TRIGGERnometry - An Honest Conversation with a Marxist - Aaron Bastani

00:00:00.000 I do think we have a particular view, I mean people say the 1%, I mean I'd probably call it the 0.001%.

00:00:06.000 And that isn't just, you know, tech CEO bad guys, it can also be people like Dame Alison Rose, you know, the CEO of NatWest.

00:00:14.000 This is really daft, you're talking about how inclusive you are because you've debanked Nat Nigel Farage, you can't even pay men and women the same.

00:00:20.000 Are you excited about a Starmer Premiership? 0.98

00:00:23.000 No, I think we need a political revolution in this country, and I don't mean like get out the bayonets and kill everyone.

00:00:29.000 I think we need a profound shift in power, economic, political and cultural, away from London, away from Westminster, towards ordinary people.

00:00:37.000 I saw Chávez come to power, and I saw everyone on the left venerate Chávez, venerate socialism, including Corbyn, including people saying this is an example of socialism working.

00:00:50.000 And now everybody's moved on and they've moved on to the next project.

00:00:53.000 And I guess my question is to you, seeing countries like Venezuela, seeing countries like the Soviet Union, how can you identify with socialism when it's never worked?

00:01:07.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:19.000 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:20.000 I'm Constantine Kissinger.

00:01:21.000 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:26.000 Our brilliant guest today is an author, journalist and the founder of Navara Media, Aaron Bastani.

00:01:31.000 Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:32.000 My pleasure to be here.

00:01:33.000 Yeah, we've been trying to get you on for a long time.

00:01:36.000 Whenever anyone wants to accuse us of being right wing, what they say is, why haven't you had Aaron Bastani on?

00:01:41.000 Please tell them it's not our fault.

00:01:43.000 We've been trying to have you on for ages.

00:01:44.000 It's your fault.

00:01:45.000 You're now officially left wing.

00:01:47.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:01:48.000 Trigonometry.

00:01:49.000 The home of the left.

00:01:50.000 Exactly.

00:01:51.000 We prefer the term cuck, Sarah.

00:01:53.000 We had a two and three a few years ago, didn't we?

00:01:56.000 I flaked on you guys.

00:01:58.000 So if that means you've got heat for being, you know, politically partial or whatever, my apologies.

00:02:05.000 It was all on me.

00:02:06.000 But I'm here now.

00:02:07.000 It's all water under the bridge, mate.

00:02:08.000 It's great to have you here.

00:02:09.000 Tell everybody a little bit about your background.

00:02:11.000 Who are you?

00:02:12.000 How are you?

00:02:13.000 Where you are?

00:02:14.000 What has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

00:02:16.000 So I have a background in new media.

00:02:19.000 I co-founded Novara Media, a bit like yourselves with trigonometry.

00:02:23.000 I started it more than a decade ago with some people who've, some have left the picture,

00:02:29.000 some haven't.

00:02:30.000 And I was doing a PhD at the time.

00:02:33.000 It meant I had time on my hands.

00:02:35.000 I had resources.

00:02:36.000 And as I was doing my PhD, which was on media to some extent, two things became really clear to me.

00:02:42.000 Firstly, there was no going back to the politics and the economy of pre-2008.

00:02:48.000 Something really had decisively shifted in politics.

00:02:50.000 We weren't just going to go back to easy street, wages going up, house prices going up.

00:02:55.000 Broadly, people aren't that, you know, critical of the political status quo.

00:02:59.000 And at the same time, it was really obvious that people were switching off legacy media.

00:03:04.000 That's only gotten worse over time, or gotten better over time, depending on how you see it.

00:03:08.000 That's only intensified over time.

00:03:10.000 But in the sort of 2013, 2014, you know, with the Scottish independence referendum, for instance,

00:03:15.000 you don't have to support independence for Scotland to see.

00:03:18.000 Some of the BBC stories were just extraordinary, extraordinary propaganda.

00:03:22.000 And time after time after time, I was finding myself very frustrated with the state of political commentary, political journalism.

00:03:30.000 And obviously, I had a set of political commitments, as my now colleagues do.

00:03:35.000 And so we thought, well, look, here's a problem.

00:03:38.000 And here's also potentially a solution in that we start our own outlet, which is what we did.

00:03:42.000 And today, we've just grown beyond any expectations.

00:03:46.000 I'm sure a similar story to you guys, right?

00:03:48.000 No, man, we had massive expectations.

00:03:50.000 Well, maybe, but you don't think, like, I think last month on Instagram, we reached 12, 13 million people.

00:03:56.000 That's amazing.

00:03:57.000 Yeah, we're reaching, you know, lots of people on YouTube, like yourselves, lots of people with podcasts.

00:04:03.000 We do articles as well.

00:04:05.000 Some of them are really, we've broken some interesting stories, you know.

00:04:08.000 We broke the Labour League story.

00:04:09.000 I don't think we expected that all to happen.

00:04:12.000 I think that's partly because of the talent of my colleagues who are brilliant.

00:04:15.000 And also partly because the legacy media is just so bad at their job that people are craving something different.

00:04:20.000 Well, that's something we can easily agree on, I think.

00:04:22.000 And that's actually what I was going to ask you.

00:04:24.000 You were ahead of the curve in terms of us.

00:04:26.000 We started this in April 2018.

00:04:28.000 You would have started in 2013.

00:04:30.000 You said 10 years ago.

00:04:32.000 Yeah, so we had a podcast.

00:04:33.000 Well, it wasn't even a podcast.

00:04:34.000 It was a radio show on a community radio station in London called Resonance FM.

00:04:38.000 So we were actually going out on an FM frequency with a weekly show.

00:04:42.000 But we didn't have a podcast with a website until 2013, yeah.

00:04:46.000 Right.

00:04:47.000 And so what was the moment for you when you realised the mainstream media are just,

00:04:52.000 they're not doing a good job of journalism anymore?

00:04:55.000 Because I can tell you, for a lot of people who are sort of heterodox centre where I see us,

00:05:00.000 and right-leaning people too, one of the key moments was Jordan Peterson being interviewed by Cathy Newman.

00:05:05.000 I don't know if you remember that.

00:05:07.000 Yeah, of course.

00:05:08.000 And a lot of people just went, wait, this is fake.

00:05:11.000 This isn't a conversation.

00:05:12.000 This isn't how people talk.

00:05:13.000 If you had a psychology professor in your living room that you may disagree with,

00:05:18.000 that's not how you would talk to them.

00:05:20.000 And if you did talk to them like that, you'd think this person's demented, right?

00:05:24.000 Yeah.

00:05:25.000 Was there a moment like that for you coming from a left-wing perspective

00:05:28.000 where you were just like, I saw that and I was like, okay, there's no going back for the mainstream anymore?

00:05:32.000 There's so many.

00:05:33.000 I mean, it happens every week, doesn't it?

00:05:35.000 I think for me, one of the wow moments was, I think at the time Andrew Marr was the BBC political editor,

00:05:41.000 and he wrote a novel, which I find quite strange.

00:05:44.000 You shouldn't really have time to write a novel when you're earning hundreds of thousands of pounds paid by the BBC.

00:05:47.000 But anyway, maybe I'm being mean.

00:05:50.000 And the launch party for that novel, can you guess where it was?

00:05:56.000 Number 10 Downing Street.

00:05:58.000 And so you think your job is to scrutinise these people.

00:06:01.000 They're doing you a favour to launch your novel.

00:06:03.000 And I just thought, you're not serious.

00:06:06.000 You shouldn't be hectoring them and being angry with them,

00:06:08.000 but there should be a slight frisson, a slight tension between politicians and political journalists.

00:06:13.000 Be wary of that guy. Be careful. Don't be too loose-lipped.

00:06:16.000 That's healthy for democracy.

00:06:18.000 And when I saw that story, I thought, I think the BBC's buggered.

00:06:22.000 And I think more broadly, the relationship between politicians and the media in this country is buggered.

00:06:26.000 It is so unhealthy.

00:06:28.000 And I think it's worse than the US because in this country, everything's in London.

00:06:33.000 Everything's in London.

00:06:34.000 Whereas in the US, you've got your politicians in Washington, you've got your LA people, your Texas people, your New York people.

00:06:41.000 Here it's so bad.

00:06:43.000 It is.

00:06:44.000 And it's a very profound point.

00:06:46.000 Here it is bad.

