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Mark Steyn: Hey, welcome along. GB News is live on your telly and on your wireless and on your teasmade but you need the premium promo code for that one. On tonight's edition of the Mark Steyn Show, we talk about the stuff the other guys don't want to go anywhere near. A statistical expert is here to challenge my view of the utter worthlessness of the COVID booster shot the government is determined to stick in your arm. Eva Vlaardingerbroek will look at where all this state coercion is headed next and also bring us up to speed on who's going to be running Twitter. There was in the end no political earthquake in France but we discerned a few interesting rumblings and the one thing we can never get enough of, your questions and comments. Send them along to [email protected]. You can Twitter me at GB News. All that coming up after Polly with the latest news.
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Mark Steyn: Thank you, Polly. And we will have more on that Twitter story that has just broken in the last couple of minutes that Elon Musk has succeeded in spite of a Twitter storm objecting to his ambitions in snaffling up Twitter, and he plans to take it private and he plans all kinds of other things too. And we will be addressing that with Eva Vlaardingerbroek a little later in the show. I'm not going to go near that story about the Boris being distracted by whoever it was crossing her legs. I uh oh, wait a minute, sorry, I've just been distracted by Alistair Stewart crossing his legs. Anyway, I woke up on Saturday as usual in a skip, trouser-less, in a town I had no recollection of ever having previously been in and after I'd had my first cup of coffee, I noticed I was being beaten up on Twitter by a big time statistician formerly with the Office for National Statistics, over my observations last week on the supposed efficacy of the so called vaccine booster shot, shot number three, which I said....and I don't want to get too technical this early in the show, was total blathering codswallop and the booster was either A) at best totally useless, or B) more likely to cause your death. And Jamie Jenkins disliked the cut of my jib, and he thundered at me "Nonsense! This claim is nonsense."
So I thought we'd get him on the show because we haven't heard enough actually from statisticians these last two very weird years. And I'm pleased to say Jamie Jenkins said yes, and he seems a fair minded sort of bloke, because aside from clobbering me into the tarmac, he also tweeted this: "The UK Health Agency report stats are not great to be honest. And they have just stopped publishing them because they don't explain what many may think."
Yeah, this is the so called vaccine surveillance report. And let's start with that right here, Jamie. It's great to have you on the show. And it's all very mysterious why they stopped publishing them. Can we have a look at graphic number one? Because I'm more cynical than Jamie. And Jamie, this is why I think they stopped publishing them. And all I've done here is colored the various columns to make them stand out a bit more easily on the telly. But if you see that red one at the far end, which says of the total number of dead, the percentage of them who are triple vaxxed. And it starts off way back in January at the beginning of the year, actually December, Boxing Day. And it's about 30 percent of the total dead are the triple vaccinated, and then it just climbs all through this year to date 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent, 70 percent. And then it gets to 75 percent, a little over and they decide, oh, all of a sudden we're not going to do this report anymore. And would it be an unfair inference, Jamie to say that one reason they don't want to do it anymore, is because that 75.3 percent figure has now upticked over 80 percent and therefore, simpletons like me will be making far too much of it? In other words, that they took a political decision that they didn't want people to know over 80 percent of the COVID dead are the triple vaccinated.
Jamie Jenkins: Yeah, good evening, Mark. So that table actually, I think there's some good legitimate argument in terms of what the findings that you're showing, the main thing is, and we can perhaps go into that, is that what those are there they are deaths from any cause within 60 days of a positive test. Now, if you look at the period that the last four week report that they did publish covers, that will take you back, if you take the 60 days, it will take you back to around the end of December. And we know in England that 6.3 million people have tested positive for COVID over that period, and their deaths from any cause, but the figures you actually quote there in relation to the proportion of the deaths, and so let us park to one side their deaths from any cause within 60 days of a positive test is actually borne out well by data that's published by the ONS and I would concur with some of the findings you've got there. Because what we've seen, Mark, is that the booster rollout started for the most vulnerable and the elderly people. And remember now the vast majority of people who die from any cause, obviously are over the age of 80. Over half the deaths of people over the age of 80. They started getting the booster around week 37. And the period from that table starts showing you from kind of the end of last year throughout the first three months of this year.
