The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 521. Reform, R＊pe Gangs and the Rot of the UK ｜ Matthew Goodwin

00:00:00.000 What we've been living through is an elite class imposing policies on everybody else,

00:00:04.140 the consequences of which they are not going to have to endure.

00:00:07.760 A trillion dollar cost net zero plan was passed through Westminster with 20 minutes of debate.

00:00:16.300 Mass uncontrolled immigration has fundamentally weakened Great Britain. 0.99

00:00:21.440 Boris Johnson did the opposite of what he promised voters he would do.

00:00:25.340 You want to just describe what you see as the reality of the rape gang situation in the UK?

00:00:31.760 Everyone around the world has heard of George Floyd. Nobody's heard those names.

00:00:35.420 These are girls who were murdered when they were 12, 13, 14 years of age.

00:00:39.680 Not a single police officer, social worker, council official, member of parliament

00:00:45.500 has had any serious consequences for turning a blind eye to this.

00:00:49.680 I don't even know how to conceptualize this and remain out of the domain of radical conspiracy theory.

00:01:10.420 Hello, everybody.

00:01:11.500 I was pleased to sit down today with Dr. Matthew Goodwin.

00:01:16.780 Dr. Goodwin was a professor of political science in the UK,

00:01:20.400 but he's turned his attention in recent years to developing a more public presence on the political front.

00:01:26.920 He didn't really believe that it was appropriate for him to be engaging in political action as a professor.

00:01:33.460 But he also got, let's say, sick and tired of working for the increasingly woke university.

00:01:39.180 And so we started our conversation with a discussion of the pathologies of modern academia

00:01:45.300 and tried to analyze exactly why the institutions had become so hidebound and ideologically rigid and punitive

00:01:54.260 and also investigated whether there was anything that might be done about that apart from, say, making new institutions.

00:02:01.960 I can't say we came to a particularly optimistic conclusion.

00:02:04.720 And then we turned our attention to the unit party in the UK,

00:02:09.880 the strange co-option, let's say, of both the Conservative and the Labour Party

00:02:16.820 into this woke, utopian, green idealism that characterizes so much of modern politicking.

00:02:25.940 And talked through, as well, the rise of the reform party in the UK as an antidote to the top-down elitism, let's say,

00:02:38.340 the destructive top-down de-industrialization elitism that characterizes the political,

00:02:45.000 the attitudes of the political class in the UK.

00:02:47.140 We also discussed the relationship between the policies and philosophies of this new emergent reform party.

00:02:56.340 We compared and contrasted them with the political attitude that's emerged in the United States under Trump,

00:03:02.920 collaborating, let's say, with Elon Musk and the rest of the Trump Avengers.

00:03:07.020 And, as well, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which is a group that I helped found in the UK

00:03:14.620 that was designed to produce a philosophical alternative to the machinations, let's say, of the WEF, Davos and UN crowd.

00:03:25.600 So, join us for that.

00:03:28.020 Matt, maybe you could start by letting the viewers and listeners, especially those who aren't in the UK, know who you are.

00:03:34.340 Yeah, sure. Well, I'm a recovering academic.

00:03:38.020 I was a professor of political science for, well, since 2015.

00:03:42.380 I was a university academic for 20 years.

00:03:45.720 And over the last year, I've basically moved more into the public debate, into political campaigning, having left the universities.

00:03:55.460 But in terms of my background, I've also worked, I've been seconded to government departments.

00:04:00.580 I've advised various prime ministers and presidents here in Europe about political issues.

00:04:06.640 But now, to be frank, I've become so concerned about the state of my country that I've entered the public debate in a much more political way.

00:04:13.700 OK, well, let's start with your university background then.

00:04:17.080 What university were you at last?

00:04:19.880 I was at the University of Kent, having previously gone through the universities of Bath, Nottingham and Manchester here in the UK.

00:04:28.120 OK, and so what was it that, apart from the dismal state of your country, let's say, which I think you share with my home country, Canada,

00:04:37.500 what was it about academia and maybe even more specifically about your social and as a professor in political science that disenchanted you with academia?

00:04:48.160 I think essentially what I saw over the last 20 years was higher education in this country, much like in North America, completely lose its way.

00:04:58.720 It increasingly lost touch with the original mission of higher education.

00:05:03.540 The universities I was working at were no longer really interested in the pursuit of truth, in good faith debate, in scientific knowledge and evidence, especially in the social sciences.

00:05:12.340 I know that you've spoken on this show to my good friend, Eric Kaufman, who has experienced the same here in the UK.

00:05:19.940 And to be frank, Jordan, I just got sick of it.

00:05:23.160 And I decided, you know, life is short.

00:05:25.860 I wanted to try and do something about what's happening in not just the UK, but in the West today.

00:05:31.840 And my university ran into financial problems, and I decided this was a great moment to exit and try and have an impact on the wider conversation.

00:05:41.500 And that's what I'm doing, and that's why I'm with you here today.

00:05:44.240 Okay, so let's delve into the details, both practical and personal, with regards to the universities, because, you know, now it's been a while since I've been actively involved with the university.

00:05:55.460 It's really been since 2017.

00:05:57.700 And, you know, I now and then have this sense that maybe I'm exaggerating the catastrophe that the universities have become because I was involved in it so deeply personally.

00:06:10.740 So let me review for a minute what I see as the major problems, and maybe you could expand on that.

00:06:19.400 I'd like to know as well what you experienced personally.

00:06:22.900 Okay, so the first thing that happened to me, I would say around 2013 or so, was that I noticed that my graduate students, particularly the females, were starting to get nervous about lecturing about gender differences in personality.

00:06:38.420 And that actually turned out to be a big problem for my lab, because I'm a personality psychologist, and one of the things we do is look at sex differences in personality.

00:06:49.100 And then I noticed I was starting to get nervous about that, and that really set me back on my heels, because I was never nervous about anything that I lectured about, particularly because I tried to base what I lectured about on what I knew.

00:07:06.480 And what I learned, what I learned, what I had investigated, it was pursuit of the truth, as far as I was concerned.

00:07:12.380 And I was apprenticed in a lab where truth mattered.

00:07:19.000 And then, well, and then things got worse.

00:07:21.600 The DEI people moved in, and the administration ballooned out of control.

00:07:25.280 And university tuition prices continued to expand in expense, and the research boards, which I always had trouble with all the way back to the 1980s, they became impossible to deal with.

00:07:41.480 So that while I had ramped up my ability to do research, I would say I probably improved my speed at doing research by a factor of 50, given computational technology, I was doing research more and more slowly, because it took forever to get through the research ethics boards, which had nothing to do with research ethics, as far as I was concerned.

00:08:02.440 And then there was the overwhelming tilt, the radical left.

00:08:07.500 Okay, so that's my spiel.

00:08:09.400 And so it became dismotivating, unmotivating to continue.

00:08:15.820 So tell me what your experience was as a professor, as a lecturer, and a researcher.

00:08:21.880 Well, I think in many ways, Jordan, our stories are somewhat similar within higher education.

00:08:27.860 You know, if you look at the UK, you know, the stat that I always remind people is back in the 1960s, for every one conservative academic, there were three academics on the left.

00:08:39.820 Today, for every one conservative, classical, liberal academic, there are 10 academics on the left today.

00:08:46.600 If you look at the rigorous surveys of how faculty has changed over the last half century or so.

00:08:52.400 And so within that, what you've seen, you know, as I'm sure many people in North America will also relate to, you've seen the rapid expansion of the university bureaucracy, the politicization of the university bureaucracy, which for an academic like me found its expression in having to do things like mandatory diversity statements, whereby every time I went for a research grant, every time I went for a job, I had to swear allegiance, essentially, to the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda.

00:09:21.340 I had to decolonize my university reading list.

00:09:26.180 But more than that, Jordan, to be frank, I was sick and tired of watching many of my colleagues, good people, Kathleen Stock, Noah Karl, Eric Kaufman, among others, being harassed, bullied, intimidated, and chased off campus because they were saying entirely legitimate, reasonable things that happened to violate this orthodoxy on campus.

00:09:50.180 And I felt sorry for their parents who were paying for this education.

00:09:57.020 And it was particularly for me, actually, it was the experience of going through the Brexit referendum, OK?

00:10:03.240 I mean, just to paint a brief picture, prior to 2016, with the votes for Brexit and Trump, I was, by all metrics, a very successful academic.

00:10:12.460 I was one of the youngest professors in the UK.

00:10:14.860 I had no problem getting research grants.

00:10:17.360 I attracted a lot of money from the research councils.

00:10:19.960 I published it for Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press.

00:10:23.620 I published in the most prestigious academic journals.

00:10:26.320 And this was part of what I would call the BB era in my career, before Brexit.

00:10:30.660 Now, when 52% of voters decided they wanted to leave the European Union, and I publicly expressed my acceptance of that, I didn't campaign for Brexit, but I said, well, if 52% of people want to leave, OK, let's leave the European Union.

00:10:47.180 And I wrote some op-ed saying perhaps how Britain could take advantage of this, well, everything in my career after that changed.

00:10:56.720 I mean, I can only describe it as being something similar to what I experienced when I was at high school, being bullied by kids in a boys' school, notoriously difficult environments.

00:11:11.640 But academics really did launch a sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation.

00:11:20.720 I was taken off research council peer bodies.

00:11:23.780 I struggled to publish.

00:11:26.740 Suddenly, my research grant applications were rejected.

00:11:30.060 So, you know, this isn't the sort of complaint of an academic that never had these things.

00:11:33.420 I just noticed such a tangible shift.

00:11:36.640 And after a while, you know, you have to look yourself in the mirror and you have to ask yourself, do I want to spend the rest of my life doing this?

00:11:44.780 Because I was becoming very depressed.

00:11:47.640 I wasn't particularly pleasant to be around.

00:11:50.600 You know, it wasn't a nice environment.

00:11:52.740 I have a family, friends.

00:11:54.940 People were saying, you know, what's going on?

00:11:56.660 What's the matter?

00:11:57.620 And I just said, you know, this is crazy.

00:11:59.580 I don't want to spend the rest of my life like this.

00:12:01.060 And I looked at what was happening at the University of Austin.