00:06:48.000 Was there a moment for you where you realised that left-wing media wasn't everything it purported to be?

00:06:57.000 Where you looked at certain outlets, I mean, maybe it's The Guardian, maybe it's others,

00:07:01.000 where you thought, hang on a minute.

00:07:03.000 This isn't what I associate with the left or left-wing media.

00:07:07.000 Well, there's not that much left-wing media in the UK.

00:07:10.000 So, I mean, I'd start with the Daily Mirror.

00:07:12.000 It's been a Labour supporting paper for a very long time.

00:07:15.000 You know, I remember doing BBC Any Questions?

00:07:20.000 And I mentioned a story, and then, you know, these are, this is Middle England, right?

00:07:25.000 I was somewhere in, like, Yeovil or something that, you know, Lib Dem Tory floating voters.

00:07:30.000 This is in Middle England.

00:07:31.000 And I said, oh, the story's from the Daily Mirror.

00:07:33.000 They all started laughing at me, right?

00:07:35.000 Rightly so.

00:07:36.000 Because, for them, it's just a tabloid.

00:07:38.000 You know, I don't think it has necessarily a sort of political take on things.

00:07:42.000 You know, it's a spin on, you know, it's like The Sun, but the other side.

00:07:45.000 I don't think it's quite as bad, but, you know, that's the ballpark.

00:07:49.000 The Guardian, I think, is a liberal paper rather than a left paper.

00:07:52.000 But, you know, we can park that for a moment.

00:07:54.000 What I would say is The Guardian has really regressed.

00:07:58.000 So, ten years ago, it had the bravery to do the Snowden stuff.

00:08:03.000 It had the bravery to do the WikiLeaks stuff.

00:08:05.000 That would not happen now.

00:08:07.000 Really? Why not?

00:08:08.000 I think editorial choices would just say, I just don't think it would happen.

00:08:12.000 I think, well, definitely with WikiLeaks.

00:08:14.000 Snowden, I don't know.

00:08:15.000 With WikiLeaks and the Glenn Greenwald stuff, I think, you know, it's easy to say,

00:08:20.000 oh, Alan Rusbridge is gone, Kath Vine is the editor now.

00:08:23.000 They wouldn't do that.

00:08:24.000 But I just feel like there's not the same intellectual curiosity

00:08:29.000 there used to be at The Guardian, even 15 years ago.

00:08:32.000 That's fair.

00:08:33.000 And I can't quite, you know, I would buy The Guardian 15 years ago.

00:08:38.000 I wouldn't buy it now. I wouldn't pay for it now.

00:08:40.000 You know, I have a subscription for the FT.

00:08:43.000 I read the FT and it's full of facts and data.

00:08:46.000 I'll disagree with all the columnists, but it's useful, high-value information.

00:08:50.000 I'm sorry to say The Guardian isn't that, you know?

00:08:53.000 And do you think part of the problem is identity politics

00:08:56.000 and writing through always the prism of race and gender?

00:09:02.000 And that's not to say that that doesn't have merit occasionally,

00:09:06.000 but that then means that you just ignore the sheer facts of the situation,

00:09:11.000 what is happening on the ground.

00:09:13.000 Well, the problem is I don't really read The Guardian, so I don't know.

00:09:18.000 But, you know, I agree with your point here.

00:09:20.000 So, for instance, there's something that really irritates me, which is your ex, this person's Y. 0.99

00:09:29.000 Therefore, this person is the only person that can have valid opinions on issues relating to Y people. 1.00

00:09:35.000 That can be with regards to race, gender, et cetera.

00:09:38.000 So, for instance, I'm half Iranian.

00:09:40.000 I might say I think the protests in Iran are bad.

00:09:47.000 I don't think they're bad.

00:09:49.000 I might say they're bad.

00:09:50.000 I might say something which is quite controversial, right?

00:09:52.000 At which point, you know, you might say something's not Iranian.

00:09:56.000 I disagree.

00:09:57.000 They seem quite good.

00:09:58.000 You know, it's about women's liberation, civil liberties.

00:10:00.000 They seem very positive.

00:10:01.000 I would say you can't have a legitimate view on this because you're not Iranian. 1.00

00:10:06.000 Somewhere in the middle of all this are the facts and the truth and values,

00:10:10.000 which don't really, they aren't contingent on who you are, your identity and so on.

00:10:14.000 So, on that point, I agree with you.

00:10:17.000 Is it a problem really for The Guardian?

00:10:20.000 It's a hard one to say.

00:10:21.000 I mean, I just don't read their columns that much.

00:10:25.000 I think actually it's worse than that in a way because this stuff has percolated a whole layer of the media

00:10:33.000 and you can find it in ad campaigns.

00:10:35.000 You can find it in The Guardian.

00:10:37.000 You might even find it in sort of censor, censor right newspapers sometimes.

00:10:40.000 Yeah.

00:10:41.000 Oh, for sure.

00:10:42.000 So, I think it's a bit bigger than that actually, yeah.

00:10:45.000 Well, our whole society is infested with this idea actually,

00:10:48.000 that we should look at everything through the prism of,

00:10:50.000 well, you can't speak about this because you're not that thing.

00:10:53.000 I agree.

00:10:54.000 I was curious, you mentioned there's not much left-wing media in the UK.

00:10:58.000 Would you, are you one of the people on the left who feels that the BBC is right-leaning?

00:11:03.000 No, I think the BBC is liberal, right?

00:11:07.000 So, what do I mean by that?

00:11:09.000 It's, it's socially liberal and has a socially liberal agenda.

00:11:13.000 Absolutely.

00:11:14.000 It was absolutely opposed to Brexit.

00:11:15.000 I said that's when you voted Remain.

00:11:17.000 It was opposed to Brexit.

00:11:18.000 And it's also economically liberal.

00:11:20.000 So, I think it's very, what's the word?

00:11:26.000 Circumspect about radical economic ideas, particularly from the left.

00:11:30.000 But actually, I think any kind of radical economic ideas.

00:11:33.000 Anybody who's saying, there's a problem.

00:11:35.000 Let's try the solution.

00:11:36.000 An actual solution-oriented sort of mode of thinking just doesn't sit well with them.

00:11:41.000 So, I think lots of people from the left dislike the BBC because they see the fact it's economically liberal.

00:11:46.000 Then lots of people from the right see the BBC and they say, well, it's socially liberal.

00:11:49.000 And so, I can see both points of view.

00:11:52.000 But it is, and because we don't have a successful liberal party in this country anymore, which we did until the early 20th century, it is very much a continuation of that sort of patrician liberalism, which was the liberal party, you know.

00:12:04.000 Which, broadly speaking, after it collapsed, kind of becomes a faction within both Labour and the Tories.

00:12:11.000 So, the BBC has kind of progressive moments.

00:12:15.000 And I'm sure it has, like, journalists who are on the left, for sure.

00:12:18.000 But I would say it's a liberal news organisation.

00:12:21.000 So, explain that to us.

00:12:22.000 Because those words, liberal and left, get used very differently by different people.

00:12:28.000 And they also get used very differently in the United States versus the UK.

00:12:32.000 Like, a liberal in America is a left-winger, basically, right?

00:12:35.000 Yeah.

00:12:36.000 Although there is increasing conversation about classical liberalism and that is a different thing entirely.

00:12:41.000 When you say the BBC is a liberal institution and you're positioning that as a different thing to you, which is left-wing, explain that to people.

00:12:50.000 What do you mean? What's the difference? How are these things different?

00:12:54.000 So, a really great way of explaining this, I think, is the fact that the BBC, I think it's changed now.

00:12:59.000 But they didn't have an industrial relations correspondent. They didn't have a Labour correspondent.

00:13:03.000 Or editor, rather. They didn't have a correspondent. They didn't have a Labour editor.

00:13:07.000 Which they would have had all the way through, really, to the 1980s. 0.76

00:13:09.000 Which is somebody whose job is to say, these workers are getting screwed here.

00:13:14.000 A thousand people have just been laid off here. Like the P&O story, for instance, right?

00:13:18.000 These people have gone on strike. They've got a big pay rise.

00:13:21.000 These women are campaigning for better maternity leave conditions at work, etc.

00:13:26.000 The BBC doesn't focus on that stuff.

00:13:28.000 Now, as somebody who's on the left, I care about that stuff, right?

00:13:31.000 I care deeply about that stuff.

