Welcome to the News Navigators with me, Jeremy Deacon.
And me, Jonathan Starling. We're doing a podcast special
today, this evening for me, this afternoon for Jonathan because
of the extraordinary news today. Jonathan, do you want to recap
for our listeners and viewers? Sure.
Dumpster fire, basically. That's polite.
One thing I, I just want to preface this to say that our
system of government depends on having a strong opposition.
And so the fact that we've seen this kind of chaos going on with
the opposition party today, well, the last 48 hours is a,
you know, it's problematic. So just to recap, so that
listeners I just. Recap Yeah, there's a lot to
unpack. There is so basically Jeremy
Richardson was the opposition leader and leader of the Oba.
He he told us that he was going to step down.
That was in late July, early August last year.
And then of course, there was a leadership election for the 1
Bermuda Alliance, the Oba, which was held, I forget the exact
date, but it was like the first week of September it.
Was about 6 months ago. Yeah.
And in that there were two candidates for leader.
You had Ben Smith, who at that time was the deputy leader of
the. Who was also the favorite to
win? Yep.
And then you had Robert King, who was a relatively relative
political newcomer. He had just become an MP in a by
election and I want to say May 2024, and then he won his
constituency seat again in the general election in February
2025 and Robert King ended up pulling it off.
He won with the victory, with the votes or support of the Oba
membership, as I understand it. It was predominantly, I think at
the time it was quite clear that the majority of MPs did not vote
for him. That's right.
I mean, several of them had come out prior publicly supporting
Ben Smith. It's never been.
They don't reveal the count, but I think it's taken as granted
now that the MPs did not vote for him or the majority didn't
vote for him. And, you know, the he had a bit
of a rocky start. It was noticeable after the the
victory that the defeated candidate, Ben Smith didn't, you
know, shake his hand. He wasn't prominent and saying,
you know. Good luck, speeches.
Exactly. It was just Robert King and
Scott Pearman who won the deputy leadership.
Now the way the Oba does their competitions, they didn't have
like an official ticket, but there was seem to be like an
informal ticket that it was a Ben Smith and Scott Pearman
ticket on one hand and Robert King and Michael Fay on the
other hand. So it ended up kind of being a
split result as I understood it from outside where Robert King
won the leadership with Scott Pearman won the deputy
leadership. And, you know, there was a we,
we interviewed what we talked about, this probably was in
November last year, interviewed Robert King.
Yeah, there was an attempted palace coup against Robert King
at the time. We'd heard that he had soon
after the election been asked to resign as leader and we did put
that to him and at first didn't really answer the question.
Second attempt, he said no. I personally think we were right
that I was. I think so A.
Coup attempt and Robert King would have had to have said that
so so soon into his stint as as leader.
But I think these rumblings are culminated today, have been
going on since the day of the election leadership election.
Yes, and it's what I would call a palace coup.
A palace coup means like it was, you know, the MPs are the ones
who kicked him. It was the courtiers, it was the
Dukes and everybody. Yeah, yeah.
Which is what? Which is what.
It came to a light yesterday that there was a challenge and
today that challenge was successful.
And it was successful because the Oba used the Bermuda
Constitution, which said if 2/3 of opposition MPs or MPs didn't
like their leader, they could petition the Governor and the
Governor would have no choice but to replace the leader, the
sitting leader, with a choice of leader from the MPs.
In which case it was this was Ben Smith.
Yeah, and it's interesting, the clash between the Bermuda
Constitution and the party. Constitution.
Well, this is the crux of it, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah.
I think Jonathan, if you, if you want to explain, but I think go
ahead and explain. Yeah, absolutely.
Because he's created such a mess here, because it's quite clear
as of speaking now as of recording this, and it is close
to 9:00 PM Bermuda time that Robert King has not resigned.
It's 5:00 PM, you're talking UK time.
I'm talking, oh man, these split shifts are killing me.
But anyway, my point is it's quite clear as of recording
this, Robert King has not resigned.
So yeah, this constitutional matter is interesting.