00:12:03.540 I looked at what was happening at the University of Buckingham here in the UK.

00:12:07.640 I looked at things like, you know, you've got the Peterson Academy.

00:12:10.740 I said, well, here are parallel structures, parallel institutions.

00:12:14.500 Okay, so that's important.

00:12:15.660 We should be supporting that.

00:12:17.040 But I also started to campaign for something called the Higher Education Free Speech Act here in the UK, which was the first piece of legislation that created a legal duty on universities here in the UK to protect and promote free speech and academic freedom.

00:12:33.460 And thankfully, that was passed, although the current Labour government is now defanging that law, and we can come on and talk about that.

00:12:43.080 But I decided, basically, I wanted to do something about the state of my country and the state of the West.

00:12:49.340 And to be honest, I concluded that I couldn't really do that while remaining a university professor.

00:12:54.660 I said, I do believe in the importance of neutrality, of objectivity.

00:12:58.500 You know, I don't think university professors should be politically active to the degree that I want to become politically active.

00:13:06.580 And so I made a decision.

00:13:07.940 I said, okay, I'm going to walk away from this after 20 years, and I'm going to actually try and enter the wider public debate and try and give people a voice.

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00:14:11.220 What was, I think it was Ernest Hemingway who famously, one of his characters, when asked

00:14:20.320 how he went bankrupt, famously said, gradually then suddenly.

00:14:25.700 And I've watched institutions, large institutions, including corporations, devolve and die.

00:14:33.440 And it happens gradually, then suddenly.

00:14:37.020 And I think it, I think this is how psychopathology develops in people too.

00:14:42.260 You hit a point where a positive feedback loop of some sort develops.

00:14:45.880 And you kind of pointed to that, I think.

00:14:48.700 So you imagine that as the number of radical left-wing professors increases, the cost of not

00:14:55.140 being one of them increases.

00:14:56.860 And then it increases to the point where anyone who isn't someone like that, who has options,

00:15:04.140 leaves because they can.

00:15:06.280 And then the people who are left are either incompetent and can't leave or are the radicals

00:15:11.460 themselves.

00:15:12.360 Well, this happens in companies all the time.

00:15:14.400 If a company has a bad quarter or two, often the 10% of people who are hyperproductive leave

00:15:20.820 because they can.

00:15:22.200 And then the company's in desperate straits almost immediately, even though it may still

00:15:26.700 have most of its employees.

00:15:28.660 OK, so there's that.

00:15:29.760 And then the other comment I would make that's horrible, really, that's a horrible observation

00:15:36.680 is that, I mean, are we really at the place where the institutions of higher education that

00:15:44.000 were supposed to function not only to educate young people, but also to act to some degree

00:15:49.620 as intellectual stewards of the political, economic, social, and psychological environments,

00:15:56.360 let's say, they've abdicated their responsibility.

00:15:59.060 They've become so irresponsible and so corrupt that they actually can't do that anymore.

00:16:04.420 One of the things I've been wondering, I've been contemplating the reality of the rot at

00:16:14.420 universities.

00:16:15.020 And one of the things you have to ask yourself when many large institutions of the same type

00:16:21.680 rot all at the same time, you have to ask yourself whether or not the reason that they're

00:16:27.500 rotting, the simplest reason that they're rotting is because they're dead.

00:16:32.640 They're actually dead and they're not savable.

00:16:35.380 And I kind of think that might be the case because I've tried to think through how you could

00:16:40.640 save them, but you can imagine, here's the situation, they're way too expensive, they're

00:16:45.780 way too centralized, they're way too dependent on government money, they're way too radical

00:16:50.980 in their thinking, there's far too many administrators.

00:16:55.280 And well, and that's enough, that's like six, that's like six terrible problems.

00:17:02.460 And my experience watching large organizations fail is that if they have two major problems,

00:17:08.380 they're done.

00:17:10.460 And I think academia has six.

00:17:13.000 And I can't even hypothesize how, well, and then he adds this, one final observation would

00:17:20.580 be the younger the professor, given everything we've said, the more likely they are to be

00:17:26.040 radical in their orientation.

00:17:28.000 And that means the longer their tenure as tenured professors before the scales might be rebalanced.

00:17:35.580 And so I can't even think, okay, so you left and you started acting in a more political

00:17:43.020 way and you said you had some personal reasons for that, including the fact that you didn't

00:17:48.280 think you should be a political actor as a professor.

00:17:52.140 But do you see, like, I can't imagine that you're happy to see the demise of these great

00:17:57.560 institutions.

00:17:58.380 I mean, if we lose Oxford and Cambridge, for example, that's a complete bloody catastrophe.

00:18:02.780 But do you see that way forward?

00:18:05.780 Look, I think they're gone.

00:18:07.820 I really think they're gone.

00:18:09.100 And I've had this debate with many friends and colleagues of mine, much more successful

00:18:16.100 academics than me.

00:18:17.260 I mean, people I really respect, historian Neil Ferguson, among others.

00:18:21.740 And the way they talk about academia in the 80s and 90s is something I don't personally

00:18:27.860 recognize from my experience.

00:18:30.060 I think the universities, the legacy universities, Jordan, are gone.

00:18:34.700 Donors constantly say to me, well, I'm going to buy, you know, or invest in an Oxford college

00:18:39.640 and I'm going to reform it.

00:18:40.720 Well, you and I both know, you and I both know as disillusioned academics that the moment

00:18:46.980 that collides with the reality of the ecosystem of higher education, the ethics committees,

00:18:53.240 the research councils, the bureaucracy, you and I both know what will happen.

00:18:57.300 Any attempt to reform the legacy universities will get tied up immediately in paperwork and

00:19:04.680 ideological motivations.

00:19:06.880 That's what's going to happen.

00:19:08.380 Yeah.

00:19:08.620 Well, you know, we also didn't add to the panoply of problems the fact that the research journals

00:19:16.480 themselves have been captured and corrupted.

00:19:19.860 Academics have to pay to publish in them.

00:19:21.860 They have libraries over the barrel.

00:19:24.300 They charge them an arm and a leg completely inappropriately.

00:19:27.940 And they put everything that researchers write behind a paywall.

00:19:32.840 And then it takes two years to publish.

00:19:35.280 Like this is, that's insane.

00:19:37.780 In a world where you can write something and publish it to an international audience in one

00:19:44.920 day, the fact that it takes two years to publish a peer-reviewed article means that you're stuck

00:19:50.140 in like 1830.

00:19:51.620 If that, it's terrible.

00:19:54.240 Well, absolutely.

00:19:55.220 But there are also ideological scams.

00:19:57.780 And that's when I became very disillusioned.

00:20:00.480 I watched the grievance studies hoax play out, whereby, you know, clearly fraudulent papers

00:20:06.240 were submitted to social justice journals and then revealed to have been authored by,

00:20:12.120 you know, Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, and James Lindsay.

00:20:15.920 I watched the Michael Lecure scandal, whereby a researcher had claimed that a randomized controlled

00:20:23.200 trial involving gay canvassers talking to voters face-to-face made them more supportive

00:20:29.920 of same-sex marriage.

00:20:32.180 It turned out he had fabricated his data, but that was accepted without question by the

00:20:37.040 most prestigious journals in academia.

00:20:39.560 I saw the Roland Fryer scandal at Harvard, you know, the nightmare that he had to go through

00:20:44.920 to publish a finding that challenged the orthodoxy on campus.

00:20:49.140 In that case, that African-Americans were not more likely to be killed by police.

00:20:54.860 And I was just watching one scandal after another and just realizing, you know, the whole

00:20:59.780 thing is rotten.

00:21:01.080 You know, the industry, the sector that I'm working in, it's just, it needs root and branch

00:21:07.220 reform.

00:21:07.700 So I left.

00:21:08.420 And I think in many ways for me, the universities, at least in the UK, are really a symbol of a

00:21:15.220 much deeper rot that is set in, has set in into our culture and into our civilization.

00:21:21.780 The institutions, the public sector, taxpayer-funded institutions have become politicized.

00:21:28.780 They've become deeply corrupt.

00:21:30.380 They've become utterly disconnected from the vast majority of ordinary people in this country.

00:21:37.420 And they have been imposing top-down a political agenda on everybody else that is really supported

00:21:43.540 by only about 10 to 15 percent of radical progressives within Western populations.

00:21:49.220 And that is what I've seen, not just in universities, but within government departments, within

00:21:54.720 Westminster, you know, within the civil service, within the federal state bureaucracy.

00:22:00.120 And, you know, I think people are sick of it.

00:22:02.160 I think they can see this for what it is, which is political indoctrination.

00:22:05.420 Okay, so, yeah, well, we have a new leader who will likely be the next prime minister in

00:22:13.680 Canada if he takes over the Liberal Party, which is the kind of classic ruling party of

00:22:19.100 Canada, Mark Carney, who is the governor of the Bank of England.

00:22:23.680 And I just read his book, Values, which is a very bad book from the perspective of literary

00:22:30.400 quality, let's say, for a variety of reasons.

00:22:33.040 But worse than that, it's like Trudeau, our current prime minister, has been a WEF follower

00:22:40.100 for, I don't know, the last 15 years, let's say.

00:22:43.760 But he didn't have the originality or the ability to come up with the ideas or really

00:22:48.160 to implement them all that effectively, although he's pretty much crippled Canada's economy.

00:22:53.200 But Mark Carney, he's like a WEF leader.

00:22:56.800 And there's every probability that he'll be prime minister at least for an interim period

00:23:03.080 and maybe longer than that.

00:23:05.000 And so, and then I've been to the UK many times and have great admiration for that country,

00:23:10.740 for your country.

00:23:11.980 It's a terrible thing to see it decay and slip away.

00:23:16.240 And it's terrible to watch, for example, you people contend with energy prices that are

00:23:25.680 literally five times more than they need to be, at least five times.

00:23:29.840 Mark Carney said, for example, that 85% of fossil fuel stores across the world have to be kept

00:23:35.800 in the ground.

00:23:36.720 And at the same time, he promises the denizens of my home province, Alberta, which is oil rich,

00:23:42.740 that somehow magically they'll all be supplied with green economy jobs, whatever the hell

00:23:48.520 they are, to replace the fossil fuel jobs that, you know, actually exist.

