Bannon's War Room - January 16, 2026


WarRoom Battleground EP 928： Nigel Farage Gains From Tory Implosion And How Human Brain Neuro-Structure Influences Politics


Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

157.82974

Word count

8,435

Sentence count

519

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Joseph Robertson joins me on the show to talk about the Tory defections of Robert Jenrick and Ben Chansal, and the impact on the leadership of the Tory party. We also discuss why the Tories need a Tory Party 2.0.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
00:00:07.000 Pray for our enemies,
00:00:09.000 because we're going medieval on these people.
00:00:12.000 I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
00:00:17.000 The people have had a belly full of it.
00:00:19.000 I know you don't like hearing that.
00:00:20.000 I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that,
00:00:22.000 but you're not going to stop it.
00:00:23.000 It's going to happen.
00:00:24.000 And where do people like that go to share the big lie?
00:00:27.000 MAGA Media.
00:00:29.000 I wish in my soul,
00:00:31.000 I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
00:00:34.000 Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
00:00:38.000 If that answer is to save my country,
00:00:41.000 this country will be saved.
00:00:44.000 War Room.
00:00:45.000 Here's your host, Stephen K. Vann.
00:00:48.000 Friday 16th of January, Anno Domini, 2000 and 26th.
00:01:00.000 Harnwell here at the helm at Steve Bannon's War Room.
00:01:03.000 It's been a tough week for the British Conservative Party,
00:01:07.000 called the oldest political party in the world.
00:01:11.000 They've had two serious defections this week.
00:01:16.000 We're going to talk it now with Joseph Robertson.
00:01:19.000 Joseph, welcome back on to the show.
00:01:23.000 Let's talk about Robert Jenrick's resignation first,
00:01:26.000 even though I guess he is slightly less in status as a shadow justice secretary.
00:01:40.000 But I think that's the one that's taken more as a stab in the back.
00:01:45.000 I don't know how she's going to be able to make the proposition to the British public
00:01:53.000 that she's a Conservative Prime Minister in waiting
00:01:56.000 if someone like Robert Jenrick basically defects to reform,
00:02:03.000 which is what he's done today.
00:02:04.000 Before you go into this,
00:02:06.000 let's just have a quick view of what he said right now.
00:02:10.000 I challenge anyone to argue other than that Britain is completely broken.
00:02:19.000 Those that came before us built a great country.
00:02:24.000 The greatest country in the world.
00:02:26.000 But we are set to lose it.
00:02:29.000 We will, for certain, if this government gets re-elected.
00:02:34.000 I can't kid myself anymore.
00:02:37.000 The party hasn't changed, and it won't.
00:02:41.000 The bulk of the party don't get it.
00:02:43.000 They don't have the stomach for the radical change that Britain needs.
00:02:49.000 In opposition, it's easy to paper over these cracks.
00:02:54.000 But the divisions, the delusions, are still there.
00:02:58.000 And if we don't get the next government right,
00:03:02.000 Britain will likely slip beyond the point of repair.
00:03:06.000 Everything is on this.
00:03:08.000 Everything is on this decision.
00:03:11.000 So, Joseph Robertson, that was Robert Jenrick,
00:03:15.000 up until, what, yesterday, until he was sacked, actually,
00:03:19.000 by Kimi Badanuk.
00:03:24.000 He was the Shadow Justice Secretary, Shadow Chancellor, Shadow Lord Chancellor.
00:03:33.000 I have reservations about reform at this point in time, taking on Tory defectors.
00:03:40.000 But I get the political point that this is illustrating.
00:03:43.000 This is Nigel Farage illustrating to the country that the Tory leadership, Tory leader,
00:03:49.000 Kimi Badanuk, has lost the confidence of her most senior parliamentarians,
00:03:54.000 her most senior Shadow Cabinet colleagues.
00:03:57.000 And therefore, it's going to be difficult for her to say,
00:04:00.000 I'm ready to be Prime Minister if those who work closest with her have lost confidence.
00:04:05.000 Timber, it wasn't a surprise. We knew this yesterday.
00:04:09.000 As I say, Kimi Badanuk sacked him,
00:04:12.000 anticipating with her irrefutable proof that he was about to defect.
00:04:16.000 So the news wasn't, today, totally shocking.
00:04:21.000 But give me your first reaction to it, please.
00:04:24.000 Well, thanks for having me on again, Ben.
00:04:27.000 I think, you know, politics in Britain tends to go, as we've seen,
00:04:31.000 in sort of 100 year or 50 year cycles.
00:04:35.000 There have been previous movements that have risen up or displaced the major parties from time to time,
00:04:40.000 but they don't either achieve getting into power or when they do,
00:04:44.000 as we saw with the replacement of the Liberal Party,
00:04:48.000 you know, the branching out between Whigs and Tories.
00:04:51.000 When that happens, which happened last 100 years ago,
00:04:54.000 parties tend to disappear sometimes into a third or fourth position.
00:04:59.000 And we've only really got one or two examples of it in our history.
00:05:03.000 Nothing quite on this scale.
