Craft Politics

Everyone has a story about winning, and almost none of them hold up.First up, the Iran ceasefire. After nearly six weeks of Operation Epic Fury, the US and Iran agreed to a two-week pause in the fighting — announced on Truth Social less than two hours before Trump's own deadline, the one where he threatened to send Iran "back to the stone ages." Both sides declared total victory. The problem is the Strait of Hormuz is still largely closed, over 400 tankers remain anchored in the Persian Gulf, and Iran is now demanding tolls for ships passing through what used to be an international waterway. Joseph and Andrew break down what the stated war aims actually were, whether any of them were achieved, and why Trump's inability to set modest goals — and stick to them — has handed the Iranian regime a survival story it will tell for decades. Andrew puts it plainly: if you're going to take on a despotic regime, you have to do it from the moral high ground. Threatening to wipe out a civilization is not that.Then, the floor crossings. Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu became the fifth MP to cross to the Liberals since last April's election, bringing Carney's seat count to 171 — one short of a majority. With three byelections on April 13th in Scarborough Southwest, University–Rosedale, and Terrebonne, a Liberal majority is now a question of when, not if. What makes Gladu's crossing so striking isn't just the number — it's who she is. An MP who aggressively challenged the COVID response, pushed back on vaccine policy, fought the conversion therapy ban, and voted to restrict abortion is now a Liberal. Joseph and Andrew credit Fred Delorey for the framing: what we're seeing isn't just Conservative dysfunction — it's Mark Carney operating as a ruthless political player. The whole caucus is now available for picking, not just the red Tory wing. And for Pierre Poilievre, Andrew draws the parallel nobody wants to hear: Jeremy Corbyn nearly won in 2017, and by 2019 the public had moved on. Moments pass.Finally, Hungary. On April 7th — five days before the election — US Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest, stood on stage with Viktor Orbán, called Trump on his phone so the crowd could hear "I love Hungary and I love Viktor," and told voters to stand with Orbán at the polls. He did all of this on the same day he called EU behaviour "one of the worst examples of foreign election interference I have ever seen." Andrew doesn't mince words on the hypocrisy — and draws on his own experience as a British MP who did Council of Europe election monitoring to explain just how extraordinary Vance's visit actually was. Joseph flags the Russia angle: the Financial Times has reported a Kremlin-linked operation flooding Hungarian social media to boost Orbán — and now you have the US and Russia aligned on the same side of a European election. Andrew's line: the MAGA obsession with strongmen is being used by Putin like a useful idiot.The Hungarian election is April 12th. Independent polls have Tisza up 16 to 19 points. We'll see.

Last night, President Trump addressed the nation for the first time since launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran on February 28. Joseph and Andrew break down a speech that offered no new information, no clear exit strategy, and no plan for the Strait of Hormuz — 32 days into a war that's sent gas prices past $4 a gallon and oil past $100 a barrel.
They cover Trump's complete inversion of the standard wartime communications playbook — waiting a month to make his case while public support eroded beneath him. They dig into the regime change contradiction: Trump encouraged Iranians to rise up in the first days of the war, now says regime change was never the goal, and claims the remaining leadership is "less radical." Joseph and Andrew aren't buying it.
The conversation turns to the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran's IRGC is running a de facto toll booth — charging ships $2 million to pass, with China potentially assisting in the collection. Trump says the Strait will "open up naturally." Andrew argues the conflict isn't over until it's resolved, and that if the U.S. and Europe both refuse to secure it, Iran has no incentive to give up its leverage.
Andrew offers a provocative thought: the endgame might look remarkably similar to the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal that Trump tore up. And both hosts question whether Western leaders — Starmer, Carney, and others — have anything resembling a plan to deal with the economic fallout hitting consumers at the pump and the grocery store.

Avi Lewis won the federal NDP leadership on the first ballot in Winnipeg with 56% of the vote. He's a documentary filmmaker, former CBC and Al Jazeera host, co-creator of the Leap Manifesto, and — as Andrew helpfully notes — a complete loon politically, though surely a lovely chap.
His platform: nationalize groceries, nationalize telecoms, build a million public homes, do banking through Canada Post, slap a wealth tax on the rich, tax oil and gas exports, and invest 2% of GDP in climate action. It's the most aggressively left federal platform in recent memory, and it won over about 40,000 NDP members who apparently liked what they heard.
Joseph and Andrew debate whether this is a stroke of genius or a spectacular miscalculation. The Corbyn comparison gets a full workout — and the part people forget is that Corbyn nearly won before he got crushed. Provincial NDP leaders started running for the exits within minutes. And the question nobody can answer yet: is there actually a market for left-wing populism in Canada, or has the NDP just made itself irrelevant to everyone except degree-educated urbanites who were already voting for them?
Story 2: "Go Get Your Own Oil"Coming Up
Trump told the UK — by name — to either buy American oil or "build up some delayed courage" and secure the Strait of Hormuz. Hegseth mocked the Royal Navy for good measure.
Andrew walks through the UK's North Sea drilling fight: Labour banned new exploration licences, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband won't budge, and the Conservatives and Reform are hammering the government with a simple question voters understand — why won't you let us use our own oil? The economics say it wouldn't move prices much. The politics say it doesn't matter.
Joseph and Andrew find common ground on the deeper problem: Western allies spent more energy punching Trump than engaging with the opportunity to confront Iran, and now everyone's paying for it — literally, at the pump. The conversation gets frank about what Europe and Canada left on the table.
Part two drops later this week with a full breakdown of the war in Iran once Trump has addressed the nation. Joseph and Andrew are also lining up future episodes on Australia's populist wave and the post-war regional power rebalancing.

