The working class inevitably becomes conservative
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Summary
Is Canada having a conservative moment? Is there a Conservative moment in Canada, and if so, what's driving it? And what can we learn from people in other jurisdictions where they ve had long-standing conservative governments? Our next guest is someone who was a keynote speaker at the Conservative National Policy Convention in Quebec City.
Transcript
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for what you need. TD, ready for you. Is Canada having a conservative moment? If you haven't heard,
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the Conservative Party, the Federal Conservative Party, just held their National Policy Convention
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in Quebec City, it was held against the backdrop of polls showing leads of between 12% and 14%. Yes,
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there was the one poll that said they're tied, but for the most part, a strong trend in favor of
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Pierre Polyev and the Federal Conservatives over Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. This comes at
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the same time as most of the provinces are now governed by center-right parties. So is there
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a conservative moment in Canada? And if so, what's driving it? And what can we learn from
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people in other jurisdictions where they've had long-standing conservative governments?
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Our next guest is someone who was a speaker, one of the headline speakers at the Conservative
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Convention on the weekend. But before we get to him, I want to remind you that you can subscribe
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to this podcast and please do hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, leave a comment,
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share this on social media where you're still allowed to, do whatever you can to help spread the
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word. Because I think we bring good conversations here and we want to share that with everyone.
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Well, Daniel Hannan is someone who is currently in the House of Lords in the UK. His official title
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is Lord Hannan of Kinsclair. Back when I first got to know him, he was just a member of the European
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Parliament campaigning to get the UK out of the European Union. He had a famous speech of dressing
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down of Gordon Brown in the EU Parliament that brought him to the attention of conservatives around
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the world. And since then, I've met up with him at the Conservative Political Action Convention in
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Washington, DC, at the Manning Conference in Ottawa. And he has someone who spends a lot of time looking
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at conservative politics around the Anglosphere. So he seemed like a good person, a keynote speaker
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at the convention, someone very aware of this country, to bring in and talk about that. Are we having a
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conservative moment? What is Pierre Poliev bringing to the table that is attracting voters? And what can
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we learn from parties like his, the UK Conservative Party, which seems to be in a bit of trouble right
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now after 13 years in government? We spoke to Daniel Hannan from Quebec City. Lord Hannan, welcome to
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Who wouldn't enjoy Quebec City, Brian? I mean, I've just been looking around the headquarters of the
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Royal 22nd, the famous, famous Van Doos, who won eight Victoria Crosses at Amiens, probably turned
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the course of the whole war, the first time the Germans had broken and run, and they were running
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from Canadian troops. And what a, you know, I feel English Canada could learn a thing or two about
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taking pride in your identity and history from Quebecers.
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Absolutely, we could. It's, it's been some time since you and I spoke, I don't, you were not a lord,
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you were not appointed to the House of Lords. So before we get into Canadian politics and all of
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Well, we are, so we're the upper, upper house, right? And we're...
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The equivalent of your Senate. And I'll tell you, actually, do you know one thing which I
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haven't really appreciated, but which I'm a strong believer in now? We are, we get a kind of
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per diem when we're there, but we've got, we're not given a salary. So the expectation is that you
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carry on doing whatever you were already doing for a living. And I wonder whether this isn't
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a model that could be more widely applied, right? How many parliaments would be improved
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if we had citizen legislators who, you know, were doing whatever, you know, were carrying on being
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teachers or plumbers or solicitors or whatever it was, and then doing this as a kind of, as a
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privilege rather than as a full-time occupation, which makes them completely reliant on the state?
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I, I feel that it would, it would kind of give us slightly more balanced governments.
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I, I, you know, I, I can think of a few, uh, smaller U.S. states that, you know, uh, practice
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something similar, not quite the same, but similar where it tends to be...
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And one, and one very big U.S. state, right? Which does it, uh, which is Texas, which is getting
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the most immigration from every other state and booming and so on. It's, it's not a bad thing.
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Let me ask you, uh, you're in Quebec City because you're speaking at the Conservative Convention.
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And, um, I'll ask you what the convention's been like in a little bit, but, uh, you are a,
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a firm believer in Pierre Polyev. Uh, you wrote about him during the Conservative leadership race.
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How is, uh, a man from England who has served as a member of the European Parliament, who has,
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uh, you know, been a, a columnist for British media, how do you know so much about Pierre
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Polyev, and why are you convinced that he's what Canada needs, you foreigner, you?