00:05:06.000 I tend to lean towards jubilance at this news,
00:05:09.000 not necessarily because as you've outlined, you know,
00:05:12.000 you don't want reform to seem like Tory party 2.0.
00:05:15.000 That's certainly not why I joined reform,
00:05:17.000 why many others did so in the past.
00:05:20.000 But I think what we do need to recognise is that you can't really spell history without the word Tory.
00:05:26.000 And unfortunately, until the unit party is broken properly,
00:05:32.000 and by that I mean the absolute demolition of the so-called right-wing Conservative Party,
00:05:37.000 which actually has been more to the left of Blair for the last 15 years,
00:05:42.000 you can't really achieve any progress.
00:05:44.000 I think Jenrick said it very well that there's no appetite for the type of radical change
00:05:49.000 that is needed in this country in that party anymore.
00:05:52.000 And so anything that hastens that demise, I think, is important.
00:05:56.000 Yeah, I think that's a good reading of this.
00:06:02.000 So let's now just zoom back ever so slightly.
00:06:05.000 I mentioned this week's been tough for Kimi Badanuk.
00:06:09.000 Robert Jenrick wasn't her only defection.
00:06:13.000 Earlier on in the week, Nadim Zahawi,
00:06:16.000 who was the former Chancellor of the Exchequer for an American audience,
00:06:20.000 that's basically the Treasury Secretary, Finance Minister,
00:06:24.000 considered to be one of the three great offices of state.
00:06:27.000 And he was only there for like a couple of months.
00:06:29.000 I think he did slightly longer as Chancellor as Liz Truss did as Prime Minister.
00:06:34.000 But still, again, it's an emotional blow to the credibility of the Tory party
00:06:40.000 to lose a former Chancellor to a party that's nipping at your heels.
00:06:47.000 What's your reading of Zahawi, by the way, Joseph?
00:06:54.000 So, I mean, Nadim, I think first point to make is that he's unelected
00:06:59.000 and will remain so unless he happens to go through party process and reform
00:07:03.000 and become an elected official, which would mean that it'd have to be acceptable
00:07:07.000 to the membership as well as, you know, other things,
00:07:10.000 other tests that will require from every candidate before they run.
00:07:15.000 So that's the first point to make.
00:07:17.000 I think, for me, he has done exceptionally well in business
00:07:21.000 and in other areas outside of politics.
00:07:23.000 I know he carries political baggage.
00:07:25.000 I certainly didn't agree with the way he handled, for instance,
00:07:29.000 passports during COVID for vaccines, that kind of thing.
00:07:33.000 There's a lot of disgruntled noises from some factions,
00:07:37.000 particularly libertarian factions, who feel that he was unfair to those.
00:07:41.000 However, what I would say is that he correctly sided with Liz Truss
00:07:44.000 when she came into power.
00:07:46.000 He understands economics very well
00:07:48.000 and that overall you can't ignore someone like that when you look at their business acumen.
00:07:53.000 And I would also say really, you know, looking at the GOP, those positions that maybe were, you know,
00:08:00.000 on the fringes of the MAGA movement are not popular.
00:08:02.000 Many of those people have come into the fold over the years as the movement develops.
00:08:06.000 I think that's something you've got to learn and understand as you mature as a political movement.
00:08:11.000 And so reform is trying to do the same.
00:08:13.000 It's a huge blow to Kemi because behind the scenes, I mean,
00:08:16.000 he works with or used to work with a lot of Tory donors.
00:08:19.000 He has, like I said, an immense business acumen.
00:08:23.000 So I think both of these defections are going to hit her very hard.
00:08:27.000 And I would say both of them are net positives for reform,
00:08:30.000 whatever people may think of the individuals.
00:08:36.000 Yeah.
00:08:39.000 To some extent, it's a little bit, I get, you know, trying to be dispassionate about this,
00:08:45.000 trying to read this objectively.
00:08:47.000 I understand why reform took them both, because at this point,
00:08:51.000 it's basically any stick with which to beat the Tories.
00:08:54.000 Now, it's been like a couple of decades since I was a member of the Tory party.
00:08:59.000 But I would like, you know, I certainly don't support them.
00:09:03.000 It's been a long time since I voted for them.
00:09:05.000 But I would like to try to be objective about my reading of their situation.
00:09:10.000 I don't know where they go now, because it's clear that Kemi Bagnot isn't doing,
00:09:16.000 she's not up to the job.
00:09:17.000 I think that's clear.
00:09:18.000 And yet Robert Jenrick was probably the only person who had perhaps the credibility
00:09:24.000 with the voters who are peeling off towards reform to have tried to be an alternative.
00:09:31.000 He was, in fact, a leadership, her leadership rival.
00:09:34.000 He lost the last, it was last year, right?
00:09:37.000 He lost to her when they both went, challenged one another for the leadership of the Tory party.
00:09:45.000 You know, just try, if you wouldn't mind, try to be along with me here.
00:09:50.000 Try out, because we're both supporting reform.
00:09:53.000 Try to help me be objective in this, and dispassionate, looking at it from the Tory party's view.
00:10:00.000 Where do they go from now, when their one possible alternative to the failing Kemi Bagnot has jumped ship?
