In this episode of Brokernomics, I look at the economic impact of civil unrest in the UK, focusing on the key indicator that can be used to predict it: population growth. And the answer is... not much.
00:00:00.000Hello, and welcome to Brokonomics. Now, in this episode, I'm going to be sticking with the theme
00:00:04.700of last week, and we're going to be looking at this civil unrest a little bit more. But
00:00:09.200in the last episode, it was a bit more heartfelt. It was a bit more reacting to the events as they
00:00:15.680unfolded, saying some things that needed to be said. In this one, I kind of wanted to look at
00:00:21.280more the hard practical realities. I've got lots of numbers in this, lots of graphs.
00:00:24.960What actually are the government's options? Why are they behaving like this? How strong is their
00:00:32.580hand? Spoiler alert, not particularly strong. So, economics of civil unrest. I'm going to start
00:00:42.660with perhaps the key indicator that I found predicting civil unrest. This is a chart that
00:00:49.020shows the red line is the growth in population, and the blue line is real GDP per worker. So,
00:00:56.880you know, per capita GDP, or you could look at it as the income level per the individual.
00:01:04.060And for those of you who are listening, basically, they're opening up like alligator jaws. So,
00:01:09.020population is going up, straight up and to the right. The real GDP per worker, or the income per
00:01:16.020worker is going down, straight down and to the right. And it's opening up an enormous gap between
00:01:22.740the two. Now, this particular chart is actually for Canada. It doesn't matter. It's the same chart
00:01:28.740for the UK. And I found a whole bunch of basically this indicator for a whole bunch of different
00:01:36.040situations. And going right back to the French Revolution, an absolute swathe of periods of
00:01:43.860strong civil unrest have had this chart. Now, I did think briefly about trying to mesh it all
00:01:50.140together and overlaying it, but the data was all in such different formats, it would have been a hell
00:01:55.460of a job to do it. So, I just thought, I'll take the Canadian chart and show you that one,
00:01:59.080because it shows it quite clearly. That gap in population and income of the population,
00:02:05.580it makes people a little bit fiery, a little bit up for civil unrest. Now, this is a
00:02:12.980sufficient but not necessary condition for unrest to occur. This is the perfect backdrop for that.
00:02:22.280But of course, you need the spark. And of course, we all know what the spark was in this case,
00:02:26.360and we'll come back to that in a moment. But just talking about the population side of this for a
00:02:31.140moment, because I think that's also worth capturing. There has always been immigration. I'm going to
00:02:36.060give you figure two. This is population of the British Isles. And this goes back to, you know,
00:02:43.060the turn of the previous millennia. So, this is quite a long data series. That first blip you can see
00:02:49.640is the Black Death, of course, or one of the Black Deaths. And what you basically have is a fairly low
00:02:55.320level organic population rise. Black Death, a bit of a sharp decline, but a fairly organic population
00:03:02.300rise up until about the early 1700s, the advent of much easier modes of travel. And then you start to
00:03:12.160get this inexorable upper rise. So, I'm just kind of making the point here that population, rapid
00:03:19.120population rise is not a particularly new phenomenon. It's been happening for many hundreds
00:03:23.980of years. Everything captured on this chart is going to be largely European, inter-European
00:03:30.220immigration. And actually, for most of this chart, it's going to be inter-British Isles immigration.
00:03:37.180You can actually see on large sections here, the populations of Ireland, Scotland and Wales
00:03:42.960declining as the population of England went up, as it became an industrial manufacturing powerhouse.
00:03:51.340So, population rise is not a new thing. But as you will also know from previous episodes of
00:03:56.000Brokernomics, there has been a long period of which productivity has gently increased over this
00:04:03.640same time scale, about, well, anywhere between half a percent to one and a half percent per year.