Yeah. So as it stands, as I understand
it and I, I have the OB as constitution here it is on their
website. I I got that wrong Privacy that
actually. Got into trouble for that.
I did indeed. I couldn't find it, but I have
subsequently found it. I'm sure Doctor Coot will be
very happy to hear you say it's on the website.
This one's for you, Doug. We digress.
So yeah, as as I understand it, Mr. King is still the leader of
the 1 Bermuda Alliance. He's the leader of the party.
Until such time with this, there's a new membership or a
new special election to elect a new leader.
Not quite. I think now the way it's being
described to me is that it's, I think paragraph 6V.
That's right. So it's 2/3 of OBAMPS pass a
voter. No confidence in the Oba leader
has to be endorsed by the Oba caucus.
Yes. Now that caucus is made-up of
the executive, OBAMPSOBA senators, regional chairs,
adopted candidates and approved candidates.
So if that caucus then endorses this voter, no confidence.
It'll be up to the Oba members then to elect an Oba leader by
secret ballot. That's right as I understand it.
So I'm not sure at that stage, does Robert King have to step,
step down as party leader or do they have to wait to a vote?
Regardless, you've got this bizarre mix at the moment where
Ben Smith is the leader of the opposition but he's not the
leader of the party. Yeah, and, and the way the OB as
constitution is written, it makes clear that the leader of
the Oba should be the opposition leader or the premier, depending
on their seats in the. House it does so.
It's not a constitutional crisis from the Bermuda Constitution,
but it is a constitutional crisis for the Oba.
At the moment, yeah. And I, and I've been speaking to
a lot of people today, and the feeling is that what's happened
today is unlawful because he reaches the Oba Constitution.
Because it's the Oba constitution, but it's unlawful
within their constitution. Thank you.
Sorry, yeah, it's not a criminal thing I should state before
somebody sues me. I mean, I, I did speak to a few
Oba friends that I have, I spoke to them throughout the day,
couple in person, some by WhatsApp and you know, they're,
they're members and they are unhappy about this development.
They voted for King or, or at least they indicate to me that,
you know, we're members. They, they said we members voted
for King and this is a slap in the face to US members.
So I'm not, I don't know if they themselves voted for King, but
the membership voted for king. And you know, you could have a
bizarre situation where you have a new leadership election and
King gets re elected by the members and then it's like a
circular thing 'cause then. I I believe, having talked to a
few people, I believe that Robert King needs endorsement of
three MPs. If he wants to run as a leader,
I believe that is the case. Now it turns out the 9 MPs voted
against him, so it seems unlikely.
How many people went along with the flow because they felt it
was the right thing to do or they had to do it is another
matter. And whether they might endorse
him is another matter as well. But the crux of what we got to
here is an unholy mess. Dumpster fire.
That the OB as got itself into the members have been sidelined.
It's the OB as we had to deceive you moment in a sense.
Oh, it's that times 10 though. Yeah, at least with that then
Jennifer, who was a victim of it, had been premier for 2-3
years, hadn't she? This is.
Since 98, yeah. OK, so this is a coup after six
months. Yeah.
And we, I mean, I, as far as I know, those leading the coup
have not given a reason. I, I, I, I have heard that they
didn't like his leadership style.
And that's very subjective. Yeah, but also, what did you not
like about it? I don't know.
Some people were aghast that he he stepped up, had the temerity
to step up, that he was not in line because he was a newbie.
Yeah, no, if that's true and I and I don't know, that's
unbelievable that that just plays into the PL.
BS hands as being like the 40 thieves pulling the pulling the
strings behind the scenes. Well, I mean, that's the
narrative that the PLP has always tried to frame the Oba as
the EBP continuity, and this completely plays to that
argument. So yeah.
Potentially if, if, if my conjecture having talked to
people is true, I don't know. But it's the problem is this
conjecture is going to, is going to carry on and on and on.
Now how the party is going to heal itself, especially at the
moment when it's got 2 leaders and the party membership is
being sidelined again, the Oba doesn't release it's results.