00:10:11.000 Who do they go to who could possibly, because I don't see anybody,
00:10:16.000 and I'd like to know what your reading of this is.
00:10:18.000 What do they do now when their one credible alternative has thrown his cards down on the table and said,
00:10:24.000 right, that's it, fold, I'm out?
00:10:27.000 So I think that while the situation is dire, they do have one or two cards left on the table.
00:10:33.000 So there are people like Katie Lamb coming through.
00:10:36.000 I am, you know, the jury's out on whether or not she is as good as she says she is.
00:10:42.000 Obviously she has, you know, some associations with people in the Tory party that I consider to be on the left,
00:10:48.000 despite what she says being more to the right of the party.
00:10:51.000 But they do have some younger MPs.
00:10:54.000 I think what will happen is if we see, let's say, a Katie Lamb or, you know, indeed a Sola Braverman, etc.,
00:11:01.000 defecting to reform in the next few days or weeks, then that will truly be the end,
00:11:05.000 because that will be all of your options off the table for anybody with any talent in the party to come through.
00:11:13.000 And that will basically be the litmus test.
00:11:15.000 As long as they sort of have this switcheroo going on between James Cleverley and Kimmy Badenock,
00:11:20.000 both establishment candidates, both essentially run by the same vested interests that control the rest of the Tory party,
00:11:25.000 there is not much hope, quite frankly.
00:11:27.000 And there's one thing I've got to say, which is that there's no youth movement in the Tory party.
00:11:32.000 It's a big problem for them right now, as well as having no donors.
00:11:35.000 But the youth I always look towards more as an indicator of where they're going to go.
00:11:39.000 I saw one quite large conservative influencer who is still in the conservative party and still in her 20s,
00:11:46.000 saying on Twitter the other day that, you know, she just hates the fact that she's going to have to eventually follow Robert Jenner,
00:11:52.000 because that's what she always said she would do.
00:11:55.000 But, you know, she's not yet ready to make that jump.
00:11:57.000 And I said, well, supporting the Tory party right now is rather like supporting your local football team.
00:12:02.000 But in reality, they've moved stadium and they now play 3000 miles away.
00:12:06.000 I think that's basically what most of them are facing is this attachment to the brand without being able to actually be part of it.
00:12:15.000 Yes, it's basically pure self-identification.
00:12:18.000 I'm going to come back to you in about 90 seconds on that theme, especially about what the youth are doing.
00:12:24.000 Generation Z is doing right now.
00:12:28.000 I'm going to ask you about recent polling as well.
00:12:30.000 And I'm also going to ask you about who you have your eye on specifically for potential next defections.
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00:14:05.000 Back now to pick up the conversation with Joseph Robertson.
00:14:09.000 Joseph, tell them, let's start at the back then and then work forward.
00:14:12.000 Who's your eye on, do you think, for potential future defections from the Tory party to reform?
00:14:22.000 Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it could be any of them at this stage, I'll be quite frank.
00:14:27.000 I mean, you know, there are there are some, of course, that simply won't be allowed into the party because of their past baggage or the political inclinations.
00:14:35.000 And that's, you know, like I said, reform, whatever people may throw at it, it's very much out to destroy the Tory party, not simply let it abscond and enter.
00:14:46.000 Nigel was completely aware of what can be pulled as it was in 2019 when you had essentially Tories infiltrating the Brexit party and then tearing it down from the inside.
00:14:57.000 He will not let that happen again, I'm quite confident.
00:15:01.000 And I think, you know, what we need to look at now is perhaps who would be most aligned with the Tory MPs who have already joined reform in Danny Kruger and Robert Jenrick.
00:15:12.000 And if you look backwards, you know, I'm going to list some names, I don't necessarily think all of these will jump ship.
00:15:18.000 But I think the ones that would be most aligned would be people like Esther McVeigh, Suella Braverman, to an extent younger MPs like Jack Rankin, obviously I mentioned Katie Lamb.
00:15:28.000 And then you also have to look at some of the old stalwarts and wonder whether or not they're thinking about it.
00:15:33.000 So Sir John Hayes would be another who is both Suella's former mentor and also formerly one of the safest seats in the country as far as the Tories are concerned.
00:15:44.000 You know, there are others that I could think of, but I would imagine that those are some of the names that are on the lips of many people right now.
00:15:53.000 You know, it's really a case of what do you want out of your political career at this point.
00:15:58.000 I think for younger MPs like Jack Rankin and Katie, the fact is they don't have as much baggage as maybe some of these other names I'm mentioning.
00:16:05.000 So if they jump ship, they could authentically be included in the reform movement in perhaps a way that some of these other older heads can't.
00:16:13.000 So I would be looking for some of the younger ones who perhaps see a future in politics for the next 10, 15 years.
00:16:19.000 And then maybe some like Suella who naturally align with reform's message.
00:16:24.000 I'm going to ask about the youth vote in just a moment.
00:16:28.000 But, you know, drawing out from what you're saying, you make a very important point for reform leadership right now,
00:16:35.000 that some of these Tories aren't jumping ship for ideological reasons or even because they think Nigel Farage is going to make a better prime minister than Kemi Badnik.