And it kind of boils out with what the ONS figures say and just for the viewer, the table you've got is from the UK Health Agency. And the ONS is like the separate body which is the official government statistics that looks at death certificates rather than deaths within 28 days of a positive test. And there's a similar story....and in part Mark, what it is showing is what the vaccine companies themselves have admitted, is that after 90 days, the vaccine started waning. It's no longer offering you that protection, which is why they say have another vaccine. Now, my view on that is that the vaccine, obviously, whilst they offer you some initial protection, especially if you're older....if you're younger, you know, the relative risk is much, much lower. I've had two vaccines, I haven't had a booster vaccine, I don't think I need a booster vaccine. But that chart, those tables that you've just shown there is indicating exactly what the vaccine companies have been saying themselves, is that after 90 days, well, you need to have another....
Mark Steyn: Well, I'd like to I'd like to push back on you against that, Jamie, because that's obviously not what the vaccine companies were saying a year ago. Back then they were talking about oh 95 percent protection. They weren't saying you're going to need to get a shot every three months, which isn't really a vaccine, but more to the point. They're not saying what the government is saying. Now I understand there's differences. There's obviously wide differences in age. If you're a 97-year-old with a bum ticker, you've got worse actuarial prospects than a healthy 14-year-old. I understand that. But I'm not sure the government gets to make that argument, because the government is saying whether you're a 97-year-old with a bum ticker, or a healthy 14-year-old school girl, you all need to get the shot, the booster shot and in fact, it may be a condition of your employment that you do that, or if you want to, as Leilani Dowding was saying on Thursday's show, she wants to go to Spain, and she can't because she hasn't had this shot. And that it seems to me.....so we're incentivizing people, which we've never done before, of having medical interventions when they have no medical need for it. I'd like to, just before we pass on from that, on the age thing, let's look at this. Could we have graphic number two up?
This is vaccine uptake by age and again, deaths within 60 days of a positive test, but again, broken down and if we look at the light blue column about halfway down, you'll see that 28.3 percent of persons in their 30s are unvaccinated. And they account for 29.5 percent of all COVID deaths. And then we have 17.5 percent of persons in their 40s are unvaccinated. And they account for 18.3 percent of all deaths. So for the early middle aged, being unvaccinated makes no difference to health outcomes. And while we're at it, then look at the pale pink column. 21.9 percent of 30 somethings are double vaccinated, but they account for 22.7 percent of all deaths. 25.1 percent of 40 somethings are double vaccinated, but they account for 30 percent of all deaths. So for the early middle aged, being double vaccinated seems to slightly increase the likelihood of death. But let's put it more neutrally and say the whole bloody pointless garbage crapola is a complete waste of time. Because if you look at that line for the 30 somethings, it's a wash from soup to nuts. The takeaway, there's 72 percent of people are vaccinated, they account for 71 percent of deaths. 28 percent of people are unvaccinated, and they account for 29 percent of deaths. So what's the point of all that?
Jamie Jenkins: Yeah, so there's two problems here, Mark. The first one is you said these were COVID deaths, but their deaths were within 60 days of a positive COVID test.
Mark Steyn: No, no they're all they're all deaths. I accept that.
Jamie Jenkins: [Inaudible] at the same period of time, what you actually find is that, I think you've got over 4,000 deaths in that table in total, I think and if you take the ONS figures where you look at actual death certificates, it's around just an order of one and a half thousand. So you've got two and a half times as many deaths in there. So you're, for example, you've made a triple jab, double jab, you had COVID over that six week period that we talked about where there were 6.3 million people having a positive test. You could have got punched in a nightclub, sadly died. And you'd be in that table, you could have fallen off a cliff even in that table. So it's best that's why I've been saying for a while they should stop publishing these deaths within 28 days of a positive test or 60 days of a positive test, because they don't fully reflect now, the COVID figures and the COVID deaths.
Mark Steyn: Well wait a minute, though, because essentially, you keep....and I understand this, you used to work for the ONS, which is a branch of the government, just as the Health Security Agency as a branch of the government. So I don't understand why they would have contradictory statistics. But the other point is on.....yeah, we're talking about, we're not talking about COVID deaths. We're talking, as I think the label on it says, "Vaccine update by age, deaths within 60 days of a positive test." So it's all deaths. But the interesting thing to me is that....I go back to my basic point, it's a wash. There's 72 percent of vaccinated people to one degree or another. And they account for 71 percent of deaths in that age cohort and there's 28 percent unvaccinated and they account for 29 percent of all deaths. So in other words, being unvaccinated seems like a rational choice?
