Full Comment - The working class inevitably becomes conservative

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00:00:11.800 for what you need. TD, ready for you. Is Canada having a conservative moment? If you haven't heard,

00:00:23.500 the Conservative Party, the Federal Conservative Party, just held their National Policy Convention

00:00:28.680 in Quebec City, it was held against the backdrop of polls showing leads of between 12% and 14%. Yes,

00:00:36.740 there was the one poll that said they're tied, but for the most part, a strong trend in favor of

00:00:42.720 Pierre Polyev and the Federal Conservatives over Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. This comes at

00:00:47.640 the same time as most of the provinces are now governed by center-right parties. So is there

00:00:53.320 a conservative moment in Canada? And if so, what's driving it? And what can we learn from

00:00:58.660 people in other jurisdictions where they've had long-standing conservative governments?

00:01:03.840 Our next guest is someone who was a speaker, one of the headline speakers at the Conservative

00:01:09.200 Convention on the weekend. But before we get to him, I want to remind you that you can subscribe

00:01:13.400 to this podcast and please do hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, leave a comment,

00:01:18.640 share this on social media where you're still allowed to, do whatever you can to help spread the

00:01:23.020 word. Because I think we bring good conversations here and we want to share that with everyone.

00:01:28.660 Well, Daniel Hannan is someone who is currently in the House of Lords in the UK. His official title

00:01:34.680 is Lord Hannan of Kinsclair. Back when I first got to know him, he was just a member of the European

00:01:41.300 Parliament campaigning to get the UK out of the European Union. He had a famous speech of dressing

00:01:49.520 down of Gordon Brown in the EU Parliament that brought him to the attention of conservatives around

00:01:54.900 the world. And since then, I've met up with him at the Conservative Political Action Convention in

00:01:59.820 Washington, DC, at the Manning Conference in Ottawa. And he has someone who spends a lot of time looking

00:02:05.880 at conservative politics around the Anglosphere. So he seemed like a good person, a keynote speaker

00:02:14.160 at the convention, someone very aware of this country, to bring in and talk about that. Are we having a

00:02:20.040 conservative moment? What is Pierre Poliev bringing to the table that is attracting voters? And what can

00:02:25.460 we learn from parties like his, the UK Conservative Party, which seems to be in a bit of trouble right

00:02:33.300 now after 13 years in government? We spoke to Daniel Hannan from Quebec City. Lord Hannan, welcome to

00:02:39.780 Canada. How are you enjoying Quebec City?

00:02:41.960 Who wouldn't enjoy Quebec City, Brian? I mean, I've just been looking around the headquarters of the

00:02:48.040 Royal 22nd, the famous, famous Van Doos, who won eight Victoria Crosses at Amiens, probably turned

00:02:53.600 the course of the whole war, the first time the Germans had broken and run, and they were running 0.58

00:02:57.420 from Canadian troops. And what a, you know, I feel English Canada could learn a thing or two about

00:03:03.920 taking pride in your identity and history from Quebecers.

00:03:08.620 Absolutely, we could. It's, it's been some time since you and I spoke, I don't, you were not a lord,

00:03:14.940 you were not appointed to the House of Lords. So before we get into Canadian politics and all of

00:03:19.740 that, what's it like being a lord, Daniel?

00:03:23.960 Well, we are, so we're the upper, upper house, right? And we're...

00:03:28.040 Yeah, the equivalent of our Senate.

00:03:30.120 The equivalent of your Senate. And I'll tell you, actually, do you know one thing which I

00:03:32.920 haven't really appreciated, but which I'm a strong believer in now? We are, we get a kind of

00:03:39.360 per diem when we're there, but we've got, we're not given a salary. So the expectation is that you

00:03:44.320 carry on doing whatever you were already doing for a living. And I wonder whether this isn't

00:03:50.280 a model that could be more widely applied, right? How many parliaments would be improved

00:03:56.460 if we had citizen legislators who, you know, were doing whatever, you know, were carrying on being

00:04:03.120 teachers or plumbers or solicitors or whatever it was, and then doing this as a kind of, as a

00:04:08.740 privilege rather than as a full-time occupation, which makes them completely reliant on the state?

00:04:13.700 I, I feel that it would, it would kind of give us slightly more balanced governments.

00:04:17.640 I, I, you know, I, I can think of a few, uh, smaller U.S. states that, you know, uh, practice

00:04:23.520 something similar, not quite the same, but similar where it tends to be...

00:04:27.240 And one, and one very big U.S. state, right? Which does it, uh, which is Texas, which is getting

00:04:32.980 the most immigration from every other state and booming and so on. It's, it's not a bad thing. 1.00

00:04:38.940 Let me ask you, uh, you're in Quebec City because you're speaking at the Conservative Convention.

00:04:43.200 And, um, I'll ask you what the convention's been like in a little bit, but, uh, you are a,

00:04:50.360 a firm believer in Pierre Polyev. Uh, you wrote about him during the Conservative leadership race.

