They're telegraph. Broke showed her friend Aisha, C.I.B.C. investors' edge while at the carnival. Aisha thinks gut-wrenching ups and downs should be for rollercoasters and not her investments.
Now, with C.I.B.C. investors' edge, she has all the tools to invest confidently. Hey Prime members, you can listen to this show, ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today. Well, it's all kicking off in America where the man who wants to be president again is now a convicted felon.
I think it's just a disgrace and we'll keep fighting, we'll fight till the end and we'll win. Okay, no criminal standing here as far as we know, but still a massive election week. We'll be asking who is up and who is down one weekend. And we'll have new evidence of what the voters really think about July the fall.
And the TikTok campaign and us in TikToks. Welcome to the Daily T. With me, Kevin, a nominee. And me, come on on.
Stormy, are you ready to take the stand against Donald Trump? I'm absolutely ready. Trump's lawyer is called Daniel's testimony. Pure embarrassment meant to inflame the jury.
The defense... We've apparently got where we already have a verdict. Donald Trump has been found guilty on count one. Donald Trump, the first former president to be convicted in a criminal trial.
This is a historic moment. Guilty. Donald Trump found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Donald Trump has now been convicted by a jury of his peers.
This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. It wouldn't give us a menu change. We were at 5% or 6% in this district in this area.
The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people. We didn't do anything wrong. I'm a very innocent man. Our whole country is being rigged right now.
Only in America are comm a living and breathing Netflix series. There's some audio close to your CNN, Fox News, BBC News and ABC. Some of the responses to Donald J Trump being convicted in a New York court of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment he made to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star to buy her silence over an alleged affair. So now we're convicted felon, obviously the Republican candidate to be the next president of the United States.
I think the first thing we asked when this happened can someone who is a convicted felon stand to be president. And apparently the founding fathers didn't really think about this when they set up the Constitution. And so the answer is yes, there are actually only three rules about standing to be the president of the United States. Firstly, you have to be a natural born citizen of the United States to be at least 35 years old and have been resident of the United States for 14 years.
That's it. So the big question now, Kamala, is whether he'll go to prison. It seems unlikely, doesn't it? Because he's quite old now and it's a first offense.
And there is a debate to be had about the kind of arcane nature of what it is he's accused of and being found guilty of and whether that actually merits a custodial sentence. The sentencing is due on July the 11th. But he's saying, of course, he is, but he's going to appeal. That sort of drags it out somewhat, but he could still theoretically stand and be president from prison.
America is really quite unusual. There was a candidate in 1920 Eugene V. Debs, he actually stood from prison in the 1920 presidential election and received 3.4% of the votes. The reason he was in prison was because he campaigned against the American involvement in the First World War.
So when you first hear this, you think, well, that must be it for Trump, in terms of actual practicalities of standing in the presidential campaign. But as we say, there are very few rules he can stand even from prison. Bizarre in extremis, although that's probably the word to use to describe the trial. Our telegraph colleague Susie Cohen joins us from New York.
Susie, you were in court for this entire show trial and you described the court case as veering from the implausible to the obscene. Tell us, what was it like inside the courtroom seeing Trump on the stand and then, of course, for the guilty verdict? Well, the guilty verdict, I've never known tension like it, not only were we being read such a damning verdict by the foreman of the jury who was standing delivering the verdict, the wife I cut out, so jealous, but also panicking, and then we had Trump in the front of the room, completely motionless, staring straight ahead. Usually, you know, there's a bit of movement that he might actually might speak to someone or at least rearrange himself.
But, you know, this was a man who was completely stoning face, staring forward, and it was really, I can't even describe how tense it was in the room. Do you mean stoning face as opposed to angry because I was looking at the footage overnight and thinking to myself, oh, my goodness, the red mist hasn't descended. It's orange mist. It's Trump mist.
I mean, he is deep down, absolutely fuming, isn't he? Oh, yes, definitely. I mean, as he turned to leave the court room, he walked past us. I was sitting in the aisle on the second row, so it was inches away from him.