So we don't know how close the result was, whether there was
like 10 votes in it or whatever. And we don't know how many votes
were cast, if I remember rightly so.
But nonetheless, democratically elected leader has been deposed
in a coup, leaving 2 leaders of the party at the moment, one the
political in the house and one of the party itself.
It's an unbelievable mess and it just doesn't seem to have been
thought through. Yeah, I mean it.
It's. I don't really know what to say.
No, I know. I mean the I'm in the UK and I
keep picking up all these UK phrases again and it's
gobsmacking. Yeah, I mean.
It's an unholy mess that's been handled in an unholy bad way.
I mean, I certainly look forward to speaking having on the
podcast representative from the Oba it.
Was too. Wasn't possible to organize it
for right now. This is like a reaction to this
kind of breaking news thing. So I mean, hopefully we get Ben
Smith or someone on on the podcast eventually to kind of
give their side of it. At the moment, all they're
saying is we didn't think his leadership was good enough, but
what was wrong with his leadership?
No one saying. I mean, he voted for that, you
know what he was like, You know, he's fairly competitive in the
House. Yeah, he'd been an MP long
enough, the member, but the members voted for him.
And the question is now what next?
OK, so they'll have this call because it may be tomorrow,
which would be Thursday or it may be Saturday.
I'm hearing different dates. OK, so all the relevant people
get together and they vote Robert King out.
One scenario, obviously. How can the party heal in in the
eyes of the electorate? Yeah, I mean, this is Oba's
constitution talks about a disciplinary committee.
This is what the actions of these MPs would seem to have
fall afoul of discipline, but I can't see them expelling.
Themselves now, how can it, how can it make itself a viable
opposition, the government in waiting when there's behaviour
like this, especially when we could be seeing an election in
the next year. Obviously David Burt steps down
on October as leader of the PLP and Premier.
They're not going to get their act together in time.
This is something that the PLP is going to bring up time and
time and time again. Do you know if the Premier,
David Burt one or two just for laughs, he could call a snap
election right now? Well, he's got bags of CIT
money. He could do a giveaway budget
and call one in April. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, think about the legacy for consecutive
landslides. And probably another huge
majority because he's going to trust the Oba after this.
You know how? How can you?
How can you ignore the members like this and override them?
I mean, I'm, I'm sure that when an election comes, most of the
Oba voters will probably rally around the Oba.
But the main problem for the Oba is going to be the swing voters.
And the Oba depends on swing voters to win elections, to
become the government. And at the moment, swing voters
are. Just interrupt it.
It hasn't managed to mobilize all its own supporters either in
the last. Two, it hasn't.
No, they've been fractured. The swing voters are important.
I mean, all this, if I was the FTM, I'd be rubbing my hands
right now that the FTM is the third political party of
Bermuda, the Free Democratic Movement.
You also have the People's Independent Campaign, which is
was trying to form like another third party as well.
I haven't heard much from them since.
But I mean, the opportunity is there for those parties to kind
of seize it in a sense at least come the next election.
I mean, swing voters going to be like, we can't trust the OVA.
Let's give these guys a chance, you know well.
I think to do that then both of those groups need to start being
more noticed now of a of a of a greater public face that a that
a media presence which they haven't done.
So I'm not I'm not convinced about that second you'd.
Also need a fracture. You know just how the UBP
fractured between the UBP and the BDA, The Bermuda Democratic
Alliance be more forming the Oba and leaving Kim Swan as like the
only member of the UVP. Poor guy, I remember the awful
picture. Of him, yeah.
I mean you could end up with Robert King as the leader of the
1 Bermuda Alliance still, but like a leader of one it's
possible. Robert King is the leader of the
Bermuda Democratic Alliance again.
Yeah, you know. Well, it's an interesting one
because he's going to have to swallow a bit of pill and he's
going to be sitting there on the back benches.
One interesting thing. And so once there's an election,
even if you don't necessarily agree with the result, often
people like to, you know, you're supposed to rally around the
leader and try to help them to be best.