Jamie Jenkins: Well, if you think one of the things I sent to your producer, I think it was the second table that I sent through to them. What that does in the same report is, it looks at the unvaccinated and the vaccinated population there. And you can see in the final column, whilst we've talked about the limitations there of deaths within 60 days of a positive test, this is from the same report that the other figures come from, and they do break it down. Now, the interesting thing on the first column I'll just talk about that actually, is that what it's kind of showing is the rates among the population per 100,000, people who are testing positive for COVID. And you can see quite clearly there, unvaccinated people far less likely, they've even put is a slightly lighter color. And they put some caveats in terms of what you shouldn't do to compare. Reason for that, the reason for that, Mark, is that there is sometimes some biases in regards to the testing because unvaccinated people are less likely to come forward. But all the data, the data from the ONS clearly shows as well, Mark, that if you've had a booster, and you've had it more than 90 days ago, there's absolutely no difference in the likelihood if you tested positive for COVID compared to if you're unvaccinated, and we've had three vaccines. And Boris Johnson was saying at Christmas time, you know, having the booster, stop infecting people, stop yourself being infected.
So that's that side of the table. If you take the far end of the table, and just look at the deaths within 60 days, you can see that the unvaccinated rate is slightly higher than the triple boosted rate. But the more important thing I would say here now, Mark, is it's nowhere near as vast as what it was many, many months ago. I remember calling out people who were saying that you were 32 times more likely to die if you were unvaccinated than if you were compared to people who were vaccinated. That was absolute nonsense at the time as well. And even the ONS had to come back and retract what they've said there. But if you look at the final table, you are slightly more likely to die but it's not massively different now and that's an important thing, because the vast majority of the population have had two doses of the vaccine or three doses, some of the boosters, if not 50 percent overall, but most of the population....
Mark Steyn: Let me let me come back, let me again come back on that, because again, they folded in all the vaccinated categories here. And I was trying to talk about the uselessness of the booster shot, which as you said you haven't had, you're not a vaccine denier, you've had the first two. I would be interested in, we'll certainly have you back on the show, because I would love to see it. I've tried but I'm not a statistician of any kind. I've tried to find any statistical proof that the booster shot, which is a condition of going into a café in France and having a café au lait. I can't find any statistical evidence that the booster shot actually does anything for you. But I'd like to put up something from your department, because you've been talking about the Office for National Statistics. This is graphic number 3. And I like this one, this is all deaths in England for the year 2021. And you can see that far left hand column, which is the unvaccinated and then all the other columns are people who are vaccinated to one degree or another. And if you add that column up, you know, you take it can do all the big numbers in your head, because you're a statistician, but I think that column in the far left adds up to about 125,000. Now at the end of last year, by Boxing Day, the unvaccinated accounted for about a third of the population of England. So I don't and obviously at the beginning of the year in January 2021, they were basically 100 percent of the population of England. So I don't understand why compared with all the vaccine dead, the unvaccinated seem to have an extremely healthy outcome for the year. In other words, they die in, they seem to die in lower proportions than the than the vaccinated do for 2021. Why would that be?
Jamie Jenkins: Well, yeah, well, that's pretty obvious in the fact that when you—I think you said a third were unvaccinated on Boxing Day. I think, I'm not sure off the top of my head. There are so many numbers from following the COVID stats but I thought is a lot lower than that, closer to 10 percent but I'm gonna wait and check that.
Mark Steyn: No, no. No, I just want to be clear about that. Because there's, there's something like 60 million according to the Health Security Agency, there's 60 million, of which the total vaccinated are 40 something million, so there's.....in other words, one of the funny things from the Health Security Agency's statistics, is that there seem to be more unvaccinated....because we all heard these things. Oh, yes, it's 5 million people in France that Macron wanted to emmerder, which is a very rude word. But in fact, according to the HSA, there seemed to be rather more unvaccinated than we thought there were. Do you find that odd?