00:23:54.200 And so, and I don't know, I mean, my country, Canada, has gone down the insane woke rabbit

00:24:00.720 hole like the universities.

00:24:01.900 But I think your country, at least at the moment, under the Labour government is even,

00:24:07.520 ah, maybe you guys are worse, which is a hell of a contest to win.

00:24:10.960 So, so let's expand on that.

00:24:13.760 Yeah, go ahead.

00:24:14.380 Well, look, I think it's just important for people who are not in the UK, but have been

00:24:17.700 asking, asking us, Brits, the same question, you know, what the hell is happening to the

00:24:22.920 UK, right?

00:24:23.760 That's a question I get from many Americans, Canadians and others.

00:24:27.400 And the answer is that we are living through the effects of a political project that was

00:24:33.300 embraced by both the established left and right by the uniparty, that was really united

00:24:39.080 by a set of policies that voters are now beginning to reject.

00:24:43.040 Net zero, mass uncontrolled immigration, much of it from outside of Europe, the imposition 1.00

00:24:51.880 of radical woke progressivism within public sector institutions, doubling down on a London-based

00:24:58.440 economy.

00:24:59.260 We don't really produce anything anymore.

00:25:01.860 We're closing factories across northern England.

00:25:04.800 We're closing steel factories in the name of net zero and climate change and a broken

00:25:10.380 model of multiculturalism that most recently found its expression in the rape gang scandal

00:25:15.560 across more than 50 towns in the country.

00:25:18.680 Now, many voters over the last 30 years have gradually looked at this elite consensus shared

00:25:26.680 by the established left and right.

00:25:28.140 And they said, you know, we've had enough.

00:25:29.360 We want a different politics.

00:25:30.460 We want a different kind of culture.

00:25:32.680 And that is why I actually think you're beginning to see now what America saw in 2015, 2016.

00:25:41.180 You know, we're beginning to see radical political change in this country.

00:25:45.100 As I'm talking to you now in early, mid-February 2025, you know, in the national polls, Nigel

00:25:52.460 Farage and the Reform Party are now number one.

00:25:55.200 Labour and the Conservatives are now trailing this disruptive party, similar to the Canadian Reform

00:25:59.720 Party in the early 1990s.

00:26:02.000 We're beginning to see a serious pushback from voters who have had enough of this.

00:26:08.820 And in Europe too, Jordan, you will know, in Germany, Austria, Sweden, you know, we are,

00:26:13.900 I think, beginning to see a sustained public-led pushback to the policies that have dominated

00:26:20.980 Western democracies for the last 30 to 50 years.

00:26:25.700 So let's talk about net zero in the UK for a moment.

00:26:30.640 I just interviewed Kemi Badnock, who's the new leader of the Conservative Party in the UK

00:26:37.140 for everybody who's watching and listening.

00:26:40.100 And she noted her resistance to net zero when it was initially formulated.

00:26:47.460 But she also pointed out, and I just, I don't even know how to conceptualize this and remain

00:26:54.620 out of the domain of radical conspiracy theory.

00:26:57.580 You know, she pointed out, kind of like Keir Starmer, when he talked about the fact that

00:27:01.960 this experiment in mass migration was something that was perpetrated from the top down consciously,

00:27:06.940 and that everyone who opposed it was gaslit, and that was also conscious.

00:27:10.460 And oops, we're sorry about that.

00:27:12.780 But Badnock said that something approximating a trillion-dollar cost net zero plan was passed

00:27:22.520 through Westminster with 20 minutes of debate.

00:27:26.400 It's like, so I just don't know how to conceptualize this.

00:27:29.160 It's like, first of all.

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00:28:26.540 What were the conservatives thinking?

00:28:31.740 Like, what was their motivation?

00:28:35.200 Was it merely that they were trying to look like planetary saviors and to virtue signal,

00:28:40.600 despite the fact that they were conservatives?

00:28:42.560 Or was it the fact that, like Keir Starmer, they were completely enamored of the Davos WF

00:28:49.320 crowd, which they regarded as, like, somehow more stylish than, you know, the mere plodding

00:28:54.480 pedestrians in the parliament?

00:28:56.200 Well, you're answering your own questions in a way, Jordan, because the answer is they're

00:29:01.120 not conservatives.

00:29:02.580 What has happened to the conservative party, one of the oldest, most successful parties in

00:29:09.340 the history of democracy, is that it has completely abandoned its ideological roots.

00:29:16.000 It's become a liberal party.

00:29:17.740 The vast majority of MPs in parliament, conservative MPs, are essentially liberal MPs.

00:29:24.740 They are the ones that put mass immigration on steroids. 0.97

00:29:29.280 They are the ones that put net zero on steroids. 0.95

00:29:32.720 They are the ones that put gender ideology on steroids. 1.00

00:29:36.800 And Kemi Badenoch is claiming that she is, the party has learned its lessons, that she's

00:29:44.200 going to change direction.

00:29:45.960 But in reality, because of the structure of the Conservative Parliamentary Party, because

00:29:51.180 it is dominated from top to bottom by liberals, even if Kemi Badenoch believes in what she's 0.99

00:29:56.160 saying, she knows deep down she will not be able to fundamentally change the direction

00:30:01.480 of travel.

00:30:02.160 So what I think we need is a bit like what America has witnessed over the last 10 years,

00:30:08.520 which is a complete replacement of not just the Tory party, but the dominant establishment

00:30:14.180 in this country, which is clinging to a consensus that is fundamentally out of touch with what

00:30:20.740 voters want.

00:30:21.860 I mean, mass immigration, I'll give you one example, Jordan.

00:30:24.920 We can come back and talk a little bit about net zero.

00:30:28.100 But to me, mass uncontrolled immigration has fundamentally weakened Britain, Great Britain.

00:30:35.720 It has undermined our prosperity.

00:30:37.940 It has divided our society.

00:30:40.220 Nobody ever voted for it.

00:30:42.580 Boris Johnson did the opposite of what he promised voters he would do when he was elected in 2019.

00:30:48.140 He said he'd lower immigration.

00:30:49.860 He put it on steroids.

00:30:50.900 86% of all migration into Britain is now coming from outside Europe, from what I would argue

00:30:57.440 are culturally incompatible nations.

00:31:01.220 They're more impoverished nations.

00:31:03.320 And the evidence that we now have from various government bodies that are now finally admitting

00:31:09.380 that actually this is a net fiscal cost to the UK taxpayer, before you get to things like

00:31:16.100 the rape gangs, before you get to things like Islamist terrorism, before you get to things 0.51

00:31:20.720 like sectarianism on the streets of Britain that we've seen since the 7th of October,

00:31:26.140 just at an economic level, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

00:31:30.040 Yet it was imposed on everybody by both the established left and the established right.

00:31:36.180 So my theory of British politics here is that the voter backlash to mass immigration is going

00:31:41.940 to be the new Brexit.

00:31:42.900 This is going to be a major fault line in our politics.

00:31:46.760 And the Tories, the status-conscious Tories, and you're right, Jordan, because they are more

00:31:52.000 interested in winning social status from London liberals, from the luxury belief class,

00:31:58.880 from what Rob Henderson and others have talked about.

00:32:01.020 They are more interested in accruing social status from the London bubble than they are

00:32:06.100 at saving this country.

00:32:08.600 And that is a reality about the Tory party.

00:32:10.560 They've completely sold this country down the river.

00:32:12.900 In fact, one minor example that I think will give international viewers a real sense of

00:32:17.980 what I would argue is a betrayal, it was the Conservative Party, under Boris Johnson when

00:32:24.940 it was in office, that even removed a requirement for companies in Britain to advertise jobs in

00:32:32.640 Britain before they advertised them overseas.

00:32:35.660 They didn't even prioritise British workers within this national economy.

00:32:41.580 They just completely opened the floodgates.

00:32:44.660 And the end result is what you see around us today, which is zero growth, massive amounts

00:32:50.320 of debt, no productivity, declining GDP per capita, while we're also pursuing this net zero madness,

00:32:58.440 closing steel factories across northern England in order to deal with this political vanity project

00:33:03.740 for an elite class that doesn't apparently seem to care about anybody else in this country.

00:33:08.400 So I'm deeply worried about the direction of travel.

00:33:10.780 But the Tory party is not going to change the direction of travel.

00:33:16.120 You know, if an architect demolished your house, you wouldn't invite the architect back

00:33:21.360 to do it again, would you?

00:33:23.360 And I think in the same way, you know, it was the Tories that really demolished Britain.

00:33:27.660 So why on earth would you invite them back to have another go?

00:33:31.200 I think we need wholesale political change.

00:33:33.820 OK, so let's see if we can get to the bottom of things here a little bit.

00:33:37.580 Now, you're outlining a scenario where both the right-wing party, the Conservatives' centrist

00:33:44.560 right party, and all the other parties were taken over by the same progressive mob, let's

00:33:49.900 say, that took over the universities.

00:33:51.320 It's something like that.

00:33:52.300 And so the distinctions between the parties start to become irrelevant.

00:33:55.500 But then we have to ask ourselves, what are the motivations of the people who orchestrated

00:34:01.900 and participated and or at least didn't oppose the takeover?

00:34:07.100 So let me lay out a couple of theories.

00:34:10.140 And I'm going to go a little astray here, but I really do want to get to the bottom of

00:34:14.780 this, you know, because I'm trying to figure out what the fundamental error is.

00:34:17.960 We see it, let's say it's the same error manifests itself in virtue signaling on the environmental

00:34:23.920 side with regards to net zero and virtue signaling on the multicultural, liberal tolerance side

00:34:30.020 with regards to mass immigration.

00:34:32.960 And so underneath that, there's this claim of tolerant moral virtue that requires no effort

00:34:38.920 personally and that requires other people to make the sacrifices.

00:34:42.320 Okay, so let me lay a structure underneath that, and I'd like to know what you think about

00:34:49.820 this.

00:34:50.500 So I've been investigating classic religious stories in the Old Testament and the New, and

00:34:57.140 I've found an interesting parallel about a class of sin, you might say, in both of those

00:35:07.360 sources, Old Testament, New Testament sources.

00:35:09.640 So one of the Ten Commandments is to not use God's name in vain.