There's a, there's a saying here, which I want to quote is a
quote about leadership. And it says as a leader, you
have an incredible opportunity to change someone's life every
single day. Leadership is never about
tearing people down. It's about helping people become
the very best version of themselves.
And that's a quote from Ben Smith, actually.
Oh, well. It's a quote that Ben Smith
himself has shared on social media.
Interesting. And.
Complying with that is he. From the outside it doesn't seem
like he did because, you know, as we said, after the election
of Robert King, Ben Smith was nowhere to be seen.
He wrote a couple op eds, but he was not, he didn't come out
after the lead, after the election to, to, to shake hands
with Robert King. And it it seems as if there's
been scheming for several months now, almost immediately since
Robert King's election. So yeah, there's going to be
massive trust issues. Massive trust issues.
I mean, we know there's been scheming because we are between
US 100% sure that he was asked to resign quite soon after the
election as leader. So there's been scheming going
on there and we did a podcast about it and we talked about the
rifts going on there because both of us had heard about rifts
after that leadership election. The dust has not settled.
Jonathan, the second scenario, OK, so again, if we talk about
the Oba caucus meeting to endorse a vote of no confidence,
suppose it doesn't suppose the elect the the the adopted
candidates, approved candidates, regional chairs, senators don't
like it, then the then the party's stuck.
Yeah, well, I mean, you bring up senators.
So with the new opposition leader, the Senate, the
opposition senators are appointed by the opposition
leader. Yes.
Not by the Oba leader. No.
So you're going to see some change on the senators.
Probably tomorrow morning. Yeah, although as I understand
from the Oba Constitution, and this is where the the
constitutional clash has happened, the Oba leaders
supposed to be the one that appoints the senators.
But again, that's the clash between that and the Bermuda
Constitution, right, Right. So.
I just want to, I want to read this again.
I want to read this again. So this is what I've been told.
So if the Oba caucus endorses the vote of no confidence that
it would be up to the Oba members to elect the Oba leader
by secret ballot pursuant to Article 3.4 of the OPA
Constitution, That's the vote. Until this process is complete,
any attempt to replace Robert King as Leader of the Opposition
is contrary to the Oba Constitution and risks
embroiling the Crown. The Crown.
I'm not sure what that means by that in an unceremonious coup by
MPs who who are subverting the Oba members of election.
Well, that's what we just saw, so.
But again, I wanted to read it though because it's a bit
unclear. Does Robert King stay as party
leader and do an election? Yeah, it's a bit.
Unclear. I don't know if you need to
clarify that. I'm reading Article 6.1 of the
Oba constitution. Article 6 is the Oba leader.
It says that the Oba leader will appoint an Oba whip, recommend
senators for appointment by the governor and may appoint a House
leader. And the Oba leader will also
appoint ministers or shadow ministers.
So. So how's this going to work?
According to their constitution, Robert King is still the one
setting out the shadow cabinet, but obviously the opposition
leader is going to set up his own shadow cabinet.
I mean, I mean, in some ways it's moot because if nine of the
MPs voted Kick King, they're not going to listen to what he says
anyway. It is moot, I agree, but it
just. Shows a constitutional mess.
But it it shows the the depths of the mess they've got
themselves into. I mean, we last had these kind
of discussions when the PLP was in power over that, the 2003
crisis, after the 2003 election, which you referred to, when the
group around Doctor Brown tried to do a palace coup against
Jennifer Smith. It was semi successful in that
Jennifer Smith's continued leadership was untenable, but
there wasn't enough support to endorse the coup leaders either,
which is how you got a kind of a compromise candidate of Premier
Alex Scott, who I actually thought was a really good
premier despite having come to it as a compromise.
Now, the PLP did take some time to heal from that.
There were still, you know, talks about Brownites and we
still saw this kind of instability in the PLP for years
after that because the PLP constitution was breached.
It left a very deep scar within the PLP.
They've eventually healed themselves and getting back into
power in 2017 certainly helps with the healing.
But yeah, I think you've got a point.
OB as got a very rocky time ahead.
