The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Charting Our Political Future ｜ Interview with Academic Agent

00:00:00.000 Hi folks, I'm joined by Dr Nima Parvini, otherwise known as the academic agent, who has decided to

00:00:05.120 come in and join me for a chat about the current state of play on the political right, both

00:00:10.720 domestically and internationally, and what we might be expecting to see in the future.

00:00:15.560 Dr Parvini, how are you doing?

00:00:17.660 Well, thanks for having me, Carl.

00:00:19.200 It's a pleasure. Right, so what's your lay of the land at the moment? Because just for anyone

00:00:24.040 who's watching this, Keir Starmer has just outflanked everyone to the right. He's somehow

00:00:32.180 won over a lot of the kind of hard right Twitter folks with his, I think the most important

00:00:38.980 part was when he said that immigration had been an unmitigated disaster in Britain, which

00:00:44.900 condemns morally all of the people who had supported immigration up until this point.

00:00:49.640 And it's had them running around like headless chickens. What are we going to do? Because

00:00:53.300 our biggest champion up until this point has suddenly betrayed us all.

00:00:57.220 Yeah, no, in fact, that speech by Starmer was notable, being not only a moral conduct, it

00:01:02.440 was a thoroughgoing repudiation of the mass immigration experiment, as he described it.

00:01:10.820 Everything since 1997 on immigration.

00:01:12.360 He didn't just say that it was creating, I mean, islands of strangers that had the headlines.

00:01:17.940 He actually took away the economic argument, which has been very central. It's always been justified

00:01:24.660 as the link between GDP and immigration and growth, those three things going together.

00:01:30.960 And he took that head on. He also, I don't know if you caught this, in that speech, I got a kind of

00:01:40.020 deep seated, almost loathing of libertarianism from Starmer, where he said basically, that,

00:01:49.800 you know, we have a responsibility to govern. And there were the echoes in that speech of Thomas

00:01:58.080 Carlyle. And this sounds ridiculous, right? That a man like Keir Starmer would echo Carlyle. 0.88

00:02:04.520 But Carlyle talked about the ship of state needing to be steered. And Starmer strikes me as somebody,

00:02:12.300 actually, especially in that speech, there's not a liberal bone in his body. Like he is kind of,

00:02:18.060 you know, somebody who believes that the job of government is to govern, is to steer the ship of

00:02:24.940 state. And I think that this presents a problem for the British right, as it has been constituted

00:02:33.000 since Margaret Thatcher. Because they're still even now in reform, for example, or in Nigel Farage,

00:02:41.220 or in the Tory, quote unquote, right. They're all involved with the IEA, the ideas about Adam Smith,

00:02:51.340 free market economics. And Starmer's just taken an absolute axe to all of that. He has framed

00:02:59.660 immigration, actually, as being the result of a libertarian free market experiment,

00:03:05.760 which I think was a masterpiece of framing. It's also something that I've talked about for some

00:03:13.360 time, this move, this containment move, was telegraphed pretty heavily by certain Tony Blair,

00:03:21.120 the Dark Lord. How is it telegraphed? Because he's basically been saying it for the past five years.

00:03:27.460 He's been saying, look, the populists have a point. Immigration has got out of control.

00:03:33.220 So what we need to do when we're in power is to actually deliver the result, to put that issue

00:03:39.800 away. We can't just talk about it. We can't just sound rhetoric. We actually need to do it.

00:03:46.000 And this is something that I know a lot of people have been sceptical. I know a lot of people are

00:03:51.020 sceptical. I actually believe that Labour are more likely to actually do the job, right,

00:03:58.660 than the Tories, or even than reform. Okay? And I imagine a lot of people, this would be freaking

00:04:06.340 out. How can you say that? But I just, I mean, how can I put this?

00:04:11.080 Yeah.