00:35:15.160 And you see, people think that means don't curse.

00:35:18.720 That's the popularized idea, but that isn't what it means.

00:35:23.280 It means don't claim to be motivated by divine purpose.

00:35:30.080 So to use God's name when you're actually pursuing your own selfish agenda, right?

00:35:36.140 So don't subvert the divine to your own ego, your own motivation, your own status, because

00:35:44.000 status is very important to people, right?

00:35:46.040 It's a fundamental psychological motivator.

00:35:48.740 And status determines longevity, for example, and status determines mating attractiveness among

00:35:54.040 men.

00:35:55.100 Socioeconomic status is a problem.

00:35:56.740 Okay.

00:35:57.280 So you can subvert that process by falsely claiming moral virtue.

00:36:00.840 Now, the same thing happens in the New Testament, because the Pharisees, who are Christ's primary 0.95

00:36:06.860 enemies, are the virtue signalers.

00:36:09.900 I mean, Christ tells the Pharisees, who are the leaders of popular religious movement tradition

00:36:17.200 at that time, that the only reason they proclaim their allegiance to God and the prophets they

00:36:23.720 purport to worship is so that they can have the best seats in the synagogues and accrue social

00:36:30.380 status.

00:36:31.400 And he compares them to tombs that are whitewashed on the outside and full of rot on the inside.

00:36:38.120 And it's actually that accusation, that's one of the primary reasons that he ends up crucified.

00:36:43.320 So the reason I'm telling you this, it might seem a bit obscure, but the reason that I'm bringing this

00:36:49.840 up is because I don't think that we've come to grips with how powerful the temptation to accrue moral

00:36:59.100 status falsely, so that's reputational status, how deeply seated and absolutely destructive that is.

00:37:07.320 And, like, absent a better explanation, and Rob Henderson, of course, who you pointed out, has touched on

00:37:13.980 this with his idea of, what's the name of his?

00:37:17.360 A luxury belief class.

00:37:19.200 Luxury, sure, luxury belief class.

00:37:21.600 Look how good I am.

00:37:23.880 Right.

00:37:24.600 And so, first of all, I'm kind of curious about what you think of those ideas.

00:37:29.300 Then I'm curious about whether you have any alternative explanation for this, because it's a systemic rot,

00:37:36.320 right?

00:37:36.800 We talked about the universities.

00:37:38.380 We already decided, for what that's worth between us, that they don't look salvageable.

00:37:43.480 But you really extended that argument to the political parties themselves, with the possible

00:37:50.200 exception of reform, which we can talk about in a moment.

00:37:54.320 So, like, where do you see?

00:37:57.440 Two things.

00:37:58.620 What would have, how would have you characterized your political orientation prior to your departure

00:38:03.720 from the universities, let's say?

00:38:05.340 And then what do you think of, what's your explanation for the pervasiveness of this rot?

00:38:12.020 Well, I think the answer to the first question is I would describe myself as, I mean, it sounds

00:38:17.340 very vague, but as somebody who simply cares a great deal about his country and somebody who is,

00:38:23.160 in very broad terms, on the side of the forgotten majority of people who share small-c,

00:38:28.780 conservative values, particularly on cultural and identity issues, who want to reform the

00:38:34.540 economy so it works for ordinary people, but feel that they're no longer really in the

00:38:38.280 conversation.

00:38:39.480 And I don't feel as though my politics have changed over the last 20 years.

00:38:43.580 What I think has happened is that we have been living through, over the last 10 years,

00:38:47.340 the greatest radicalization of the elite class in Western societies since the 1960s.

00:38:53.220 And I've seen this, not just in terms of the universities, but actually in Westminster.

00:38:58.640 And I think the answer to your second question is, to go back again to this idea of the luxury

00:39:02.900 belief class, what we've been living through is an elite class imposing policies on everybody

00:39:07.200 else, the consequences of which they are not going to have to endure.

00:39:11.500 And I think you can see that in everything from mass migration, which across Europe, the

00:39:16.520 evidence now is overwhelming.

00:39:19.040 Serious academics, people like Professor Jan van der Beek, have shown this.

00:39:23.280 The influx of low-skill, low-wage migration from the Middle East and Africa is a net fiscal 1.00

00:39:28.300 cost to European economies, right?

00:39:30.100 If you looked at it simply through the lens of a cost-benefit analysis, you would simply

00:39:34.060 say, this makes no sense.

00:39:35.340 We've got to radically change the way we're dealing with migration.

00:39:38.420 Yet still, the elite class won't change it.

00:39:40.700 So obviously, this is about the accruing social status for themselves.

00:39:45.280 But there's something else going on here, too, which is the enforcement of these taboos

00:39:49.320 within our conversation around migration, around what John McWater and others would call the

00:39:54.740 new religion, the sacred values that we cannot question, pro-net zero, pro-migration, pro-diversity

00:40:02.400 in all of its forms.

00:40:04.220 And that's exactly why, for example, Jordan, we didn't get to the bottom of the rape gangs 0.57

00:40:08.640 crisis because it was people's fears within the elite institutions of being seen to be

00:40:14.580 racist, being seen to be conservative, being seen to be Islamophobic or whatever word you

00:40:21.960 want to, whatever term you want to choose, which stopped people from getting to the truth.

00:40:25.820 So the imposition of these taboos, the imposition of these social norms, of trying to tightly

00:40:31.660 control the national conversation through hate laws, through these Orwellian things we have

00:40:37.380 in the UK called non-crime hate incidents, which again are sort of police measures that

00:40:43.000 are designed to stifle debate and discussion.

00:40:45.500 All of this, I think, is about controlling the supply of information, stigmatising alternative

00:40:52.180 opposition to the elite project and trying to use these taboos to basically impose this

00:41:00.160 elite project from above.

00:41:02.240 And the losers, of course, are ordinary people who are asking themselves questions like, well,

00:41:06.400 why are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of young white working class girls 1.00

00:41:11.040 being raped in Great Britain and nobody talked about it for 30 years?

00:41:16.360 Like, that's a question a lot of people in this country are asking.

00:41:19.480 Why didn't the...

00:41:20.620 As they might.

00:41:21.140 Why didn't the legacy media do anything about this?

00:41:25.100 You know, and by the way, a legacy media in this country that is now complaining about

00:41:29.780 Elon Musk talking about it, whereas the reality is if legacy media had been doing its job by

00:41:36.620 actually pursuing truth and taking the rumours seriously from the 1980s about girls being put

00:41:44.500 on heroin and cocaine and alcohol and being gang raped in northern towns across this country,

00:41:51.140 and being trafficked from one town to the next, if journalists had taken that seriously, we

00:41:56.640 wouldn't have had, according to one MP, she estimates perhaps up to a million children from 0.87

00:42:01.880 the 1980s have been abused to some extent by these gangs.

00:42:06.120 And the enforcement of these taboos is going on today, which is what makes it so remarkable. 0.93

00:42:11.820 Even after the rape gang scandal, we've got a Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, who's now come out

00:42:16.860 and said, well, if you want to discuss the rape gangs, if you want to ask questions about the rape

00:42:20.460 gangs, I'm not going to give you a national inquiry into this issue.

00:42:24.840 But also, and I quote directly, you are jumping on the far right bandwagon if you're talking about

00:42:31.360 this issue. So again, it's an attempt to control the conversation, to suppress dissent, to suppress

00:42:39.040 opposition. And ultimately, I think it is partly about individual social status, but it is also

00:42:45.500 about maintaining and protecting this ideological project. I think fundamentally, that's what it's about.

00:42:51.920 Okay, okay. So, so it's about protecting the pretentious claims to unearned moral status of

00:42:59.440 the elite. But then we might ask ourselves, do you have any sense of why it was the progressive

00:43:05.680 ideas, so to speak, that emerged to dominate the universities? Like, I can't quite, I can't put those

00:43:12.320 two things together. Is it that the, is it that progressive, is it that what progressive ideas

00:43:18.060 actually do, as Rob Henderson, say, might indicate, is that, is the progressive ideology nothing but

00:43:26.340 the proclivity of the privileged elite to cover themselves in unearned moral glory? And is, is the

00:43:33.260 temptation so profound that that's the natural course of things? Like, because you might say, well, why

00:43:38.520 wasn't the progressive movement working class, you know? Or why was the elite movement towards moral

00:43:45.500 status virtue signaling? Why did that take this leftist twist? And I can't quite put those things

00:43:54.680 together. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that. Well, I think over the last 50 years,

00:44:03.020 my, my view is that the nature of status fundamentally changed. It moved away from wealth and resource

00:44:10.620 into the realm of ideology and belief. And that became a key indicator for the elite class to accrue

00:44:17.980 status to say, actually, it's not just that, it's not just that I've got a butler, I've got a house,

00:44:22.360 I've got wealth, I've got money. It's that, you know, I know the vocabulary of radical progressivism.

00:44:27.980 I know what white privilege means. And I, you know, I know what white guilt means. And I'm going to,

00:44:34.400 you know, latch onto this sacred religion and ensure other people have to, 0.99

00:44:37.440 have to, you know, hear the word and do the work. I think, I think, I think that's part of it. But I

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00:45:15.040 expressvpn.com slash wire. Yeah. Well, okay. So let's imagine. Okay. Okay. That's a good hypothesis.