00:04:09.380So, even though the population was rising, the income per individual was also rising. So, life was getting
00:04:17.800just a little bit better every year alongside the population increase. And the population that was
00:04:25.500coming in was as productive as the existing population. So, you had that organic and genuine
00:04:35.160income level rise, GDP level rise. But of course, that is not what we've been talking about in
00:04:43.280modern times. So, the country can absorb, quite effectively, significant increases in population
00:04:52.200when those increases in population are sufficiently well matched with the population that they're
00:05:00.200integrating into. I now want to move on to figure three. This is a pie chart of 1981, the ethnic mix of
00:05:11.260Britain in 1981. And for those of you who are listening, the white population makes up 95%, over 95% of the
00:05:21.620of the pie chart. Asian, which I presume in 1981 would have been largely, largely Indian, perhaps a smattering of
00:05:31.860Pakistani, but largely Indian. 2.7. Black is actually quite low, 1.5. And then 0.4 for everybody else. So, in 1981, the
00:05:42.680country was a predominantly, overwhelmingly white country. And then we're going to advance this another 10 years, to 1991.
00:05:51.740A modest increase. Black is up fairly organically from, was it 1.5 to 1.9. The Asian population, a stronger increase,
00:06:05.740from 2.7 to 3.7. But the population is still 94% white in 1991. And I will remember 1991. I'm old enough to remember many of you,
00:06:17.800some of you won't, but many of you will be old enough to remember 1991.
00:06:21.8002001. This is after Blair has come into government. In 2001, he was still largely behaving himself.
00:06:33.860He was still largely sticking to the spending plans of the major era government. But by now, the ramp up in immigration was
00:06:45.860starting to kick in. Now the population is down to 87% white. And we're starting to break it out. And actually, the big
00:06:57.920new entrant here was other whites. Typically, that was Eastern Europeans. That was, by and large, it was, it was Polish.
00:07:08.6004% of the population, they rapidly caught up with the Asians. I mean, the Asians are now higher.
00:07:15.200They're at 5%. Blacks are modest growth at 2.3%. And we're now getting mixed. Because, of course,
00:07:23.200immigrant populations tend not to mix Generation 1. Generation 2, they often will. So you're starting
00:07:30.920to get that mix come through and still a negligible amount of others. And that was the concern in Britain
00:07:39.440of immigration at the time, which is always worth remembering when you get these sort of leftist
00:07:44.260idiots telling you that it's all about skin color and racism. Well, no, because there was a lively
00:07:50.620debate about immigration back in 2001. And it was directed at the rapid increase of Polish coming
00:07:56.980in. And they did sort of colonize a bit. I mean, my hometown of where I grew up, Bognor,
00:08:01.720Regis. I have a mental image of the place. I mean, I haven't been back there for a long time. I moved
00:08:08.720out when I was 18. But I mean, I have a mental image of the high street that I remember. And when I sort
00:08:13.660of briefly visit again now, the main high street is just full of Polish signs, Polish shops everywhere.
00:08:21.540I mean, the place has been colonized. So let's jump forward another 10 years, 2011. Blair has really had the
00:08:31.040opportunity to do things and things are really starting to shift now. The white British population is down below
00:08:37.14080% at this point. White other is now up to 5.7. But what's interesting is the Asians are being caught up
00:08:48.060on by the white other. They are surging ahead now 7.8%. And the black is starting to show a respectable
00:08:59.640increase. It will increase still only up to 3.5. Mixed is growing all the time at 2.3. 2021.
00:09:11.640The white British are now down to 73%. White other 75, 7.5%. The Asians very close to 10%. Black up to 4%.
00:09:23.880Mixed now at 3%. And other because of course, you know, the doors have been fully opened at this point. So,
00:09:28.920you know, let's make use of that other category, 2%. But let's just stop and think about the remarkable
00:09:35.360change in the space of a single human lifespan. 1981, 95% white British. In the space of a single
00:09:44.380human lifespan, that has gone down to barely above 70%. This is a rapid level of demographic change.
