to get above the 5% of

the vote that would keep them in the Bundestag. And in Britain, you have

got nowhere near that, so what is the future? If you want to trade

foreign elections, we could point to the Dutch election where the Green

left out did Geert Wilders party and had a meteoric rise. We can trade

foreign results. But the big one is the German Greens. The point about

here is that we can take the 1.1 million votes from last time. The

kind of growth we have had in the party, four times the size it was a

two years ago, and we can turn that into seats. We are focusing hard,

concentrating our efforts and aiming to grow. How many seats do you think

you will win? Between three and five. Parties can have an impact

without winning many seats. Look at Ukip. But look what then happened.

It is a bit dispiriting, isn't it? It is dispiriting, and it is

difficult. I think the Lib Dems did the right thing for the country and

got damaged as a result. These things happen. Has Tim Farron fails

to make the big time? Tim has had a few unfortunate slip-ups around this

conflict between the internal view is that he may or may not have based

on his religious philosophy and his Liberal positioning, which means he

always votes for a separation of church and state and thinks it is

irrelevant. He will be pleased you have reminded us about that, it was

about ten days ago. He is also carrying a heavy burden because in

politics, when something happens... View for a long time. The Lib Dems

went into coalition which was unpopular for them. He bears that

burden. He has also decided to narrow his coalition by only going

for a narrow Remainer and the Liberal Democrats stretch much more

widely than that. The problem is that we had a referendum on

proportional representation and we decided not to have it. At 12:30am,

we are not going to speak about proportional representation. Thank

you, both. Now, it's been a swag

week for Jezza Corbz. All the mandem have come out to rep

for their boy, big JC. We already knew Stormzy

liked his energy but now JME, Boy Better Know and all the mandem

have strated #Grime4Corbyn. They're all bigging up

the Labour ting, rude boy. I'm told there will be

a translation of all that I look forward to finding out

what I've just said. The Prime Minister got down

with the kids in Birmingham on Tuesday showing off her

Harry Potter knowledge Despite trying to impress the young,

the PM still isn't keen You have to draw a line,

you have to pick a point at which you think it's right

for the voting age to be. I continue to think that it's

right for it to be 18. The Lib Dems on the other hand think

it's right for the voting age to be We must give the British people,

particularly the young people... A desire to give people of our

country, particularly young people, Tim Farron even took

to an East London nightclub to launch his youth

oriented manifesto yesterday. So that is the launch

of the Liberal Democrat party manifesto for this general election

in this very noisy nightclub He received an enormous

cheer for pledging to axe Labour will scrap tuition fees,

lifting the debt... He now appears to benefit

from overwhelming support BOTH: Make sure

you register to vote. Comedian and rapper Doc Brown

is campaigning to get young people But will such attempts always

be an uphill struggle? And Ben Bailey Smith is with us.

Welcome to the programme. Thank you. Do you think this election is really

grabbing young people? More than the last three or four elections. The

numbers bear that out, looking at the Electoral Commission numbers.

390,000 people aged 18-24 have already registered since the snap

election was called. Those figures were a good eight days ago. It might

still be growing until the cut-off date. It has grown considerably over

the last three elections. I wonder if that is maybe because young

people are looking at it now in respect of some of the crazy things

that have happened, as a result of voting in very recent memory. You

think about how crazy Brexit was, as a surprise to a lot of people. There

is a reality TV star running the free world. It is pretty crazy

stuff, and these are the results of votes. And they are big news. You

can't escape them. Exactly. So those things are already in gauging young

people to some extent. The idea they are not in gauged is a mistake.

There have all it's been efforts to try and get younger people to be

more engaged in the political process, but it never quite happens.

The only modern example I can think of is the Scottish referendum. Well,

they lowered the voting age, which is very interesting. For the

referendum they lowered it. And that is interesting because the majority

of 16-year-olds will still be in their house with their parents, with

a knowledge of what is going on in their community. At 18, you could be

anywhere. And the date of this snap election is interesting as well,

because I think the last three elections were in early May will

stop this one, early June, a time when some of these young people will

have finished their exams and will be looking to do interesting,

different things, getting out of their town, going abroad, on the

move. That is a bit of a shame, but I think the Scottish referendum is

also not the only example. Perhaps in the UK, but if you look at Bernie

Sanders in the states, he managed to govern I is a huge, huge youth

turnout in the votes. 80%, something like that. Which is very impressive.

That says to me, regardless of your politics, if there is a big idea,

something bigger than, hey, maybe we will legalise marijuana, scrapped

tuition fees... Something bigger than that? Yes. I think young people

are thinking bigger than just these individualistic ideas, which affect

them and their mates. They think deeper.

My experience is that young people are interested in politics, they are

not that interested in Party Politics. Exactly. The big ideas are

bigger than the party and the personality politics, bigger than oh

look at her and what she's wearing. They are engaged in the big things

but there's very limited... It's like it's the essence of politics

that they're into and nobody's really tapping into that. The rapid

rise of Obama and the huge wave of support behind him, I think it

largely came from that rhetoric of hope and change. It seemed big and

positive and different. And that galvanised younger people? Yes, like

it did once in Canada. The idea of something big and hopeful. That's

what young people are, they've still got hope, you know, they've still

got this kind of optimism that's largely untapped because nobody's

going, here is the big idea, you know. We'll see what happens on June

8th. Just before you go, what are you up to? Actually, is it past

Midnight already? Yes. My album is out today. I put together an album,

my first in almost a decade working in comedy for such a long time.

Congratulations and good luck with it. Little plug on the BBC. No harm

in that, especially at this time of night. Thank you. Cheers.

That's your lot for tonight folks, but not for us, we're staying right

here and partaking in what is sure to be the viral craze of 2017,

we're set for a wild night playing Ballsbingo.

Our very own Ed wants to show Ed Milliband how it's done.

Pick up your sheets guys and listen up!

Nighty nighty, don't let Ed's dulcet tones bite.

Hands on dabbers, eyes down, here we go. 1 and 0 Number Ten. That's the

prize. 9 and 7, 97, Labour landslide. Six and six, all the

sixes, 66. 6 and 0, 60, free bus pass. 7 and 5, 75. Free TV licence

on the way for you, Andrew! 5 and 0, 50, 50p, top payer tax. 1 and 8, 18,

Doc time to vote. Get voting. 1 and 1, Number 11, the guy next door,

friend or foe? 7 and 9, 79. The day Michael's hero came to Downing

Street. Now, before we award the prize, we need to verify your card,

we know what you Tories are like, get it checked. Exactly. Michael, at

last, you've won a game. I have never slept with

a man that I just met.