00:04:58.400 How is, uh, a man from England who has served as a member of the European Parliament, who has,

00:05:05.060 uh, you know, been a, a columnist for British media, how do you know so much about Pierre

00:05:10.140 Polyev, and why are you convinced that he's what Canada needs, you foreigner, you? 0.99

00:05:15.420 Yeah, no, I really am convinced. Well, first of all, come on, I mean, you guys to us at least

00:05:20.060 are not really foreigners, you're, you're family. But let me put it like this. I, I may be the only

00:05:27.120 person in the world who can say this because Stephen Harper once said to me a, an absolutely

00:05:31.420 hard rule of politics is that every leader is disappointed in his successor, like whatever

00:05:36.900 the country, whatever the party. So I may be the only person who can say that I'm very proud

00:05:40.980 to number as friends, all of the recent Canadian Conservative leaders, Stephen Harper, uh, and

00:05:49.040 Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole and Pierre. But let's be honest, the other two never really,

00:05:55.460 the intervening two never had a, uh, a shot at it because Trudeau had inherited such a great

00:06:02.200 economic legacy from the Harper government, you know, falling taxes, budget surplus, low crime,

00:06:10.320 secure borders, government that was working for the people. It takes quite a long time to burn

00:06:15.460 through that, right? You can, you can dash off the edge of the cliff like Wile E. Coyote with your legs

00:06:21.260 spinning around. It takes a while. And that's the moment that we've reached now, which is why I feel

00:06:25.140 that Pierre is in with a shot for the first time. But that's not really the case for Pierre. That's

00:06:31.340 like a, that's the case against Trudeau. I think Pierre is just extraordinary in his insight,

00:06:38.340 instinct and ability. I see a contrast between Justin Trudeau, who is a guy from a, a very privileged

00:06:47.680 background who's had everything easy, but who actually turned out to be quite mediocre when

00:06:51.240 things got rough. I mean, he was, he was fine as a fair weather prime minister, you know, telegenic,

00:06:57.160 good looking. Don't know why he has that thing about putting on so much makeup, but you know,

00:07:01.960 fine until, until things got tough. Pierre is the opposite. Pierre has come from a very ordinary

00:07:08.020 background. A lot of people I think would relate to it, you know, delivering newspapers when he was a

00:07:12.400 kid in, in suburban Calgary, but he is extraordinary in his analysis. And I was watching him when he was

00:07:19.260 on the budgets committee or finance committee, whatever it was called here, grilling all the

00:07:23.000 central bank governors back in the lockdown in, in like April, May, June of 2020 saying, what's

00:07:29.260 going to happen with the inflation? Why are we printing all this money? What's the plan B if the

00:07:34.000 inflation takes off? And they were all saying, ah, it's not going to be any inflation. No, the problem is

00:07:37.600 going to be deflation. No, you don't know what you're talking about. So I mean, this is the guy who got the

00:07:42.080 diagnosis, right? He's got the prescription, right? He's got a plan to get back to a country where people 1.00

00:07:46.840 can, you know, earn decent money and afford a house. I wish we had politicians like, I wish we could clone

00:07:54.460 him and have him in other countries. Well, I'll ask you about Britain in a little while. But, you know, just

00:07:59.120 as the Conservative convention's going on, we get this jobs report that shows, okay, job creation's going

00:08:10.160 well. 40,000 jobs added. But we added 103,000 new people to the country last month. And that's just

00:08:18.560 working age 15 and older. And we're in the middle of a housing crisis that's driven by the lack of

00:08:24.060 supply. We don't have enough houses for the people that are here already. We're adding a middle-sized

00:08:30.160 city in a month. One thing you are not short of here is land, right? I mean, Canada is the second

00:08:37.620 largest country in the world. We have constraints in the UK, sadly. You do not. It takes a real

00:08:44.460 organizing genius to have created a housing shortage in a country the size of this one. And by the way,

00:08:50.440 a labour shortage, I mean, one of the things that is extraordinary, and which I like to think that

00:08:54.920 Pierre has a plan for again, is how many qualified immigrants here are not able to work because of 1.00

00:09:02.840 what Pierre calls the gatekeepers, right? In other words, all the producer interests and the needless

00:09:09.700 bureaucracies designed to hurt consumers by keeping out competition. So it is crazy in this country that

00:09:16.280 you have immigrant doctors working as Uber drivers, that you have, you know, scientists, teachers kind of

00:09:21.660 working as, you know, sweeping the floor in barbers. If we could just move to a more immediate

00:09:30.900 recognition of people's qualifications, everybody would win. Well, what we've got right now, and what

00:09:36.060 we didn't have when my parents came here, was these organizations that act more like feudal societies of

00:09:44.640 keeping people out, rather than just being regulators. And so they're not there to regulate

00:09:51.580 the profession or the trade. They're there to make sure that there's a scarcity of that profession or

00:09:57.140 trade so that the people get paid more. Oh, but we're short of doctors, or we're short of nurses,