00:09:53.420Now, this does not have anything to do with skin colour by itself, which is of course the lefty
00:10:01.400narrative, which is, oh, you just don't like people with higher melanin. No, no, no. That's not what's
00:10:06.740going on here. What it's got to do with is cultural change. Now, any man who, any single man who's ever
00:10:15.800taken on a woman will know about cultural change. Um, you know, you have your perfectly sensible house,
00:10:22.240um, with your perfectly sensible limited amount of furniture and everything is order and there's
00:10:28.980lots of nice empty space everywhere. And then a woman turns up and suddenly you've got bloody soft
00:10:33.480furnishings everywhere. You know, your curtains were not sufficient. They need to be replaced with
00:10:37.920puffy wavy curtains and your single cushion, which is perfectly sufficient. All of that time now needs
00:10:44.080to be replaced with about 30 cushions and God knows what else. Drapes and extra tables, far more
00:10:50.860crockery than you could ever possibly need. Even you've invited over all of your friends, but you
00:10:55.840know, a big cultural shock. The difference with that though, is that you chose it. You made the decision
00:11:02.260to take the trade off. That is not what's happening here. There has been no popular clamoring for the
00:11:11.300sort of cultural change that comes with it. I mentioned my hometown has been largely colonized
00:11:16.640by the Polish, at least the high street. Swindon has apparently been colonized by absolutely
00:11:23.020everywhere. I mean, there isn't a dominant, um, foreign ethnicity here. It is just people seemingly
00:11:30.700from everybody and different groups integrate in different ways. And of course it's affected
00:11:34.780by the speed of the integration. I mentioned in the last episode that I don't really have a problem
00:11:39.820with immigration per se, as long as it is limited, as long as it is, you know, the, the best of the
00:11:46.600rest of the world. The native population of this country is, is about 50 million. Population of the
00:11:53.820entire world is about 8 billion. If we took the top 0.1% of the rest of the world, that mean an extra
00:11:59.4608 million people. I, I would be fairly comfortable with that if it was the best of the best of
00:12:05.340everywhere else, you know, um, personal example, I was friendly with a lad at university who was,
00:12:12.360um, originally Ghanaian, well, his parents were Ghanaian anyway. And Wayne described himself as
00:12:17.840Ghanaian as well, cause he wasn't in for this lefty nonsense. Um, and his father was a, was an
00:12:23.260aerospace engineer who came over. I mean, brilliant, fine. Don't have a problem with that. Um, and as
00:12:31.280far as I can remember, he was the only, I mean, he wasn't the only black lad on the campus, but he
00:12:34.840was, you know, there weren't many Ghanaians. That idea of taking the best and the brightest from
00:12:43.240wherever they may be in the rest of the world in limited numbers and bringing them here, you know,
00:12:47.400as, as, as mentioned in the previous episode, perfect, perfectly happy with that. But obviously
00:12:52.480you don't go from 95% white to, you know, barely 70% white by taking the, the best of everywhere
00:13:02.520else. You do it by fairly indiscriminate open borders, which is entirely what's happened.
00:13:08.820And people recognize this. They recognize the cultural shift. Um, they recognize that the, um,
00:13:20.300speed and the numbers are a qualitative difference of their own. So, you know, that Ghanaian lad
00:13:25.400that I'm thinking of integrated perfectly into, you know, what we all did, how we all behaved.