00:04:11.440 Let me jump in on this, because I actually do agree with you. Because Labour,

00:04:16.300 the Conservatives lack a certain will to power. And they reside in the cockpit of power, by accident

00:04:27.320 almost. Because the Labour Party have not made themselves to appeal to the vast majority of the

00:04:35.000 population. The further they went left, the less appealing they became. Which means that the

00:04:39.800 Conservatives didn't put forward an affirmative programme for action. They said, we are the lesser of

00:04:45.760 two evils. And in a way, they're probably right most of the time. But the Labour Party has a strong

00:04:51.760 executive spirit within itself. And this was definitely brought, I mean, this was easily

00:04:57.280 visible in the 70s, leading on to Margaret Thatcher. And of course, very visible in Tony Blair's

00:05:02.440 governance, moving into the 2000s. They have a plan. They intend to do something. Now, the thing they

00:05:09.160 intend to do is evil. But they at least want something out of governance. Whereas the Conservatives

00:05:16.400 view governments almost like a retirement plan or something. Our job is to do the very bare minimum

00:05:22.780 and sort of coast along on left-wing morality until we're forced to do something or the Labour Party

00:05:29.320 takes over. And so in this way, they're kind of the, say, uniparty is a bit cliche. But in many ways,

00:05:37.480 they are exactly the same organism that is symbiotically moving through the British political establishment.

00:05:44.440 So when the executive half of this organism has acted too much and done too much and made too many

00:05:53.000 mistakes, people choose the passive side of the organism to just kind of let the problem fade

00:05:59.480 away for a bit. And then when they've decided, yeah, okay, maybe we are up for a change now,

00:06:03.720 they'll go back to the executive side. We've had this back and forth this whole time. Whereas the

00:06:07.640 Conservatives will never step off of that moral agreement. And this is why the Conservatives are now

00:06:13.880 far more left-wing than the Labour Party. I also think it goes even a little bit deeper than this. I mean,

00:06:19.720 we could say that the likes of Tony Blair, whether you love him or hate him, he's a guy who looks at

00:06:26.280 the situation and he says, look, this is what needs to be done. Okay. I've got a plan to do it. And

00:06:32.920 somebody says, let's say a lawyer comes up to him and say, Tony, you can't do that. It's against the

00:06:37.480 rules. He will say, I made the rules. And he will also say, well, then the rules need to be changed.

00:06:44.200 Those rules, they worked for that time. But now the circumstances are different. So we need a new

00:06:50.120 set of rules. So he won't let the status quo get in his way because he is somebody who is always

00:06:57.720 thinking of the outcome down the line. Okay. Unfortunately, the Conservatives naturally,

00:07:03.720 okay. And this is something Pareto talks about, they're a type two elite. They are rule followers.

00:07:09.240 Yep.

00:07:09.640 Okay. And what late, what happens is the left set up a new set of rules. And just as

00:07:16.920 the Conservatives start getting used to following these rules, slavishly, pathetically following

00:07:23.080 those rules, Labour come along and pull the rug away. And they'd be like, well, there's,

00:07:27.960 guess what? All the rules are going to change again. And look, now you're stuck with Kemi

00:07:32.040 Badenoch as the leader. And look at you now, you're still stuck in that work paradigm. And now we've

00:07:37.560 take, we've parked all our tanks onto the lawn, which is a move that it was telegraphed a mile off.

00:07:44.680 And I mean, just a quick thing there. It was a few months ago that Keir Starmer

00:07:48.920 first used the phrase open border experiment against the Tories. And everyone was like,

00:07:53.400 oh wow, that's strong rhetoric. But it just, everyone let it slide. It's not that Starmer hasn't

00:07:58.040 been edging towards this point already. He seeded this a couple of times now. And so I think you are

00:08:03.640 correct on this. Morgoth had a great video on this saying, look, essentially the Tories have

00:08:10.200 rubbed diversity in the left's face at this point. And now Starmer is just going to attack

00:08:14.920 to the hard right. And in that speech, every point he made, it made like four or five substantive,

00:08:20.680 hard right wing talking points. And often Nigel Farage himself is not brave enough to raise.

00:08:26.200 And Nigel Farage often raised the economic argument or the sort of the institutional argument.

00:08:30.760 But Starmer, by calling it an island of strangers, what he's saying is we've dispossessed the British

00:08:37.960 people of their own homeland. And this is why the left reacted going, that's Enoch Powell.

00:08:42.040 It's like, they're right. That is Enoch Powell. And it's also the deep relational language that

00:08:46.920 Starmer used can't be by accident. There was a few times in that speech where I found myself

00:08:52.360 almost involuntarily going, yes, yes. I mean, one of the things he did is he drew attention to the fact

00:08:58.600 that the public have consistently voted against this. The public didn't want it. They voted for

00:09:03.560 one thing. They got another thing. He called the Tories, basically tracers.

00:09:09.240 And he called them out for their betrayal of their own base, which is really strong. I mean,

00:09:15.000 there are a few times, Carl, where I thought, have they been watching us, like Labour, you know?