Jamie Jenkins: That's in part, Mark, to do with the way the figures are calculated by the UK Health Services Agency, and then the ONS because, frankly, what some of the viewers will find surprising, actually, is that we don't know how many people are actually in the population. So the UK Health Security Agency uses the NHS databases to do that. The ONS use their official population estimates and the unvaccinated population. We don't fully know how many there are, because basically, we know how many vaccines are being given out. But they just take one number from the other and it depends on which population total you get. But regardless here if it's 10 percent, or say a third. I'll talk briefly about why the unvaccinated are less likely to die. And so the thing that you've shown there, in that table there was all deaths across the country, not just COVID deaths. And if you do look at the proportions of unvaccinated, they do get higher as you get younger. And as I said earlier 55 percent of deaths are in people over the age of 80. So when you go throughout the year, this obviously changes throughout the year as you've got more unvaccinated at the start of the year, less unvaccinated towards the back end of the year. But when you kind of got the age demographic and less likely to be vaccinated, the younger you get where you're less likely to die the younger you get, that's why when you just look at the table like this, that's the kind of finding that you get. The best way of doing the kind of analysis itself, Mark, is the age standardized, look at different age groups, look at things overall and what's that clearly showing is, just going back to the unvaccinated population, Mark. They've had quite a you know, a brutal bashing by ministers over the winter. I was calling him out a lot on Twitter myself for saying that hospitals were full of unvaccinated when they weren't, there was coercion to get these vaccines. I was calling out the vaccine passports saying they were bonkers. You shouldn't need to have a vaccine to go abroad, because the vaccine doesn't stop you catching the virus. You know, I think me and you are in the same category. I think the main thing I took issue with was when you was saying you were three times more likely to die if you were boosted. I think that's an artifact of the way the numbers were showing the table. That was the main issue.
Mark Steyn: Well, I think the demonization of the unvaccinated....I find this fascinating. Because when I look at the statistics for the....not just these ones from your office, but ones elsewhere within Her Majesty's dominions, in Canada, and I think it was the province of Saskatchewan and parts of New Zealand. It seems to be the same pattern, that actually you can hoot and jeer at the unvaccinated. But being unvaccinated is actually a rational choice when you look at the health outcomes. Now I like statistics as an amateur. And you've clearly established I am one. But there is a bestselling book to be written by a statistician about the last two years. Because clearly there is a difference between the numbers and the narrative. So when you look at Boris Johnson saying you need to get that booster shot. When you look at people saying no, no, if you want to come and work for this company, you need to have the booster shot. No, no, if you want to visit your holiday house in the south of France, you need the booster shot. I can see no justification for that. And I would be very interested to see if you can, if you with your contacts, can come up with any kind of statistical basis arguing that this booster shot was worth bothering with in the first place, because I can't. We would love to have you back to talk about this some more because I feel this whole thing. As I said, we have a disagreement. But you don't disagree that the narrative has been strange and the numbers do not quite support that narrative. And we disagree on what the actual explanation would be. But the rah rah Chris Whitty Professor Pants Down version of events is not supported by these numbers.
Jamie Jenkins: No, no. And I agree. I think that's where we are in agreement. I threw up all my Twitter throughout the last year, was calling out SAGE's modeling. Some of it was absolutely nonsense in terms of number of deaths they were predicting, the vaccine, you know the reasons you've given for why some people have to take a vaccine. Remember, they closed the nightclubs unless you had a vaccine. And then they closed the nightclubs because COVID. So they stopped you going into a nightclub if you didn't have a vaccine, and then they closed them when the vaccine policies didn't work. You're spot on there, the narrative about vaccine, vaccine and vaccine. If you're vulnerable if you're elderly, you know, I would say if you look at the data, it has clearly shown that it offers you that protection against death. But it's very temporary. You can see that's why the government is now saying you need another vaccine. You're right. We weren't told a year ago, you're going to need a fourth dose and a fifth dose. Thankfully, I think partly to do with Party-gate with Boris in Parliament, that he's had to back down to the backbenchers. He's rolled back on not bringing in the vaccine pass. If you haven't had a booster, then the fourth dose that seems to be a thing of the past, Mark and it's a good thing. We just now need countries like Spain to start following suit because putting vaccine mandates for you to go on holiday, absolute nonsense.