His face was so red, the fury in his eyes, he grabbed his son, Eric's hand, really grasped it. This was a man who was furious, and, yeah, you could feel it was palpable. And, Susie, it's amazing that you were just a few metres away from him when all this was happening, what a moment of history to be involved in. We often see Trump, don't we, sort of, packaged?
He performs when he's in public. There's a media figure, but my sense is that you actually did get, I think, fury is there as well, but also shock that the trial has gone and the way it's gone, and that all the 34 charges that he was found guilty. Yes, definitely, and I think the way that the verdict was delivered, just moments before the judge had said, I'm going to send the jury home at half four, so everyone reads a big sigh of relief, including Trump, you know, but going home, they're then nowhere near, because we were waiting to see whether they might have asked for it longer to continue deliberations that evening, then you might expect a verdict, then it gets to half-past four, and we still haven't seen the jury, and then the judge comes back in and says, we've got a verdict, they want 30 minutes. So it's gone from this moment of, you know, calm, at ease, everyone's thinking about what they might have for dinner, and then suddenly this tension out of nowhere, a man who is always in control, has that control completely ripped from him.
Susie mentioned him going straight away to Eric Trump, his son. Has Melania been spotted at this trial match? No, she hasn't, she hasn't been there at all. His other children have come, and Eric has been there almost every day, sitting directly behind his father in support.
We've seen Don Jr, we've seen Lara Trump, we've seen Tiffany Trump, but no, Melania has been notably absent from the courtroom, and even outside the court itself. And Susie, for those who haven't followed the case in great detail, two big other characters alongside, obviously, Donald Trump himself. One is Stormy Daniels, and the other is Michael Cohen. Can you just give us a little thumbnail of Stormy Daniels, what it was like watching her during the trial?
And then also, who is Michael Cohen? So Stormy Daniels, it was, we all knew it was going to be a very interesting day, let's put it that way, but we didn't, nobody was prepared for quite how extreme and salacious her testimony was going to be. She was very relaxed on the stand, building up a rapport with the jury, talking directly to them, a bit nervous at first, but soon relaxed, but as if she was speaking to a group of old school friends about maybe a tinder tape that's gone wrong. But her testimony was, I'd say, the crescendo of the trial, even though it wasn't relevant to the case in the sense that it had nothing to do with the falsifying documents, but the prosecution argued that it was necessary to show why he wanted to silence her.
So that was definitely, you know, in this dingy courtroom full of men in suits, a former porn star, well, a porn star comes in and delivers this shocking testimony. So that was definitely a very interesting few days. And then Michael Cohen, so Michael Cohen is Donald Trump's former fixer, a man who used to be obsessed with him, idolized him. Throughout his testimony, he spoke like a mobster, he referred to Trump as the boss, everything he did was to try and get credit from the boss, to please the boss, you know, in his thick long island accent.
It really did feel like they were in some sort of mafia film. But, you know, this is a man who did everything to protect Trump and then ended up falling on his sword when he was convicted in 2018, made this payment to Stormy Daniels that is the crux of this entire case and has been seeking revenge since then. So just so we understand, it's so Michael Cohen, he actually was convicted because he made the payment that was at the heart of this case. Yes, so that was campaign violations.
So he was convicted, he served 13 months in prison. He also admitted the line to Congress as the defense continued to say a convicted liar and makes it very difficult to build a case around that. And, Susie, briefly, what was the scene like outside the courtroom? I mean, did you see lots of people with MAGA hats on going bonkers at this news?
Surprisingly, I didn't. I saw mainly people very anti-Trump standing outside the court in the park opposite. There were loads of people there, lots of them probably just interested to see what was happening, but quite a few with big signs saying Trump guilty, Trump's a schmuck, convict Don, and, you know, very pleased with the results yesterday. New York, very Democrat, I think.
Well, indeed, that does. It turns out his point about them only polling at five or six percent in that particular district. Susie, we know you've got to get back to business. We look forward to reading all of your work on this on the Telegraph website and in the paper.
Thanks very much for joining us. Our US editor, Tony Diver, is in the studio, why are you in London, Tony, when you're normally based in Washington? I'm normally in D.C. I have a very ill-time holiday, which is now turned into working.