00:10:01.980 we're short of electricians. Oh, well, you know, we're going to keep them out. And that's been going

00:10:07.120 on for a long time. And I think it's good to hear somebody at the federal level talking about that,

00:10:12.160 because we go around the world and we sell the dream of coming to Canada. And then you get here

00:10:16.960 and you find out there's no houses, and you can't do your job. From your mouth to God's ear, Brian. I

00:10:22.440 mean, okay, you say we've had this problem for a long time. We have. Yes, indeed, it is an intrinsic

00:10:27.180 problem, right? Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations talks about people from the same trade or profession

00:10:32.200 never get together, even for merriment or diversion, but it ends in some conspiracy to raise prices or

00:10:38.120 disadvantage the public completely. There's nothing new about that, right? Of course, if you are

00:10:41.860 doctor, teacher, whatever, you want the most advantageous position for yourself. I don't

00:10:48.020 blame people for that. But the role of the politician, because no one else can do it is

00:10:52.520 to stand up for the consumer, right? And to make sure that all these organizations are working for

00:10:57.700 the rest of us, rather than just for themselves. And it is really encouraging to hear a politician

00:11:04.120 doing that. I mean, look, I don't want to be a kind of come over all teenage girl fan here.

00:11:09.600 But I look at how Pierre has already transformed the demographics of his party, the way he's

00:11:17.140 attracted all these young people, the way he's attracted all these settlers from other places

00:11:21.500 who, for exactly the reason you say, feel that their dream of Canada is being thwarted by

00:11:27.340 bureaucracy, the way he's revolutionized his party support among the working people that Canada

00:11:33.820 depends on, right? The people who drive things, dig things, make things, right? And I think if he's

00:11:40.340 done that in opposition, what could he be like as prime minister? How amazing to have a conservative

00:11:46.360 leader who's managed to get ahead with young people, because he's telling the truth about the

00:11:51.920 situation that this generation has been screwed, that the people who paid the highest price for the

00:11:56.780 lockdown, for a disease that was of no threat to them at all, have now come out and been presented

00:12:01.560 with a bill for the whole bloody thing, and then can't get on the housing ladder because the central

00:12:05.880 bank is acting like an ATM machine on behalf of a spendthrift government. How brilliant to have a

00:12:11.720 conservative politician who's been able to turn monetary policy into a popular cause, right? And if he can

00:12:17.840 do that in opposition, I would love to see him in office. Let me ask you about the fact that you

00:12:23.860 mentioned that he's attracting people from all walks of life, from different backgrounds. I'm just trying

00:12:32.260 to pull up the poll here now in front of me. Abacus data looked at who you're supporting based on

00:12:39.280 what kind of job you do. And for people in, oh, here it is now. We know that according to Abacus,

00:12:48.320 conservatives are about 41%. Frontline retail, 34%. Public services, 39%. Service sectors,

00:12:57.540 private and not-for-profit, 38%. But trades, manufacturing, and transportation, 51% backing

00:13:05.240 the conservatives to 20% for the liberals, 14% for the NDP. I can't remember the last time a Canadian

00:13:12.940 politician got over 51% of anything. That is a staggering figure. How does that relate to what

00:13:20.400 the British conservatives did several years ago? Mainly, I would argue under Boris Johnson,

00:13:27.220 but perhaps you can correct me on that, where you went and said, okay, we need to talk to these people,

00:13:35.320 the people that do the everyday jobs that get overlooked, the people that used to be assumed

00:13:41.300 were labor voters. Is Pierre running a similar plan to what Johnston did in the UK all those years ago?

00:13:50.900 Yeah. I mean, so first of all, there is no dishonor in resting on the support of the people

00:13:56.900 who actually get stuff done and make things, right? I mean, the people, you and I talk for a living,

00:14:02.720 right? But a country rests on the people who say little but do much. And it's fantastic to have 0.54

00:14:16.180 connected with a majority of working people with, as you say, numbers that politicians in other

00:14:24.120 countries would kill for. But yeah, I think you're right, Brian. I think this is kind of a global

00:14:28.160 phenomenon, right? It's a realignment in that it used to be that parties of the left spoke for

00:14:35.800 industrialized labor and parties of the right were, you know, rural and whatever. I mean,

00:14:42.600 that world is gone. There's very, very few people now who, you know, the number of people who work in

00:14:48.040 these mass workforces as steel workers or miners is small. People, when we talk about working people now,

00:14:53.600 they are much more likely to be self-employed or working in small companies. And so the kind of

00:15:01.720 corporatist message of the left doesn't really connect in the way that it would have done. You

00:15:07.640 know, I look at my kids who range in age from seven to 21. I don't think any of them is ever going to

00:15:12.920 have a job, as you and I understood that word in the 20th century, right? I think they're going to go

00:15:17.460 through life constantly re-skilling and freelancing and adapting to accelerating technology. And so