00:13:33.000 Instead, the BBC will focus on, like, as a liberal organisation, representation.

00:13:40.000 More women in boardrooms, right? I'm not saying more women in boardrooms is bad. 1.00

00:13:46.000 Although it is.

00:13:47.000 I'm not saying it's bad.

00:13:49.000 But that affects a tiny slither of society.

00:13:51.000 Meanwhile, you're not talking about women organising in their workplaces for better maternity care policies, for instance.

00:13:57.000 Yeah.

00:13:58.000 So that makes perfect sense.

00:13:59.000 And I remember during the whole Ngozi-Felani affair, it was covered like it was a terrorist attack.

00:14:04.000 When you sort of think there's probably much bigger core issues affecting way more people, which I think is what you're talking about.

00:14:10.000 So is your focus basically an old-school class-based approach where you are like, well, the workers who are the majority of the society, they're at the bottom.

00:14:20.000 They're not getting paid enough.

00:14:21.000 They're not treated well by their employers.

00:14:23.000 That's who I'm advocating for.

00:14:24.000 Is that, broadly speaking, the angle you have?

00:14:26.000 I wouldn't say they're at the bottom.

00:14:28.000 I would say we are interested in the stories of working people.

00:14:32.000 And that's not a politician's answer.

00:14:34.000 But frankly, you know, the middle class and the working class in this country, we just did a show on this actually with a great guy, Dan Evans.

00:14:41.000 You know, we talked about the petty bourgeois.

00:14:43.000 What does it mean?

00:14:44.000 You know, my dad's a taxi driver.

00:14:45.000 He categorised him as petty bourgeois, right?

00:14:48.000 Lots of people with their own shops or small businesses.

00:14:51.000 They work harder than the most exploited workers.

00:14:54.000 It's a different relationship, right?

00:14:56.000 Because, of course, they get the dividends and the profit and one day they might be very rich as a result.

00:14:59.000 But they work incredibly hard, some of these people, literally exhausting themselves and killing themselves.

00:15:04.000 In terms of what we do, like I said, it's about working people.

00:15:07.000 I do think, though, in terms of, you said, old school sort of socialist way, I do think we have a particular view.

00:15:14.000 I mean, people say the 1%.

00:15:16.000 I mean, I'd probably call it the 0.001%.

00:15:18.000 You know, the economic elite, frankly, who are pro-privatisation with regards to things like water, who fundamentally don't think democracy matters, who contrives sort of Mickey Mouse bizarre issues so that we don't actually confront the real problems in society.

00:15:36.000 And that isn't just, you know, tech CEO bad guys.

00:15:40.000 It can also be people like Dame Alison Rose, you know, the CEO of NatWest.

00:15:45.000 You know, NatWest have all these, quote unquote, progressive inclusive policies.

00:15:48.000 And yet, I think the gender pay gap in the organisation was something like 30%, right? 0.99

00:15:53.000 Like, this is really daft. 0.63

00:15:55.000 You're talking about how inclusive you are because you've debanked something like Nigel Farage. 0.98

00:15:59.000 You can't even pay men and women the same for doing the same job.

00:16:03.000 So, you know, this elite also, in a way, mirrors what I was saying about the BBC.

00:16:10.000 Generally speaking, it's actually a lot more socioliberal than we think.

00:16:13.000 So people on the right will say, this elite is socioliberal.

00:16:16.000 They're all lefties.

00:16:18.000 I'm on the left saying they're also economically liberal and they're exploiting, you know, the rest of society.

00:16:23.000 And we're probably, we're both right in a way.

00:16:26.000 Do you ever get frustrated how the left is mischaracterised?

00:16:30.000 Because I'm not on the left as a whole.

00:16:33.000 There's certain aspects of the left that I'm very sympathetic to.

00:16:36.000 But I see people on the right going, all lefties think like this.

00:16:40.000 And you go, no, they don't.

00:16:42.000 And if you, if somebody said the inverse, you'd get upset with them.

00:16:46.000 So how is it fair to say all left are pro-remain liberals?

00:16:51.000 And you go, well, you're overlooking Lexit, for example.

00:16:54.000 And let's be real, Corbyn was pro-Brexit.

00:16:57.000 If Corbyn, there's a, I was thinking about this.

00:16:59.000 He wasn't very honest.

00:17:00.000 Well, I think he's a Democrat.

00:17:02.000 So I think, you know, he was the party leader.

00:17:04.000 I think he did what he thought was right.

00:17:05.000 I don't think he secretly, you know, there's this conspiracy that he secretly went in the ballot box and voted to leave.

00:17:09.000 I won't go that far.

00:17:10.000 I mean, maybe he did.

00:17:11.000 I don't think he went that far though.

00:17:12.000 But there is a sort of weird alternative reality where Jeremy Corbyn isn't the Labour leader in 2016.

00:17:19.000 Somebody else is.

00:17:21.000 Labour sort of lose the election, Brexit.

00:17:25.000 But Labour lose the referendum, rather, because they would have been campaigning for Remain.

00:17:28.000 And Jeremy Corbyn is like elevated to like this cult hero because, you know, him and Farage secured, you know, there's this.

00:17:35.000 And also what I found really funny is in that scenario, he would also be expelled from the Labour Party.

00:17:39.000 Yeah.

00:17:40.000 You know, he ends up in a similar place.

00:17:41.000 So, no, not all left-wing people feel the same.

00:17:44.000 This is the great thing with the RMT and the strikes we've had, you know, Mick Lynch, who's their chief, the Rail Workers Union.

00:17:54.000 I think it's so useful for the average sort of Joe Bloggs, you know, member of the public, to see a guy, you know, who's, you know, bald, late 50s, early 60s, gruff, a Millwall fan.

00:18:09.000 Yeah.

00:18:10.000 And I think that's so good for a number of things.

00:18:13.000 I think it's good for the left because it undoes a few caricatures.

00:18:16.000 But I also think it's just so healthy for our society.

00:18:19.000 You know, you can't presume somebody's politics just by how they look.

00:18:22.000 That's a really, you know, it's a really bigoted thing to do, actually.

00:18:26.000 Yeah.

00:18:27.000 He may look like a gammon is what Aaron is saying.

00:18:29.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:18:30.000 You don't know that he is.

00:18:31.000 Yeah.

00:18:32.000 That's a profound point because in 2016 and post-2016, that term gammon would have been used for people like Mick Lynch or Eddie Dempsey, who I would have seen as the fulcrum of the left.

00:18:46.000 The people who, what I think left wing means, which is people coming out, representing workers, trying to get them a better deal.

00:18:55.000 And what I've seen on the left now, and look, maybe it's Twitter amplifying these voices.

00:19:00.000 Or somebody going, you know, if you're fat phobic, you're Hitler.

00:19:04.000 And I go...

00:19:05.000 Did you actually see that?

00:19:07.000 Pretty much.

00:19:08.000 You may be exaggerating.

00:19:10.000 You may be exaggerating at times.

00:19:11.000 I go...

00:19:12.000 Do you know what we mean?

00:19:13.000 Yeah.

00:19:14.000 I go, that's not left wing.

00:19:15.000 That's just internet insanity.

00:19:19.000 Well, I think fat phobia is, I think it's bad to discriminate against somebody because of how they look.

00:19:24.000 Yeah.

00:19:25.000 Or to bully them on that basis.

00:19:26.000 But I don't think that makes sense.

00:19:27.000 Mate, I fat shamed him for two years.

00:19:28.000 Look how slim he looks now.

00:19:29.000 I don't think that makes you look like Hitler.

00:19:31.000 Well, I'm older now.

00:19:32.000 I'm 39.

00:19:33.000 But I mean, I was quite ripped until about 30.

00:19:34.000 And that was definitely because of my dad's body shaming when I was about nine.

00:19:38.000 So I sort of got into bodybuilding and, you know, athletics and whatnot.

00:19:41.000 But on a serious note, it's that left wing.

00:19:45.000 I mean, look, there are lots of things which are right wing.

00:19:48.000 There are lots of things which are conservatives.

00:19:49.000 There are conservatives out there that want to pull down all the trees and build loads of skyscrapers and, you know, chase GDP relentlessly.

00:19:56.000 There are also conservatives out there who want to reintroduce beaver and, you know, rewild things and introduce regenerative farming.

00:20:03.000 And I think in a very strange way, they both sit in the same tradition.