I think you've got a point. It goes back when she said over
and over again that this has happened against the wishes of
the members, the majority of the members.
And yeah, that's going to take a long time.
The whiplash from that could be quite severe at an election.
They're not going to come out. I mean, I'm not an Oba member,
I'm not an Oba supporter. So you.
Know me neither either just. Being upfront about that.
But if I was an Oba member, I would have, I wouldn't trust
what had happened. I would have a lot of heated
words that. Would be really upset.
Yeah, that would be really upset.
And I've seen a few comments about people leaving the party
and withdrawing the membership. And I, you know, say that with a
pinch of salt because it's, I don't know if they're the real
people when they come to comment on the R GS, on the R GS story,
but there's clearly a sentiment out there that this, this hasn't
gone down well. The, the other thing is, you
know, I mean, we touched briefly that Robert King's going to be
sitting on the back benches. Presumably they're not going to
give him a portfolio, even though they've only got 11 MPs.
He's going to be sitting on the backbench.
He's easy, easy prey for the premier who's so good at this
kind of thing to again ask will the real leader of the of the
Oba stand up? You know he's going to do it.
He did it with Michael Dunkley was there and and Jerry and
Richardson. Will the real leader of the Oba
please stand up. He's going to he's going to
absolutely milk it. But Rodney King, he could be a
bit of a loose cannon for them now, depending on how he feels.
I. Mean I I wouldn't even blame him
if he decides to step down and leave politics all together.
And then you have a by election, which adds to another headache
for the Oba. I mean.
He might want to stay there and be a loose cannon.
He could join the PLP because he might agree with the PLP
narrative. I mean, we saw that's how the
PLP got Kim Swan and Wayne Fabric, former leader of the
EBP, because they came out and said, yeah, I was not respected
by my party. I was being used.
And once they were done with me, they spat me out.
So we could see how being joined the PLPI mean that would be
bizarre. Well, I don't think it would be
that bizarre and I think I think the ramifications is are going
to play out for quite some time. Just just one other point I
wanted to make. If you include John Barrett, who
was an interim leader back in May 2011, Ben Smith is the 11th
leader of the Oba since May 2011.
That's 11 in do my mas 15 years. I mean, the Oba is the Oba has
been unstable almost since inception.
I mean, you had their first, not their first leader, because that
was John Barrett, but their first real leader, Craig
Cannoneer. He had to, you know, step down
in a relative disgrace and you had Michael Dunkley took over
from him and of course he lost. The UVP trappings as well, yeah,
you know, difficult to avoid that.
Yeah, and then of course, he lost the 2017 election, which
kicked off a new round of instability.
I actually forget who took over. It was Patricia Gordon Pamplin,
another interim. Leader interim right, and then
Craig Pannier came back for. The 2012 election, it was Jean
Atherton. Right.
And Betty was Craig Cannanier, who came back.
Right. And Ken and EAR was their leader
for the 2020 election. I believe that.
Disastrous one Down to six seats, yeah.
And then it was right. And then Jerian.
And then it was Robert King and now Ben Smith.
It's, it's jealous, isn't it? Yeah, it doesn't doesn't give a
lot of confidence in their abilities.
And I think you mentioned earlier, the opposition party in
our system is supposed to be the government in waiting.
They're supposed to show that they can govern.
If they cannot govern themselves, how can they govern
the country? That's going to be the narrative
the PLP is going to put out there and.
And, and it's a perfectly good narrative to put out there.
And it'd be difficult to disagree with when you have that
many leaders. It's smacks of instability, long
term instability in the party itself.
Yeah. They've created one big mess.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how this plays out
because I think it's going to keep us in a lot of podcasts.
Yeah, well, if they if they want to come under our podcast, they
may not want to after. I don't like us, Jonathan.
Critical comments. The Oba doesn't like us.
Well, that's what I've been told.
I don't know how many don't like us, but we're not their favorite
people because we're criticizing them.
But the reason we're criticizing them is because they do things
like this. Yeah, if you don't want to be
criticized, don't do stuff to be criticized for.
I know. I mean, politics 101 isn't it?