But it also means I get to come and see you and be on this fantastic podcast. It's good to see you in the flesh. I don't know if you know this command, but Tony, this wonderful specimen, this up-and-coming journalist, was once my mentee. Oh, that's brilliant.
Everything he knows. Everything he knows. Absolutely right. You can share over a cup of tea after we finished his podcast.
What he was really like, being mentored by a cumulae, but Tony, let's kick off with those broader applications. Susie's taken us through the actual case itself. Let's start with polling. What do you think the effect will be for Donald Trump and his push for the White House of the fact that he's now a convicted felon?
Well, this is a slightly counterintuitive one. I should start by saying that when you poll people about things that haven't yet happened, the answers aren't always that reliable. But actually, the polling that we've done ourselves, the Telegraph has conducted some polling in the swing state. And we found that Donald Trump's ratings actually improved if he was to be convicted.
And that's because you have some people who understandably think that they wouldn't want to put a convicted felon into the White House, but there's also a fair number of people who buy into this argument by the Trump campaign that this is a politically motivated prosecution, that this is being run behind the scenes by the Biden administration. They see Trump as the underdog and they therefore support him even more. And actually, we find that those people tend to outweigh those who have put off by conviction. I think we will probably see a boost for Trump's ratings in some of these places.
Let's just get into that swing state's issue for people who don't follow American politics too closely. There are six, possibly seven states where the election will actually be decided, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, and some people add North Carolina to that. There's an analysis that says it's only 6% of voters that actually will decide who wins in November. And so even though the movement in response to the convictions may be small, it could still be super, super significant.
That's right. You hear people on the both Trump and Biden campaigns talking about this, the 6% of 6%. And it's 6% of voters within those six states. It's like 300,000 voters or something.
It's tiny. Yeah, exactly. We're talking in a country of 50 million people. This is a very small number.
And so both campaigns are hyper-focused on those very small margins and the possibility of small improvements. So something like this, if it does manage to swing the dial, I think could be very significant. I mean, in a place like Georgia, it's a state that Biden won in 2020 by only 0.02% of the vote. But it's when it takes all election.
And so if you win a state, you get all the delegates. It's not about the raw number of people in America who vote for either candidate. This is about which way the states go. And something like this does other potential to move the dial.
Tony, how does Biden respond to this? Because the Democrats are meant to stand for fairness. Ron DeSantis has tweeted in response to this conviction. He's the Republican governor of Florida.
He did try and run against Trump for the to become the nominee didn't get enough support. This is quite an interesting reason to nuance response. He's basically saying it's often said that no one is above the law, but it is also true that no one is below the law. If the defendant were not Donald Trump, this case would never have been brought.
The judge would never have issued similar rulings and the jury would never have returned a guilty verdict. Now, that argument is going to play quite well with some people. I appreciate the MAGA that make America great again campaigners are always going to be on the side of Trump. But aren't there some people who very much value judicial fairness and the rule of law, you know, right-minded Republicans and Democrats who are going to be concerned about this?
Yes, I think there are a lot of those people. I think there are some merits to these arguments, which is if you look at the actual crimes that he's been convicted of, these business records, convictions that Trump has got are usually misdemeanors in New York. I've been upgraded to be a category felony in this case, and there are people that say that's politically motivated, the prosecutors were, and the judge were going after Trump from the beginning. And it's obviously true that the only reason why we care about all of this is because the Stormy Daniel story was going to come out in advance of the 2016 election in which Donald Trump was running and he didn't want to hurt his chances.
So none of the sort of architecture around this case would exist if Donald Trump wasn't Donald Trump. There's no way that a prosecutor will be spending all this money going after, to such an extent, someone who would falsify business records in something completely pointless or, you know, unrelated to the white republic. So I think there is an element of truth to that. And I think that argument does hold to water.
Does it hold to the extent of the Trump campaign pushes it, which is to say this is a complete witch hunt, and this is all being secretly orchestrated behind this into the White House? No, probably not, but I think that there is an element of truth to that. And the Biden response? Well, what we've seen so far is Biden's say very little about it.