00:20:07.000 I think you have to be realistic on the left.

00:20:09.000 You know, those arguments are on the left because they're taking aim at a form of oppression or antagonism or hatred is a strong word, but you know what I mean.

00:20:18.000 And so I think they probably are on the left.

00:20:20.000 I don't agree with that proposition, though.

00:20:25.000 So the left is a very broad coalition.

00:20:29.000 So what can Labour do and Keir Starmer do to hold together this very broad coalition of people who actually think and believe very, very different things?

00:20:40.000 Somebody who is a left wing progressive, I mean, it's a cliche in Islington, is going to think very differently to an old school former minor in a town like Darlington.

00:20:50.000 It's a great question.

00:20:51.000 I mean, the thing is, Labour, people say Tony Blair's the most successful prime minister.

00:20:56.000 Actually, it's Harold Wilson.

00:20:57.000 He won four elections.

00:20:58.000 And in the 60s, Labour had the exact same problem.

00:21:01.000 They kept on winning.

00:21:02.000 You know, they won in what, 60, 64, 66, 74, I think 76.

00:21:08.000 You know, so they won repeatedly with their economic base being, you know, organised labour, but also introducing things like the right to divorce, abortion, decriminalising homosexuality.

00:21:22.000 So very socially liberal agenda.

00:21:24.000 And they made that work.

00:21:25.000 So I think, you know, it's not impossible.

00:21:28.000 You can do it.

00:21:29.000 I think you just need to be open with the electorate about it.

00:21:31.000 You know, I increasingly find myself drawn to the Green Party.

00:21:34.000 I like the Greens.

00:21:35.000 I'm pro-nuclear.

00:21:36.000 Right?

00:21:37.000 I'm pro-HS2. 0.92

00:21:38.000 Yeah.

00:21:39.000 I'm pro...

00:21:40.000 What else was I going through?

00:21:41.000 So you're drawn to the Greens.

00:21:42.000 They're not drawn to you.

00:21:43.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:21:44.000 But I like a lot of what they stand for.

00:21:46.000 I like their values.

00:21:47.000 I just think they're wrong about some really big issues.

00:21:49.000 Yeah.

00:21:50.000 I'll vote Labour in the next election.

00:21:51.000 But I think if I was in Bristol West, for instance, where they have a good chance of winning, I would vote for the Greens.

00:21:56.000 You know, I think most of the electorate's adult enough, actually, to vote on a...

00:22:02.000 I think that's what happened in 2017, right?

00:22:04.000 I think lots of people don't like Jeremy Corbyn.

00:22:06.000 They say, I actually quite like three or four of those policies, and I'll plump for Labour.

00:22:09.000 I think by 2019, the avalanche was so strong.

00:22:12.000 The media campaign, the unforced errors by the Labour leadership, Brexit, it was too much to hold back.

00:22:18.000 But I think most of the electorate's sensible enough to go, these two or three things really matter to me.

00:22:23.000 I think they'll do a better job than the other lot on those two or three things.

00:22:26.000 I'll ask you the same question that I've asked.

00:22:28.000 We've had a bunch of left-wingers on the show in a short succession, actually.

00:22:31.000 But it seems to me that Starmer and Labour Party are going to win the next election.

00:22:37.000 Look, anything can happen between now and then.

00:22:39.000 Sure.

00:22:40.000 But it's looking that way.

00:22:41.000 Are you excited about a Starmer premiership?

00:22:43.000 No.

00:22:44.000 Why not?

00:22:45.000 No, I'm not...

00:22:46.000 Well, I was asked this question.

00:22:47.000 The evil Tories are going to be out, isn't that a good thing?

00:22:49.000 Yeah, the evil Tories will be out, yeah, great.

00:22:51.000 I mean, what's interesting is that Boris Johnson in 2019, at the moment, on, for instance, climate change, was to the left of Keir Starmer right now.

00:23:02.000 He was.

00:23:03.000 Not even the Twitter left.

00:23:06.000 I'm on the Twitter left.

00:23:08.000 The sort of big liberal accounts on social media.

00:23:10.000 No, you're not, but you like most of my tweets.

00:23:12.000 No, that's true.

00:23:13.000 Well, I'm a heterodox thinker.

00:23:14.000 I think that's how the new statesman described me.

00:23:16.000 All over the place is how normal people would describe it. 0.99

00:23:19.000 You know, the nasty Tories have to go, they're awful, blah, blah, blah. 0.96

00:23:24.000 Well, Boris Johnson was funding LTNs, right? 0.98

00:23:29.000 Which is, you know, they want to disown that now.

00:23:31.000 Low traffic neighbourhoods.

00:23:32.000 Yeah.

00:23:33.000 They want to disown that now.

00:23:34.000 They had very ambitious commitments on decarbonisation.

00:23:38.000 They moved huge numbers of public sector jobs, for instance, to Darlington.

00:23:41.000 Brilliant.

00:23:42.000 Great.

00:23:43.000 I'm really happy about that.

00:23:44.000 I mean, the public sector workers weren't, but I take your point.

00:23:47.000 Yeah.

00:23:48.000 The North East has got its attractions.

00:23:49.000 Yeah.

00:23:50.000 And, you know, I feel like there's just, this is the most right wing government in history.

00:23:55.000 It's like, on the political economy side, it really isn't.

00:23:58.000 Like, there's a few, you know, sometimes you'll hear something crazy and, you know, that they release as a press release or as a media message.

00:24:05.000 But on the sort of fundamentals, Boris Johnson was to the left of David Cameron.

00:24:09.000 These same people had no problem with David Cameron, right?

00:24:12.000 And austerity between 2010 and 2016 in terms of how, you know, how it dismantled lots of really core parts of how, you know, this country functions.

00:24:22.000 So, yes, the Tories will be gone.

00:24:25.000 I think that's good.

00:24:26.000 My view is that Labour will be less bad, which is obviously not great.

00:24:32.000 And it's probably why people aren't sort of, you know, enthused about a Starmer premiership.

00:24:38.000 But equally, I think that's probably why he's going to win over lots of floating Lib Dem Tory voters or floating Lib Dem Labour voters or Tory Labour voters in the Red Wall.

00:24:47.000 I think they'll be less bad.

00:24:49.000 But fundamentally, I think we need a political revolution in this country.

00:24:52.000 And I don't mean, like, get out the bayonets and kill everyone.

00:24:55.000 I think we need a profound shift in power, economic, political and cultural, away from London, away from Westminster, towards ordinary people.

00:25:03.000 A few ways of doing that.

00:25:04.000 Portia representation.

00:25:05.000 I think electoral reform of some kind.

00:25:07.000 And I think you need to start dismantling some of the really dysfunctional parts of British politics.

00:25:13.000 Which have what?

00:25:14.000 Well, for instance, the electoral system is the first one for me.

00:25:17.000 And this is going to sound sort of strange.

00:25:19.000 The worst part for me of first past the post isn't the two party system.

00:25:23.000 It's the Liberal Democrats.

00:25:25.000 Because the Liberal Democrats in Tory seats will say to Labour voters, we're the only ones that can meet the Tories.

00:25:31.000 You have to vote for us.

00:25:32.000 Then, you know, they'll go in Labour seats, say to Tory voters, we're the only ones that can meet Labour.

00:25:37.000 Right?

00:25:38.000 They have actually no substantial politics.

00:25:40.000 They're purely a consequence of the two party system.

00:25:44.000 We're not, you know, we're not that bad.

00:25:47.000 And if you don't like these guys, these other guys can't win.

00:25:51.000 How the hell is that a basis for a democratic vote?

00:25:53.000 So I just think when you look at the Tories, you look at Labour, you look at the Lib Dems, so much is dysfunctional with first past the post.

00:25:59.000 That would be the first one for me, I think.

00:26:01.000 I mean, we've had plenty of people on to talk about the problems with first past the post and what a proportional system might mean.

00:26:09.000 One of the things it will likely mean is that extremist parties do very well.

00:26:15.000 And so I sometimes, and I'm very open to the idea of PR, but I wonder whether people have thought about that.

00:26:21.000 But look, I actually, you've raised a few points that I think are bigger than this whole Twitter left-right bullshit that we spend too much time talking about.

00:26:31.000 And I want to talk to you about a couple of things where we may agree less than we have done so far.