Communications 101. Well, the communications is an
interesting thing because of course Ben Smith was the deputy
leader for the Oba for the 2025 election and I understand he was
heavily involved in the campaign.
Yeah. And, you know, not just us, but
other people had said they were critical of the communications,
the election campaign communications, and that in some
ways contributed to Robert King being elected.
I think a lot of the members, as we saw and as you said, you
know, the RG commentators, how real are they?
We don't know. But a lot of the RGA, lot of
what I'm citing are RG commentators who are Oba
supporters saying they were critical of the election comms
and the the way the Oba handled the election.
They did well. They got a was it an 11 or 10
MPs, which is better than the six that they had before?
They won, they won five seats. They I mean, we saw the document
that suggested they should have won three or four more seats and
part of that was down to the bad comms.
I mean, that was one of many, many documents.
So I don't know how much credence to give that, but I
think talking at comms, you know, I think I saw Ben Smith
acceptance speech. It was very brief, clearly off
the cuff. I thought it was off the cuff.
He, he, he very quickly thanked Robert King for being opposition
leader and moved on. No tributes, nothing else.
To me, as somebody who writes speeches, has heard speeches,
who is involved in comms, I thought that was extraordinarily
brief. He did a little bit more there.
The it's interesting. They're they're pretty much
coming out very strong saying, oh, these are internal matters,
We're not going to discuss them and we're not going to
negatively talk about Robert King, but this whole thing is.
Just negatively talked about Robert King by effectively
sacking him. Yeah.
And saying that his leadership and saying why?
Oh, because his leadership wasn't that's negative talking.
So they're they're double talking right now.
They are, you know, they talk. They say it's internal politics,
internal stuff, but as we both said, these guys have got to
show they're a government in waiting and the lack of
transparency doesn't show that, I'm afraid.
And. I mean, it's quite.
Clear they haven't got their script together on this because
they're not putting out a proper message at all.
Well, I mean, who? Who's even in charge?
I don't know. I have no idea now, but that's
not the point. You could always get somebody in
for a week on a consultancy basis, couldn't you?
And and get it done. It's not hard.
As I said, when at the beginning of this this podcast, I said
that it's very important in our system of government to have a
strong opposition. So even though I am not a
supporter, I do not support the ideology off the OBAI do think
it's valuable to have a strong opposition.
And I do hope that however this mess gets sorted out, that they
do find a way to become a stronger opposition going
forward. Well, you know, they've got a
long road ahead. Putting, putting everything
that's happened yesterday and today aside, Ben Smith is a new
leader. We have to accept that and and
probably will be the leader of the opposition and the leader of
the party. I imagine it'll play out that
way. It'll be really interesting to
see if how or if he shapes the party going forward because you
and I both talked in the past that it's very difficult to know
what they stand for, what their policies are, what their
ideology is. They talk about a broad church.
Well, that's fine. But if everybody's disagreeing
with each other or a few are agreeing with each other and,
and not so much the others, you're not going to spin a
consistent message, are you? And I think that's been a real
problem for the Oba. And it'd be interesting to see
how Ben Smith leads them going forward do.
You think he's capable? Of doing that, what do you
think? What do you think if you could
get a crystal ball? Well, I think they are unlikely
to win the next election. I kind of thought that the the
trends were in their favor to to at least come close to winning
the next election before this whole happen thing happened.
But at the moment, I think that's unlikely unless the PLP
does something really stupid in the next between now and the
next election. But at the moment, I think the
the OBEA will be lucky to hold on to the seats that they have
at the moment. Maybe in the next, next
election, they might be able to recover.
But at the moment, I think they've alienated a lot of the
swing voters. They've alienated a huge chunk
of their own membership by this action.
I think it's going to be very difficult for them to to to win
in the upcoming in the next election as a result.
I agree, they remind me a bit of the Tories and the Conservative
Party here and how they've completely imploded after so
many prime ministers. David Cameron They were doing
all right, but then after. That.
They went into a bit of a death spiral.
They were still in power for some time.