We had one tweet last night, just a couple of lines saying that no one should be above the law and that this was a good reason, this commission was a good reason to vote Democrat. And I don't expect we will see much response from the White House. There's a few reasons for that. One, it's that you perhaps don't want to get drawn into this back and forth, whether or not the prosecution was legitimate in the first place.
And secondly, it's that, you know, as we see here, it's all over the front pages already, Trump being guilty. It can't really be a better story for Biden in all the years. So why would you intervene in your own enemy when they make it? Exactly, exactly.
Just to your point, Kamala Ronda Santis' point, in America, of course, justice is much more political because much more of the justice system is actually voted on. You are voted in to be the Attorney General. So the prosecuting authorities are much more influenced by politics than they ever would be in the UK. So for UK listeners, listen to this, they might say, oh, yes, but justice is outside, you know, politics, but in America, it's much more intertwined.
If we go back to those swing states and what the effect might be in the run into the election, Trump is ahead or tied in four of those six swing states. Biden is only heading to. Why haven't the Democrats been able to maybe make more political hay out of the fact that Donald Trump is facing all these charges? Well, I think what we saw about three or four months ago is a huge shift in the way that Biden was tackling this election.
Previously, last year, he liked to talk about binomics. That was his big thing. It's domestic economic policy. It's the inflation reduction act.
It's putting money into production of electric vehicles, semiconductors, chips, all these kind of purely economic domestic issues. He's stopped doing that now. He does talk about it now. And then, but really what he now campaigns on is the threat to democracy from Donald Trump.
And I think if this polling is right, and if we find that Donald Trump wins in November, the sort of Democrat post-mortem will say that shift came far too late and that if you are the Biden campaign, then making arguments about the wider threats to democracy, pointing out the fact that Donald Trump was involved in the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. He hasn't said that he would necessarily accept the result. If he lost again, he's supposed to have done the same thing. Those sorts of arguments about the threats to the American political system is the sort of thing Biden is saying now.
But there are some strategies who say, well, it's too little, too late, and actually those Trump arguments about the politicization of the judiciary and the Biden which have now taken root in the minds of some of the six percent of those in six states, which can't be undone now. These are the cases against him, Tony. So the retention of classified documents case and then the insurrection case, the Capitol riots case. When will they be heard?
Well beyond the election? It looks like it. Yes. And we were initially expecting to hear those before, but it now looks like they will be pushed back after the election.
And that's significant because those two cases, the classified documents case and the Washington case, the January 6th are the only two federal prosecutions against Donald Trump. So both the Stormy Daniels case and another case in Georgia surrounding the election interference of both state prosecutions. The reason why it matters is that the federal cases is because if he was elected president in November, he would have the ability to pardon himself in those cases. So pushing back the dates of those trials beyond the presidential election is very significant because he's basically in position here.
He either becomes president of the United States or goes to prison for the rest of his life. It's easy space. Thanks so much, Tony. Safe journeys back to America.
Thanks. Stay with us. I mean, it's not quite as wild as the U.S. You know, this kind of slight bore off between a former banker and a former lawyer.
However, we are going to bring you the election latest and TikTok and TikToks broke shoulder for an Aisha C.I.B.C. investors edge while at the carnival. Aisha thinks gut-wrenching ups and downs should be for rollercoats and not her investments. Now with C.I.B.C.
investors edge, she has all the tools to invest confidently. Listen to this a cast show at free on Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Talk about every week, one of the election over into week two.
We're on day nine. Golly, it seems. Yes. I feel like week nine doesn't it?
Generally come and I have no idea really what day it is because we've been very, very speedily working away every day. We've been beavering. I've just written my column for Saturday's paper and obviously in the fashion of as I'm described on X and other social media platforms, Tory Stooge, Tory battle acts, Tory client journalist, I have written, true to type, that I actually think the Conservatives have had a very good week. It started with Rishi Sunak's interview with us on the Tuesday.