00:09:20.040 Well, this is all the talking points we've been making for five years.

00:09:23.320 I mean, it's a speech I would have given. It's the speech I would have given.

00:09:29.240 No, this is the thing.

00:09:30.680 I would have left out the diversity as good bits.

00:09:32.280 This is the thing that I've been, and I know, you know, my critics have said, well,

00:09:37.960 this is a subversive figure. He's secretly working for Labour and so on.

00:09:41.080 Well, I do believe that, yeah.

00:09:42.280 I know a lot of people believe that. But I'm trying to think, like, I'm trying to think in terms of the outcome.

00:09:48.920 What is the situation that will maximise the outcome that we want?

00:09:53.480 And the main way of getting there, in my opinion, is to move beyond the kind of flim-flam of petty

00:10:00.840 party politics. That is the thing that really holds people back, rather than saying it as this party

00:10:08.040 versus this party, this is this party. Instead, taking a wider metapolitical view, where almost

00:10:13.800 you're just kind of, like, setting the tempo in a way. And, I mean, let's face it, on this issue,

00:10:22.360 the tempo is ours.

00:10:23.480 I mean, I think Rupert Lowe tweeted out the other day that this was the consequence of the online right.

00:10:29.720 And I think in this regard, he is correct. I think if it wasn't for that consistent body of

00:10:34.360 influencers and activists driving this issue every day, then I don't think it would have been as

00:10:40.440 salient in the minds of the political elites as it clearly has been. And they, I think exactly

00:10:48.280 what you say, it's like they're watching our channels. Now they might be, they might not be,

00:10:52.120 but the point is, if they're like, right, okay, immigration has gone too far. We need to come

00:10:57.720 out with a strong anti-immigration perspective. Well, what suite of policy proposals would you have?

00:11:03.560 What suite of arguments would you have? Well, they're right in front of you because they're in

00:11:06.760 your comment sections all day, every day. And so you just lift them and go, yeah, this is,

00:11:10.920 this is the, the set of arguments that work and they do work. And so even if they're not directly

00:11:16.760 watching me or you or whoever, it's our arguments that are percolating through the discourse that they

00:11:22.600 had no choice but to accept. Yeah. Another thing that I think that we can learn from the Dark Lord,

00:11:27.720 from Blair is the mindset. The future we want is inevitable.

00:11:33.080 How we get there, that's still up to the debate, but it is going to happen. And it's going to happen

00:11:37.960 in the direction that we want. That ball is rolling. Look at where we are now compared to five,

00:11:42.920 five, six years ago. In a strange way, as Forgoth said, Horace is to kind of blame for that because

00:11:48.520 of the ridiculous, the ridiculous numbers that we've seen. But another thing that Blair does,

00:11:55.640 he always has a plan, right? What we need to be doing is generating plans all the time.

00:12:03.560 Okay. Now it may be that they copy them. It may be that they never pick them up,

00:12:07.800 but ideally there needs to be plan A, plan B, plan C, plan D, plan E, and all of them have to be

00:12:15.000 ready to go or to be finessed or to be picked up because politicians are lazy.

00:12:21.000 Yeah. And they're not that smart. 0.69

00:12:23.960 What really what people need to be doing is, you know, when, I mean, one of the worst things that

00:12:29.480 Farage did when he gave that interview, I can't remember who it was with now.

00:12:33.320 Maybe it was with Steve Edgington. I can't remember.

00:12:35.320 The I'm Against Mass Deportation.

00:12:37.160 Where he said, oh, it's impossible. It's politically impossible.

00:12:39.400 Yeah, that was the Edgington point.

00:12:40.600 This was just, I mean, he shouldn't have been saying that. He should have been saying,

00:12:44.680 actually, it's perfectly possible in these parameters. Here are 10 different plans

00:12:49.080 that the government could pick up tomorrow. Okay. So he, in a way, the problem with

00:12:54.840 the model that the Tories and Reform have had is that they're always reactive.

00:12:58.760 You shouldn't be reactive. You should be proactive. You should have the plan. And honestly,

00:13:05.080 think like Tony. I mean, really, because I look at politics and be like, who is the guy

00:13:12.200 who's getting results? Who is the guy who seems to always get his way?

00:13:18.040 Well, it's Blair. Why? How? Okay. He's got advantages. He was the prime minister and he's

00:13:23.480 got backing and so on. But he's got an idea of what he wants.