00:16:46.000 They're jumping ship because they want to continue their political careers and they see no viability of them doing that if they're kicked out of parliament at the next election.
00:16:55.000 It's a pure opportunism thing.
00:16:58.000 And some of the some of these guys are going to go over.
00:17:01.000 You can very much sort of use the descriptor of rats leaving a sinking ship.
00:17:06.000 But, you know, Nigel Farage is an old hand.
00:17:09.000 You know, he's not going to he'll have the discernment to sort that out.
00:17:14.000 He's going to actually add something to his movement and who's just coming on board for for opportunism.
00:17:19.000 Tell me because you mentioned just now the youth element of the vote and you mentioned it before.
00:17:24.000 What's going on in Generation Z, as the Americans like to say?
00:17:31.000 Well, it's splitting into what I would consider to be a slightly more extreme left and right divide.
00:17:37.000 I think it would be foolish to say that, you know, reform is dominating with the youth because that's not true.
00:17:44.000 There is still a very, very strong contingent of left wing voters, particularly at university age.
00:17:50.000 But they are going further to the left. They're not satisfied with the Labour Party.
00:17:54.000 And quite frankly, if I was on the left, neither would I be because the Labour Party has drifted too far towards commercial interests to be of interest to genuine Marxists,
00:18:04.000 whilst also remaining Marxist enough to not be of interest to old school Labour voters.
00:18:09.000 So it's perfectly positioned itself to be the land of never.
00:18:13.000 And so younger voters are turning more to parties like the Greens, perhaps in some cases like the Lib Dems and then, of course, Nigel.
00:18:21.000 But there is a big gender disparity still in that age group.
00:18:24.000 So young men are more likely to vote right leaning towards Nigel and young women tend to vote more to the left.
00:18:32.000 So that's kind of where we see the biggest gap is in the gender divide. 1.00
00:18:38.000 Where do I think that generation will go?
00:18:40.000 Well, I think there is two trends that I look at which surprise me.
00:18:44.000 I think even in the more left leaning vehicles, there's more emphasis on relationship and community building.
00:18:51.000 Whether or not that translates to solving our natal crisis is yet to be seen.
00:18:56.000 I don't think that will be the case, but there is at least a sense that there's a lack of community.
00:19:01.000 And there's also something else quite interesting, which is less partying going on, less alcohol consumption in younger generations that we can see.
00:19:10.000 Of course, drug usage is still prevalent, but there does seem to be a kind of growing trend that people are taking life more seriously at younger age again.
00:19:18.000 And so I think that will probably lead to a more conservative flourishing maybe in the next five years or so as those younger people do settle down and have families.
00:19:27.000 So I think the stats are pretty positive.
00:19:29.000 The only big issue for me is whether or not we can try and outgrow this natal crisis that we have in the West.
00:19:35.000 Something that we cover on our Wednesday show, and we're going to have to get you on our Wednesday show at some point, Joseph.
00:19:42.000 Something that we talk about basically every week amongst Generation Z is the uptick between 18 to 24 year old men embracing Christianity.
00:19:57.000 There is something like, you know, we covered the statistics just a couple of days ago.
00:20:02.000 I think that it's nearly twice as much about 24% now of young guys in that age bracket say they go to church at least once a month.
00:20:11.000 And that's literally twice the equivalent percentage amongst the equivalent aged females. 0.76
00:20:19.000 Something's going on and that's going to have an influence at some point on politics as well.
00:20:27.000 You know, one of the things that the war room is pretty focused on is the, say, the blue collar worker movement aspect.
00:20:39.000 Certainly in the United States, something Steve Bannon's been pushing very heavily over the last 15 years, but also in the UK.
00:20:47.000 Okay. Boris Johnson, despite his faults, did quite well to take over some of those Labour constituencies, historic Labour constituencies.
00:20:59.000 Of course, he didn't know what to do with them.
00:21:01.000 And it sort of emerged that his level, was it the levelling up?
00:21:07.000 Yeah.
00:21:08.000 Electoral Gambit didn't really have much policy behind it.
00:21:11.000 And of course, Keir Starmer took those seats back.
00:21:14.000 But what hope do you see for presumably not the future, the Tory party, but a future reform government going in and taking definitively those traditionally Labour voting constituencies and actually delivering on an agenda for the regular working guy?
00:21:36.000 Well, you've hit a nerve with me because I, for the viewers who probably won't know this, I was the director of a think tank between sort of 2020 and 2024, I guess, probably just 2023 really.
00:21:51.000 But it was sort of filtering out at that point, which was set up back in 2019 to focus on two things, the work of Sir Roger Scruton, who may be familiar to some people, you know, sort of the last conservative philosopher who died in 2019 in the UK.
00:22:09.000 And then also the secondary purpose was to look at conservatism in the red wall and how the 2019 win under Boris Johnson would translate to those areas and what we needed to do to get the country flourishing again.
00:22:21.000 And we did a lot of policy work specifically on this, you know, those blue collar workers translating into Tory voters because they wanted to unlock prosperity.
00:22:31.000 And we found a few things, they're still very socially conservative, they want to build families, they want to build businesses, very often very entrepreneurial, and they are not at all modern Labour voters.