Mark Steyn: Well, thank you for that. Jamie. It's great to see you and we hope you'll come back and as I said you've got a standing invitation. If there is any....I know what you said about the booster shot, it's effective for three months. I can't actually find any evidence terribly supporting that but if you can, do come back and we'll go over that too. Let me know what you think about this stuff, [email protected]. Or you can Twitter me at GB News. Your thoughts coming next. Plus, Elon Musk. Twitter is now his. What does that mean? Eva Vlaardingerbroek is here on that, Anne-Élisabeth Moutet on what that French election means, all coming up, stick around.
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Mark Steyn: Hey, let us get your comments. Kirsten, that's a lovely name, Kirsten. Very Scandinavian. Kirsten says—this is all about Elon Musk taking over Twitter. Kirsten says: "Twitter is an echo chamber, which generally only reinforces existing modes of thought."
Well, the thing about it Kirsten, it is an echo chamber. But it doesn't enforce existing modes of thoughts like any kind of societal consensus, it actually amplifies what are hitherto thought of as fringe modes of thought, and makes you think as if that's the acceptable view on them. So if you're like a 14-year-old girl who's announcing that she's really a boy, and she wants to go on puberty blockers or whatever, and have her breasts removed, then there will be 1,000 tweets saying, "Oh, you're so brave, we're so supportive of you, you're a hero for our time, you're going to be Time magazine's Man of the Year." And so you get a distorted echo chamber in favor of certain actually rather atypical views. This is why our newspapers are so crap, because most....entire newspapers like The Independent, which doesn't really have journalists anymore. The Independent just has a lot of minimum wage, 14-year-olds who type up stories based on what three people tweeted. So it's this combination of an atypical segment of the population, plus lazy, useless newspapers that no longer have....oh well, that is actually true on television. Oh, let's spend 15 minutes now talking about your tweet. Oh, wait a minute, I'm doing that right now.
Okay. Anyway, speaking of which a Twitter user says, "The left are trying to close the marketplace of ideas and set up state rationing."
Yeah. Here's the way to look at it. The left doesn't want to have a debate. They want to close down the debate, because they think all the great questions of our time, whether you're talking about transgender rights, whether you're talking about climate change, whether you're talking about Islam, whether you're talking about whatever, all the great questions have been settled. So it's not about a vigorous exchange of opinions, because there's only one correct opinion. And if you don't have it, you should be fired, or certainly kicked off Twitter.
Charlie says, "Will Twitter open the marketplace of ideas? Not once this government's Online Safety Bill become law. This will effectively allow them to outlaw anything on social media that they deem harmful."
Yeah, we will have a strange situation in which Twitter would be to the right of the British Conservative Party.
Darrell says: "But will Elon Musk get rid of the bot and the anonymous accounts when he takes over Twitter? That would be great."
I don't think anybody can take over the bots. I don't think the bots are just on Twitter anymore. I think there's like a lot of them in the House of Commons now. Some of them are hosting television shows. I went into a singles bar and accidentally found myself making out with a bot, so I think They've broken free of Twitter.
Okay, another viewer emails: "I hope we do get real free speech with far less nastiness and crassness, as it used to be a long ago."
Okay, we are always delighted when Eva Vlaardingerbroek can join us as she's about to now, because today is the big day that Elon Musk has bought Twitter. He doesn't own the company yet. But he, while he does actually, he's taken control of it. He doesn't own it all. He wants to take it private. And he says, I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that's what free speech means and there's talk that he'll be permitting Donald J. Trump to resume his Twitter account. As I said, Eva joins us from the Netherlands. It's great to see you from your fabulous country, Eva. Do you think this is good news for free speech?
Eva Vlaardingerbroek: Hi, Mark. Well, it's always wonderful to be on. Honestly, I don't want to rain on this parade. But I have.....I think it's a little early to be cheering. First of all, because of well, apparently, both your government's but also the EU's crackdown on freedom of speech. That's one that I'm very worried about. And also Elon Musk. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of his, I think he has a lot of weird, very fringe, very dangerous projects up his sleeve, like neural link, for example. But also with Twitter, now, he vowed to authenticate all humans. So that would mean taking away those bots that you were just talking about. And even though I think that sounds like a great idea, of course, authenticating all humans would also mean that you would have to log into these platforms with, again, a digital identity that would make sure that you actually exist as a person. And I see all sorts of dangerous tendencies there that would work right into the hands of the European Digital Identity project that we've talked about before.