00:26:36.000 One of them is, and I'm glad you said the 0.001%, but this narrative generally worries me because people talk about the 1% or the top this or the top that.

00:26:47.000 Look at the statistics. The top 10% of people in this country pay 60% of all the income tax, right?

00:26:53.000 And I sort of think, like, I mean, okay, they're rich and we're British, so we have to slag off people who've done well.

00:26:59.000 This is kind of part of our culture.

00:27:01.000 But are they really the bad guys, the people who are earning what would be put in top 10% and probably, like, over 80 grand a year?

00:27:09.000 Are they really the bad ones that we have to point our fingers at and go, you're not paying enough tax when they're 10% or providing 60% of the income?

00:27:17.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:27:18.000 No, I entirely agree. I mean, Labour's manifesto in 2019 was that they would increase tax for the top 5%.

00:27:24.000 So even that, I agree with you.

00:27:26.000 There could be somebody, look, on 80 grand a year, they've got a couple of kids, maybe the other half, whether it's the wife or the husband, maybe just works part-time for whatever reason, partly because of caring for the kids or whatever.

00:27:38.000 But, you know, given what's just happened, mortgage rates, energy, they might think I need to put some away to look after my parents for a few years, my own pension, you know, it doesn't go that far.

00:27:50.000 So I'd agree, they're not the enemy.

00:27:52.000 But, you know, there was an amazing quote recently from the managing director of Harrods.

00:27:55.000 And this was in the midst of the sort of crisis, you know, with living standards.

00:27:59.000 And they said, we're doing great.

00:28:02.000 You know, recessions and economic downturns, the rich always get richer in a recession.

00:28:07.000 That's what they said.

00:28:08.000 And I think that is a problem.

00:28:10.000 I think that is a problem.

00:28:11.000 I think it's a problem that in the European Union, we're not in the European Union, in Europe, the most valuable company is LVMH, Louis Vuitton, Moet, Hennessy.

00:28:20.000 It's a luxury goods brand.

00:28:21.000 The biggest companies in the United States are producing extraordinary goods and services for literally billions of people.

00:28:28.000 We're making designer handbags and champagne.

00:28:30.000 There's nothing wrong with that.

00:28:32.000 But I think it says something quite significant about how our economies work.

00:28:36.000 And also, is that really the basis of like future prosperity?

00:28:40.000 I suspect it's not.

00:28:41.000 No, probably not.

00:28:42.000 But I guess what I'm asking you more about is this.

00:28:45.000 I hear this a lot.

00:28:46.000 And I'm not talking about Twitter.

00:28:48.000 I'm talking about Question Time.

00:28:49.000 I'm talking about mainstream flagship programs.

00:28:52.000 People always talk.

00:28:53.000 I'm not in the one percent.

00:28:55.000 I may never be in the one percent.

00:28:56.000 But the more I meet people who are, the more I realize that, look, of course, this country has a history of the landed gentry. 0.99

00:29:03.000 Right.

00:29:04.000 People whose only achievement is they went to Eton in the seventh generation.

00:29:09.000 Yeah.

00:29:10.000 People and they're annoying, admittedly.

00:29:12.000 But there's like there's not a lot of them.

00:29:14.000 Most of the people I meet who are wealthy and who have a high income are people who've created things that are of value to other people.

00:29:20.000 Right.

00:29:21.000 They are actually creating jobs.

00:29:22.000 They're creating opportunities.

00:29:24.000 So when I see them being sort of demonized as the problem, I don't really know that that to me is accurate because I'm not envious of them.

00:29:34.000 I'm like, you've done well because you've contributed to other people's lives.

00:29:38.000 You've created opportunities for other people.

00:29:40.000 You've created a product that other people want to buy or a service or whatever.

00:29:44.000 And I am quite uncomfortable with that rhetoric.

00:29:47.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:29:48.000 Well, I sort of disagree.

00:29:49.000 So, like, look at landlords.

00:29:51.000 We have a lot of landlords in this country, right?

00:29:53.000 A lot.

00:29:54.000 So it's not even the 1%, like you say.

00:29:55.000 Yeah.

00:29:56.000 It's like over 2 million of them.

00:29:57.000 And it's lots of people.

00:29:58.000 They would be electricians or tradesmen, and they didn't pay national insurance, and that's their pension.

00:30:03.000 Right?

00:30:04.000 So they're not like, you know, they're exploiting arguably their tenants, but they're not like, you know, this caricature of the 1%.

00:30:10.000 Absolutely.

00:30:11.000 But the way I see it is this.

00:30:14.000 All the capital that's going into buy-to-lets, all the intel, these are very smart people, right?

00:30:21.000 All the construction work and the application that goes into building these little rabbit hutches for people. 0.99

00:30:27.000 I just think, and then you look at the high street, and you think surely it would make more sense to society.

00:30:32.000 You want to make money.

00:30:33.000 Like you say, you should be making money from selling goods and services to people, starting a business.

00:30:38.000 And I think too much of the money and capital and the know-how and the ambition has gone, for instance, in buy-to-lets in this country over the last 20 years.

00:30:45.000 But, Aaron, this is where you and I would, and Francis, would agree completely. 0.96

00:30:48.000 The housing market is completely fucked on purpose, and they refuse to fix it. 0.99

00:30:52.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:30:53.000 Right?

00:30:54.000 Because the incentive structure rewards all the behaviour that's there.

00:30:56.000 Yeah.

00:30:57.000 But that's a different issue to the 1%.

00:30:59.000 Because, as you say, most of the buy-to-lets are just owned by people who built up some capital in their housing and then bought another flat when they could, or whatever, and rent it out.

00:31:09.000 And I agree with you.

00:31:10.000 The housing market is a big problem that needs fixing.

00:31:12.000 But that isn't my point.

00:31:14.000 My point is, are the people at the top the captains of industry, let's say, the people who started a big business?

00:31:20.000 Well, the captains of industry often don't start businesses anymore.

00:31:23.000 Maybe.

00:31:24.000 Maybe.

00:31:25.000 But I know people who do, is what I'm saying, right?

00:31:27.000 People who run big businesses, let's say, it doesn't really matter.

00:31:30.000 They are creating value for the rest of us, one way or another.

00:31:33.000 Why are they a problem?

00:31:35.000 And I'm open to the possibility that they are.

00:31:37.000 I'm just saying, why is there this narrative?

00:31:39.000 And maybe I'm holding the wrong person to account here.

00:31:42.000 Maybe you don't think that.

00:31:43.000 I don't know.

00:31:44.000 Do you see what I'm getting at?

00:31:45.000 The housing market is a real issue.

00:31:47.000 But if we set that aside, why is creating wealth and earning a high income a problem?

00:31:53.000 I don't think it is.

00:31:54.000 You don't think it is?

00:31:55.000 No, I don't think it is.

00:31:56.000 You know, there's a great line by Clement Attlee.

00:31:58.000 And I think he was sort of criticizing charity.

00:32:00.000 He said, you know, a patriot would just pay their taxes and that would be done.

00:32:03.000 You know, I think charity is a cold, I can't remember, a cold dreadful thing, something

00:32:08.000 like that.

00:32:09.000 And I, you know, look, if you are willing to work hard, and like you say, you meet these

00:32:14.000 people, almost all of them say, I've been very lucky.

00:32:17.000 Right?

00:32:18.000 Right?

00:32:19.000 People have done really spectacular things in business, whatever they go, I worked hard,

00:32:22.000 I'm smart, blah, blah, blah.

00:32:23.000 I was also really lucky, right place, right time.

00:32:25.000 Maybe it would have happened at a different time, you know, if it hadn't happened then.

00:32:27.000 But generally speaking, I was very lucky.

00:32:29.000 And there's a lot of gratitude there.

00:32:31.000 But let's pick one issue, corporation tax.

00:32:36.000 Corporation tax, you need to be competitive, obviously.

00:32:40.000 We have higher rates of corporation tax in places like Japan or California or Germany

00:32:44.000 than we do here.

00:32:45.000 Now, the argument would be, don't, corporation taxes are tax on corporate profits to start

00:32:50.000 with.

00:32:51.000 If you're not making any profits, you're not taxed on.

00:32:52.000 The argument would be, oh, the lower the rate of corporation tax, the higher the incentives

00:32:57.000 to set up businesses, right?