00:15:24.980 trade union-based parties of the left really seem literally to belong, as they do, to another

00:15:31.680 century. And this is an opportunity that conservatives around the world have taken to appeal to people on

00:15:37.920 cultural issues. And, you know, I'm saying this from the outside as a friend of Canada and a friend

00:15:43.900 of Canadian democracy. But the kind of identity politics phenomenon has gone further here than

00:15:50.980 almost anywhere else, especially among broadcast media and academics. The cancel culture, the

00:15:57.320 intolerance, the obsession with racial issues. To have a leader who says this is a post-national

00:16:04.560 state, there's no core Canadian identity, you know. And I think that has, you know, that has left a lot of

00:16:11.440 people thinking, well, hang on, wait a minute. There is a nation here. We're not just a government

00:16:15.600 with a population attached. There is a Canadian nation. And not just any nation, right? It's a

00:16:21.100 pretty decent nation, which has achieved some pretty good things. It was on the right side in the two

00:16:25.100 world wars, on the right side in the Cold War. It's exported freedom. You know, our children are not

00:16:30.700 just a random collection of individuals who are going to get a decaffeinated passport with snowflakes on it,

00:16:35.120 right? There is something here that is, it doesn't matter where our parents were born, there's

00:16:40.880 something when you come here that should be the common inheritance of every Canadian, and a pretty

00:16:46.020 darned good inheritance it is.

00:16:49.620 So you think that conservatives can win on the cultural issues, that when you're attracting these 0.78

00:16:57.020 people who are private sector workers in trade unions, you know, the skilled laborers, the skilled

00:17:04.160 trades, is it economic issues that attract them? Because that's how, you know, at the provincial

00:17:10.960 level in Ontario, the Ford government has gone about it. They've basically said, well, the other

00:17:16.220 guys don't want to build anything. They don't want to build highways. They don't, they don't want to

00:17:19.600 build infrastructure. They don't want to build homes. We do. And guess what you do? You build homes,

00:17:25.040 you build highways, you build infrastructure, we'll put you to work. That, that won the Ford

00:17:31.420 government, the support of trade unions, including the one my late father was part of, that I never

00:17:37.400 thought would have backed a Tory party. But do you think it's those issues? Or is it the cultural

00:17:43.460 issues? Is it both? Because to me, the NDP is now the, the party of the faculty club. They're not the

00:17:50.240 party of the trade union hall. They're the party of the faculty club. And I think they've lost their

00:17:54.520 way. So how is it that Pierre brings these folks in and keeps them as part of his coalition?

00:18:03.500 I think it is generally the economic issues, and especially at a time like this, when we are

00:18:09.120 wrestling with, you know, putting things back together after the lockdowns, which were needlessly

00:18:16.240 long and restrictive here. And so, understandably, the main pitch of any politician is going to be,

00:18:24.600 I will bring prices down, I'll bring taxes down, you'll keep more of your money, which I think,

00:18:29.360 you know, the Tories are doing pretty convincingly. And Pierre, as I say, has the

00:18:33.200 track record to prove this. Even among fairly woke younger voters, they still want to be able to fill

00:18:41.060 their car, you know, afford a house one day, you know. And so that's the primary message. But it

00:18:47.360 doesn't follow that you have nothing to say about, let's not call it culture wars, that's a kind of

00:18:53.640 imported Americanism, but let's call it patriotism, right? As recently as 2020, there were 10 statues of

00:19:03.720 Sir John A. Macdonald in this country. And now there are two, one in Toronto and one in Ottawa, and they are

00:19:09.600 under constant police protection, right? Now, what is it that Sir John has done that is such a crime?

00:19:17.640 Is it just being a dead white guy? Is it being a Tory? Or is it really, in the eyes of the people who 0.89

00:19:24.200 are vandalising his statue, that his crime was to have created this country in the first place?

00:19:29.480 And you see, I think there's been this overreach by some of the Wokies and this 1.00

00:19:36.060 unwillingness of the Liberal government to condemn them, which has created a space for people who

00:19:42.780 wouldn't have ever considered themselves as being on the right to say, well, hang on, this is crazy,

00:19:47.880 right? We can't trash all of the things that make our country distinctive. And at the same time,

00:19:55.720 you know, fire people who disagree, or persecute people who say something inconvenient, or, you know,

00:20:02.860 who say that, you know, women have uteruses or whatever. It was like, this may have been wrong,

00:20:08.440 but I saw a case, I think it was in British Columbia, of a teacher who was fired for saying

00:20:15.440 that the majority of the Indigenous children, the supposed genocide cases about, died of natural

00:20:22.600 causes, which, of course, is true.

00:20:24.580 Tuberculosis was the major cause.

00:20:27.800 Horrible disease.