Mark Steyn: Well, I'm glad you brought that up because it really ties together the two things we've been talking about, which is basically the mandated COVID vaccine booster shot, or the booster for the booster shot for the booster shot's, booster shot or whatever we're up to for now and the Elon Musk Twitter thing, because basically, as we were sort of talking about earlier, in a statistical sense, my sense is that actually these vaccines wouldn't have made much difference to the health outcomes anyway. But what they do make a difference to is that as the head of the EU, the president of the EU, whatever her name is Cruella von der Leyen. That's her I think the head of the European Union president. She's fully on board with using COVID passports as the pretext for digital identity. Has that train left the station? And is it too late to stop it?
Eva Vlaardingerbroek: Well, they just passed another law in the European Parliament that's called the Digital Service Act, which is part again of this digital project, digital identity project that also the COVID pass was a part of. So you're completely right there. This is something that is going to control, as Ursula von der Leyen has said, every aspect of our lives. So yes, this new DSA, this Digital Service Act, for example, is one where the EU or the government, the moment that there is a crisis, oh we've heard that word before, is able to intervene on social media platforms like Twitter, regardless of whether Elon Musk's owns it or not, and say, hey, there is a crisis here, take it COVID, take it the war with Ukraine, maybe even the climate crisis that they've convinced everyone and their mother to believe in, and then say we need a narrative that is solid, that can't be questioned, because we need to fight this crisis right now. And that is the end of free speech. So I mean, it all goes hand in hand, it all works together. And I am very worried that we are not really going to be able to stop this, unless we might all decide that we're not going to use these apps anymore. And good luck with that.
Mark Steyn: Well, what's the difference between because when the Chinese started their social credit scores, and all the rest of it, and we all went "Oh my word, good thing, we're not like China." We seem to be getting very much like China in terms of controlling the narrative as you put it.
Eva Vlaardingerbroek: Oh, absolutely. I don't know if you've seen this or if your viewers have but in Bologna and Rome in Italy, and also in Bayern in Germany, they're going to start now with what they call a Smart Citizen Wallet, which is basically a social credit system. But just like you would expect in the West, they are, you know, they are going to cover it up a little bit for us. And they're going to make it sound like it's a wonderful thing that you can do to do good for society. And so what they're going to do now is reward citizens, that's the word that they use, to behave in a virtuous manner. And just, you know, coincidentally, the virtuous manner of behavior is in line with the Sustainability Development goals that the UN has laid out for us for the 2030 agenda. So if you take public transport, instead of your car, you're going to be rewarded points. And it's all lovely, and it's all voluntary, until it's not.
Mark Steyn: And of course again, as we were talking about earlier, they could do that with, you know, the fourth, fifth sixth booster shot, if you get the sixth booster shot, then with this Italian so-called passport, you might get 10 free bus trips, or 10 free train rides or whatever. So in a sense, the state is taking an ever heavier handed approach to how it permits us to live our lives.
Eva Vlaardingerbroek: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And this is, I mean, we've seen that it works with COVID, because they'll bring to you a perfectly good sounding pretext like public health, they will talk to you in a way where you feel morally obliged to comply, because if you don't do it, you're killing grandma. And nobody wants to kill grandma. Well, they can do that, of course, with the climate, you know, you want to save the world, right? So you have to eat less meat, you have to take less planes. And if the technology is there, and the technology is there, the only thing that stops us from believing that this will happen to us is our naivety. But it's going to happen. Yeah, it's almost like a law of nature, that if the technology is there, and if people in power have the option to abuse it, they will do it.
Mark Steyn: Well, I find this all very disturbing. And you've been on top of this story long before most people were. I think about things like well, you know, the American Revolution or any other kind of revolution, whether that would be even possible, would the American Revolution be possible if George III had all the American colonists' digital identity details at Buckingham Palace? I don't think so. I think this has huge implications for how we conduct ourselves in the most basic way. Thank you very much for that Eva, and we look forward to seeing you again, because as I said, you've been following this stuff since way before most of us were. And this is something you should be talking about. You've seen in the last two years, how quickly things can change.