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Yeah, no, I really am convinced. Well, first of all, come on, I mean, you guys to us at least
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are not really foreigners, you're, you're family. But let me put it like this. I, I may be the only
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person in the world who can say this because Stephen Harper once said to me a, an absolutely
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hard rule of politics is that every leader is disappointed in his successor, like whatever
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the country, whatever the party. So I may be the only person who can say that I'm very proud
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to number as friends, all of the recent Canadian Conservative leaders, Stephen Harper, uh, and
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Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole and Pierre. But let's be honest, the other two never really,
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the intervening two never had a, uh, a shot at it because Trudeau had inherited such a great
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economic legacy from the Harper government, you know, falling taxes, budget surplus, low crime,
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secure borders, government that was working for the people. It takes quite a long time to burn
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through that, right? You can, you can dash off the edge of the cliff like Wile E. Coyote with your legs
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spinning around. It takes a while. And that's the moment that we've reached now, which is why I feel
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that Pierre is in with a shot for the first time. But that's not really the case for Pierre. That's
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like a, that's the case against Trudeau. I think Pierre is just extraordinary in his insight,
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instinct and ability. I see a contrast between Justin Trudeau, who is a guy from a, a very privileged
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background who's had everything easy, but who actually turned out to be quite mediocre when
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things got rough. I mean, he was, he was fine as a fair weather prime minister, you know, telegenic,
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good looking. Don't know why he has that thing about putting on so much makeup, but you know,
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fine until, until things got tough. Pierre is the opposite. Pierre has come from a very ordinary
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background. A lot of people I think would relate to it, you know, delivering newspapers when he was a
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kid in, in suburban Calgary, but he is extraordinary in his analysis. And I was watching him when he was
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on the budgets committee or finance committee, whatever it was called here, grilling all the
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central bank governors back in the lockdown in, in like April, May, June of 2020 saying, what's
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going to happen with the inflation? Why are we printing all this money? What's the plan B if the
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inflation takes off? And they were all saying, ah, it's not going to be any inflation. No, the problem is
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going to be deflation. No, you don't know what you're talking about. So I mean, this is the guy who got the
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diagnosis, right? He's got the prescription, right? He's got a plan to get back to a country where people
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can, you know, earn decent money and afford a house. I wish we had politicians like, I wish we could clone
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him and have him in other countries. Well, I'll ask you about Britain in a little while. But, you know, just
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as the Conservative convention's going on, we get this jobs report that shows, okay, job creation's going
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well. 40,000 jobs added. But we added 103,000 new people to the country last month. And that's just
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working age 15 and older. And we're in the middle of a housing crisis that's driven by the lack of
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supply. We don't have enough houses for the people that are here already. We're adding a middle-sized
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city in a month. One thing you are not short of here is land, right? I mean, Canada is the second
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largest country in the world. We have constraints in the UK, sadly. You do not. It takes a real
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organizing genius to have created a housing shortage in a country the size of this one. And by the way,
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a labour shortage, I mean, one of the things that is extraordinary, and which I like to think that
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Pierre has a plan for again, is how many qualified immigrants here are not able to work because of
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what Pierre calls the gatekeepers, right? In other words, all the producer interests and the needless
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bureaucracies designed to hurt consumers by keeping out competition. So it is crazy in this country that
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you have immigrant doctors working as Uber drivers, that you have, you know, scientists, teachers kind of
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working as, you know, sweeping the floor in barbers. If we could just move to a more immediate
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recognition of people's qualifications, everybody would win. Well, what we've got right now, and what
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we didn't have when my parents came here, was these organizations that act more like feudal societies of
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keeping people out, rather than just being regulators. And so they're not there to regulate
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the profession or the trade. They're there to make sure that there's a scarcity of that profession or
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trade so that the people get paid more. Oh, but we're short of doctors, or we're short of nurses,
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we're short of electricians. Oh, well, you know, we're going to keep them out. And that's been going
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on for a long time. And I think it's good to hear somebody at the federal level talking about that,
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because we go around the world and we sell the dream of coming to Canada. And then you get here
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and you find out there's no houses, and you can't do your job. From your mouth to God's ear, Brian. I
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mean, okay, you say we've had this problem for a long time. We have. Yes, indeed, it is an intrinsic
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problem, right? Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations talks about people from the same trade or profession
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never get together, even for merriment or diversion, but it ends in some conspiracy to raise prices or
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disadvantage the public completely. There's nothing new about that, right? Of course, if you are
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doctor, teacher, whatever, you want the most advantageous position for yourself. I don't
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blame people for that. But the role of the politician, because no one else can do it is
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to stand up for the consumer, right? And to make sure that all these organizations are working for
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the rest of us, rather than just for themselves. And it is really encouraging to hear a politician
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doing that. I mean, look, I don't want to be a kind of come over all teenage girl fan here.
