We Care, We Fight! (with Stewart Lee)
Strong Message Here
Armando Iannucci and Stewart Lee critique the erosion of meaningful language in politics and technology. They analyze Ed Davey's Lib Dem slo
Key takeaways
- Ed Davey's 'We care, we fight' slogan is criticized for being overly simplistic and disconnected from actual policy substance.
- A YouGov word cloud for Ed Davey reveals public perceptions of him as 'boring,' 'dull,' and a 'clown.'
Main topics
- Lib Dem party conference messaging
- Donald Trump's media tactics and 'Trump TV'
Notable quotes
We care, we fight.
Conclusion
The episode highlights how both political and corporate entities use i
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (0:43) Here from BBC Radio 4, a guide to the use and abuse of political language. I'm Amanda Nuttry. I'm joined once again this week by Stuart Lee. Hello. Hello. You're back. Speaker 4 (0:54) I am. How was your summer? It was brilliant. I did a succession of spoken word tents, a succession of festivals, culminating in Cranken House in the Lake District, where I judged a dog competition with Charlotte Church. And it was really great. She was very, very good at it. We had a really good double act going on. Oh, right. Fantastic. Who won? A dog that looked like the journalist John Robb, who you may not have heard of, but there was a celebrity lookalike competition and someone did their dog's hair in a kind of purple Mohican, which is what John Robb would have. And he was at the event, so we were able to compare the dog to him. Yeah, so there. All Speaker 5 (1:28) right. So that sounds biased, given that he was at the event. Was there a kind of... Subconscious. Oh, we better to give it to the dog. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, because he's made an Speaker 4 (1:35) effort. Yeah. But it was great. I had a brilliant summer. Speaker 5 (1:37) Oh, good. What about you? Well, I was, as long-term listeners might know, I was in a chicken-induced coma with Salmonella. I didn't know that. Oh, did you not know that? I didn't know. You should be listening to this show. Oh, Speaker 4 (1:47) right. Sorry. Speaker 5 (1:48) Right. Speaker 4 (1:48) No, no, no. I only listen to the ones that I'm in in real time. Right. Yeah. Speaker 5 (1:53) Right. So you're listening to this podcast now. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. This week, the phrase we're looking at is we care. We fight. Who said that? Who said that? Speaker 4 (2:02) Ed Davey. Speaker 5 (2:03) Ed Davey. It's a rallying cry from the Lib Dem conference said by Ed Davey. We'll also be looking at why tech leaders' language has become more care and less fight. See, that's neat, that. Yeah. Speaker 4 (2:15) How Speaker 5 (2:15) we did that. They're now genuinely concerned about the potential threats of total apocalypse arising from AI. We'll look at their language a little bit later. Shall we go on to the Lib Dems? Yeah. Interesting because, I mean, the question I was asking myself is how do they, especially Ed Davey, how does he get heard above the noise when he is someone advocating moderation? Speaker 4 (2:42) It's really difficult because the attention-driven and monetizable internet and social media economy means that the more outrageous the things you say, the more likely you are to get covered. And Ed Davey's in a very difficult position because he's normally... pulling in the opposite direction. He has to say moderate things whilst doing outrageous things. That's right. So it's the opposite for the far right. They like to say outrageous things whilst appearing normal, drinking a little pint, standing outside a pub, whereas he has to say moderate things whilst being shot out of a cannon into a massive bowl of soup or something. Speaker 5 (3:14) That's right. He does want to say outrageous things, yes. So he will express the strength of his feeling on the moderate policy he's announcing by the... Speaker 5 (3:25) apparent dangerousness of the liquid into which he's going to immerse himself. Speaker 4 (3:28) Yeah, yeah. You Speaker 5 (3:29) know, is it out of a cannon? Is it from a height? Is it on skis? Yeah, and what's he wearing? What's he wearing? What's Speaker 4 (3:35) he Speaker 5 (3:35) not wearing? What is the liquid? Do you think he's going to have to get heard above the noise or seen above the noise? Is he going to be tempted to immerse himself in increasingly dangerous liquids? I Speaker 4 (3:48) think he's going to end up in a large bowl of extremely hot soup. dressed as a chicken whilst talking about the need for a serious look at the exact rules regarding who is allowed to stay in the country and why and for how long and where their parents have to have come from. They have to do that at some length in a really reasonable way. Speaker 5 (4:07) I mean, Speaker 4 (4:08) he's basically got himself an interesting position because he's able to tell a lot of truths that others can't because he's not near power. So he can say the obvious truth that it's not really worth taking anything Trump says seriously, whereas people in the Labour government have to sort of just ignore that or pretend it's normal. He's basically operating like a medieval fool. And the Australian fool Rumpel, who was quite famous in Australia and Las Vegas, died last week. And remember him saying that a clown was a job. But a fool was a lifestyle choice. And it's kind of like Ed Davies had to do that. Like every time he stands up in Parliament to say something, he's saying the ridiculous thing that everyone does know to be true, but