00:45:21.960 So let's imagine this. Let's say, look, when I was at Harvard in the nineties, I taught there in the

00:45:26.960 nineties, that place was firing in all cylinders. And that was the same at McGill when I trained

00:45:32.280 there as a clinical psychologist. I really liked being at McGill. We, I had excellent compatriots

00:45:38.980 there and the, the education I received by and large was extremely high quality, especially on

00:45:44.260 the research side. And then when I went to Boston and taught at Harvard, I thought the undergraduates

00:45:49.580 were great. I had excellent graduate students. The administrators served the faculty, particularly

00:45:54.880 the senior faculty. The senior faculty were the smartest and most well-informed people I'd ever met

00:46:00.140 by a lot. And everyone was devoted to their work to the point where we had very short faculty

00:46:06.480 meetings because everyone wanted to get back to their lab. It was really good. Okay. So now imagine

00:46:11.180 that we had a period of time after World War II where the, the elite universities, the high quality

00:46:18.200 universities really were high quality. They were merit-based and high quality. And they set up a

00:46:23.960 reputation system that was valid. Okay. Now imagine that the cluster B psychopaths and the narcissists

00:46:32.300 and the histrionic anti-merit types invaded those institutions that, that had developed this new currency

00:46:40.260 of status that you referred to, which would be educational accreditation, but it was valid. Well, now you can

00:46:48.420 game it. Now you can game it because it's been established. And I really see that this happened

00:46:53.340 at Harvard, for example, with, with the promotion, for example, of gay to the position of president. 0.98

00:46:59.020 It's like, what the hell was going on with that? She didn't have the academic credentials to be hired 0.99

00:47:04.680 at a second rate, um, at a, at a, in, as a professor in the second rate department. So, okay. So imagine that

00:47:12.240 the universities built up a, a reputation, a, a, a, a, a real, they were really markers of credibility

00:47:20.580 and then the system got gamed. Maybe that's the right explanation. Now you can place, go ahead, go ahead.

00:47:26.560 Yeah. Well, just, just something on that. I think something else happened too, though. And ultimately,

00:47:29.700 you know, it depends on whether you view the radical progressive takeover, which I personally

00:47:35.780 think has peaked. I think it's now on the, it's in retreat. I think, you know, Trump has got,

00:47:39.700 you know, the woke ideology, whatever your favorite term, I think it's on the back foot.

00:47:44.160 But if you, if you ask yourself, well, why did it emerge? I think, you know, there are those who say

00:47:48.020 it is a kind of radicalization of, you know, cultural Marxism and so on. But there are those,

00:47:54.200 you know, Eric Kaufman, among others, who I'm persuaded by, who say, no, actually,

00:47:57.760 this is a radicalization of liberalism. Like this isn't cultural Marxism. This is the inevitable

00:48:03.420 extension of liberalism, which became so consumed with minority rights, 0.74

00:48:09.700 and emotional harm, that particularly within universities, emotional safetyism, protecting

00:48:16.400 minorities, racial, sexual, and gender minorities from harm, from perceived emotional harm,

00:48:23.020 was basically prioritized over the pursuit of truth, objective science, objective knowledge,

00:48:29.040 and that just filtered through everything. And the moment the North Star became this notion of harm,

00:48:35.060 of protecting people from harm, everything trickled down from that. Now, that's what I saw in

00:48:40.440 universities. It's what I see in left and right in politics, this endless obsession with DEI,

00:48:46.520 this endless obsession with anti-racism training, this endless obsession with apologizing for what

00:48:52.360 happened 500 years ago. It is, I think, fundamentally, this sacralization of minorities that is lying at the 1.00

00:49:01.420 heart of this ideological revolution. Okay, let me add another ugly dimension to that line of

00:49:08.060 argumentation. And this is something, I haven't talked much about this publicly, but at least not

00:49:14.300 in this context, but I think it's probably worth broaching it. So, I did a research project in 2016,

00:49:20.240 just before my academic career blew up, where we were looking at predictors of politically correct

00:49:26.320 authoritarianism. First of all, we established that such a thing existed, all protestations to the

00:49:32.160 progressive, of the progressive social psychologists to the contrary. There was a coherent set of left-wing

00:49:38.500 authoritarian beliefs, and you could identify them statistically. Then the question was, what predicted

00:49:43.760 them? Okay, we found three major predictors, and we had no a priori perception about this. The first predictor

00:49:54.760 was low verbal intelligence. And so, when you ask yourself, well, how could people be daft enough to 0.99

00:50:00.920 believe such things is, well, one of the answers to that our research showed was that, well, people who 0.96

00:50:07.100 swallowed those ideologies weren't that smart. And so, they were very much likely to dominate those

00:50:14.100 academic sub-disciplines that attracted the least cognitively able people. Okay, so it was a big

00:50:20.760 predictor. The correlation between IQ and politically correct authoritarianism was higher than the

00:50:27.780 correlation between cognitive ability, IQ, and grades. It was a whopping predictor.

00:50:33.860 Doesn't surprise me, yeah.

00:50:34.700 The next, here's, now here's the, so that's bad enough. Here's the kicker, though. There were two other

00:50:39.960 major predictors, three, actually. The first was being female. 1.00

00:50:44.380 I was going to say that.

00:50:45.140 Yeah, yeah. The second was having a female temperament. That was an additional predictor 0.99

00:50:51.720 over and above being female. The third was having ever taken a politically correct course. 0.72

00:50:56.860 Okay, so now that, you know, you pointed out that this ethos of harm avoidance, let's say,

00:51:02.800 something like that, this protective ethos started to dominate. Well, no one has been courageous enough

00:51:09.760 or foolhardy enough to broach the possibility that the reason for that is that the universities became 0.74

00:51:16.000 dominated by not only women, this is even worse, I might as well go in all the way, childless women. 1.00

00:51:22.460 Yeah. 0.96

00:51:22.880 Right. And that's-

00:51:23.820 Well, actually, there are a couple of papers on that, Jordan. I'm sure you've seen, I think,

00:51:28.140 Corey Clark, and I've read a couple, I think, showing basically the feminization of higher

00:51:35.920 education over the last 50 years. But there's something else listening to you that just came

00:51:40.020 into my mind. I don't know if you've read it. There's a book by a psychologist called Luke

00:51:43.360 Conway that came out, I think, a year ago, called Liberal Bullies. And what he has done,

00:51:48.280 which is fascinating, is he's gone back and looked at all the old stuff on right-wing authoritarianism

00:51:53.300 and the scales that they used comparing right-wing authoritarians with left-wing authoritarians.

00:52:00.880 And of course, the old argument, this is, you know, going back 50 years of social science,

00:52:05.740 was that you don't get left-wing authoritarians, you only get right-wing authoritarians.

00:52:10.460 Yeah, what a lie that was.

00:52:11.780 It was, and the whole literature, right, has just been debunked because what Conway is saying,

00:52:16.900 well, if you actually, if you change the scales because they were measuring right-wing

00:52:21.000 authoritarianism differently from left-wing authoritarianism, if you use the same scales on both,

00:52:26.360 what you find is that so-called liberals are actually more prone to authoritarian impulses

00:52:33.700 and tendencies than conservatives. And if anything explains the last 15 years in Western politics,

00:52:41.060 the kind of great awokening, you know, all of the, you know, fanaticism and dogmatism that we saw

00:52:48.260 around Black Lives Matter and the social justice movement, it's this take. You know, I read his book

00:52:54.840 and I was like, there it is. So basically, social scientists were misleading everybody.

00:52:59.520 I would say maybe they knew about it. Maybe they were just lying to people.

00:53:02.920 And here we have evidence that if you identify as highly liberal, you are more prone to authoritarian

00:53:10.380 impulses than conservatives.

00:53:13.340 Okay, okay. So they were definitely at least lying by omission. Like, I got into the study of

00:53:20.080 left-wing authoritarianism sort of sideways because I'm a personality and clinical psychologist,

00:53:25.940 not a social psychologist. And the people who studied right-wing authoritarianism or authoritarianism,

00:53:32.520 let's say, were social psychologists. And so then I had to master the social psychological literature.

00:53:39.000 And I found to my absolute bloody shock what you just described, which was that for 60 years,

00:53:44.680 the social psychologists essentially had insisted that there was no such thing as left-wing

00:53:50.460 authoritarianism. And I thought, well, what do you mean there's no such thing as left-wing

00:53:54.960 authoritarianism? For Christ's sake, who the hell do you think was, who do you think Stalin was in Mao?

00:54:00.980 That's not left-wing murderous authoritarianism. And that's why we did this research.

00:54:05.680 But here's another thing that's horrible. And I don't know if Conway has dealt with this. And I

00:54:10.680 didn't know about the book, and I will read it. See, the pattern of cancel culture is the same 1.00

00:54:17.820 pattern as female antisocial behavior. So there is a literature on antisocial behavior that's sex-typed.

00:54:25.060 So antisocial males are violent. They're physically violent. And they're criminal for that regard. And

00:54:32.080 they tend to get thrown in prison because of it, because we don't tolerate violent crime.

00:54:36.340 White-collar crime's not so bad. You can defund a million people out of their pension.

00:54:40.680 But you don't want to mug someone. And, you know, I can understand that because people are afraid of

00:54:44.740 being physically assaulted. But we definitely have a differential scale of justice when it comes to

00:54:50.800 economic damage. Anyways, female antisocial types, they don't use physical aggression. 1.00

00:54:58.160 They use gossip, reputation savaging, and like camouflaged aggression. Right. And so you can imagine,

00:55:07.720 I mean, this is a very ugly hypothesis, but there's no reason to assume that

00:55:13.080 women are going to be any less pathological in their social behavior than men. It'll just take 1.00

00:55:18.340 a different form. So I was just going to say, I would say the evidence on cancel culture, you know,

00:55:23.580 comprehensive, rigorous surveys across the West is pretty consistent in showing that the female 0.98

00:55:30.600 scholars, especially young female PhD students, are consistently the most likely to endorse a range

00:55:39.100 of cancel culture measures. They're the most likely, for example, to say that we should sacrifice

00:55:43.700 academic freedom and free speech on the altar of protecting minorities from harm. So I think

00:55:50.040 that's a big part of the story. I mean, again, it's controversial. And the fact that we

00:55:53.400 would struggle to have this debate at an Oxford, you know, union debate or on Cambridge campus is

00:56:01.580 itself a reflection of the problems within universities. I think it's an enormous part.