00:22:44.940 And so those people were very disappointed by the Tory party for obvious reasons, you know, taxes, mass migration, this slavish wedded mentality to net zero, all of these things helped crush the red wall, rather than raise it up a lack of commitment to infrastructure, proper, proper levelling up by transport, etc. 0.99
00:23:07.500 So those people were kind of went into the ether, I don't think a lot of them really voted Labour, a lot did vote reform already in the last general election, but a lot just stayed at home.
00:23:18.500 And Nigel's promises of opening up, you know, steel industries, getting fracking and going again, coal, all these key industries, which by the way, if you went to AI or tech, we desperately need because we're going to be so energy intensive trying to grow out those sectors.
00:23:33.900 As a pipe dream suggests otherwise. That's what will unlock growth in the red wall.
00:23:39.240 And I think voters are already quietly turning out. You know, you've just seen 29 councils apply across the country not to have elections again this year, at local level.
00:23:50.820 This is something the Labour government is supporting and encouraging, and in my opinion, inducing to try and prevent reform winning councils off them all over the place.
00:23:59.340 And the Tories are happily complying because the same will happen with their fewer councils that they hold.
00:24:07.140 But this is the big question. How much will the red wall come out to vote?
00:24:11.620 I personally think that they will pour out for Nigel in the next election, and I think we will end up having an even higher vote share than is predicted by the pollsters.
00:24:19.780 OK, let me build on that, because we've got like 90 seconds left and ask you this, because we haven't really spoken about the Labour Party vis-a-vis the Tory defections.
00:24:33.180 How do you think the Labour Party should be looking at this and doing the hemorrhaging of the Tory presence in the House of Commons right now?
00:24:44.960 Panic, patience or popcorn?
00:24:47.380 That's a good question. I mean, they're Fabians, so patience will always be their virtue.
00:24:54.340 But I think in the front bench, there will be some panic because this signifies a unifying effect against them.
00:25:01.620 They only think in two ways. They think in 100-year plans, and that's going back to my Fabian analysis. 0.96
00:25:09.540 But then they also think in two, three, four years, the very short term at the other end of the spectrum.
00:25:14.100 They will be panicking in a political sense, because the problem is, as reform unifies and gains more and more authority,
00:25:22.060 they can level less and less this idea that they don't have experience in the party.
00:25:26.320 And that will be their panic at the moment.
00:25:28.180 There's also rumours of a Labour defection coming soon, I think next week.
00:25:31.540 So that will add to their fears, because don't forget, a lot of the elected representatives in the Labour Party,
00:25:36.920 particularly in the Red Wall, may not like the trend of socialism going on,
00:25:40.580 may be more socially conservative and may not feel like it's their home anymore.
00:25:45.580 Just give me 30 seconds before we close this about Keir Starmer's attempt to suspend the local government elections
00:25:55.240 of, I think, around 70 or so local councils across the country.
00:25:59.320 What does that indicate to you?
00:26:02.100 Communism.
00:26:05.380 And they're running scared, right? They're absolutely terrified.
00:26:08.820 I'm not joking, Ben. I think at this point we have to question whether or not we are under communist rule.
00:26:14.240 I've said it quite openly.
00:26:16.200 But it's not just about that. It's about free speech, the crackdown on X, etc.
00:26:20.280 Just to give you one very quick statistic, Snapchat in this country accounts for 53%, 54% of child sex crimes, not X.
00:26:29.200 So, you know, you can see where it's going.
00:26:34.500 Ten seconds, Joseph. It's always a pleasure for you to come on the show and share your very detailed insights in UK politics.
00:26:42.320 Ten seconds. Social media. Where do people go to keep up with you?
00:26:45.280 JRtypes across X and Substack and josephrobertsonuk on Instagram.
00:26:52.820 If you want to follow me there, it would be great to connect with some of you afterwards.
00:26:58.160 Joseph, thanks very much indeed. We'll catch up with you again soon. God bless for now.
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00:31:40.600 Welcome back.
00:31:41.520 Well, sometimes on the show we have scientists, sometimes historians, sometimes analysts, sometimes journalists.
00:31:49.800 But we like to expand the range of people we bring on.
00:31:56.680 And we've asked Dr. Nicholas Wright, the neuroscientist, to come back and give his insights into politics and how certain political dispositions, social dispositions, cultural dispositions are actually hardwired into the human brain.
00:32:14.160 And, you know, when I saw that Dr. Wright had made the thesis looking at the protests going on in Iran right now, that you can actually have a neuroscientific analysis of why people are in a democracy movement, are of all things calling out for the return to monarchy.
00:32:38.320 I was immediately interested to know more.
00:32:41.840 So, Dr. Wright, thanks for coming back on to the show.
00:32:46.080 Tell us then, in your own words, your thesis on this, because I think it's absolutely fascinating.
00:32:51.220 Yeah, Ben, thanks so much for having me on.
00:32:54.640 So, I think the first thing to say is that all human societies are hierarchical.
00:33:01.400 There is always a hierarchy.
00:33:04.060 And by a social hierarchy, I mean, that can obviously come from many different traits that people might have.