00:13:31.760You know, there was, there was no incompatibility in culture there. If you bring over thousands
00:13:40.720and, you know, put them in a town, especially if they are from a culture, which has a particular
00:13:47.500antithetical way of doing things to Western values, then they ghettoize and they don't integrate
00:13:53.800and they don't become one of the lads. Interestingly, I did know a couple of, um, um, Muslim lads
00:14:01.380at university as well. One of them has integrated since, and another one of them has basically
00:14:08.060gone full Islamist since then. I mean, he's, he doesn't, doesn't do any of the things he
00:14:14.300used to do. He doesn't drink. He doesn't go out. He's, you know, he's just fully, I mean,
00:14:18.600he puts his wife in the whole thing, the hijab. Um, you know, different, different groups
00:14:26.480will integrate in, in different ways and, and not always will it be successful. So now
00:14:31.640I want to turn to figure eight. How have the British public reacted to this? Well, basically
00:14:39.000they voted to cut immigration at every opportunity. Now this is a, um, a chart that's going to,
00:14:45.640um, go back to, you know, the early nineties. My former colleague Callum did a segment where
00:14:53.080he actually went back to the post-war period and at every election, the British public
00:14:58.840have voted for a government promising to curb immigration and they've never done it. But
00:15:05.700this, this chart is a, is a good example. Labour's 1997 manifesto stated very clearly,
00:15:11.700every country must have firm border controls over migrants.
00:15:15.460Not what they actually did. Um, one hiccup in this is in 2005, their manifesto said that the,
00:15:27.680you know, the Labour Party declared that, um, a priority is building a strong, diverse country.
00:15:34.160So that is an example, a rare example of when a, um, uh, political party is one with a, um,
00:15:43.180very soft claim on, on immigration. But certainly from 2010 onwards, it has been unequivocal. So
00:15:50.660the 2010 conservative manifesto, conservatives pledged to bring down immigration to the tens
00:15:55.800of thousands repeated in the subsequent election and the election after that. Um, and in the 2019
00:16:06.800one, conservatives pledge numbers will come down. These are clear unequivocal statements that
00:16:15.480the intention is to reduce immigration levels. But Westminster has become unresponsive to the views
00:16:25.200of voters, not just on this, but a whole range of issue. But, but immigration is perhaps the issue
00:16:30.860where the people and the democratic and the, and the elite are most at odds with each other,
00:16:40.040where they, where their views diverge most widely. Now, partly, I think this is, comes from a
00:16:47.120misunderstanding of the benefits of, of low skilled immigration. Um, you know, I've made the argument
00:16:54.100last week and I've just made it again today that I think the benefits of, um, the best of the best,
00:17:02.060you know, the, you know, the 0.1% is obvious. Clearly there would be benefits, um, to that bringing
00:17:10.080limited number of very high skilled people who can then integrate. Recent governments have got
00:17:16.220themselves into a trap through a, presumably a desire to avoid appearing racist, but they must treat
00:17:26.080everybody the same. They must make no assumptions that anyone is different. And therefore, if the
00:17:32.080economy is GDP per capita times capita, well, if you increase the capita, you must therefore increase
00:17:40.560GDP. Because everybody that you bring in, you know, that guy from Somalia, he must be equally as
00:17:51.280productive as somebody who has grown up their entire life here, is immersed in the culture, speaks the
00:17:56.560language, understands the social conventions, and has been fully educated. Clearly that guy that's just
00:18:03.160off the boat must have an equal GDP per capita output to that original purse. And therefore you can then
00:18:10.880go on to start making OBR projections where you say, yes, okay, the debt has got excessive and we can't
00:18:16.100possibly pay it. But if we just bring in large amounts of new capita, then GDP will go up and our debt
00:18:25.720situation will become affordable. This is, of course, complete and utter nonsense. It has been demonstrated
00:18:32.620in more recent studies. I don't know why you need a study, though, to tell you this, since it's
00:18:39.180blindingly obvious. So, incorrect assumptions about the benefits of low-skilled migration.
00:18:46.160That coupled with the changes to party structure. Now, what do I mean there? It used to be the case that
00:18:52.480the local constituency would select their candidate and then they would go off to Westminster. What happens
00:18:58.360now, as we've covered in a number of brokenomics, is that the party selects a shortlist of candidates
00:19:04.320and then drops that on the constituency and they have to choose between a couple of different people,
00:19:10.440all of who believe exactly the same thing. All of this has served, along with the way that the
00:19:17.840first-past-the-post system works, to basically insulate the political class from having to deliver
00:19:24.740on any of their actual promises. As a result of which, turnout in general elections has been falling
00:19:32.720very sharply over the last 30 years. It's pretty much a down and to the right chart of, you know,
00:19:40.480turnout at general elections because people understand that their vote simply doesn't matter.