00:56:06.660 And in politics too, by the way, I think if you look at the people who have been most dogmatic

00:56:11.340 when it comes to the debates over migration, net zero, who have refused to look at the issue of the

00:56:18.400 rape gangs, have refused to give the country a national inquiry routinely. I mean, routinely,

00:56:23.440 it's been prominent women in national political life. And I think there's also, by the way,

00:56:29.620 been a lot of hypocrisy there too. I mean, if you just take the case of the rape gangs, you know,

00:56:34.080 the whole Me Too scandal, you know, middle class liberal, middle class liberal professional women

00:56:39.020 who didn't say anything at all about young white working class girls being raped, harassed and abused 0.99

00:56:44.280 by Muslim gangs. And, you know, there's just, I think people aren't stupid. They can see a lot 1.00

00:56:48.240 of this stuff that's playing out before them. Well, it's a good thing that neither of us have

00:56:52.440 academic jobs anymore, because if we had had them, this conversation would have done them in for like

00:56:57.920 seven different reasons. Okay, let's turn back to the rape gang issue, because, you know, in for a penny,

00:57:04.420 in for a pound. And so if you don't mind, what I would like you to do is, you know, I've looked at the

00:57:10.540 rape gang issue as much as I possibly could as an outsider to the UK, right? And was shocked by it,

00:57:17.260 absolutely shocked beyond comprehension that such a thing could even be vaguely possible. I couldn't

00:57:22.500 even believe it when I first started to investigate it, which was probably about 15 years ago, by the

00:57:27.060 way. And so the first thing I'd like you to do for people who are watching and listening, and for me,

00:57:31.660 is just to, do you want to just describe what you see as the reality of the rape gang situation in

00:57:39.060 the UK? Just lay it out. You mentioned 50 cities, and up to something approximating a million

00:57:44.020 victims. So tell us, tell us what you believe to be the case in the UK with regards to these rape

00:57:51.120 gangs. Define them, and then tell us what the case is. Yeah, so the first thing I would say is that this

00:57:55.900 will go down in history, I think, as the biggest scandal in British society, one that much of the

00:58:03.420 establishment deliberately ignored and downplayed for half a century, what we are talking about, to be

00:58:10.800 clear, is the sexual exploitation of mainly young, white, working-class girls, often from very damaged,

00:58:20.380 broken homes, vulnerable girls. The organized, industrial-scale rape and sexual assault of those 0.94

00:58:27.740 girls by predominantly Pakistani Muslim gangs of men operating in alliance with one another, 0.99

00:58:37.180 trafficking those girls from one town to another, often having some kind of connections with police

00:58:45.760 social services. We have police officers who have been arrested and being brought before courts because

00:58:53.580 of their involvement with these rape gangs. And the rumors of this really began, Jordan, from the 1970s,

00:59:02.040 1980s. But it wasn't really until 2011, when one or two rogue journalists started to talk about the issue,

00:59:12.440 and some prominent political activists and campaigners too. But this was instantly branded a topic of, you know,

00:59:20.120 far-right politics. It was seen as low status to talk about it in Westminster. And then as the transcripts came out of

00:59:28.600 these girls, as the number of towns increased, as I say, upwards of 50 towns and cities across the UK, and, you know,

00:59:37.300 lots of young girls coming before court saying they were put on heroin, they were put on cocaine, they were told they 0.99

00:59:44.540 were targeted because they were white, they were non-Muslim, and they were trash, they were white prostitutes, 1.00

00:59:49.860 those are words that were used in the court transcripts. And as the evidence simply became 1.00

00:59:55.280 unavoidable, we then started to get these local inquiries into key towns like Rotherham, a town where

01:00:01.400 1,400 girls at least were raped and sexually assaulted by these gangs, towns like Oldham and Telford.

01:00:09.400 And it wasn't really until actually the beginning of 2025 that the release and the recirculation of some of

01:00:18.680 those transcripts, in conjunction with Elon Musk drawing attention to it, basically forced Westminster,

01:00:26.080 forced the elite in Britain to actually do something and talk about this crisis in a much bigger way.

01:00:33.180 But even then, they said, actually, we're not going to have a national inquiry into this issue,

01:00:39.660 which is outrageous, because this is clearly a systemic national crisis that involves social

01:00:45.140 workers, police officers, Muslim communities, gangs of men. It's been going on for 30, 40 years. 0.98

01:00:52.980 Some of these girls, by the way, have been murdered. I just want to mention a few names. Lucy Lowe,

01:00:59.720 Victoria Goglia, Charlene Downs, everyone around the world has heard of George Floyd. Nobody's heard

01:01:05.320 those names. These are girls who were murdered when they were 12, 13, 14 years of age. Like you,

01:01:13.980 I'm a father. I find this absolutely despicable. And even when, in some of these cases, even when

01:01:20.440 fathers in desperation were trying to get their daughters back, were trying to save their daughters

01:01:28.720 from these gangs, they were then arrested. They were then told that they were breaking the law.

01:01:35.900 So every aspect of this scandal is utterly hideous. And the fact that our Labour government,

01:01:41.100 you know, which has announced 25 national inquiries for other issues, cannot bring itself

01:01:45.900 to launch an inquiry this time around, also tells you a lot. It tells you that Labour is scared about

01:01:51.720 the scale of this crisis. It tells you that Labour officials are probably implicated in this crisis.

01:01:57.240 And we do know that some Labour officials have been implicated in this crisis in local towns in

01:02:03.820 England. It tells you that this crisis probably goes much deeper within the state than we currently

01:02:09.560 are being led to believe. And it tells you again, that because the victims are white working class

01:02:16.800 girls, that within the matrix of social justice ideology, which dominates many of the public sector 1.00

01:02:23.260 institutions, they are simply not seen as being fashionable or important enough to warrant the

01:02:30.240 same level of attention and concern that other groups in our society receive.

01:02:35.500 Okay, let's see if we can sort out why that is. Because you might assume that if the elites that we were

01:02:42.780 describing have a harm ethic, like a harm reduction ethic that you might associate with a maternal instinct

01:02:53.500 gone astray, that the, that a logical target for an empathic impulse like that might be underprivileged

01:03:02.040 working class girls, like it doesn't seem to stretch the bounds of credibility, unless, and you know, 1.00

01:03:09.820 I think I've maybe detected this as a strain in British society, because I'm a bit of an outsider

01:03:15.720 looking in, unless part of the motivation for the virtue signaling on the part of the people who are

01:03:22.180 ignoring this, including upper class women, is to separate themselves as much as they possibly can from 1.00

01:03:28.540 any hint whatsoever of contamination with that lower class status. Is that, I know that's a harsh

01:03:36.760 judgment, but, you know. No, I think, I think there's a lot to do with that. Yeah, I think there's a lot to do with that.

01:03:43.260 Okay, so let me add another layer to that. And again, I'm speaking as an ignorant man, you know, I'm not a

01:03:48.720 citizen of the UK, and I'm trying to sort out what the hell's going on there as an outsider. You know, I really 0.91

01:03:55.560 became aware of the grooming gangs as a consequence of my knowledge of Tommy Robinson. And I started watching him about

01:04:02.400 15 years ago, and I interviewed him last year, my wife first, and then, or my wife and I, she, it was actually

01:04:09.760 on her instigation. And then we did two interviews. And my sense with Tommy was, you know, I kind of

01:04:16.980 understand him, because I was raised in a working class environment, by the way. And so I understand what

01:04:21.460 sort of character he is. And he's also super bright. He's remarkably intelligent. And, you know, he's got a

01:04:27.800 chickered past. But my sense of Tommy Robinson, and I'm more than happy to hear your take on this,

01:04:34.080 is that he's a representative of the working class. He saw what was happening to the girls in

01:04:40.760 his community, including his own cousin, who fell prey to these gangs. And he started to make quite

01:04:46.440 the damn fuss about it. And he wasn't afraid to point fingers, particularly in the direction of the 0.97

01:04:51.660 Pakistani rape gangs. And we have to talk about the fact that they're, well, you know, because 1.00

01:04:57.660 we're already in serious trouble in seven different ways. They're Pakistani Muslim rape 1.00

01:05:02.420 gangs. That's the ones we're concentrating on. And at the moment in the UK, from what I understand, 1.00

01:05:07.760 and this has been the case for quite a while, to specify it that carefully and precisely, let's say,

01:05:13.580 opens you up to accusations of being like a far-right neo-Nazi, like Tommy Robinson, let's say. So

01:05:19.300 tell me what you think about Robinson and the reaction to him. I mean, I know people like Pierce

01:05:24.540 Morgan. I get along fine with Pierce. He's treated me great. We've had lots of good discussions.

01:05:28.860 He's certainly no fan of Tommy Robinson. And he's pilloried in the British press as a general rule.

01:05:35.240 I know there was a huge demonstration, what, last week? 100,000 people, I heard. The legacy media never

01:05:41.540 bloody well reported it. Anyways, see, tell me what you think about that mess.

01:05:46.660 So I've always found Tommy Robinson interesting for a number of reasons. We're a similar age.

01:05:52.320 He grew up in Luton, which is very close to the town. I grew up on the outskirts of somewhere called

01:06:00.440 St. Albans. I'm very, you know, he reminds me of lots of the guys I grew up with. You know,

01:06:08.860 I don't want to make it too personal. My background was somewhat similar, not stable,

01:06:13.760 certainly wasn't middle class. And so when I saw him first break through in 2009, 2010,

01:06:21.980 drawing attention to this issue, I kind of, you know, I sort of understood where he was coming

01:06:26.800 from and the anger and the frustration that was driving that. Now, where I departed from Robinson

01:06:35.560 is that I felt at the time that being so provocative, and this was between 2009 and 2013-14 with his

01:06:45.580 movement, the English Defence League, by being so provocative on the streets, I felt that he was

01:06:54.500 playing into the hands of the state, that he was becoming useful for the state, which was then saying,

01:06:59.940 well, if you talk about these issues, you're like these guys. And I think he's obviously been

01:07:07.240 on a journey. He's not the same person today that he was then. But I think the reality of Tommy

01:07:12.800 Robinson is that he would not have become a prominent, significant figure in our national

01:07:19.480 political life, which he is, were it not for the sustained failures of the British state to deal

01:07:27.500 with the issues that he has been campaigning on. Had they taken this issue seriously,

01:07:33.080 had they investigated the rumours, had they looked at the rise of radical Islamism as well,

01:07:40.320 particularly within some of the communities that Robinson knows very well, then he wouldn't have

01:07:46.560 become a significant figure. So, you know, he certainly gave voice to some of the issues that

01:07:51.880 were being ignored, as did, by the way, a few other people at the time, some renegade journalists

01:07:57.120 and so on. But I think all, I think at the same time, though, and this is a, it's a sensitive

01:08:04.200 conversation, because I think everybody who cares about this issue, you know, cares very strongly

01:08:10.520 about it, right? My view is that the only way we can change Western societies today, we can save

01:08:19.260 Western civilisation, we can reassert the values that we care about, is through the ballot box.