So let me know your thoughts, ask me anything for Stump the Steyn, [email protected]. You can tweet me at GB News and ask me anything you want. You can be as personally abusive as you want, because I can take that. Anne-Élisabeth Moutet is here on the French election. The dinky little metrosexual globalist is back, but there may be aspects of it that offer a different view of France's future. Don't touch that dial. We're coming right back.
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Mark Steyn: Well, that French political earthquake never happened. The dinky metrosexual globalist with his stick on chest hair, and his cougar drama class schoolmarm managed to survive. They'll be in the Élysée Palace for another five years. And they saw off the challenge from the far right Marine Le Pen. Did I mention that Marine Le Pen is far right? I do hope so, the BBC do it every minute of the day. It was Macron versus far right Le Pen. I think that's actually how it appears on the French voting ballots. So it's either a new BBC drinking game, or she's changed her name by deed poll. [In French accent] "Ah bonsoir, Madame Far Right Le Pen, Gaston will show you to your table by the door of the WC. You're looking especially lovely tonight, Madame Far Right Le Pen. May I call you Far Right?"
Anne-Élisabeth Moutet joins us from Paris to go through the entrails of this thing. Let me just say what I thought of it this time yesterday, when the results started. The first results to come through came from all the overseas departments, which are what we in the UK would call colonies. So it was all places like Martinique, and Saint Pierre et Miquelon and they basically all voted for Marine Le Pen. And I thought that interesting because last time around, they all voted for Mélenchon. So I thought oh well, at least in these distant islands the far left guys are going for the far right ladies. If that happens in Metropolitan France, Macron could be in trouble. But he in the end, he prevailed.
Anne-Élisabeth Moutet: Yes, yes. And what they really wanted to signal was that they felt abandoned, that they felt that the Métropole, the Metropolis, mainland France was not a taking care of them and it didn't matter what kind of things they said. They felt like many people in the Rust Belt in France itself feel, that it's all about [inaudible] nation as Macron calls it and they have forgotten the worries about people who are hurt by cost of living increases. And in general, things that Macron doesn't seem to know anything about. But he's still been reelected, partly because Marine Le Pen at the end of the day, was not believable. And that's not just on him. It's also on her. First of all, because to both right wing and left wing her social program was very attractive. That's what they liked in Guadalupe and Martinique, but she didn't explain how she could fund it. And the other thing, of course, is that she has taken two loans from Vladimir Putin over the years for her party not for herself. She has reasons for that. And she explained those reasons during a debate with Emmanuel Macron, where she said, look, no French bank would give me a loan even though because I poll well over 5 percent, I was guaranteed to my campaign of cost to be reimbursed by the state. But nonetheless, they virtue signal and therefore I had to go and find somebody who would give me a loan. The National Rally is a poor party, but this isn't dishonorable, which was a very good line. She said some good lines, and she hit the best score for them ever, but she still doesn't quite reach 42 percent of the vote. And that's probably the end of it. She seems to too many voters as unelectable. And it's a circular thing.
Mark Steyn: Well, let's break that down a bit, Anne-Élisabeth, because the sort of shorthand of some of this is that old people voted for Macron. And people who aren't old voted for Le Pen. And you can see some, and actually, you don't need to be that old to be old enough for Le Pen. But under 50, there was very, there was really quite an impressive Le Pen tide. So in a sense, demographically she has the wind at her back to a certain extent.
Anne-Élisabeth Moutet: Yes, and no. Lots of young people voted for Mélenchon. I mean, he's a Trotskyite. He says all sorts of things about social justice, and they have just the right age to like that. Older people felt that she was not reliable. And you have all the people who voted for Éric Zemmour, for instance, and even though he only pulled 7.1 percent of the vote, it was very obvious that he had a very different vote from her. She got working class people, she got the Rust Belt. She got the small towns and places where you don't have services anymore, public services anymore. She got the classic vote of the equivalent of Donald Trump, but she doesn't have a moxie of somebody like Trump. And at the end of the day, that didn't work. Well, and you had a lots of old people who felt do I trust that woman to sort of be just to steer the country where it should go? And to some extent, she's a sort of young Joe Biden, she's not believable enough.