00:32:59.000 Well, actually, what we know empirically is that a higher rate of corporation tax, not

00:33:03.000 too high, because yes, they will go, but a higher rate of corporation tax means that

00:33:07.000 businesses reinvest in fixed capital, robotics, upskilling workers, because they don't want

00:33:12.000 to pay tax, right?

00:33:13.000 They'd rather reinvest it in the business than give it to HMRC.

00:33:16.000 And so there's a very sensible pro-business argument for higher corporation tax.

00:33:21.000 Not 60%, 70%, but, you know, somewhere close to Germany.

00:33:26.000 And in the last election, again, Labour was saying, let's get 26%.

00:33:29.000 And that's still lower than the places I just mentioned.

00:33:32.000 And I think if you want a high productivity, smart economy, then I think you'd have to do

00:33:38.000 something like that.

00:33:39.000 It doesn't mean I hate rich people or I think profits are bad.

00:33:41.000 It's about, like you say, aligning the incentives to create a more affluent, prosperous country.

00:33:45.000 If you look at, for instance, there are remarkable tables on this.

00:33:49.000 Industrial robots per head.

00:33:51.000 You know, Britain is the country that gave the world the industrial revolution.

00:33:54.000 We're nowhere.

00:33:55.000 Like, we're below, like, Thailand, right?

00:33:57.000 We have a very, very low automation economy in this country.

00:33:59.000 So it should be a question of, like, public policy interest.

00:34:02.000 How do we change that?

00:34:03.000 I think one answer is probably corporation tax.

00:34:05.000 I mean, given the dustbin the country's in right now, maybe not.

00:34:09.000 But in the media...

00:34:10.000 Don't forget, countries do have to make a profit to pay dividends to attract investment.

00:34:13.000 Of course, yeah.

00:34:14.000 Of course.

00:34:15.000 So there's a trade-off there.

00:34:16.000 Of course, no, there is a trade-off.

00:34:17.000 But I think it should be part of a policy mix.

00:34:19.000 And if people disagree, they need to explain why.

00:34:21.000 I think something like corporation tax for too long has just been like,

00:34:24.000 you're jealous of rich people.

00:34:26.000 I'm sure some people are.

00:34:27.000 That's not what I'm saying.

00:34:28.000 Yeah.

00:34:29.000 I'm hearing a lot of this talk about the 1%.

00:34:32.000 And look, I think it's fair to say, and this isn't me trying to attack the left in any way.

00:34:37.000 Please, yeah.

00:34:38.000 But it is fair to say that a lot of people, vocal people on the left, do hate rich people.

00:34:43.000 I see that when I see the way they talk about it.

00:34:47.000 Now, you clearly don't.

00:34:50.000 Hate is a strong word, isn't it?

00:34:51.000 Isn't they hating them?

00:34:52.000 Yeah.

00:34:53.000 Oh, yeah.

00:34:54.000 Yeah.

00:34:55.000 Can you give me an example?

00:34:56.000 I'm not saying they don't exist, but can you give me an example, obviously?

00:34:58.000 I actually can't because I'm not thinking of a specific moment.

00:35:01.000 Yeah.

00:35:02.000 But I hear this over and over.

00:35:03.000 And as I said, I'm not talking about Twitter or X or whatever it's called now.

00:35:07.000 I'm talking about big discussion shows where it's like the rich, the rich, the rich.

00:35:11.000 And I don't, I've never seen the rich as bad people in and of themselves.

00:35:16.000 No.

00:35:17.000 You know.

00:35:18.000 But it sounds like you don't either.

00:35:20.000 Well, look, let's go to the OG Karl Marx.

00:35:23.000 You know, he would say that, in a way, capitalists are, in a way, they are in a desperate situation.

00:35:34.000 Because as capitalists, you're in competition with one other, right?

00:35:36.000 And this is the beauty of capitalism.

00:35:37.000 You're in competition with one other.

00:35:38.000 You have to produce the best goods and services at the best price to get market share.

00:35:42.000 If you don't, you're screwed.

00:35:45.000 Your opponent gets, you know, your rival gets market share. 0.67

00:35:48.000 This is great for the customer.

00:35:49.000 If you're, you know, this is sort of neoliberal or the liberal classical economists read on things.

00:35:53.000 What Marx says is a really important insight is they're in competition with each other.

00:35:57.000 And this makes them permanently anxious.

00:35:59.000 Because, of course, if you fail, the worst thing of all happens, you join the working class. 1.00

00:36:04.000 So, and you have to do certain things.

00:36:06.000 So, for instance.

00:36:07.000 You're right.

00:36:08.000 That sounds terrifying.

00:36:09.000 If you own a business and you're selling X product at £10 and your rival is selling it for £9, you have to sell it for £9.

00:36:16.000 Otherwise, you're gone.

00:36:17.000 So, what does that mean?

00:36:18.000 Ideally, you know, you find new ways of increasing productivity which don't hurt anybody.

00:36:23.000 But the first port of call for many is, okay, cut headcount, cut quality, reduce pay, you know, get rid of this benefit.

00:36:32.000 So, and that might not be because they're a bad person.

00:36:35.000 They have to do it because capitalism is inherently a competitive system.

00:36:38.000 And Amazon.

00:36:39.000 Sorry, Francis.

00:36:40.000 We'll just wrap up here.

00:36:41.000 No, no, no.

00:36:42.000 It's cool.

00:36:43.000 It's cool.

00:36:44.000 Amazon would be a very good example of this.

00:36:45.000 I mean, we had James Bloodworth on to talk about his book which exposed a lot of the practices that these giant multinational corporations are engaging in to drive down their costs.

00:36:54.000 And, by the way, you talk about the high street. 0.99

00:36:56.000 That's why the high street is fucked. 0.98

00:36:57.000 It's not because people aren't investing in it. 0.99

00:36:58.000 It's because they can't compete with Amazon.

00:37:01.000 So, I hear you.

00:37:02.000 I was just curious because I wonder how we have a productive economy if there is a section of the population who sees anyone who's made any money as a problem, you know.

00:37:12.000 And it sort of sometimes feels like that to me.

00:37:14.000 But anyway.

00:37:15.000 Yeah.

00:37:16.000 So, I mean, that is the issue.

00:37:19.000 I think the problem is is that people talk about the rich and they conflate the Amazons and the Jeff Bezos of this world with the bloke who's maybe a very successful estate agent on 90K a year.

00:37:31.000 Do you think that is easy?

00:37:33.000 He is an estate agent, mate.

00:37:34.000 Yeah.

00:37:35.000 Yeah.

00:37:36.000 So, you're right to hate them.

00:37:37.000 It's a good point.

00:37:38.000 I think there's an interesting angle here which is obviously we're in the anglophone world, right?

00:37:42.000 We speak English.

00:37:43.000 Yeah.

00:37:44.000 And what's the great line, you know, the United States and Britain are separated by the same language, you know.

00:37:52.000 Yeah.

00:37:53.000 Two countries divided by a common language.

00:37:54.000 Exactly.

00:37:55.000 Very well put.

00:37:56.000 That's exactly it.

00:37:57.000 And I think a lot of this comes from the U.S. where it's entirely legitimate, right?

00:38:02.000 Yeah.

00:38:03.000 Where you have a country with tens of millions of people that don't have access necessarily to healthcare.

00:38:07.000 Where the working class blue collar workers in the U.S. have been screwed, frankly, let's be real.

00:38:11.000 Yeah.

00:38:12.000 For 20, 25 years.

00:38:13.000 And where there is a runaway plutocratically.

00:38:16.000 They are earning huge amounts of money, not even earning.

00:38:19.000 The market caps of their businesses are skyrocketing and they obviously own lots of that.

00:38:23.000 So, yeah.

00:38:24.000 Bezos, Musk.

00:38:25.000 You know, when I was growing up, the idea of a company being worth a trillion dollars was like, well, that probably never happened.

00:38:32.000 You know, I think Apple now is touching three trillion dollars.

00:38:35.000 And some of the business practices which underpin that, yes, Apple sell amazing products.

00:38:39.000 I've got an iPhone here.

00:38:40.000 I have an iMac.

00:38:41.000 But there's also lots of, you could say shadier stuff, right?

00:38:43.000 Share buybacks.

00:38:44.000 They're inflating the price of their stock.

00:38:47.000 That makes the people like Tim Cook, for instance, better off.

00:38:51.000 Elon Musk with Tesla.