You had Boris Johnson. The lettuce.
Yeah, who was the one before Before the before Liz.
Rishi Sunak, wasn't it? Theresa May.
Theresa May, Sorry, yes. Rishi Sunak took over from Liz
Truss. That's right.
So yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, of course the Oba is the sister
party of the Conservative Party, just like the PLP is the sister
party of the Labour Party. So, you know, maybe they're
following the same directions well.
One managed to keep power for quite a long time, the other
hasn't got anywhere near it. Yeah, one term I don't even
think that they're they're rebranding to the Oba help.
They could have stayed as EVP and probably still have won the
2012 election. I think they should have said
it's Bermuda Democratic Alliance.
Yeah, You know, I just wonder, you know, it's probably, this is
probably a bit too fanciful, a bit too far fetched, but is
there room for the BDA to come back?
There was, because when when they merged, when the EBP merged
with the BDA, there were a lot of disaffected BDA supporters
that just gave up on politics. This is not what they wanted.
They wanted a clean break. I wonder.
I just wonder if, like I said, it's a bit fanciful, but I think
I. Imagine many of the former Any
BDA members that were still hanging in and in the Oba
membership might be wanting to walk away now.
I don't know. I don't think it'll be on the
road. Because I don't have access to
the Oba membership list. But if you can imagine but these
things could happen. It's it's probably a bit
fanciful but I can see the OB as membership going down after
this. Yeah, again, I think that
there's an opportunity here for the third parties to be more
vocal and scoop up some of these membership.
They've got to get their act together then.
Yeah. Because they haven't at the
moment. Not at all.
They they come up at an election, then they disappear
again. The FDM has had a couple opinion
pieces in the paper. Yeah, Prince and Sherlock, who I
believe is their chair, and Omar Dill, I forget what his proper
title is within. The he's, he's a really good
guy. Yeah, I don't know the other
gentleman. I know Omar, he's a really good
guy, but it's not enough. No, it's just an occasional
opinion piece. It's not being in there
responding to things. You have to be there in the
public's face all the time to do it.
Yeah. You know, one thing that is the
one thing that might play for the Oba is a week is a long time
in politics. Voters tend to have a very short
memory and if we have the election a year away, they've
moved on. Ben Smith has asserted himself
and maybe some policies and and and identity.
The PLP won't let people forget, of course, but there is an
opportunity. I definitely think that the new
leadership of the well, I do think that Ben Smith and the MPs
are banking on let people cool down for a week before before
they do like a membership meeting and hope that they can
get their anger out now. Then again, it's going to boil
down to what happens at this caucus.
Yeah. If there's trouble at the
caucus, this could go on for a while.
And if Robert King doesn't play ball and behaves like a a nice
defeated leader and sits on the back benches, it's not going to
die down I. Mean they they did him dirty.
To be frank, the way this all went down if they had an issue
with his leadership, they had ways to trigger a membership
vote a special election. But doing it this way, with
this, I coup going to the governor.
It just looks very, it looks very underhand, doesn't it?
It does, yeah. Ruthless, but not good, not good
team building. No, it's.
A good way to end. I hope you enjoyed listening.
I hope it's cleared things up for you a little bit.
Jonathan. I could say I don't think this
is going to finish. I think we'll hear from the
caucus whether it's tomorrow or Saturday or next week.
And we might well be back doing an emergency podcast again.
In the meantime, Robert King is remains as a party leader, has
power as the party leader. Whether he'll exercise it in the
next 24 hours remains to be seen.
Well, you know, Jeremy, just just earlier this week, I was
saying to you that there's not a lot of juicy news stories for
the podcast. You did.
And now our cup runneth over. He certainly does and we haven't
even talked about the guy from the UK civil service saying
that, you know, a bunch of territories should be
independent. That's for another podcast.
All right mate, on that note, we'll see how many emails I get
or WhatsApp messages I get criticizing us for hating
Beenoba haters again, and I shall respond in exactly the
same way as responded before. Stop giving us the ammunition.
All right mate, take care. Cool, see you.