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Craft Politics

Craft Politics

By: Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy
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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.Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy Political Science Politics & Government
Episodes
  • How Vote Leave Actually Won — Nick Varley on the Brexit Ground War

    How Vote Leave Actually Won — Nick Varley on the Brexit Ground War
    Jul 1 2026
    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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    54 mins
  • UK By-Elections Quick Take: What Just Happened?

    UK By-Elections Quick Take: What Just Happened?
    Jun 19 2026
    We're trying a new episode format, so let us know what you think of it. We didn't have time to record a full show, we have as a short and snappy take on this week's by-election results in the UK and what it means for Keir Starmer's future.
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    10 mins
  • One Country, Two Fires

    One Country, Two Fires
    Jun 11 2026
    A week ago, the Henry Nowak case was the story dominating the news agenda. Then Belfast caught fire — literally — and two separate stories became one. Percy and Joseph work through how a murder in Southampton and a knife attack in Northern Ireland became one national tinderbox. What we got into: This week's number: minus six. Nigel Farage's net approval on his handling of the Nowak case — the worst of any senior leader in Britain. Andrew has a Boris-shaped theory about why it might not matter. Two nights of Belfast riots. Water cannon in Newtownabbey, twelve injured officers...and expectation that a third night will rage on. Why Northern Ireland's fire burns on different fuel than England's. Why hasn't Canada had its Southampton? Same immigration anxieties, same online ecosystem, no riots. Andrew's answer involves dinghies, hotels, and what people can see from the war memorial. The thug problem. The rioters are making it harder to fix the very system some of them claim to be angry about — and the only winners are the actual far right. An opening for Kemi? Badenoch sits at plus twelve and keeps quietly stacking strong performances. We ask whether anyone will notice before they have to. Starmer's "island of strangers." The line that resonated, the 180 that followed, and what it says about who's allowed to talk about immigration. Also discussed: Vancouver's curiously invisible World Cup, the case against $500 tickets, why Andrew is boycotting Belgium over his grandma's tortoiseshell cigarette case, and his suspiciously great skin and hair on CBC. For Last Orders: Joseph is finally on to Wind of Change, the podcast asking whether the CIA wrote a Scorpions power ballad — and Andrew remembers Baroness Meta Ramsay, the softly spoken Labour peer he treated like his grandma on foreign delegations, who turned out to be one of MI6's most senior officers. Obituary linked below —https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/meta-ramsay-death-mi6-spy-b2985761.html. If you haven't yet, find us on Apple Podcasts and YouTube, leave us a five-star rating, and drop your questions in the comments — that's what the Postbag is for.
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    39 mins
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