01:08:24.680 That's my view. That the only way forward is by appealing to a majority of concerned citizens,

01:08:31.840 by bringing together a broad coalition of people who say, actually, enough is enough. I'm not going

01:08:36.720 to have this project imposed on me anymore. I'm not going to support mass uncontrolled immigration. 1.00

01:08:41.960 I'm not going to be told that little boys can become little girls and little girls can become

01:08:45.600 little boys. I'm not going to see my country, my home be denigrated in this way. You know,

01:08:51.800 I want to push back through the ballot box. And to me, that's the only viable, alternative,

01:08:58.360 plausible way forward. It's not to say that I think these people are wrong to be highlighting

01:09:02.540 these issues. But I think if you're serious about bringing about change, changing things,

01:09:10.460 changing policy, changing government, I think the ballot box is the way forward. I don't think Britain

01:09:16.660 has the same culture as France, Italy and other countries whereby street protest is embraced or

01:09:26.640 supported. I think we have a very distinctive political culture in this country, which social

01:09:31.820 scientists have talked about from the 50s onward. We have a civic culture. We're very sceptical of

01:09:37.160 what anything that might look like it's aggressive, anything that might look like it's,

01:09:41.940 you know, challenging the rule of law. And I think ultimately, it's about what approach do you think

01:09:51.220 is really the most viable way to bring about change?

01:09:54.840 Okay, so you're okay. So if I'm reading this correctly, your criticism of Robinson would be

01:10:00.300 that he took the protest route, let's say, rather than working within a system that you still regard,

01:10:08.440 an electoral system that you regard as viable. And, you know, you have your reasons to regard it as

01:10:14.640 viable. I mean...

01:10:16.000 Let me just put it a different way. I think path dependency really matters in politics.

01:10:22.740 I think where you start determines your eventual destination. So if you start with a movement that's

01:10:29.760 very combative, provocative, that is associated with, you know, rightly or wrongly, it was associated

01:10:37.140 with drinking and conflict and fighting with cops and whatever. It's just going to be very difficult

01:10:42.400 for you to change the public perception, right? From where you start, basically determines your

01:10:47.560 eventual destination. Now, what I'm interested in, I'm interested in movements that are winning 30,

01:10:52.520 40% of the national vote, as in, I want to get things done. I want to do what Trump's doing in the US.

01:10:58.580 I want to come in and say, right, we're slashing the state. We're getting rid of DEI. We're ending

01:11:03.500 mass uncontrolled immigration. We're going to have a serious strategy for integration, right? We're 0.98

01:11:08.800 going to push back on net zero. I'm interested in that. I'm not interested in a purity spiral

01:11:14.340 over on the corner here as to, you know, who's been talking about this issue for the longest

01:11:19.840 period of time. I respect people who are ahead of the curve on issues like that. But I'm ultimately

01:11:26.080 interested in how do you actually save a country? What's the most viable way of doing that?

01:11:32.180 Look, there's two ways we could take this conversation now. And we have to kind of decide

01:11:37.140 between them because we're going to run out of time, although we have an additional half an hour

01:11:41.780 on the Daily Wire side. So what we could do, we could take apart the Pakistani Muslim immigrant issue 0.97

01:11:50.860 and see if we could discuss the separate contributions of each of those three attributes

01:11:56.320 to the rape gang phenomena, right? That's a hard thing to do, but it would be worth doing. 0.77

01:12:03.320 The other thing we could do, because I don't think we can do both, is we could further discuss

01:12:08.560 the plan that you just described or the vision that you just described in relationship, let's say,

01:12:15.220 to the Reform Party and Nigel Farage. And we could talk about how it is that you might reinvigorate

01:12:24.960 UK civil society and move it away from this virtue signaling net zero and multiculturalism idiocy. 0.66

01:12:34.480 And so do you have a preference for one of those directions? 0.63

01:12:39.600 Well, personally, I would want to focus on how we realign politics and save this country.

01:12:46.060 That's where I'm investing a lot of my effort. I have a plan for that. I think I have something that

01:12:52.320 looks pretty credible. I'm involved in the plan to try and do that. I'm speaking across the country

01:12:58.620 at many events alongside people like Nigel Farage. And I'm interested in thinking about how do we

01:13:05.260 realign this country in the way that Canada was realigned for a period of time, in the way that

01:13:10.100 America is currently being realigned? What does that actually look like? Because for the first

01:13:15.820 time in history, I think it's actually possible. As you and I are talking right now, reform is number

01:13:21.940 one in the national polls. Okay, it's on 25, 26%. It needs to really get to about 31% to win a majority

01:13:30.620 at the next election. I think that's possible. I genuinely do. I think there's so much volatility

01:13:36.240 in British politics at the moment. I think it is possible for this movement to actually

01:13:41.180 do what the Labour Party did in the early 20th century when it emerged to replace the Liberals.

01:13:46.900 I think there is an enormous opportunity for reform to do that, principally, but not only because of the

01:13:52.920 mass immigration crisis. So that's where I'm spending a lot of my time. And the rape gangs is part of 0.99

01:13:59.280 that. But to me, that's a symbol of the failure of our state policy of multiculturalism. It's a symbol

01:14:05.340 of the failure of mass immigration. And it's a symbol of this woke political correctness,

01:14:11.780 the fact that so few people were willing to talk about it, that has created this enormous vacuum

01:14:16.440 that you're seeing now playing out in the national polls.

01:14:21.120 Okay, so let's do that. Okay, so let's start by, let's start with this. So could you detail out your,

01:14:28.040 both your association with and your understanding of the, I guess we're going to concentrate on the

01:14:33.460 Reform Party in the UK and differentiate that from, well, the current Conservatives, maybe even the

01:14:39.820 classic Conservatives in the UK? So how are you associated with reform? What do you think of

01:14:45.280 Nigel Farage and what he's doing? And how would you distinguish reform from the, whatever the

01:14:52.240 Conservatives are now, the net zero Conservatives, let's say?

01:14:55.740 The Liberal Conservatives, I think probably many people in Britain would call them,

01:14:59.840 or the Uniparty. They're indistinguishable from the Labour Party. Look, I think many people in

01:15:06.460 Britain know, I mean, I'm friends with Nigel Farage. I've known him for 15 years. I'm very

01:15:12.240 sympathetic to what he's trying to do. I speak at reform party rallies and conferences. And,

01:15:19.240 you know, I have a close association with the party, because I believe fundamentally,

01:15:24.600 it's the only political movement that we have that is capable of bringing about the kind of change

01:15:33.260 this country needs to see if it is to be saved. And by that, I mean, ending mass uncontrolled,

01:15:41.840 low skill, low wage migration from outside of Europe. I mean, fixing our borders by leaving the 1.00

01:15:49.240 European Convention on Human Rights, by reforming the laws that Tony Blair brought in, including the

01:15:54.580 Human Rights Act, by dramatically reducing the 15.3 billion pounds that we spend in foreign aid

01:16:03.100 every year, and making sure that our public services work for British people before we send

01:16:09.420 money to China, India, and elsewhere. I mean, pushing back against the net zero project. And I mean,

01:16:17.320 investing in non-London areas, in places outside of the capital, and investing in people outside of

01:16:23.800 the elite minority. Now, I have come to the view, the Tories, the Conservative Party, are completely

01:16:29.340 incapable of doing those things. They are the architects of the mess that we see around us today. They are

01:16:36.060 the architects of our national decline, and the Labour Party is part of that. I do not view reform as merely a

01:16:43.960 new Conservative Party. That would be selling it short. I view reform as a none of the above party,

01:16:50.360 neither left nor right, as a party that could just as easily win over the working class in northern

01:16:57.640 England and Wales, in the industrial heartlands, as it could win over disillusioned Conservatives

01:17:02.860 in the Tory shies. Look, Jordan, I'll be honest with you. I don't think Nigel Farage has all the answers,

01:17:08.480 and I don't think the reform movement is the perfect movement. But what I think is that Britain is,

01:17:14.860 for the first time really in generations, is ideally positioned for a full-blown political

01:17:21.600 realignment. And I think Nigel Farage and reform are the vehicle that can be used to bring that about.

01:17:31.280 Okay, so let me compare and contrast your reform party agenda, let's say, with the agenda that we've

01:17:39.020 put forward, perhaps more on the philosophical side with this alliance for responsible citizenship.

01:17:44.320 We have a conference coming up in London, February 17th to 19th. We'll have about 4,000 people there.

01:17:52.140 I think that what we're aiming at has what, to some degree, they are overlapping Venn diagrams with

01:18:00.800 what reform has been proposing. So we have five major policy initiatives, six because we added an

01:18:10.000 initial, an additional one. So let me just lay those out. And I want to do that, not to advertise art

01:18:15.960 precisely, although that's, you know, handy, but to give us a structure that we can use to take apart

01:18:24.200 the reform platform. So cheap, reliable, plentiful energy in all of its forms to drive energy costs down

01:18:33.460 so we don't starve the poor people to death, let's say. Allied with something approximating 0.99

01:18:39.780 responsible environmental stewardship. But that doesn't mean nature worship. And it certainly doesn't

01:18:44.380 mean there's too goddamn many people on the planet. A rekindling of the narrative that the West is 0.68

01:18:51.820 founded on. And a restoration of appreciation for the fundamental principles that the free West is

01:18:59.280 predicated on. I'll give you an example. 100% of Protestant and Catholic majority countries outside

01:19:05.140 of Africa are highly functional Western democracies. There's a reason for that, and no one will talk

01:19:11.220 about it. And so that needs to be discussed. We're not a fan of government, media, corporation collusion.

01:19:18.560 So it's anti-fascist in the genuine sense. We're very pro-family. We don't think there are too many

01:19:25.800 people on the planet. We think that monogamous, child-centered, married couples are the appropriate

01:19:33.880 environment for children and the foundation of a civil society. And that's, well, that's basically

01:19:39.880 insofar as they're, those aren't policies, they're axioms. That's a good way of thinking about it. And so

01:19:47.460 I'm wondering perhaps what you think of those, but also more specifically, how you see that in

01:19:53.320 relationship to what the Reform Party is doing, maybe even what the Trump administration is doing

01:19:58.000 in the United States. Well, the first thing I would say is congratulations, Jordan, you are a reformer.