00:20:28.520 I mean, a horrible, horrible thing, right? But, but that is not a genocide. And, you know,

00:20:35.000 it is, that story strikes me as one of the oddest things that you see this reported in the UK,

00:20:42.520 or in the US, other than a couple of shows like yours, it is utterly ignored here. The fact that

00:20:49.440 the other day, they found that there weren't these mass graves that, you know, had prompted all the

00:20:54.120 attacks on churches and so on. It's just unreported in any mainstream media here. And of course,

00:20:59.780 Canada is becoming like one of those Soviet countries where the dissidents had to get

00:21:03.020 something into a foreign newspaper to get it known, right? Because it was, it was, except that this is

00:21:07.740 all happening voluntarily. Now, that creates an understandable reaction from many sensible,

00:21:14.800 level-headed, middle-of-the-road people who don't see themselves at all as right-wing culture warriors,

00:21:19.380 but who just think, hang on, it cannot be, it's un-Canadian, right? To live in a country where

00:21:24.440 people are persecuted for saying something that's true.

00:21:27.920 All right, Daniel, we got to take a quick break. But when we come back, I want to ask you

00:21:31.880 about the state of the UK Conservative Party and the conservative movement. Are there warnings

00:21:38.300 for conservatives in this country? Because I, you know, I think we're having a conservative moment

00:21:44.000 here. Most of the premier's conservative. The, the federal, you know, government would change hands

00:21:49.860 if we had an election. But I look at what's going on with the UK Tories and it leaves me a little bit

00:21:55.500 worried. So we'll talk about that when we come back. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the

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00:22:25.720 learn more. Conditions apply. So things are going well for Canada's conservatives. You look at provinces

00:22:31.500 across the country, and most of them are held by a party that sits somewhere on the conservative side

00:22:37.840 of the spectrum. But in the United Kingdom, they've had a federal government that is

00:22:42.780 conservative, at least a name for quite some time. But they've gone through a lot of leaders,

00:22:48.040 they've gone through a lot of changes. And right now, looks like Labour is knocking at the door again.

00:22:56.020 Daniel, one friend said to me the other day, Labour is now running to the right of the UK Conservative

00:23:03.360 Party. Is that a fair assessment?

00:23:05.560 I'm not sure that is a fair assessment. Your introduction, I think is fair. You know,

00:23:13.880 I can read the opinion polls like everyone else. Labour is definitely ahead at the moment.

00:23:19.320 I think that has to do with, first of all, our having been in office for a long time,

00:23:23.620 we've had 13 years. And it's quite difficult to repress the time for a change argument when you've been in

00:23:31.640 for a long time. In the same way that even though, I remember when Stephen Harper lost the election

00:23:35.540 here, actually, most people thought that things were going pretty well, but that they'd still had

00:23:39.000 enough, right? So there's that, but there is the massive extra factor that we were the incumbents

00:23:46.020 during the pandemic, and the hangover that followed. Now, in general, being in office during the pandemic,

00:23:52.920 you benefited from a certain kind of swing to the incumbent, because of the crisis.

00:23:57.000 Being in office afterwards is a whole different thing. Because during the lockdowns, we and you

00:24:04.180 and every other country paid people to stay at home, and printed money to cover the difference.

00:24:10.600 If you like, we were borrowing from our future selves. And the moment has now come to repay some

00:24:16.800 of that money. Now, that is an unpopular message with people who, because of course, we must remember,

00:24:22.740 the vast majority of voters in every country were very enthusiastic supporters of lockdown.

00:24:27.540 Now, I suspect now, in the light of some of the data, they kind of regret that, on some level,

00:24:32.780 even if they don't admit it. But what they don't want to hear is that the lockdown that they supported

00:24:37.680 means that we dropped all this money that we now can't get back, and therefore that there have to be

00:24:41.960 tax rises or spending cuts, right? And that's the huge problem, that there's always going to be

00:24:50.980 a space in politics for the guy who comes along and offers sweet falsehoods over bitter truths,

00:24:59.260 who says, I've got a magic wand. I can make all this go away. The 500 billion pounds that we dropped

00:25:06.520 during the lockdown, don't worry about that, because I've got this magic wand called wealth tax or

00:25:10.920 windfall tax or something, and I can make it all go away. And actually, as whoever is in office next is

00:25:16.960 going to discover, that's not the case. We borrowed heavily. Our taxes are now very high.

00:25:22.240 Our borrowing is still carrying on. Eventually, we are going to have to allow spending to go back

00:25:27.360 to where it was pre-lockdown. And that's just a very, very unpopular thing, because human beings

00:25:34.080 are loss averse, and a lot of the supposedly contingent and emergency spending that we brought

00:25:41.640 in after 2020, people now dig in and defend it as though it was sort of an immemorial right.

00:25:45.960 The, you know, the spending in this country, obviously, the major pandemic spending dropped

00:25:54.780 off, but it continued on. Well, other spending continued on. We're still up dramatically compared

00:26:05.260 to what we were before, well above the rate of inflation, and the COVID programs have stopped.

00:26:09.880 And if you suggest that maybe a 30% to 40% increase in the number of civil servants is

00:26:18.080 unsustainable, well, you want granny to die in a snowbank. How dare you? And I'm sure it's the 0.90

00:26:26.060 same for the voters in the UK.