00:19:46.400Farage managed to force what was essentially an immigration referendum in 2016 with a Brexit referendum.
00:19:53.380And he went on to win it. And largely, I think what happened there is people believed the Tories
00:20:01.040when they said that they wanted to honour their promises, lowering immigration, but they were being
00:20:07.620blocked by the EU. So the people handed them Brexit as this sort of great enabler,
00:20:12.860only to watch Rishi Sunak drive immigration to absolutely unprecedented levels with those great
00:20:24.980hopes of these OBR surpluses in his mind. And the people at this last election, they destroyed the
00:20:33.200Tory party in revenge for the utter betrayal that they inflicted upon us. Conservative MPs, I think they knew
00:20:40.900that cutting immigration would require fixing things that they had broken. It would require
00:20:47.200curbing spending, getting the debt under control. The debt isn't in control with immigration. It's just
00:20:55.440that they had found an accounting fudge that enabled them to borrow more because they said,
00:21:02.640OK, we're increasing the capita and therefore we can afford the borrowing to get us through,
00:21:07.080you know, the next few months and the next few months and so on it rolls. So in order to fix
00:21:13.540this problem, I think Conservative MPs knew that they had to fix a lot of other things that they'd
00:21:17.900broken. They would need to take some short-term pain. They would need to cut spending. And also,
00:21:24.700they would get some stick and not be invited to media studios. They would perhaps have some of
00:21:33.280the more liberal friends not invited to dinner parties, etc., etc. And so they simply didn't
00:21:38.800bother doing this and thought that they could just fob their way through it. They were unsuccessful in
00:21:46.120that. So this is all of the background
00:21:49.880to the immense changes that have taken place in this country. Cultural, demographic. Let's get on
00:22:00.100to this particular period of unrest. Keir Starmer, the media class, were all acting as if people have
00:22:06.400no legitimate grievances whatsoever. Let's talk about some of those legitimate grievances. And I'm
00:22:12.320going to have to give you a very redacted list. And I can only start at 2005, otherwise we'd be here
00:22:18.380all day. So let's start with 2005. Central London bombings, the bus bombings. 52 people
00:22:24.480were killed. Bombs placed on the London Underground and on buses. The British public's response was
00:22:31.500outrage. There were no riots. The government promised that they would get a handle of things
00:22:38.680and they lied. 2013, Lee Rigby was hacked to death on the streets by two immigrants
00:22:48.200with machetes. There was outrage, but there was no rioting. And the government promised to get a handle
00:22:54.920on things and they lied. 2017, the Westminster attack. And there are still traffic stopping
00:23:04.460bollards on Westminster Bridge to this day. There was outrage, but no rioting. The government promised to get a handle on things. They did not.
00:23:13.2002017, this is a big one. The Manchester Arena bombings. At a Taylor Swift concert. Kids concertgoers were blown apart by a bomb in a kids' music festival.
00:23:35.2002017, there was outrage. There was outrage, but there were no riots because the government promised to get a handle on things.
00:23:41.920And they lied. Same year, the London Bridge attack. Outrage, no riots, government lies. 2019, London Bridge stabbings.
00:23:53.840People were outraged. People were outraged, but there was no riots. Because the government contained it and they lied.
00:24:02.160Before I go on, I'll give you a quick anecdote. It kind of makes the point well.
00:24:06.000When I married the missus, we went to Thailand, a little Thai island, Koh Lanta, I think it was, for our honeymoon.
00:24:16.800There was a little sign in the hotel that said, you know, we urge patrons to not hire a motor vehicle,
00:24:24.800because under Thai law, if you get into any accident, regardless of the circumstances,
00:24:30.560as a foreigner, you will be held responsible, on the logic that if you were not there, the accident could not have happened.