01:20:04.060 If you believe all of those things, then you share the platform of reform. And I look forward to seeing

01:20:09.800 you at ARC. But in my mind, there are two principles that differentiate this movement from what we might

01:20:15.000 call the Uniparty, in my mind. And I'm not speaking in an official capacity for reform. The first is the

01:20:22.020 principle of popular sovereignty. I think reform believes that the true source of power, authority and

01:20:28.580 legitimacy lies not with a distant elite, but with the people. I believe that ultimately, the relationship

01:20:37.180 in politics that matters is vertical. It runs from the people to those they elect to represent them on

01:20:45.220 their behalf. It does not run horizontally from one group of elites in Westminster to another group of

01:20:51.580 elites in Davos to another group of elites in Washington. So I believe foremost in the principle

01:20:56.760 of popular sovereignty. That's what got things like Brexit over the line. And that's what will get many

01:21:01.440 other common sense positions over the line. The second principle that I think unites reformers and

01:21:07.120 certainly is something I believe in is the principle of national preference. Namely, that in every aspect of

01:21:13.560 our country, our country, our home, I believe from housing to the economy, to our culture, identity and

01:21:20.020 history, that the people of that country should ultimately be prioritized. That if limited housing

01:21:28.160 is available, if limited places on the National Health Service are available, if we have money, we should

01:21:34.560 focus on fixing our home before helping other parts of the world. That's not to say we don't want to help

01:21:40.700 other parts of the world. It's just about the ranking and the order of preference. Those are the two

01:21:45.260 principles that I think put the reform movement clearly apart from the uniparty because both the

01:21:52.340 Labour Party and the Tory Party have shown consistently that they don't respect the values and the voice of

01:21:59.080 ordinary people. And they have shown quite clearly that they don't have much of an interest in

01:22:04.800 prioritizing and protecting our home and the things that make our home distinctive, its identity, its

01:22:11.140 culture, and its sense of collective memory or its history. So to me, you know, reform is a common

01:22:18.060 sense position. Almost all of its policies, from migration to the borders, to the economy, almost all of

01:22:27.340 them are supported by large majorities of people. And they used to be advocated by mainstream politicians.

01:22:32.780 It's just, as I say, the elite class has drifted so far to the cultural left. You know, we had a survey

01:22:37.960 recently in Britain by some social scientists, and they found that Labour and Tory MPs are closer

01:22:45.000 together ideologically than Tory MPs are to the average voter, right? In other words, the Conservative

01:22:52.480 movement have moved so far to the cultural left that they've basically abandoned ordinary voters.

01:22:58.560 They're indistinguishable, basically, from their Labour colleagues. Now, nobody could say that

01:23:03.980 about reform MPs. They are bang on, basically, where the average voter is on these big cultural

01:23:11.500 and identity questions. So that's how I see it. And I see it's a correction to a system that has become

01:23:17.980 deeply corrupt and ideologically homogenous.

01:23:20.620 I should have pointed out, too, given what you just said, that one of the primary focuses of ARC

01:23:27.840 as well, and this overlaps with the principles that you just laid out, is the principle of

01:23:32.680 responsible citizenship, hence the name Alliance of Responsible Citizens. And it is predicated on the

01:23:39.420 idea that sovereignty properly inherits in the people, and that society not only can't be,

01:23:48.060 but shouldn't be governed by top-down elitist rule by, let's say, force, compulsion, and fear,

01:23:54.240 that ordinary people aren't so ordinary, and that they have to, that it would be best, all things

01:24:00.500 considered, for them to adopt responsibility for their own sovereignty and to govern their own affairs.

01:24:06.600 That's partly an emergent consequence of the principle of subsidiarity, which is an ancient

01:24:12.520 doctrine of social order that has been classically viewed as the alternative to tyranny and

01:24:17.980 slavery. And so, okay, and so that's in keeping with your, well, your, let's say, something like

01:24:24.240 a return to the people, which is a deep, obviously, a deep British tradition, maybe the deepest of

01:24:29.780 British traditions, and something that you Brits have given to the world, most fundamentally. It'd

01:24:35.040 be a catastrophe to see that disappear.

01:24:37.400 But I'll just say, just about the conversation that you're sparking with ARC, you know, you have to

01:24:42.160 understand, Jordan, that that is essentially the only place that is having that conversation

01:24:47.700 here in the UK. I mean, if you look at the long-term forecast of where we are headed as a country,

01:24:53.520 by 2100, you know, our fertility rate is forecast to be 1.3, you know, well below the replacement level

01:24:59.980 of 2.1. It's currently at about 1.6 at the moment. We also now know that between today and 2047,

01:25:09.300 which again, isn't really that far away, 22 years, our population is forecast to grow by another 10

01:25:15.180 million people, obviously all of whom will come from outside of the UK. Migration is the only driver, 0.98

01:25:22.860 it is the only driver of population growth in this country, because more people are now dying than

01:25:28.440 being born among the British population. So migration is the only driver of population growth,

01:25:33.880 while our fertility rate is collapsing. So what I'm saying is, if you want to have a conversation

01:25:40.000 about pro-family policy, okay, what does that look like? How can we support families outside of,

01:25:44.900 you know, tinkering with the tax system? How could we actually radically have, bring about a pro-family

01:25:51.300 culture, right? And people say, oh, you can't do that. Well, I say, well, look what they did with

01:25:54.960 smoking. I mean, look at how, you know, that changed the culture, right? You've suddenly convinced

01:25:59.120 everybody. Israel has done it. Israel has done it. Now, interestingly, Israel has had a lot more 0.52

01:26:04.980 success than countries like Poland and Hungary, also countries I know well. Now, how has Israel done 0.91

01:26:09.940 it? Israel's done it by making it clear that actually the survival of the nation, the survival

01:26:16.120 of the people is dependent upon them, all assuming responsibility and playing a role in that enterprise.

01:26:22.920 Now, somehow Western nations have to come up with something similar, something that is existential,

01:26:31.140 that appeals to the soul and appeals to that sense of responsibility, because I don't think tax changes

01:26:36.940 and all that stuff are really going to do it. But again, family, so that conversation is happening

01:26:40.940 at ARC. It's not happening with our mainstream political elite. The effects of migration, they're not

01:26:47.580 talking about the evidence that is being accumulated, that is showing this is going to be a disaster

01:26:51.780 over the next 10, 20, 30 years. What we're doing, like Canada, is we are pushing our country into a

01:26:58.820 population trap. And what do I mean by that? I mean that we are basically pushing ourselves into a

01:27:04.860 position whereby the capacity of the state to provide basic public services is being overwhelmed by the

01:27:13.600 sheer scale of demographic change. That's a population trap. So if you cannot provide basic health

01:27:19.740 services, basic housing, if you cannot keep people safe on their streets, and you're being sort of flooded

01:27:25.960 with demographic change, well, you know, welcome to a disaster, because that is what is unfolding, not just

01:27:31.820 here, but also, by the way, in countries like Sweden. I mean, most of your viewers, I suspect, won't know this,

01:27:36.820 but since Christmas, you know, we're speaking in February 2025. In the last month, there have been more than

01:27:42.740 30 bombings in Sweden. 30 bombings in Sweden. Right. None of that's covered with the weather legacy.

01:27:48.900 None of that's in the mainstream media. So again, you know, conversations that are being had,

01:27:55.220 thankfully, in this new ecosystem of podcasts, of shows, of Daily Wire, new universities,

01:28:01.460 that is one of the reasons, one of the few reasons why I am actually optimistic, because we are now

01:28:06.600 beginning to force a conversation about family policy, about the rape gangs, about the future

01:28:13.180 of the West, about how we reframe our understanding of our history, about how we, you know, share a sense

01:28:21.100 of patriotism and a belief in the values that have driven this thing we love called Western

01:28:28.140 civilization. That's one of the only reasons I'm actually optimistic that this new ecosystem

01:28:33.720 has taken off to the extent that it has done. All right. Well, okay. First, I'm looking forward

01:28:41.800 to continuing the conversation at ARC in mid-February. And it is a conversation because we're trying to

01:28:48.120 figure out how to move toward the implementation of these, let's say, broad-scale philosophical visions

01:28:55.280 that we're putting forward. And there's obviously a conversation to be had, well, I think, with the

01:29:00.140 conservatives, as well as with reform, but certainly with reform. And, you know, I'm certainly attending

01:29:06.500 very carefully to your concerns about the capture of the conservatives, because the fact that they're

01:29:11.780 still promoting net zero seems to me to indicate quite likely that that capture is pretty complete.

01:29:17.640 But in any case, we've got many things to talk about, and there is some reason for optimism.

01:29:22.100 I think maybe what we'll do on the Daily Wire side, for those of you who are watching and listening,

01:29:26.300 is I think maybe we'll return to the issue of the rape gangs, because there's some more

01:29:30.220 delving into that I'd like to do, both on the pessimistic and the optimistic side, because I'd

01:29:35.980 like to take apart the contributing factors on the side of the perpetrators, like just exactly who are

01:29:43.640 they and why are they doing what they're doing, apart from, you know, issues of pure, unadulterated lust

01:29:50.280 with some, you know, with some genuine sadism mixed in there. So I think we'll do that on the

01:29:56.420 Daily Wire side. Apart from that, I'd like to thank you for talking to me today and for being so

01:30:02.020 forthright. That's a hell of a conversation to have to have. There's so many terrible things to

01:30:07.320 delve into, and I'm looking forward to seeing you at ARC. Thanks, Jordan. Looking forward to seeing

01:30:12.920 you as well. Yeah, much appreciated. And to all of you watching and listening on the YouTube side,

01:30:18.720 thank you very much for your time and attention. Thanks to the Daily Wire for making this possible.

01:30:23.720 The film crew here in D.C. I'm in D.C. today at the prayer breakfast. And, well, we'll continue

01:30:31.280 our conversation for another 30 minutes behind the Daily Wire paywall.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - February 13, 2025

521. Reform, R＊pe Gangs and the Rot of the UK ｜ Matthew Goodwin

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