00:26:28.280 A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And people say, oh, you want, you know, you want this kind

00:26:32.680 of randy and skeletal state. Do you know what? I would be, given where we are now, I'd be happy

00:26:38.700 with the Tony Blair, Gordon Brown spending levels, right? That would be a massive improvement

00:26:42.820 on where we are. Just to go back to where we were in January 2020 would be a massive

00:26:48.540 improvement. And yet it is effectively unthinkable. There's this assumption that, of course, like

00:26:56.400 in Canada, the furlough spending and the emergency grants have stopped, but the health and welfare

00:27:02.040 spending shot up during the crisis. And there is an assumption that instead of it dropping

00:27:06.920 back taxes now have to shoot up to meet it. And I just don't think that's sustainable. We're not

00:27:11.560 going to be able to be solvent as a country unless we restore order and sanity to our public finances.

00:27:19.300 And in a way, it doesn't matter who's in office, right? Unless that's tackled, we are headed towards

00:27:25.260 a bad place. It may be that your friend who you were quoting earlier, who said Labour are running to

00:27:31.580 the right of the Tories. I mean, I don't think that is true, but it is at least conceivable that a Labour

00:27:38.480 government finding itself in office and recognising the nature of this problem might be able to

00:27:45.500 undertake some reforms that a Conservative government couldn't do, right? So a Labour government could

00:27:50.420 more easily reform our healthcare system, could more easily reform our welfare system, you know,

00:27:56.580 because it wouldn't be assumed that they were trying to kill your granny. They could probably raise

00:28:01.000 our pension age or allow it to rise in line with rising longevity, or at least stop increasing the

00:28:07.100 pension, which is very hard for a Tory party, because of where its electoral support is. They

00:28:13.520 could make it actually paradoxically easier to build houses in some of the places where we need to build

00:28:18.580 houses, where there are very articulate middle class Tory voters who are quite good at stopping it all.

00:28:24.440 So there are things that a left of centre government could do, right, to stimulate some reform. And that,

00:28:33.500 you know, a little bit, I guess, you know much more about it than I do, but a little bit like Paul Martin

00:28:38.480 was able to do some things coming from the centre left in terms of beginning...

00:28:42.540 Budgetary reforms, yeah.

00:28:45.240 Correct.

00:28:45.540 The Tory party in the UK has been in office since 2010. Biggest chunk, you had David Cameron there,

00:28:54.560 fairly stable government. Then you went to Theresa May, then quickly to Bojo. Bojo seemed to stick

00:29:01.140 around for a bit, but then it was less trust. Now it's Rishi Sunak. Is there stability now? Because,

00:29:09.060 you know, for those of us on the outside, we're wondering, okay, well, when's the next PM going to show up?

00:29:15.540 Yes, I don't think there's any threat to Rishi Sunak. But the instability you talk about,

00:29:20.800 I think, was a function of two very destabilising factors. First, the realignment that we talked

00:29:27.980 about earlier, which was crystallised around Brexit in the UK. And second, the lockdowns and the response

00:29:35.300 to the lockdowns. And, you know, ultimately, that was what did for Boris. It wasn't Brexit or tax or

00:29:43.180 whatever. It was, you know, it was the peculiar conditions created by COVID.

00:29:49.320 Anger over the parties and such after or during COVID made things untenable.

00:29:55.080 Yeah, those parties. I mean, you know, I mean, Boris hates parties, right? He's the least party-going

00:30:02.120 guy. I mean, the irony of it being, but, you know, when you, when you saw what it was, he

00:30:07.940 was thanking somebody who'd worked for him. It wasn't a party, as you or I would understand

00:30:12.360 it, of inviting people, right? But, but all of that is, all of that in a way was a kind

00:30:18.980 of lightning rod. The real problem for Boris, I think, was this. Boris was, people knew, people

00:30:27.380 had his number already, right? People knew what they were voting for. They were voting for this

00:30:31.280 kind of false staffian figure, the rabelaisian figure, this, this, this rule breaker, this guy

00:30:38.620 who transcended the petty norms. And they got exactly what they voted for. They, and it was that side

00:30:46.620 of Boris that broke the deadlock in Parliament, delivered Brexit, won the 2019 election. It was that

00:30:52.640 side of Boris that led to the quickest vaccine procurement in the world, because he didn't

00:30:58.060 follow all the bureaucratic EU rules that everyone said at the time, oh, if you, if you, if you don't

00:31:01.860 join in the E program, the EU's program, you're going to be killing all these people. Actually,

00:31:05.900 we were so far ahead of the EU that they actually closed the, or threatened to close the border in

00:31:10.280 annoyance with us. All of that, if you like, was people getting what they were voting for. But then

00:31:15.420 the mood changed. The mood of the country changed because of lockdown. People became much more

00:31:21.600 intolerant, much more puritanical, prissy, censorious. And poor old Boris suddenly found 0.78

00:31:30.580 himself as a kind of cavalier in a suddenly roundhead country, or as a, as a, as a Toby

00:31:36.940 Belch in a, in a, in a country full of malvolios. And his character hadn't changed, but the mood 0.93

00:31:42.540 of the nation had. No one was in the mood for jokes anymore. And in the end, I think that was what

00:31:46.800 brought him down. Is the country in good hands with Rishi Sunak?

