Craft Politics
Craft Politics
Podcast Description
Join Craft Politics, where politics meets business over a pint. Hosted by a former politician and a seasoned political staffer, this podcast translates world events into actionable insights for business leaders. With populism on the rise, understanding this intersection is more crucial than ever. Why beer? Because the best political discussions happen with a pint in hand. Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy bring decades of experience in politics and business, offering concise, targeted insights to help you navigate the political landscape. Cheers to making politics work for your business!
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast focuses on the intersection of politics and business, covering a range of topics such as polling dynamics, the Conservative movement in Canada, economic tariffs, and the influence of American politics on Canadian affairs. Episodes include in-depth discussions like the implications of Trump's tariffs on trade relations and insights into leadership changes within Canadian political parties.
Craft Politics is a cross-border political podcast, which sounds grander than it is. Mostly it’s two friends — Joseph Lavoie, a Canadian public affairs strategist who used to work in a Prime Minister’s Office, and Andrew Percy, a former UK Conservative MP — asking the experts who’d know the answer to one sharp political question. Canadian listeners get the UK context they’re missing. British listeners get a Canadian lens on their own politics. Everyone comes away slightly better informed.
Ten years ago, everyone who was supposed to know — the British government, the Bank of England, the IMF, half the world's economists, even President Obama — said Leave couldn't win. Then a campaign with no party, no machine, and almost no money beat all of them. We're not here to relitigate Brexit. We want to know how you actually pull that off.
So I brought in Nick Varley, who ran the ground campaign for Vote Leave and built a 12,000-strong volunteer army from a standing start — twenty people and no referendum date — in eight months. He now leads UK campaigns at Crestview. Nobody is better placed to explain the part of Brexit the Cambridge Analytica story always skips: the shoe leather.
What we got into:
- The army from nothing. It started with Nick cold-calling Eurosceptics one at a time — ”Alan, do you know anyone else who thinks like you?” Not scalable, not glamorous, and the foundation of everything.
- It wasn't really about immigration. For the twelve thousand, Nick says, it was sovereignty: ”I could live with X, if we the voters had the power to decide.”
- The ”skint” theory of politics. Nick's whole model: politics runs on whether people feel broke — which is why ”you'll be poorer if you leave” sounded, to a lot of voters, like an insult from the very people who'd made them poorer.
- How Obama backfired. The ”back of the queue” line — a British staffer forgot to translate ”queue” into American — and why Project Fear kept turning voters into angry voters.
- The worst arguments. Kittens (yes, kittens) for Leave; the ”punishment budget” and the imminent collapse of the world's fifth-largest economy for Remain.
- Why Alberta should be watching. Referendums don't release pressure — they harden identities, and the losing side doesn't go away. Why Joseph thinks the first Alberta vote is the dangerous one.
Also discussed: bendy bananas, why a chocolate bar became a ”chocolate-flavoured product,” Scotland's ”double leavers,” the SNP sweep, and why businesses that pick a side in a referendum tend to regret it.
The through-line, ten years on: once a voter crosses an identity line, they rarely cross back. That's the warning Canada should take from Britain.
Nick Varley leads UK campaigns at Crestview Strategy — find him on LinkedIn, link below.
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