00:33:12.120 It might be sort of physical strength.
00:33:13.960 It might be something to do with religious, you know, where you are in a caste system, for example, or whatever it might be.
00:33:22.460 But there will always be some form of social hierarchy.
00:33:24.940 There will always be leaders and there will always be followers.
00:33:28.260 And that is baked into how our brains work.
00:33:31.480 And so, our brains have very specific areas that see exactly where we are in these social hierarchies.
00:33:40.020 Now, in terms of the leaders and followers, we know that some people actually, in fact, quite a lot of people, do not want to assume responsibility for others.
00:33:53.600 They don't want to take on a leadership position.
00:33:55.920 And we can see where this happens in the brain.
00:34:00.760 And actually, what we can see is that when people are given the opportunity to just shoulder responsibility for others, often they are averse to it.
00:34:09.080 And when we scan their brains and then we can see where people are more likely to be averse to shouldering responsibility for others, we can then actually then correlate that to real world tests of their leadership.
00:34:26.800 So, for example, there was a great study done in Switzerland.
00:34:30.000 And they were able to scan people's brains and then look to see where they had reached in the military ranks within the Swiss military.
00:34:37.580 And so, for all those reasons, there will always be leaders and there will always be followers.
00:34:44.080 And what we often want is a specific individual leader that we will follow.
00:34:50.180 And that's one of the reasons why monarchy in particular has been one of the most historically successful and pervasive forms of leadership structure that we've had in human societies.
00:35:02.440 Okay. So much there to unpack. So much there to unpack.
00:35:06.900 Let's start. I don't believe in evolution.
00:35:09.980 I think I mentioned that the last time we had you on the show, but I'm quite happy to use it as an intellectual construct because, you know, it makes a certain amount of sense.
00:35:20.520 So tell me if I have understood the thesis correct.
00:35:24.940 And it's a very, you know, amongst scientists, what you've expounded there is a very popular and accepted idea that because of the constraints of evolution and the nature of limited resources, was it Darwin who called the struggle for existence?
00:35:44.400 So there's only a certain amount of food or what have you, and therefore animals need to fight over it and those who are best fitted and suited pass on their genes.
00:35:58.860 And because of that, and because of the mating process and all the rest of it, and the selection of these genes, sort of inside all animals' brains, you know, and this goes, I think, down to lobsters, there is this hierarchical inbuilt.
00:36:15.420 Is it in the hippocampus? I don't remember where in the brain, but there's a measure of where you are in the hierarchy, right?
00:36:23.060 In your communal hierarchy, in your social hierarchy, and that sort of way, that placement in the hierarchy dictates basically how you confront and respond to all of life.
00:36:33.540 So it's there at the neurological level in the brain, inbuilt, including into human beings.
00:36:42.140 And the more social the animal, the more it lives in society, the more keenly aware it is of this hierarchical nature.
00:36:49.580 Now, if I understood the thesis correctly, and what you're saying is that also, that reality, which humans have because of evolution.
00:37:00.500 I just say, it doesn't, this is, this is based, this doesn't have to be based on evolution.
00:37:05.360 So, you know, my studies scan people's brains, and you could say those brains have evolved, or you could say those brains were designed intelligently, or where have you want to go.
00:37:14.360 So it's not, it's not centered on evolution, just to, just, just to be clear.
00:37:18.480 No, thanks. Yep. Thanks for that. Corrections. Great.
00:37:23.200 Because it basically makes your analysis even more universal.
00:37:27.580 But the idea is then, because of these very real measurements in human brain structure that can be made, you can then project outwards onto, onto politics.
00:37:38.380 Because you said the last time you came on the show a couple of months ago, that the way the brain is constructed can actually lead human beings into the state of warfare.
00:37:47.560 You drew the direct parallel from the neurological structure architecture of the brain into warfare.
00:37:54.620 And your thesis now is exactly the same, is you're looking at the human brain, and you're sort of projecting that to how we comport ourselves on the political level.
00:38:03.960 So tell me, so if I've got that synthesis correct, tell me more then, please, about how that neuro-architectural structure would lead to people calling for a king.
00:38:20.340 I know you were just sort of saying it a moment ago, but I wanted to get that out for the audience.
00:38:24.740 Say that again, about how in this moment that is the result.
00:38:29.000 So I think that what people always want is a leader, right?
00:38:32.480 There will always be a leader, and that leadership.
00:38:34.660 So where does human leadership come?
00:38:36.060 There will always be leaders, and there will always be followers.
00:38:38.040 So where does human leadership come from?
00:38:39.860 And there are really two main sources of power in human leadership.
00:38:44.880 So the first thing is the sort of maybe more animalistic side, which is dominance, right?
00:38:49.720 All this could be to do with the fact that you have power through guns or whatever it might be, but there's dominance.
00:38:54.720 So dominance can often give you power, and that can be contributed to you having a leadership position within society, a status, and other people will follow you.
00:39:06.720 But then in humans, because we are really remarkable animals, and we teach each other, and we learn, and we're extremely clever animals, extremely social animals.
00:39:18.020 And so another source of power for us that leaders can have is through prestige, right?
00:39:23.360 So prestige is when you're doing things, when you have qualities that will be thought admirable by others.