00:31:52.440 Yeah. One of the ironies is that Rishi is seen widely among conservatives overseas, particularly

00:31:59.520 as kind of a, uh, uh, whatever the British equivalent of a rhino is. A wet. A wet, a panty

00:32:06.320 waist kind of, you know, which really is just impossible to reconcile with the facts as we know

00:32:13.280 them. On all the key issues, he is to the right of Boris. Um, you know, Boris, uh, wavered until

00:32:19.940 the last minute deciding how to vote on Brexit. Rishi had been writing Eurosceptic articles as a

00:32:24.940 schoolboy. You know, he never hesitated. Uh, Boris was very pro-immigration, you know, boasted about

00:32:30.720 giving amnesties to, to, to, uh, illegals when he was a mayor of London. Rishi is much, much tougher

00:32:37.020 on immigration. Uh, Boris was very green. He loved all this, you know, net zero stuff, kept bringing 1.00

00:32:45.460 forward the dates for phasing out engines and stuff. Rishi was always very sceptical of the cost.

00:32:50.720 And the issue that Rishi resigned over as chancellor, which in the end is what brought Boris down,

00:32:55.940 it wasn't anything to do with parties or anything. It was, it was that he was fed up with having to sign

00:33:00.400 off on all these massive unfunded spending increases because Boris is a great spender. Now I love

00:33:05.300 Boris, you know, he, he's, he was a friend of mine for many years. Uh, I voted for him as leader

00:33:10.640 because I thought he would be popular, uh, because of the sort of largeness of his character. And I,

00:33:16.020 I don't regret that. I think if, if he was still leader, we'd be doing better, but let's not pretend

00:33:19.820 for a second that Boris was a fiscal conservative, right? I mean, this is the paradox. Rishi is actually

00:33:25.440 a much better conservative by any normal definition. So why, why do people not see that? It's a really,

00:33:31.040 really interesting question. Why do people, uh, perceive him as being somehow not, you know,

00:33:36.860 it's a little bit like, why do people see Trump as being the proper conservative when he's obviously

00:33:41.620 to the left of a lot of the other candidates on a lot of the issues. I think it's because

00:33:47.320 we live in an age when the vibes trump the policies. Oh yes, absolutely.

00:33:53.820 That's all. What, what, what you or I might pretentiously call the gestalt trumps the,

00:33:58.840 so the classic example of this was the, the, the Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak leadership contest,

00:34:05.820 um, in which I supported Liz Truss, um, who I, you know, uh, knew and liked. Um, but here's the

00:34:14.060 irony. I mean, among the party members, I would say that three quarters of the ones who had voted

00:34:18.720 leave in the referendum voted for Liz Truss, who had voted remain, right? And three quarters of the

00:34:24.360 ones who voted remain voted for Rishi Sunak, who had voted leave. Why? Because Liz looked like a 1.00

00:34:30.500 lever, sounded like a lever, right? She said blunt things in a provincial accent. She annoyed all the 1.00

00:34:35.100 right people, right? Whereas Rishi with his thin ties and his tight suit and his immaculate hair and all

00:34:41.120 other. Rishi looks like the CEO of a multinational corporation and people make their sort of tribal

00:34:49.560 determination on the basis of these vibes. And then they reverse engineer the politics.

00:34:54.340 Let's talk about the issue of Brexit. Um, you came to my attention, uh, with that magnificent speech

00:35:01.220 in the European parliament addressed to Gordon Brown, um, complete dressing down. It was magnificent.

00:35:07.000 And we got to know each other after that, but I was long on the Brexit side. I thought it was the

00:35:14.080 right thing to do. Most of the commentary that I hear now, as like before says it was a horrible

00:35:20.700 move. They never should have done it. It's, it's been all downside. Um, how do you view it as someone

00:35:29.260 that championed this cause for years that was elected to go to sit in the European parliament to say,

00:35:34.240 let us go? How do you view it now? I mean, look, the, the bottom line is, is we, we could argue,

00:35:41.760 I could fill up a whole other interview talking about the things that have gone well, the, the,

00:35:47.580 the, the, the trade deals we've got, the Pacific tilt, the AUKUS deal. But the bottom line is this,

00:35:52.220 we have outperformed, we have grown faster than the EU. Whether you start counting in 2016,

00:36:01.420 when the referendum happened, or whether you start counting in 2020, despite a worse lockdown,

00:36:05.780 we've outperformed the EU. So whatever problems we've got, plainly, if Brexit is the factor,