So Tuesday was the first big day back to campaigning and I'm sure a lot about listeners have listened to it. But you and I come in and are talking quite a bit about it. And we've actually done quite a few interviews about it to other outlets about did it show a different soon and we both thought that it did and it showed a human side to him that we hadn't really seen before. And also we've had this very rapid announcement of a set of policies that could be considered to be the retail offer from Rishi Sunak and each of them on their own has pulled pretty positively, particularly National Service and the pensions quadruple lock.
So the National Service was this idea that at the age of 18, there'd be some form of compulsory national or civic service either in the armed forces or doing a weekend community volunteering work. That has pulled pretty well, particularly for core conservative voters. And the second one was that for pensioners on the state pension, they wouldn't be dragged any further into the tax system because of the problem that all of us with incomes are facing, which is this fiscal drag, which is the thresholds are not rising at the same pace of inflation. And so Rishi Sunak said pensions would be protected from that.
I just think that a few good things have been landed for the Tories. We've got some policy ideas and we're not afraid to tell you about them comparatively. I think the electorate's still confused as to what is going in this Labour manifesto. Jeremy Hunt was on the airwaves of the Chancellor this week, basically saying that taxes would definitely come down.
I mean, they have to. And he boxed the Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves into a bit of a corner because she could only say that they wouldn't go up. I agree with you on the finally, we see the real Rishi, thanks to our podcast, which is obviously a bonus for him. Let's also talk about the slow destruction of reform.
We saw polling this week, savanted in some polling for the telegraph, where we see the reforms popularities dropped from 11 points to nine. I think that's directly on the back of Nigel Farage being forced into not standing as an MP because he said that Rishi's next snap announcement hasn't given him enough time. We then saw Richard Tice trying to sell this migrant tax. I mean, he came on GB News last night and pretty quickly, the whole policy unraveled.
I had to say Rocco Forte on the show with me as well. He employs lots of foreign workers because he runs two hotels, one in London, one in Edinburgh. He said this is a crazy idea. And Forte is somebody who is donated to the Tories, but has been talking about voting for a form.
I think he's now reconsidering that position. Meanwhile, Ed Davie. Kamal. Kamal Kamala, I want to promise from you that we are going to do the Lib Dems next week.
All now, many, I'm sure, Lib Dems listen as we will be doing Ed Davie. He has spent most of the week falling into various bodies of water, off paddleboards and diving through hoops and generally just doing things that will get him noticed in some way. So we are going to come to this because actually they are going to be an important part of what happens on July the 4th. For Kistama, this steady as she goes is the way he's clearly going to manage the election campaign.
In one space, he's having a bad time and this is over the whole issue around Dine Abbott and whether she will be able to stand as a Labour candidate whenever a party is not in control of the day-to-day agenda. That's a problem for the party, particularly when it's lasting day after day and we're now in day three of that argument. We picked up on this yesterday. What is the relationship between Kistama and his deputy, Angela Rayner?
There was no reason for his deputy to say so directly that she could see no problem with Dine Abbott standing for Labour at the same time as the leader of the Labour Party has said no decision has been made. And he's just said now, in fact, Kistama, that Dine Abbott is free to stand as a Labour candidate in the general election. So, as we predicted yesterday, it was unlikely that the two Kistama and Angela Rayner would go to war over this, but it's been an uncomfortable 40-downs. If Angela Rayner just stayed quiet, then Labour at the top would not seem to be split.
And if Labour is split before an election has happened, when they are supposed to be at their most unified, they are over 20 points ahead still in nearly every single poll. So, we should soon act as might. I agree with you when having a better week has not seen the polls move. If they can't stick to unification through this period, what is it going to be like if they get into government?
The trouble is Angela Rayner can't keep quiet. She's not that kind of politician. I mean, she is his press court to a certain extent. There's been a contradiction at the heart of Star Wars positioning this week.
I am a socialist, he declares, but I don't want socialists like Dine Abbott in my party. Let's look at that polls issue for Rishi Sunak. We've done some research within the Telegraph with our readers panel. We have a readers panel of nearly 1,000 people who we regularly go to and discuss how they're feeling about all sorts of different issues.