00:39:28.800 And so people can have prestige.
00:39:30.160 So I, for example, when I was a doctor working in the hospital, there were other doctors who were more senior than me, and they had a huge amount of prestige.
00:39:37.760 And so I valued their opinion.
00:39:39.680 I followed them because they had a huge amount of prestige.
00:39:42.020 And we see others who have prestige in societies.
00:39:45.260 So, for example, religious leaders will often have a large amount of prestige within society, and that prestige is another source of power.
00:39:56.160 And so one of the traditional sources of prestige in very many societies is monarchy.
00:40:01.980 And so if you look, for example, today, of the G7 countries, that's the sort of the biggest rich world economies, three of the seven G7 countries are monarchies.
00:40:13.740 If you look at countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, they're monarchies.
00:40:18.900 If you look at many of the most successful countries in the Middle East, they are monarchies.
00:40:23.640 Oman, Jordan have been much more stable than others.
00:40:27.260 And if you're in Iran, for example, you're looking at UAE, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, they have been much more successful.
00:40:37.260 And one of the reasons for that is that they have a much more stable society because they have this clear leadership at the top.
00:40:42.340 Now, that doesn't necessarily mean the leader is going to be benign.
00:40:45.020 It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be democratic.
00:40:47.220 But we as humans will often try and coordinate around such individual human leaders.
00:40:53.400 And that's one of the reasons why, particularly if there is a traditional military monarchy that you can go to, that people will often coordinate around that as a source of leadership.
00:41:04.780 It gives Reza Pahlavi, who is the Shah living in the US now and has been since 1979, it gives him an extra leg up in Iranian politics because other people will coordinate around him as a leader.
00:41:19.580 I'm going to ask you, this is a fascinating thesis.
00:41:24.900 I'm going to ask you after this short shout out to one of our sponsors, you've mentioned how the structure of the brain might lead to a desire for monarchy.
00:41:36.780 I'm going to ask you how compatible democracy is with your analysis as a neuroscientist of the brain.
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00:42:22.320 So, Dr. Wright, I get the idea how a desire for a king, and it sort of comes out of neuroscience, of the study out of the composition of the brain.
00:42:35.860 And if I might just interject, if I might just interject, because you mentioned where that sort of hierarchical sense of falling in comes out of, say, physical strength or of social prestige and what have you in leadership.
00:42:52.820 I'd like to say that my somewhat idiosyncratic theological view on this is that the desire for power, the desire to dominate one's fellow man arises out of original sin.
00:43:07.120 But I'm perfectly happy to argue here on the brain level.
00:43:11.600 Tell me then about democracy, because throughout human history, as you were indicating, throughout recorded human history, there's pretty much always only ever been a king that's led, governed over, ruled over his normally subjects.
00:43:32.120 Democracy is a rather more rare bird.
00:43:34.920 How compatible is democracy with your study of the human brain?
00:43:40.700 Yeah, I mean, so what I'd say is the brain is like an orchestra, right?
00:43:45.460 There's not one single system in the brain that explains everything.
00:43:48.980 We have many different systems, and they're all important for how we act in society, how we make decisions about things like who we support politically or whether we go to war, for example.
00:43:59.820 Now, yes, these social systems are very important to look at social hierarchies, and they create the space, a space at the top of our social hierarchies for a leader or a leadership, something that will be at the top of our hierarchy.
00:44:17.040 But what could that be?
00:44:18.660 It's not only going to be, it's not only going to be monarchy.
00:44:21.600 Clearly, it could also be, for example, in the United States, 250-odd years ago, you had a war, a war of independence, and it was at the point of that was to get rid of the monarch, right?
00:44:32.880 And then we have other parts of the brain that can think up clever ideas and put those systems, those institutions, as things that we then will have at the top of our hierarchy or that can create spaces that can help us fill the top of that hierarchy.
00:44:51.300 And how we choose those people then wouldn't be through the intuitive and ancient system of the family unit or family inheritance, which is, you know, the most common, always the most basic fundamental unit of social organisation in humans.
00:45:06.080 But then you could, for example, have the US Constitution, which had votes, and then they selected a leader who then ruled for a defined period of time.
00:45:16.480 And I think this also indicates that these rules are not only, for example, if you look at the American Constitution, not only about how things are written down, but they're also about the human beings and how they decide to act, so they set the social parameters.
00:45:31.400 So George Washington famously chose to step down, right?
00:45:36.480 He could basically have become a king, a lot of people would argue, but he chose to step down.
00:45:41.720 And by setting that precedent, you know, the founding fathers of the United States were really quite remarkable guys.
00:45:46.480 And he set that precedent, and that helped set the unwritten rules by which the United States, along with the written rules, now has a system, a democratic system, in which it can have a leadership position filled.
00:45:58.280 And in a country like Britain, for example, or the Netherlands, you have a hybrid system, and we often have hybrid systems too.
00:46:04.940 And our brains live with this kind of hybridity all the time.
00:46:09.240 I seem to remember that when, back during the first president, there was a debate on how Americans should address their president.
00:46:26.060 And George Washington basically ended the conversation by saying, Mr. President is more than sufficient.