00:38:52.000 I think he's done an amazing thing with Tesla.

00:38:54.000 People love to bash Elon Musk, me included.

00:38:56.000 I think he's probably, I think he's maybe screwed Twitter.

00:38:59.000 We'll see.

00:39:00.000 You know, he's defied predictions before.

00:39:03.000 He accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles probably by about 15, 20 years.

00:39:08.000 An incredible thing to do.

00:39:09.000 He took on like the major car manufacturers and he's done really well.

00:39:12.000 An incredible thing to do.

00:39:14.000 But there's a few what economists would call negative externalities with this.

00:39:19.000 If you're worth 200 billion.

00:39:21.000 You know, the amount of political power you can buy with 200 billion is incredibly dangerous.

00:39:26.000 That to me is the main thing.

00:39:28.000 So yes, it's bad that these people have so much money, but it's what they can buy with that money in terms of political influence, the media, opinion making.

00:39:37.000 So if the Koch brothers were just billionaires, fine.

00:39:40.000 But it's the fact that they are trying to buy massive political influence in a range of areas.

00:39:45.000 They're trying to really, they've tried to basically buy candidates in the past.

00:39:49.000 So I think for much of the left, the big problem is political capture by the elite as much as those people being rich.

00:39:57.000 If they were just rich and they sort of just, you know, did their thing and enjoyed life, I think we'd be having a slightly different debate.

00:40:04.000 But, you know, Jeff Bezos has the Washington Post and then the Washington Post runs something excoriating Donald Trump.

00:40:10.000 I can see why the average American voter would say this is kind of screwed up, actually.

00:40:14.000 I completely agree with you.

00:40:16.000 And it's a very good point.

00:40:17.000 My issue always with the left is it's a very personal thing to me.

00:40:22.000 So my background, everyone's going to drink because, you know, it's the in joke.

00:40:26.000 So my mother's from Venezuela.

00:40:28.000 I saw Chavez come to power in 99.

00:40:33.000 I saw him bring socialismo, as we would say, to the country.

00:40:38.000 I saw him shut down journalists.

00:40:41.000 He put one of my relatives under house arrest because he refused to enact Chavez's wishes, which would make the country poorer.

00:40:51.000 And he was put under house arrest until he complied.

00:40:55.000 I saw Chavez threaten journalists until the point my cousin had to leave because he didn't know at one o'clock in the morning there was going to be a knock on the door and he was going to a prison called La Tumba.

00:41:07.000 I mean, I don't need to explain what that is.

00:41:09.000 And I saw everyone on the left venerate Chavez, venerate socialism, including Corbyn, including people saying this is an example of socialism working.

00:41:19.000 And that was a moment for me where I fell out of love with the left because I was trying to say, hang on, this isn't what you think it is.

00:41:33.000 But people didn't care. And now everybody's moved on and they've moved on to the next project and saying they're socialists.

00:41:40.000 And everyone in my country is screwed, to be honest with you. 0.50

00:41:45.000 And I guess my question is to you, seeing countries like Venezuela, seeing countries like the Soviet Union. 0.88

00:41:53.000 How can we, how can you identify with socialism when it's never worked?

00:42:02.000 Well, that's an interesting one. Let's start with Venezuela.

00:42:04.000 So I think, I think South America is incredibly unique.

00:42:07.000 Yeah.

00:42:08.000 Because, because of the Monroe Doctrine, because of the fact that you have this global superpower to your north.

00:42:13.000 Yeah.

00:42:14.000 The United States never let social democracy happen in South America. It was not allowed.

00:42:18.000 This happens in Guatemala with a guy called Arbenz in the 1950s.

00:42:22.000 He really just wants to institute a bit of land reform and trade union rights.

00:42:26.000 Really nothing radical.

00:42:28.000 Nothing that wasn't happening by social democratic parties in Europe.

00:42:31.000 The point was that wasn't allowed.

00:42:33.000 That was not allowed.

00:42:34.000 So this idea of, well, if only the South Americans could have sort of mainstream centre-left politicians.

00:42:39.000 They tried it.

00:42:40.000 Okay.

00:42:41.000 They were removed by military coups.

00:42:42.000 And interestingly enough, who was in Guatemala in the 50s when that happened?

00:42:45.000 Che Guevara.

00:42:46.000 Yeah.

00:42:47.000 And he says, well, they're not going to let us do that.

00:42:49.000 Then we've got to seize control by, you know, by military means.

00:42:52.000 And actually we're going to have to hold on to power in a very different way.

00:42:55.000 So I think the development of socialism in South America.

00:42:58.000 It's not to make excuses for anyone.

00:43:00.000 But I think the development of socialism in South America is quite unique and quite particular.

00:43:04.000 Because parliamentary democratic socialism or social democracy like we have in Europe was not allowed.

00:43:09.000 It was completely off the table.

00:43:10.000 So that's parking that one.

00:43:13.000 And in terms of socialism not working, I suppose, and again, I also wouldn't compare the Soviet Union to Venezuela.

00:43:18.000 Yeah.

00:43:19.000 I think Venezuela under Chavez did well because of high oil prices.

00:43:24.000 So there was a sense of rising prosperity.

00:43:27.000 And obviously when oil prices went down, that sort of disappeared again.

00:43:30.000 Yeah.

00:43:31.000 I think with the Soviet Union, it was different in so much as there was a national project of industrialisation too quickly.

00:43:39.000 But there was a different kind of project.

00:43:41.000 It was reaching towards a modernity in a different kind of way to somewhere like Venezuela, I feel.

00:43:46.000 I might be wrong.

00:43:47.000 And the Russian people and the peoples of the former Soviet Union, I think, can be proud of certain accomplishments such as the first person in space.

00:43:55.000 I think it's an incredible technological achievement.

00:43:57.000 I think it's an amazing achievement.

00:43:58.000 The defeat of Nazism. 0.68

00:43:59.000 I think you should be very proud of that.

00:44:02.000 That wasn't so much a technological achievement, but yeah.

00:44:05.000 Well, no, but you know, you say that, but there's some really interesting stuff about this, about the ability of the Soviet Union after 1940-41 to actually start developing incredible tanks, incredible military technology.

00:44:16.000 Incredible.

00:44:17.000 But it could rival the Germans. 0.81

00:44:19.000 In a way that nobody predicts in the 1930s.

00:44:20.000 You know what?

00:44:21.000 Actually, it's the other way around, interestingly.

00:44:23.000 So the Soviet Union, people don't know this because the Soviets got overrun in 41 and early 42.

00:44:29.000 What actually happened is the Soviets had far superior technology in the early period, but then they got outpaced by the German military machine as the war went on.

00:44:38.000 So by the end of the war, the kind of technology the Germans had is the basis of all our technology now. 0.89

00:44:45.000 They had cruise missiles basically in their thousands, et cetera.

00:44:48.000 And there's a reason the Soviets lost 20 million people in World War II.

00:44:51.000 Of course.

00:44:52.000 But I mean, look, your point, every society has positives in every way of structuring it.

00:44:58.000 I guess the point that Francis is making about it not working is in the Soviet Union and in Venezuela, the argument would be about socialism that it is a way of thinking about the world that is so unnatural to human beings.

00:45:11.000 The way that we evolved to think about our own interests and the interests of others in the Soviet Union.

00:45:16.000 As you know, the idea was that you were supposed to put the needs of the state above those of your own family that it takes putting people in Latumba or it takes people in being put into gulags to achieve that dream in which Pavlik Morozov gives up his parents to the state.

00:45:35.000 Because it's such an unnatural way that doesn't really apply onto how human beings are wired.

00:45:40.000 If we were mole rats or ants where we were genetically linked, that might be easier to do.

00:45:45.000 Do you see what? That's kind of more the argument.

00:45:47.000 I think the 20th century has a series of experiments like this from Nazi Germany to the USSR to the Khmer Rouge, where you have this incredibly, I mean, I don't even think there are economic projects, extremely cultural projects and extremely innovative as cultural projects.

00:46:06.600 So like the idea that a human being is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and look, I don't, I don't think that's necessarily, doesn't have to be socialism or fascism or anything like that.

00:46:17.160 I think it has a certain interpretation of human nature, which was, we now know is wrong. We know that doesn't function.

00:46:23.040 So why am I a socialist? I would actually, I'm a Marxist, frankly, and we'll get, I can also go back to a few what I would call success stories regarding democratic socialism.