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But I look at how Pierre has already transformed the demographics of his party, the way he's
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attracted all these young people, the way he's attracted all these settlers from other places
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who, for exactly the reason you say, feel that their dream of Canada is being thwarted by
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bureaucracy, the way he's revolutionized his party support among the working people that Canada
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depends on, right? The people who drive things, dig things, make things, right? And I think if he's
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done that in opposition, what could he be like as prime minister? How amazing to have a conservative
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leader who's managed to get ahead with young people, because he's telling the truth about the
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situation that this generation has been screwed, that the people who paid the highest price for the
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lockdown, for a disease that was of no threat to them at all, have now come out and been presented
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with a bill for the whole bloody thing, and then can't get on the housing ladder because the central
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bank is acting like an ATM machine on behalf of a spendthrift government. How brilliant to have a
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conservative politician who's been able to turn monetary policy into a popular cause, right? And if he can
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do that in opposition, I would love to see him in office. Let me ask you about the fact that you
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mentioned that he's attracting people from all walks of life, from different backgrounds. I'm just trying
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to pull up the poll here now in front of me. Abacus data looked at who you're supporting based on
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what kind of job you do. And for people in, oh, here it is now. We know that according to Abacus,
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conservatives are about 41%. Frontline retail, 34%. Public services, 39%. Service sectors,
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private and not-for-profit, 38%. But trades, manufacturing, and transportation, 51% backing
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the conservatives to 20% for the liberals, 14% for the NDP. I can't remember the last time a Canadian
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politician got over 51% of anything. That is a staggering figure. How does that relate to what
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the British conservatives did several years ago? Mainly, I would argue under Boris Johnson,
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but perhaps you can correct me on that, where you went and said, okay, we need to talk to these people,
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the people that do the everyday jobs that get overlooked, the people that used to be assumed
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were labor voters. Is Pierre running a similar plan to what Johnston did in the UK all those years ago?
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Yeah. I mean, so first of all, there is no dishonor in resting on the support of the people
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who actually get stuff done and make things, right? I mean, the people, you and I talk for a living,
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right? But a country rests on the people who say little but do much. And it's fantastic to have
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connected with a majority of working people with, as you say, numbers that politicians in other
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countries would kill for. But yeah, I think you're right, Brian. I think this is kind of a global
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phenomenon, right? It's a realignment in that it used to be that parties of the left spoke for
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industrialized labor and parties of the right were, you know, rural and whatever. I mean,
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that world is gone. There's very, very few people now who, you know, the number of people who work in
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these mass workforces as steel workers or miners is small. People, when we talk about working people now,
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they are much more likely to be self-employed or working in small companies. And so the kind of
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corporatist message of the left doesn't really connect in the way that it would have done. You
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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
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have a job, as you and I understood that word in the 20th century, right? I think they're going to go
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through life constantly re-skilling and freelancing and adapting to accelerating technology. And so
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trade union-based parties of the left really seem literally to belong, as they do, to another
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century. And this is an opportunity that conservatives around the world have taken to appeal to people on
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cultural issues. And, you know, I'm saying this from the outside as a friend of Canada and a friend
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of Canadian democracy. But the kind of identity politics phenomenon has gone further here than
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almost anywhere else, especially among broadcast media and academics. The cancel culture, the
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intolerance, the obsession with racial issues. To have a leader who says this is a post-national
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state, there's no core Canadian identity, you know. And I think that has, you know, that has left a lot of
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people thinking, well, hang on, wait a minute. There is a nation here. We're not just a government
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with a population attached. There is a Canadian nation. And not just any nation, right? It's a
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pretty decent nation, which has achieved some pretty good things. It was on the right side in the two
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world wars, on the right side in the Cold War. It's exported freedom. You know, our children are not
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just a random collection of individuals who are going to get a decaffeinated passport with snowflakes on it,
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right? There is something here that is, it doesn't matter where our parents were born, there's
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something when you come here that should be the common inheritance of every Canadian, and a pretty
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So you think that conservatives can win on the cultural issues, that when you're attracting these
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people who are private sector workers in trade unions, you know, the skilled laborers, the skilled
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trades, is it economic issues that attract them? Because that's how, you know, at the provincial
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level in Ontario, the Ford government has gone about it. They've basically said, well, the other
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guys don't want to build anything. They don't want to build highways. They don't, they don't want to
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build infrastructure. They don't want to build homes. We do. And guess what you do? You build homes,
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you build highways, you build infrastructure, we'll put you to work. That, that won the Ford
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government, the support of trade unions, including the one my late father was part of, that I never
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thought would have backed a Tory party. But do you think it's those issues? Or is it the cultural
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issues? Is it both? Because to me, the NDP is now the, the party of the faculty club. They're not the
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party of the trade union hall. They're the party of the faculty club. And I think they've lost their
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way. So how is it that Pierre brings these folks in and keeps them as part of his coalition?