00:46:35.940 But there was actually a movement to suggest that the correct form of address ought to be His Majesty the President.
00:46:42.660 And you can imagine how America might have worked out differently had that faction succeeded.
00:46:49.680 Now, you mentioned, obviously, that we're now sort of accelerating towards America's 250th anniversary.
00:46:58.420 And I think it's fair to say that revolutions that succeeded, that have succeeded, probably did succeed because they were very quick about re-establishing the hierarchical structure whose leadership the revolution had replaced.
00:47:14.620 From a neuroscience perspective, do you think humans are just badly hardwired in the brain in order to have a social structure that isn't heavily dependent on political leadership?
00:47:34.360 I don't think we can have any kind of large-scale social structure where there won't be leadership.
00:47:41.480 There won't be hierarchy and there won't be leadership.
00:47:43.540 And partly that's because there will always be followers, right?
00:47:47.620 And there will always be leaders and there will always be followers.
00:47:50.200 And that's because the followers' brains like to follow and the leaders' brains like to lead.
00:47:54.500 And that makes up the structure of our society.
00:47:59.740 That's part of it.
00:48:01.220 Then there's a second point, which is sometimes you need leaders, right?
00:48:05.840 So if you have a military, you can't have everybody having a good old discussion about what they should be doing because you need a decisive leader.
00:48:11.060 And that's why I think if you look at the Roman Republic, there were periods where they would have decisive leadership, right?
00:48:22.520 They would essentially give a decisive leader far more power so that they could make the – and the same thing in Athenian democracy – so they could then make the types of decisions that were needed urgently, right?
00:48:34.800 So for those two sets of reasons, one, we basically as humans like to live in hierarchical societies, whether that's something that people are comfortable with, agreeing with or not.
00:48:47.700 And secondly, there are just so many examples where having a more hierarchical society, certainly in part, can make you more effective.
00:48:57.140 So that's bad news for libertarians then?
00:49:03.280 Yeah.
00:49:03.960 I mean, I think that if you just scatter people around – I mean, it is basically.
00:49:07.220 I don't think it's going to work for a wide variety of reasons because you would scatter people around, but then people will assort into leaders.
00:49:13.480 You look at somebody – I don't know if you – you probably saw just last fall, I think, and you had Donald Trump gathered around the titans of the US tech industry in the White House, and you saw them sitting at this big table.
00:49:30.120 And it was – I mean, you didn't – you know, a deaf person or, you know, a monkey could probably have worked out who was the big leader and who were all the subordinate people in that – you know, around that – around that table. 0.98
00:49:43.800 That's just the way people organise, and that comes through two things, as I said.
00:49:49.220 You get that political power through dominance.
00:49:53.960 You know, yes, they had a lot of money, those tech leaders, but the guy who has the dominance, you know, the security operations on is Donald Trump.
00:50:01.640 And then secondly, he is a very effective politician.
00:50:05.600 He is, you know, very good at politics.
00:50:08.400 That's been amply demonstrated, certainly now, you know, winning a second term, and that gives him an enormous amount of prestige as well, politically.
00:50:17.460 Okay, look, if you've got 30 seconds, if you can do it in 30 seconds, fine.
00:50:22.600 If you can't, we'll have to bring you back on again.
00:50:24.480 You mentioned earlier the typical leadership profiles being established, I think, on physical strength and your word, prestige.
00:50:32.800 Are there any other characteristics that historically are essential from a neurological perspective in political leadership?
00:50:41.800 20 seconds, if you can.
00:50:44.240 I'm going to be super quick.
00:50:44.940 So I was talking about why we have leaders and followers, but there's a separate thing is what makes you a good leader.
00:50:49.720 What makes you a good leader is having accurate self-confidence.
00:50:53.280 You're not too overconfident.
00:50:54.440 You're not too underconfident.
00:50:55.660 You need to have a model of what you want to achieve in the world, and you need to be a good communicator.
00:51:00.700 And those three things are the three things you need to be a more effective leader.
00:51:06.100 Someone like Dwight Eisenhower, for example.
00:51:07.840 Fantastic.
00:51:10.760 Okay.
00:51:11.860 So, Dr. Wright, where do people go to keep up with your research and your sort of quite fascinating various theses?
00:51:21.580 Thank you.
00:51:22.120 Yeah.
00:51:22.360 So, on X, Nicholas D. Wright, my book, Warhead, How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain.
00:51:31.800 Uh, and, uh, among places like Time Magazine and other, you know, other outlets.
00:51:38.140 Thank you so much.
00:51:40.780 Dr. Nicholas Wright, thanks very much.
00:51:42.300 I had wanted also in this show to discuss with you Venezuela and your also fascinating thesis on unpredictability as a strategic tool from the neurological perspective.
00:51:52.800 Have to get you back on again another time to dig down on that one.
00:51:56.960 That's the end of the show, folks.
00:51:57.920 Have a great weekend.
00:51:58.780 My thanks to Will and his crack team in Denver from Real America's Voice, our producer, Cameron Wallace, and, of course, Victorio Santifranco, who put this show together.
00:52:08.600 God bless for now.
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