00:00Well, Helen, come of the hour, come of the man,
00:02because Robert Jenrick from Reform has got all the answers
00:05we could possibly hope for to the cost of living and energy crisis.
00:09And we should just, there's definitely a trigger slash health warning
00:11that needs to be applied before watching this rather dystopian intervention
00:14in our political landscape this week.
00:16Take it away, Bobby.
00:18How would you like Nigel Farage to come to your house
00:20and pay yours and your entire street's energy bills for a year?
00:26If that sounds good, enter our draw.
00:28Go to www.nigelcutmybills.com
00:32I absolutely do not want Nigel Farage to come to my house.
00:36Don't enter the draw then, Cleo.
00:37Yeah, that's true.
00:38Well, we'll get into why I also wouldn't enter the draw.
00:41But I also find it extraordinary that Robert Jenrick is really firmly committed
00:45to this shadow chancellor.
00:47But based on the kind of size of the party in the House of Commons,
00:50he'd actually be something like shadow, shadow, shadow chancellor.
00:54The worry about that is I think it might make him,
00:57if he's too many shadows, doesn't he in fact then become the chancellor?
01:00Well, like a negative council.
01:01Yeah, exactly.
01:03Maybe that's the whole structure behind it.
01:05Maybe that's the game.
01:05He's going to get on technicality.
01:07My God.
01:08Well, that's the current situation on cost of living and energy prices
01:11and the government's reaction.
01:13But next, we're going to talk about reform's latest stump
01:16because it is actually quite important and it's not quite what it seems.
01:20So surprised.
01:20And we'll get into how governments actually put together emergency packages like this
01:25and why Donald Trump could yet worsen our cost of living crisis.
01:30So much to look forward to.
01:32But what's actually, what else is going on here with this generous offer
01:35to pay a whole street's electricity bills?
01:38Why are they doing this?
01:39Yes.
01:39So this is not actually reform's only stunt on cost of living.
01:43They did a campaign a fortnight ago in Derbyshire at a petrol station
01:46doing reform refuel where they knocked 25p off the pump price for people to fill up.
01:54Very exciting.
01:55All done up in their branding.
01:56And the idea was they are campaigning against the government's scheduled 5p fuel duty rise.
02:02So there is some kind of method behind, not the madness, but the campaigning anyway.
02:09I personally think this is a little bit different.
02:13So on the one hand, very tantalizing offer.
02:15This could tot up to a fair amount.
02:18It depends on the street, I guess.
02:19It depends on the house.
02:21You know, Buckingham Palace could have some major energy bills.
02:26Downing Street, a bit drafty.
02:27Quite.
02:27So the reason I think this is not quite what it seems is because I have been part of something
02:34similar myself.
02:35When I worked for Vote Leave in the 2016 European referendum, we had a competition
02:43called the 50 million prize, where if you correctly predicted all 51 games from the men's
02:51Euros 2016 football tournament, you could win 50 million pounds.
02:5650 million pounds.
02:58Did anybody win 50 million pounds?
03:00They did not win.
03:01But the backup prize, if you did not accurately predict all the results, the next best person
03:09got 50 grand and he did get 50 grand.
03:12Thank you very much.
03:13So we did follow through on that.
03:15But the bit that is more important here is not what are your odds of winning, although
03:19the odds that were pointed out to us by the Remain campaign at the time were one in
03:24a six dillion.
03:25How many?
03:25It's a many, many zeros that I'm sure Robert Jenner, because shadow chancellor could.
03:30Shadow, shadow, chancellor.
03:31Shadow, shadow, shadow, I think, chancellor could reveal to us.
03:36But the point of the exercise was to draw people in to give us their data, which is fine
03:43and legal.
03:43You can't buy lists of data anymore, which was quite common practice.
03:48And you had to have people voluntarily give up their information.
03:53So what sort of information would it be?
03:55Name, address, postcode and like contact information, basically.
04:02So it's to build like build mailing lists, basically.
04:04Exactly.
04:05And actually to get hold of people that, you know, it was particularly relevant for us
04:09at Vote Leave, people who may not have voted before.
04:11So they're not on the electoral roll, but they think, yeah, I'll have a pun to this.
04:17And I think, you know, it could be the case that reform are trying to do something similar
04:22to here.
04:23Because if you go to NigelCutMyBills.com, you are given the opportunity to give them a
04:28whole load of your private contact information.
04:31Ah, so like NigelHere'sMyData.com.
04:33Yes.
04:34But of course, if Nigel were trying to get hold of you to pay your bills because you've
04:38won the competition, he would obviously need to turn up unannounced in your house.
04:43But I just think people should be quite aware of this kind of thing.
04:48There were lots, there's lots of this kind of practice, to be honest, amongst political
04:52parties and particularly reform, who obviously are quite new.
04:56So they are trying to build up a base and a kind of understanding of where people are very,
05:02very, very quickly.
05:03They haven't got old data to rely on.
05:05Right.
05:05So they've got to start from scratch.
05:06So we can expect to see quite a lot more of these sort of innovative bits of competition
05:10opportunities for us in the public.
05:12It's possible.
05:14NigelPayMyNurseryBills.com.
05:16NigelPayMyFoodShopForAYear.com.
05:18Stunts work if there's actual meaning behind them.
05:21And I've worked on plenty of campaigns where stunts have come into it.
05:25Boris Johnson's like a stunt machine.
05:27The 2019 general election, he did all kinds of stuff with us, you know,
05:31grabbing the bull by the horns on a farmyard and he drove a digger through a wall saying
05:38get Brexit and unblock Brexit, that kind of thing.
05:41Very, very complex and subtle metaphors there.
05:44But there is meaning behind it.
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