And we've just done some work with them, which we can reveal now, about how they are responding to the campaign and where the movements being for in the main conservative electorate in 2019. How are they seeing things now? And basically, how they're seeing things is that that support for the Conservatives is down 28% since 2019. And then of those 28%, they're more or less directly split down the middle between those who are now telling us, I don't know who I'm going to vote for, so the undecided and the other half saying, I'm going for reform.
And we have seen this reflected below the line in our comments section. Having said that, I mean, this then lays bare directly the task facing Sunak, because not only does he have to persuade the people who are flirting with reform to come back, he also has to say to the undecideds, come back to us too. What was interesting about the polling is not that many telegraph readers are saying that they're going to vote Labour. The idea of a 1997 landslide, pardon the pun, is slipping away a little bit.
I notice that the bookies are now shortening the odds on a hung parliament. So Rishi Sunak was talking about that the other day and everyone's saying he was completely deluded. Now, actually, no overall majority is looking a little bit more likely, despite the fact that from an approval point of view and from an overall polling point of view, the Tories are still well behind. You go back to those phrases from, you know, people like Lyndon Crosby, you can't fatten a pig on market day.
This is a long-term process of persuading people to come to support you, and why is this also late? It's fewer than five weeks now until election day. We've got the TV debate on shooting, which could be an important moment. You're going to go to that.
I'll be there. I'll be there. And we've then got the manifesto launches. But now, after the first week, the public actually, some of the public's not disengaging a bit.
They've heard the first bit of the speeches. They saw Rishi Sunak outside, Dan is getting very wet, they saw his armour, they're engaged for a period. Then they slightly switch out and switch back in at the very end of the campaign. So the Conservatives must be concerned, some of the betting stuff aside, that they've not yet seen a flicker in the polls, which is creating some degree of momentum.
The manifesto is key. I know that we're writing a leader in the paper for tomorrow, basically saying, stay on this course of boldness and bravery. Have those so-called retail offers in the manifesto, convince the public that they're going to be better off under the Conservatives compared to Labour, and you might have a fighting chance. Come on, shall we talk about TikTok?
Yes, but first of all, as we promised, I listened as yesterday, we're going to be wearing tank tops. And then we're going to explain why we're going to be wearing tank tops. You didn't have a tank. You should be able to have a tank top.
Behind the fashion curve. Or a sweater vest, as I believe. There's one I brought from home. Lovely.
There's one here. I'm not sure this is going to be for area pieces. Do you wear that? I do wear this.
For people who are listening to this on various podcast platforms, I've got a beautiful rust orange sweater vest which Camilla is giggling at. There's one way of describing the colour. Vomit orange could be another way of describing it. It's slightly sort of double-trumplacing.
It's got that same hue. Trump to it. Okay, so there we are. Just for our audio listeners.
I put on my tank top. As has Camilla. Why are we doing this again? So we're doing this in our brilliant social editor, Jimin.
When the Prime Minister came in to the interview on Tuesday, Jimin strode into the film, he does the clips for us. He came in with a tank top on, and I've just got it again for our YouTube viewers. There is. This is the only picture we have of Jimin.
For our audio listeners. Fabulous. He's just in some kind of like absolutely majestic Burberry style checked tank top. And in sort of homage to Jimin, who sadly is on a well-earned day off to date, we want to have a little homage to Jimin and his tank top, it was the conversation I think that most engaged the Prime Minister, although we haven't seen him in a tank top yet on the campaign trail, but I think that would nudge the polls.
There's still time. And should we talk about the TikTok area of this election, because when we had David Davison, he talked about these days, elections being fought 80% in the air and 20% on the ground. And what he meant by that was that the days of MPs going around all the doorsteps and putting leaflets through letterbox are over. And actually, you've got to win the air war, which is the war on social media.
Exactly. And I think there are two campaigns going on here. There's what you might describe as more of the mainstream campaign, the stuff we see on television, the stuff we see in more traditional media. And then there's, as you say, the socials campaign.