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I think it is generally the economic issues, and especially at a time like this, when we are
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wrestling with, you know, putting things back together after the lockdowns, which were needlessly
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long and restrictive here. And so, understandably, the main pitch of any politician is going to be,
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I will bring prices down, I'll bring taxes down, you'll keep more of your money, which I think,
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you know, the Tories are doing pretty convincingly. And Pierre, as I say, has the
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track record to prove this. Even among fairly woke younger voters, they still want to be able to fill
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their car, you know, afford a house one day, you know. And so that's the primary message. But it
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doesn't follow that you have nothing to say about, let's not call it culture wars, that's a kind of
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imported Americanism, but let's call it patriotism, right? As recently as 2020, there were 10 statues of
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Sir John A. Macdonald in this country. And now there are two, one in Toronto and one in Ottawa, and they are
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under constant police protection, right? Now, what is it that Sir John has done that is such a crime?
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Is it just being a dead white guy? Is it being a Tory? Or is it really, in the eyes of the people who
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are vandalising his statue, that his crime was to have created this country in the first place?
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And you see, I think there's been this overreach by some of the Wokies and this
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unwillingness of the Liberal government to condemn them, which has created a space for people who
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wouldn't have ever considered themselves as being on the right to say, well, hang on, this is crazy,
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right? We can't trash all of the things that make our country distinctive. And at the same time,
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you know, fire people who disagree, or persecute people who say something inconvenient, or, you know,
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who say that, you know, women have uteruses or whatever. It was like, this may have been wrong,
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but I saw a case, I think it was in British Columbia, of a teacher who was fired for saying
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that the majority of the Indigenous children, the supposed genocide cases about, died of natural
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I mean, a horrible, horrible thing, right? But, but that is not a genocide. And, you know,
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it is, that story strikes me as one of the oddest things that you see this reported in the UK,
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or in the US, other than a couple of shows like yours, it is utterly ignored here. The fact that
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the other day, they found that there weren't these mass graves that, you know, had prompted all the
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attacks on churches and so on. It's just unreported in any mainstream media here. And of course,
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Canada is becoming like one of those Soviet countries where the dissidents had to get
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something into a foreign newspaper to get it known, right? Because it was, it was, except that this is
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all happening voluntarily. Now, that creates an understandable reaction from many sensible,
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level-headed, middle-of-the-road people who don't see themselves at all as right-wing culture warriors,
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but who just think, hang on, it cannot be, it's un-Canadian, right? To live in a country where
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people are persecuted for saying something that's true.
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All right, Daniel, we got to take a quick break. But when we come back, I want to ask you
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about the state of the UK Conservative Party and the conservative movement. Are there warnings
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for conservatives in this country? Because I, you know, I think we're having a conservative moment
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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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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
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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.
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Daniel, one friend said to me the other day, Labour is now running to the right of the UK Conservative
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I'm not sure that is a fair assessment. Your introduction, I think is fair. You know,
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I can read the opinion polls like everyone else. Labour is definitely ahead at the moment.
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I think that has to do with, first of all, our having been in office for a long time,
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we've had 13 years. And it's quite difficult to repress the time for a change argument when you've been in
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for a long time. In the same way that even though, I remember when Stephen Harper lost the election
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here, actually, most people thought that things were going pretty well, but that they'd still had
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enough, right? So there's that, but there is the massive extra factor that we were the incumbents
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during the pandemic, and the hangover that followed. Now, in general, being in office during the pandemic,
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you benefited from a certain kind of swing to the incumbent, because of the crisis.
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Being in office afterwards is a whole different thing. Because during the lockdowns, we and you
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and every other country paid people to stay at home, and printed money to cover the difference.
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If you like, we were borrowing from our future selves. And the moment has now come to repay some
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of that money. Now, that is an unpopular message with people who, because of course, we must remember,
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the vast majority of voters in every country were very enthusiastic supporters of lockdown.
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Now, I suspect now, in the light of some of the data, they kind of regret that, on some level,
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even if they don't admit it. But what they don't want to hear is that the lockdown that they supported
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means that we dropped all this money that we now can't get back, and therefore that there have to be
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tax rises or spending cuts, right? And that's the huge problem, that there's always going to be
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a space in politics for the guy who comes along and offers sweet falsehoods over bitter truths,
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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
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...
00:28:45.540
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
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
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
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
00:34:30.500
lever, sounded like a lever, right? She said blunt things in a provincial accent. She annoyed all the
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.
00:40:30.760
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
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00:40:52.660
And tell your friends about us. Thanks for listening. Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.