Tim Kiladze is a financial reporter and columnist at the Globe and Mail. His recent long-form feature — "Out of nowhere, Canada became poorer than Alabama" — went viral with over five million views on X and triggered a debate about Canadian competitiveness. Tim joined us to walk through what he actually found on the ground in Alabama, why the piece touched a nerve, and what Canada and the UK should take from it.
What We Covered
Tim explains why the piece almost didn't happen — the Canada-Alabama GDP comparison first circulated in 2024, then got buried by the trade war and federal election. He'd always wondered whether the stat was real, pitched the story, and the editors sent him south.
What he found in Huntsville didn't match any Canadian stereotype of Alabama. The city sits in the foothills of the Appalachians, looks like Vermont from the mayor's office, and the dominant car in the biotech research park parking lot was a Subaru Outback. Mayor Tommy Battle, a real estate guy turned politician, has spent years rebranding the city as "Huntsville: a smart place" — complete with lapel pins.
Tim walks through Alabama's economic transformation, starting with Mercedes-Benz arriving in 1993 and triggering a cascade of auto manufacturers — Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Toyota — that now produce nearly as many vehicles as Ontario. He met Greg Canfield, the state's former commerce secretary, who candidly acknowledged that Alabama's early tax incentives were unsustainably generous and had to be reformed. The key insight from Canfield: speed to market matters more than anything. Companies putting capital at risk want to earn it back fast, and Alabama let them build quickly.
That led to a discussion about Canada's regulatory environment. Joseph flagged the Enbridge pipeline refusal — the same week the piece came out, Enbridge said it wouldn't participate in the proposed Alberta-to-Pacific pipeline. Tim went further, noting that even people involved with major Canadian projects told him privately, in the last couple of weeks, that they don't know if their projects will get built. The variable nobody talks about enough, he said, is the courts — duty to consult rulings, judicial reviews, and First Nations groups that have learned to use legal processes to slow or stop development.
Andrew drew parallels to the regeneration of Greenville, South Carolina and northwestern Arkansas, and raised a critical constraint: the bond markets. The US can run a nearly $2 trillion annual deficit because of the dollar's reserve status. Canada and the UK simply can't play that game — as Britain learned during the Liz Truss mini-budget. Andrew also pushed back on the idea that southern US strategies are directly transferable, noting that lower union protections, weaker worker rights, and minimal safety nets are politically unacceptable in the UK and Canada regardless of which party is in power.
Tim acknowledged all of this but kept returning to a central point: Canada hides behind its morals. Public healthcare and public education are things he firmly believes in — but his kids' school in Toronto looks like a bomb shelter, and when he tried to get a wall painted through the parent council, he hit union rules and red tape. The healthcare system has the same problem: COVID exposed that the bottleneck was nurses and ICU beds, and years later, the nursing crisis persists.
The conversation closed on the question of what's actually learnable. Tim's answer: use tax policy selectively, build a brand again, and stop expecting investment to come to us. Andrew's answer: get past the reflexive anti-Americanism that prevents honest assessment of what's working south of the border.

Lord Walney joins the show to discuss his new 100-page report, Undue Influence, which documents a network of as many as 30 charities, cultural centres, and religious institutions in Britain with alleged ties to the Iranian regime.
The report examines 10 charities in depth — eight of which are under active Charity Commission investigation — and argues that the network has avoided serious scrutiny because regulators and officials feared being accused of racism.
Walney walks through the evidence, including a charity whose governing document required a trustee appointed by Iran's Supreme Leader, and explains why the UK's failure to proscribe the IRGC leaves the regulatory system unable to address the core problem.
The conversation also covers the UK government's newly announced Charity Commission powers and the risks posed by a proposed definition of anti-Muslim hostility.
Walney's report identifies a network of Iranian-aligned organisations operating as registered charities in the UK. Four of the 10 charities examined qualify for Gift Aid — three of those are under active investigation.
The Islamic Centre of England is described as a "central node" in the network. Until recently, its governing document required a trustee appointed by Iran's Supreme Leader.
A former Charity Commission chair admitted that fear of racism allegations made the regulator reluctant to pursue investigations into these organisations.
The Charity Commission's framework focuses on governance and compliance — not ideological alignment with hostile states — creating what Walney calls a "compliance trap."
The UK government announced new Charity Commission powers to tackle extremism, timed closely with the report's release. Walney welcomes the announcement but says political leadership and culture change are needed to make it meaningful.
The UK still has not proscribed the IRGC — unlike Canada, the US, the EU, Sweden, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. Walney argues proscription would make it significantly easier to shut down related activity.
A new UK government definition of anti-Muslim hostility risks compounding the chilling effect that has already prevented action on Islamist extremism, though Walney notes efforts have been made to protect freedom of speech within it.
00:00 — Introduction and context: the Iran conflict and Walney's report01:29 — Andrew introduces Lord Walney03:39 — What does the Iranian charity network actually do?06:16 — Charities on the front line of pro-regime protests07:25 — Why has nobody dealt with this?11:22 — Political leadership and the tools gap at the Charity Commission13:16 — The Islamic Centre of England as "central node"15:04 — How embedded is the regime's influence?17:50 — The double standard: Islamist vs. far-right extremism19:38 — University links, IRGC recruitment, and the proscription gap22:46 — Response to the report: legal threats and personal risk27:45 — New Charity Commission powers: enough or window dressing?31:10 — The proposed anti-Muslim hostility definition and its risks37:30 — Why charity networks matter when drones are hitting British bases40:49 — Defending democracy: final reflections