00:13:25.800 But these principles, believing your future is inevitable, having the plan. I mean, these are

00:13:32.200 things that we can kind of take inspiration from. Honestly, this is why I'm quite optimistic about

00:13:39.240 Rupert Lowe, actually. Because you can see that he has a plan. He knows what he wants.

00:13:43.720 You know, how he gets to that position, who knows? Maybe he'll never will, et cetera, et cetera. But

00:13:49.800 he's not just a conservative who is prepared to play in someone else's sandbox.

00:13:54.680 He's prepared to set the rules. And so, oh, finally, someone on the right. Because I mean,

00:13:58.840 Nigel Farage, for all his charisma, is still playing in the left sandbox. We're not the racist. The left

00:14:05.320 of the real racist is his genuine boomer core beliefs. And he will always have this.

00:14:09.960 I mean, ideally, another thing that we could learn from Tone is getting beyond this paradigm of the

00:14:15.480 left versus right. Blair always presented his set of solutions as neutral. Okay.

00:14:22.920 And immigration is not a left or right issue. And just to think, you'll notice Starmer did the

00:14:28.360 same thing in his speech. He said it just wasn't in the British interest. Exactly. It's the neutral

00:14:34.120 position. So the neutral position is, immigration needs to come down. The neutral position is,

00:14:40.360 we need to start increasing deportations. Now, the only discussion left to have is how to get there

00:14:46.600 and how precisely do we do it. And now, the conversation's a lot closer to, you know,

00:14:51.560 Steve Laws. Well, I mean... There really is, though.

00:14:55.640 Right. Yes. But what I was saying is, now the conversation's a lot closer to the sort of

00:15:00.920 paradigms that Blair sets up in, let's say, for digital ID. Well, the decision's already been

00:15:05.960 taken. It's the only question is, how quickly do we get there? Or how exactly do we get there,

00:15:11.160 crossing the dots? And so that's one kind of positive development, I think, is that people,

00:15:19.640 I think, have kind of disaggregated themselves from loyalty to Tories or even loyalty to reform.

00:15:28.280 And if Rupert Lowe did anything, it was showing how, actually, support for Nigel is not automatic.

00:15:35.720 Support for Nigel is not de facto. Because people will, if we think Starmer is going to

00:15:43.000 get us the results we want, for example, reform can't count on it. So what, I mean,

00:15:48.840 if any reform guys are watching this, what can they do? Rather than tacking to the center or playing

00:15:54.120 the wet or whatever, they need to be saying, it's not enough, Starmer. Where's your deportation plan,

00:15:59.480 Starmer? You know, you're saying you're going to get the numbers down by 200,000. It needs to be zero

00:16:05.640 or whatever. Why is the Boris wave still here if you've just said it was a failed experiment that

00:16:10.760 betrayed us? Exactly. And that, I think, is actually a very strong argument that should be

00:16:16.040 being made at the moment. Hopefully Rupert Lowe will start making it or something like that.

00:16:19.880 It's like, these people need to go. And see, ideally, we need to be,

00:16:23.800 and this is, again, where people, I think, get caught up in quote-unquote slop. We don't need

00:16:29.560 to be worrying about Owen Jones and Ash Sakaas. And that's for the Blairites to deal with. And the

00:16:35.560 Blairites will deal with them. We need to be onto the right to actually kind of put the right sort 1.00

00:16:45.400 of pressure on Labour from the right. Not, I mean, honestly, they were wrong-footed by this. They

00:16:52.600 shouldn't have been wrong-footed because many of us, me and you years ago, saw this coming because

00:16:58.360 we pay attention. We're not, like, out doing, like, little bits for 50 pounds ago to say happy

00:17:06.360 birthday. We're watching what Tony Blair's saying, seeing what plans are coming down the pike.

00:17:11.240 Right? And so I feel like they were, reformed, were not prepared. And the Tories, I mean,

00:17:17.720 forget about the Tories. Yeah, no one talks about the Tories because why would they?

00:17:21.000 But the thing I find really interesting about this, in particular, not just on the speech,

00:17:28.520 but the Twitter posts he was making afterwards, was that he is receptive to arguments from the

00:17:35.560 right. If you would like to see the full version of this premium video, please head over to

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 24, 2025

PREVIEW： Charting Our Political Future ｜ Interview with Academic Agent

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