Mark Steyn: Well, thank you for saying the word Moxie, which I think is impressive for a francophone. It's a fantastic Americanism. You're right, that if you're gonna go down this populist route, I think it's fair to say you do need a certain amount of moxie. But let's look at it across the 21st century as it were. Monsieur Le Pen, Marine's dad, he got 18 percent in 2002, then Marine runs first time and she's absolutely clobbered by Macron. So she gets I think 30 something percent. And now she gets 42 percent five years later. Do you think it possible that France is....42 percent of people voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen's daughter. If you'd said that to anyone in Paris in the year 2002 they'd have said this is some crazy comic book dystopian fantasy, get out of here. I'm not even wasting time considering it.
Anne-Élisabeth Moutet: Well, yes. But on the other hand, she made it so very clear that she was not her father's daughter, or rather politically. I mean, she decided that—she fired him first of all. He made an anti Semitic joke and she brought that in 2015. And she just expelled him from the party he created and then she decided to soften not just her image, but also her platform. She decided that she no longer wanted Frexit, she decided that she didn't want to leave the Euro. She decided that she had no problem with Islam, only with Islamism. She was essentially doing a sort of Sarkozy with a bit of sort of French style in addition to that, and for a long time, people said, if you want to buy something, you don't buy the copy, you buy the original, but then came first of all Macron, who sort of made people define themselves next to him, but also Éric Zemmour himself, who expressed more strongly and more clearly lots of the things that she was trying to sort of tiptoe about, and it made her seem acceptable for lots of people who wanted to cast a protest vote. So her personal Overton window, moved back leftwards and she became more acceptable at the same time.
Mark Steyn: It seems to be difficult for anybody west of Austria to close the deal on this kind of stuff. And we've talked about whether she over detoxified herself, and perhaps needed to retoxify herself back a bit. Since we bought up her dad, does her dad think she's softened the party too much?
Anne-Élisabeth Moutet: He said this many times, that she was going the wrong way. And I mean, he's a he's a sort of terrifying dad in many ways. He criticized her. I must say yesterday, he actually said no, I stand with her. I think she's done a fantastic performance. This is admirable, and he was sort of behaving like a normal dad, which hasn't always been the case. So it's the detoxification but the other thing is that she's not believable enough as somebody who can sort of get this through. I personally, I'm with the people who believe that after this election, there's going to be a sort of recomposition of the French right, that will bring some people within the French equivalent of the Tory Party in Britain and the Republican Party in America and bring them with some people from some [inaudible], some people from Zemmour, some people from all other small parties, and they're going to build a different kind of right wing party that will really be right wing and not centrist. And that would be something like sort of a Tory Party including Nigel Farage crossed with Viktor Orbán's Fidesz.
Mark Steyn: Nigel Farage crossed with Viktor Orbán, this sounds like some terrible horror movie in the making. But you see it as Frances political future. Thank you very much for that as always, Anne-Élisabeth Moutet. That's an interesting theory.
Let's go Stumping before they throw us out of here. Dan says: "Since the government seem incapable of easing the increasing cost of living, I think we need to do some fundraising for them. How about looking at the large companies who took furlough cash from the taxpayers when they didn't need it and should be required to pay it back?"
Good luck with that, Dan. It's very difficult once you've given people all the dosh to get them to give it back. And let's not forget that a third....it's an interesting statistic, a third of the National Health Service, you know, remember that thing when you dial the free phone number to make your appointment to see a doctor and he says, "Take four aspirin and call us in 2027?" That NHS thing? A third of its entire annual budget was stolen by COVID frauds. They're not going to get that back. We're basically spending money.....Her Britannic Majesty's government is spending money it's not going to have until the next century.
Janet says: "I'm really keen to hear more about the World Economic Forum, any new developments?"
Hey, you know who you should talk to you about the World Economic Forum? Because he's one of their guys. That's Emmanuel Macron. They seem to win all the elections, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau, Jacinda Ardern, here's a way to put one over on the bookies. Next time do you want to put money on an election, find out who's the World Economic Forum candidate and put 500 quid on that guy.
Alan says "Do you have a favorite UK newspaper?"
I used to write....I've written for a lot of UK news. I wrote for The Independent when it started, I wrote for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph for many years. Wrote for the Evening Standard and the Mail on Sunday and now I don't, I don't know. I don't really look at newspapers in quite the same way. I read the English newspapers in Pakistan, because they were always full of interesting tidbits.
That's gonna do it. Dan Wootton is about to massage your Monday for two maceratingly marvelous hours.
Stay safe, stay free.