And for most people, that's going to be TikTok or it's going to be Facebook. And if you remember back to the Brexit campaign, a lot of people pointed out that one of the reasons for the success of the Brexit campaign was how good they were at their socials campaign, particularly on Facebook, being able to define messages that worked for certain demographics and motivated them to come out and vote. And I find TikTok is sort of seen as an afterthought, a bit of a joke, but it's actually incredibly important as is Facebook for the millions of people that it manages to send messages to who will not be watching the stuff coming to you and I watch all day every day. So Labour has launched its TikTok channel.
It's got 134,000 followers, more importantly, likes, very important part of TikTok. People who view videos and then like them shows an engagement, a positive engagement. The Conservatives, 39,000 followers, only 300,000 likes, but they're both there and they're both playing. So let's just listen to the different style of the TikTok campaign.
I'm looking for any Prime Minister, big plans, goodbyes, new talks, new plans, goodbyes, new talks. That's Labour and now here's the Conservatives. Hi, TikTok, sorry to be breaking into your usual politics-free feed, but I'm making a big announcement today and I've been told that a lot of you already have some views on it. So, first thing, no, I'm not sending everyone off to join the audience.
That was releasing their referring to as a national service plan. Down with the kids as ever. It does sound a little bit light, fluffy, a bit silly, but actually it is a way of delivering some things of substance. Rachel Duffy has joined us, your Rachel from our socials team.
Rachel, tell us why these platforms, let's focus on TikTok in the main. We know that so many people get their first piece of information about anything on their mobile phone on TikTok. Why does this matter for the political parties? Well, that is the question and it's the question that all of the political parties have been wrestling with since 2019, TikTok was in its infancy and there's been a consistent debate across individual MPs, publishers and political parties of how we can utilise TikTok to their in advantage.
Obviously, in the UK, 23 million users on TikTok every day, there's a huge vote share there to be had and in what way the different political parties are coming up that I think is most interesting. Commonwealth, you said earlier that reform may not be winning the election right now, but they're winning the TikTok battle, as it were, really storming ahead, 1.3 million likes, as you say, more than the Conservatives, more than the Liberal Democrats, only slightly behind Labour. They're really going hard on the forage line, they're clipping up speeches, they know the viral moments that those politicians are so well known for and they're really utilising those on TikTok. Faraj has said to me, I think one of the decisions behind him not standing is that he feels he can reach this audience via socials, so he's got a TV news show, he's also got this extraordinary following on TikTok that he's built up fairly recently.
Also in terms of young people and just plain recognizability, if you're thinking sometimes people are ticking boxes, they're voting for parties, but they're also voting for personalities. I was astonished by how much my youngest child knew about Boris Johnson, and I remember speaking to his former head of Press Lee Kane about one particular viral video, which is the one of Johnson throwing that basketball behind his head and landing a hoop, getting it in the hoop. And of course Kane was saying, well yeah, obviously we weaponised it, it happened years ago, we put it out there because we wanted youngsters to share it. Lo and behold, my son came instead of using this a Boris.
That sort of effect, I think, can't be underestimated. Gone are the days, maybe, of the kind of importance of your Sarchie and Sarchie, Sahl poster, Labour isn't working. I mean, these posters are effective, but not if they're on a billboard, if they're on social media. I think it's an end.
I think political parties have to do everything. They have to do the billboards, they have to do the traditional campaigning, and they have to do socials, very similar to you, Kamala. One huge thing that was shared by my kids and many young people was Boris Johnson saying, if they can, sausage roll, that became a big, big deal that he was eating this thing, and it's those moments that start a journey for voters. I wouldn't want to listen to this kind of thing, oh yeah, but it's all just stupid and skateboarding cats.
It's not all they hear about politics, but it starts them. What was interesting about Boris Johnson was he was almost, he almost campaigned like he was on TikTok all the time because he had this warmth. He had this wit, not too polished, not too much detail, and when to so many voters, politics seems so distant, so miles away, I'm already lost by paragraph two. I've listened to a kiss, I'm a speech, goodness me, I can't follow it.
Something like the basketball hoop that began, sausage roll. It just connects me for a moment. I mean, Rachel, how they navigate these spaces? Yeah, well, I think that's a really important point.