dare not address because they're all invested in maintaining power. He's a bit like a little boy shouting that the emperor is naked, except he's doing that whilst being shot out of Speaker 5 (4:58) a Speaker 4 (4:58) cannon into a bowl of soup. Well, while naked. While naked, yeah. The emperor's naked and so am I. He's the large, naked Speaker 5 (5:04) boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 4 (5:06) Well, Speaker 5 (5:06) actually, we ought to hear, because there was a lot of talk this week about fighting talk for the Lib Dems, because they've got to say that. Deputy leader of the Lib Dems, Daisy Cooper, told the BBC it will be a gloves-off kind of conference. You'll see a bit of fighting talk, she said. Well, let's hear some of it from the leader, Ed Davey. Speaker 3 (5:24) Will they hear? We care! We... We care, we fight. We care, we fight. That's right. Speaker 5 (5:35) Wow. It's the that's right at the end. That spoils it. It does. I'm going to rip you apart if you don't mind. It seems Speaker 4 (5:46) like you have to boil, well, it's a fact, isn't it? You have to boil everything down to a slogan now. Take back control. Brexit means Brexit. Stop the boats. We care, we fight. I think it's probably a syllable too long, if anything. Speaker 5 (5:59) Yeah, and also care and fight. I don't necessarily associate them. No, that's the beauty of it. They very often don't appear in the same sentence, you know. There was a fight outside a care home. It's possibly it, but Speaker 4 (6:12) that's it. It feels like there's a lot missing between those two things, which is what? What's not there? We care Speaker 5 (6:20) so much about certain issues that we feel forced into expressing them in a more aggressive way. way hence the mention of the word fight yeah Speaker 4 (6:28) is Speaker 5 (6:29) how I would yeah that might Speaker 4 (6:30) almost be better you know to go in the opposite direction from the modern economic slogan we care we fight it's kind of like a sort of woke superhero team or something isn't it Batman and Robin after a kind of course in having to do care for the community at the same time as fighting crime fighting crime yes yeah Speaker 5 (6:50) we'll be on the run which I've never I've never quite understood about Batman, why he's always on the run. Speaker 4 (6:54) That Speaker 5 (6:55) seems to be a recurring theme of all the movies and all the... I don't know why. You're in a cape and you look like a bat and you tell pickpockets to stop. that's what you do. Why is that an issue? I don't know. The Speaker 4 (7:07) character doesn't bear too much analysis, to be honest. He's someone that saw his parents murdered in front of him as a child, and his response to that was to dress as a bat. So I think that, you know, don't worry about it. But it's something for Ed Davey to think about, maybe. A costume of some sort. A costume, there we go. This is the next Speaker 5 (7:25) phase. Taking Speaker 4 (7:26) on some kind of... character that has a relationship with some kind of trauma that he's experienced. Or a kind Speaker 5 (7:32) of toxic Avenger. If you're going to put me in increasingly dangerous liquids, then I need some sort of costume. A, to kind of express my kind of, I've now got superpowers, but also B, just to protect me. Because I heard a rumour that he's cutting down on the, they seem too trivial, these stunts that he's cutting down on. because I saw him at the start of the Lib Dem conference. He was filmed in a fish and chip van, doling out fish and chips. Speaker 4 (7:59) Yeah, that's a classic politician thing, isn't it? To be seen serving a food of some sort. That's right. You have to be really careful about what it is. Do you think fish and chips was the right food for Ed Davey to be serving? Speaker 5 (8:08) Well... Speaker 4 (8:09) If you were advising the Lib Dems, what would you have had him doing? Speaker 5 (8:11) Well, you see, fish... Is he making a point about cod and all the sustainability? Or is he trying to just look normal? He's Speaker 4 (8:19) trying to look normal. Speaker 5 (8:20) think the Ed Davey of old would have covered himself in batter. Yeah, and been fried. And fried himself. Yeah. Speaker 4 (8:25) Whilst talking about the need for a rethink about how further education is funded. Exactly. Yeah. Speaker 5 (8:32) We did, just to look at the dilemma he's in, to coincide with the start of the conference, YouGov released a word cloud on Ed Davey asking people what word springs to mind when they hear the name Ed Davey. And the biggest circles seem to be don't know. Boring, dull. Clown, buffoon. Yeah. There's yours, yeah. Yeah. There's one when it's in the neutral ones. There's one that just says man. Quite a lot of people just, what's the word that springs to your mind when people, what's the word that comes to your mind when somebody says Ed Davey? Quite a few people said man. It's Speaker 4 (9:07) hard to think what could be less than that. What could be more all-encompassing than just saying man? Shape. Shape. Shape. Oh, Speaker 5 (9:20) I was listening to that. Shape. David. Speaker 4 (9:26) Form. Yeah, the form. Yeah, he occupies space, doesn't he? Yeah. He occupies the space equivalent to his volume. That's what you can say about Ed Davey. I think Ed Davey's all right, actually. I feel bad about this. No, Speaker 5 (9:43) no, no, no. I want to explore this further. Speaker 4 (9:45) Okay, well, what's less than a form? I mean, a form. A notion. A notion. He's notional. Speaker 5 (9:52) Joining me now is the notional leader