00:36:13.720 um, Brexit must be deemed more successful for us than having stayed in right now. I cannot prove to

00:36:20.420 you that if we'd stayed in, we wouldn't have grown even faster. Of course I can't, no one,

00:36:23.900 no one can prove a negative or a counterfactual, but the, the, the, the sort of disastrous scenarios

00:36:31.220 that we were given, not just by remain campaigners, but by the bank of England, the treasury, OECD,

00:36:36.900 the IMF, they have conspicuously failed to materialize. Trouble is that those people cannot

00:36:41.280 now let go. They keep trying to press all the facts into their earlier predictions. I had really

00:36:46.140 underestimated, and I blame myself for this now, I had really underestimated, not just the

00:36:52.180 institutional resistance from our officials and civil servants, but the cultural resistance from our

00:36:58.360 media, our academics, our celebrities, and so on. This absolute determination to turn every bit of

00:37:06.800 bad news into a, because of Brexit, and then dismiss every bit of good news as despite Brexit, right?

00:37:11.840 Which they are still doing after more than seven years, uh, absurdly, right? And then in fact,

00:37:18.740 there's something particularly delicious, which is that we just, uh, about a month ago,

00:37:23.160 the Office of National Statistics massively uprated our figures, revised our growth figures

00:37:29.740 from, from 2020 upwardly, retrospectively. Uh, now, you know, these things happen. An awful lot of

00:37:37.140 people, including the Financial Times, Economist, the BBC, the Labour Party, half the Tory, Wets, and

00:37:40.980 almost every foreign correspondent had been saying, if Britain has been growing more slowly than some of

00:37:47.160 the others, it is purely because of Brexit. Okay, guys, well then, by your own logic, if it's all

00:37:51.600 purely because of Brexit, now that you can see that we've been growing faster than France, Germany,

00:37:55.820 Italy, whatever, presumably, by your own logic, you have to say that Brexit has been a big success.

00:38:01.260 There are things we should have been doing. We've been much too slow to sign ambitious trade deals.

00:38:06.880 We've been much too slow to deregulate. And like I say, we've got this massive problem of this

00:38:12.000 growth of the state because of the lockdowns. However, the fact of being a free, independent,

00:38:16.900 sovereign country that we can vote for the people who pass our laws and sack them if we don't like

00:38:20.840 it, that there's no, there's no world in which that is not a good thing and a massive improvement

00:38:26.200 on where we work. Well, and you're not having people tell you to get rid of your fast tea kettles

00:38:30.180 or to start selling your beer by the leader. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, we may, of course, have

00:38:36.560 our own officials who will try and come up with whatever new inanities of their own. You know,

00:38:41.660 one of the reasons why the debate has changed is paradoxically is precisely because we're

00:38:46.200 out now. So when we were a member, every new EU directive of that kind, you know, the kettles

00:38:54.200 of the wrong wattage or whatever, was a was a big story. And that had an impact on public

00:39:00.120 opinion, or indeed, every, every story about something going badly in the EU, like if there

00:39:04.940 was a breakdown of the immigration system, or if there was a downturn somewhere or debt

00:39:09.060 crisis, that was our problem when we were in the EU. And therefore, it was front page

00:39:13.020 news. Now, if there is now a downturn in Germany or something, you know, you don't care, you

00:39:18.300 can find it in the inside pages, but it's not a big problem for us anymore. And for that

00:39:22.500 reason, the the if you like, the euro skeptic case just isn't being reported in the way that

00:39:28.780 it was when it was still a problem. Maybe, maybe if here probably have gets in, he can

00:39:35.280 fast track a proper trade deal with the UK, and we can get back to I am really, I'm really

00:39:41.140 optimistic. And by the way, not just a bilateral deal, I would love to see the Kansuk policy,

00:39:47.740 Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK together, with not just free trade, but free, free movement

00:39:52.940 of labor, free movement of workers. This is still Tory party policy became Tory party policy

00:40:01.040 under Andrew Scheer is Erin O'Toole's big thing. Pierre has gone has not changed the policies hugely

00:40:06.360 popular among all the activists here in Quebec City. But you know what, it's even become liberal

00:40:10.420 policy. I saw at the last liberal convention that they'd adopted it too. So this is like literally

00:40:16.560 the most uncontroversial thing that hasn't yet been done that could easily be done. So, you

00:40:22.660 know, let's hope that it'll be one of the early acts of a poly of government.

00:40:26.960 All right, Daniel, thanks so much for your time.

00:40:29.520 Thank you, Brian.

00:40:30.760 Full Comment is a post media podcast. My name is Brian Lilly, your host. This episode was produced

00:40:35.480 by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. Again,

00:40:41.400 remember, you can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Amazon Music,

00:40:46.020 listen through your Alexa, enable devices, the app, help us out by giving us a rating or a review.

00:40:52.660 And tell your friends about us. Thanks for listening. Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

Full Comment - September 11, 2023

The working class inevitably becomes conservative

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