It's very easy to diminish, and I think TikTok is actually with it being one of those newer social platforms. You know, it's not Twitter, it's not Facebook, but you look at recent polls, 18 to 24-year-olds, 40% of those are getting news from TikTok every day. It's only 20% that are on the BBC. You know, it's a huge, huge outlet for these politicians to use.
And I think also the timestamps, for example, the Boris videos. We know that they're from 12 months ago, but on TikTok, you don't know, that might be your first impression of Boris. And I think also the personality politics is really interesting. So, Grand Shaps, he's on 300k likes, not maybe the most well-known minister, but obviously when he's got a whole TikTok around events, we know that there are huge defense communities on TikTok.
It's a very good avenue to really plug those gaps. And I think another thing I'd say on why it's so important, we were speaking earlier about how the first week of campaigning, all eyes on Starmer and Sunak. And then it maybe tones off a little bit. The thing with TikTok, it's always there.
And people are using it every day. It's very much part of their daily habits and their routines. You know, they're looking first thing on the morning, maybe on their commute, they're coming home, they're relaxing by it. So, I think it's a very unique insight into the demographic.
And you're right there with them in their bedrooms, you know, in their bathrooms, you're there all of the time. So, the campaigns really able to continue. And once you've clicked on one of them or paused on one of them or watched one of them, TikTok will serve you more. So, it's self-fulfilling.
Once you've engaged with one side or another side, it will start promoting that to you. So, it's doing the job of the campaign for you. Exactly. And I think on campaigning, that's a really important point.
With TikTok, it's all reliant on organic growth and organic reach. So, as you're saying, Kamal, you know, when you interact with a video, you like it, you comment, you share it with your friends. That algorithm will serve you more of that type of content. And I think that's really important for parties, because it's not something that they have to factor into their budgets and what they're spending money on.
You can put Rishi soon up in front of the camera as they have been and say, hey, I've heard a lot of you don't particularly like my national service policy. Well, here's why you might, here's maybe what you haven't heard. And it's really getting him onto people's phones, onto that target audience. He's replying, well, he is replying.
The account is replying to users' comments. And it's very much a two-way relationship, rather than a TV broadcast or something on a more traditional social platform. It also reveals a little bit about the campaign itself. If you go to each of the TikTok channels for each of the parties, you can see who they put on there.
And those are the people they think are their best performers. So, on the Labour TikTok, it's Kiss Armor, of course, it's a leader, but also Rachel Reeves, very interesting. And we're treating not many other people on the Rishi soon act. As you've said, very presidential election, you go to the TikTok for the Conservatives.
It is nearly all Rishi soon act. So, there's some interesting signals there about who they think perform for the voters by looking at their TikTok channels. I'm going to be going into a bit of this in my column. I'm going to be writing over the weekend.
It'll be published on Monday. But it's one we're going to keep a tight look on as tight as our TikToks. Rosie. Well, that's us done for another day.
But before we sign off, there has been a response to your call out to men to help you with your sartorial choices, Kamal. Thank you so much. You made the point earlier in the week. It was very difficult.
This was on the back of Gareth Southgate, swapping his three-piece suit for a cardigan for Nick Ware, he said. We know you're a fan of Nick Ware. I mean, you're doubling up, Nick Ware, as we speak. And we did get a response to your plea for a bit more fashion guidance.
This comes from Nick, who emails into the dailyt at telegraph.co.uk. If you also want to write in saying this, I work in cyber defence. And maybe it's the local Belgium culture. That's where he comes to us from, from Belgium.
But I wear the standard polo shirt and chinos unless it's school photo day, in which case it's a blazer or suit or old regimental tie. Really enjoy the interview with the PM. When do we get the repeat from Kia Stama? Nick, the bid is in, watch this space.
And thank you so much for your advice, Nick. I don't sadly have an old regimental tie, but I'll see what I can get that is closest to that. Kamal has been quite the week, hasn't it monumental for the dailyt with the PM's appearance. I'm very much looking forward to your first column in a while for the telegraph.
Thank you. Kamal's back with a vengeance. Enjoy your tank top and have a lovely weekend. Thank you so much, Kamala.
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