00:46:32.120 We'll part of that for a moment.

00:46:32.760 I'm a socialist because I believe that workers generally should be as close to the product of their labour as possible.

00:46:39.680 They should have as little of it alienated from them as possible, which means a fair deal for workers, right?

00:46:44.840 So if a worker is creating value per hour of £30 an hour, I think they should be earning a significant chunk of that.

00:46:51.320 Clearly, there should be a little bit of profit, there should be some taxes and so on and so forth.

00:46:55.420 But the idea that a worker should be exploited from the products of their labour, I think, is a moral affront.

00:46:59.740 And I think that to me, I'm a Catholic, but that to me is almost like an article of faith.

00:47:04.380 I think a good society allows workers to enjoy a significant share of the value that they create.

00:47:11.100 In terms of Marxism, I'm a Marxist, the capital, das Kapital, is not a manifesto.

00:47:20.660 He does a manifesto called the Communist Manifesto, but Kapital is called a critique of political economy.

00:47:25.740 So what he does in capitalism, he's critiquing the classical political economists, J.S. Mill, Adam Smith, Ricardo and whatnot.

00:47:33.600 And I know this is probably quite cliched for many people, and clearly that's not what happens in the 20th century.

00:47:38.480 But Marx wasn't a programmatic thinker.

00:47:40.980 He has some parts where he says you may need to do this, this or this, or he talks about, you know, civil war in France, military theory and whatnot.

00:47:49.540 But the stuff that you see in the Soviet Union or with the Khmer Rouge is as connected to what Marx is talking about as, say, Nazi Germany is with Edmund Burke.

00:48:01.920 That's my view.

00:48:03.140 You know, it's like saying, how could you be a conservative because of, look where it ends up when you believe in flag, family.

00:48:10.080 Tradition.

00:48:10.580 Yeah, and tradition and, you know, patriotism and very muscular robustness.

00:48:13.780 Look where it ends up.

00:48:15.000 Well, there's been many decent people who believe in all those things who never ended up in that place.

00:48:18.200 So I tried to have a bit more of a nuanced view.

00:48:21.340 And then in terms of where it sort of succeeded, you know, look at Singapore.

00:48:25.120 Lee Kuan Yew would have identified as a democratic socialist.

00:48:27.700 Look, he's very, you know, he's a very controversial figure.

00:48:31.200 But Singapore and the state had a very distinct role in its development really from the 1950s all the way through to today.

00:48:38.720 Today, Pahead is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, has no natural resources.

00:48:42.420 Basically, people thought it wouldn't last 10 minutes once the British left, I think, in the early 1970s.

00:48:49.700 They built an incredibly complex, sophisticated, high-productivity economy.

00:48:53.520 How did they do that?

00:48:54.820 Central planning.

00:48:56.420 They promoted people on the basis of competence and talent.

00:48:58.760 And they didn't allow, you know, the free market to run riot in so much as having an unplanned economy.

00:49:07.020 There was, you know, let the invisible hand do its thing.

00:49:10.400 They didn't do that.

00:49:11.580 They had a significant amount of planning and they wanted that planning to create wealth, which would lead to a more prosperous country.

00:49:19.120 And it worked.

00:49:19.940 Now, I'm not saying Singapore is a socialist paradise, but on things like, for instance, land, actually, how land policy works in Singapore is effectively a socialist policy.

00:49:29.680 So, you know, I think it's hard to say, well, where has it worked?

00:49:32.960 We've got very clear, identifiable examples of socialist policy working very well.

00:49:37.520 To finish, it's interesting if you compare something like Singapore to Venezuela.

00:49:41.720 If Singapore has oil, none of that happens, right?

00:49:44.860 You do not let Lee Kuan Yew and a bunch of really intelligent, competent, remarkable young men run a country if they have a shed load of hydrocarbons.

00:49:53.040 Because we have many examples where people tried to do that and they mostly got murdered.

00:49:57.760 Singapore's advantage was it had no natural resources and it was in the same neighbourhood as Vietnam and China.

00:50:04.220 So the US was actually quite happy to sort of say, well, look, let them do their thing.

00:50:07.460 So it's a bit more complicated than that.

00:50:10.760 And I don't want to be, I hope I'm never sort of seen as an apologist.

00:50:16.100 No, not at all.

00:50:18.020 But I do think there are really important lessons to learn from a whole range of societies.

00:50:25.740 And I think there are positive lessons to learn from, you know, quote unquote, conservative societies.

00:50:29.480 And I think it's about what works.

00:50:30.340 So let's look at the positive lessons from what would you implement left-wing policies in this country that we do not have to make society fairer and better for all?

00:50:43.320 What would you do?

00:50:43.880 Left-wing policies?

00:50:44.880 Yes.

00:50:45.240 I think my first policies wouldn't even be that left-wing, but OK.

00:50:48.840 Well, what would be your policies?

00:50:50.260 That's the interesting thing.

00:50:52.380 They wouldn't even be left-wing.

00:50:54.200 I think the very first thing I'd do is I'd scrap police and crime commissioners.

00:50:57.020 I think we have far too many non-jobs in this country.

00:50:59.940 Couldn't agree with you more.

00:51:01.000 Political parties.

00:51:02.360 I'm not trying to be populist because I have such a bugbear with police and crime commissioners.

00:51:06.200 I'd reduce the House of Lords.

00:51:07.540 And I think there's arguments about how it works.

00:51:09.600 Do you have it elected?

00:51:10.700 Do you scrap it all together?

00:51:11.760 Do you keep it as it's presently composed?

00:51:13.260 Those arguments are actually quite strong.

00:51:14.620 I don't necessarily agree with them, but we can have that debate.

00:51:16.900 As you say, this isn't a left-wing point.

00:51:18.560 There's lots of people on the right and in the centre who would agree with that.

00:51:20.960 Yeah.

00:51:21.180 But I think it should definitely be smaller, right?

00:51:22.200 It's presently like 900.

00:51:23.140 It should be like 400 tops.

00:51:24.500 Sometimes I would halve the number of councillors, but I'd pay councillors double what they presently get

00:51:29.500 because I don't think people – we don't really have towns, people in local government

00:51:33.180 because they're not paid enough.

00:51:34.500 So I'd give them twice the responsibility and twice the pay.

00:51:37.560 None of that's left-wing, but I think that's like really low-hanging fruit to improve the country.

00:51:41.340 Right.

00:51:41.980 Then in terms of socialist policies – so for instance, I think what Singapore does on land is really good.

00:51:48.920 You know, I think I would probably scrap council tax and introduce a land value tax because it's fairer.

00:51:54.920 And land value tax is a few things.

00:51:56.620 It incentivises the productive use of land.

00:51:58.560 So if you own land and nothing's happening with it and you're being taxed,

00:52:01.120 even if it's a small amount of tax a year, you shift it quite quickly.

00:52:05.080 Or if you've got an empty building in central London, it's put into use very quickly.

00:52:08.800 So that would be my first thing probably is a land value tax.

00:52:10.960 And get rid of council tax, which is incredibly unfair.

00:52:13.920 Why?

00:52:14.160 Why is it unfair?

00:52:16.680 Because it's not about how much you earn.

00:52:19.520 So for instance, you might be living in a – I'll give you a really good example.

00:52:26.320 Students don't pay it, for instance.

00:52:27.860 Students don't pay council tax.

00:52:29.140 And if you're in Leeds or where I live in Portsmouth,

00:52:33.980 you might be in a council ward where there are thousands of students.

00:52:37.520 They still have the bins collected.

00:52:39.120 They still have all manner of services they can use.

00:52:42.580 But they're not paying into it.

00:52:44.440 What would be far better is if the landlord was paying a land value tax.

00:52:48.300 So there's lots of problems with council tax.

00:52:52.140 Again, pensioners tend not to pay it.

00:52:54.540 You can get various forms of relief and whatnot.

00:52:57.860 I just think a land value tax has less bureaucracy, less administration,

00:53:00.560 because you don't have all these little opt-outs.

00:53:02.280 And I think it's just fairer.

00:53:04.320 Well, look, I don't have any issue with any of that.

00:53:05.760 But what about seizing the means of production?

00:53:07.800 When does that happen?

00:53:09.860 I wouldn't –

00:53:10.860 I'm taking the piss.

00:53:12.060 But I'm just curious because none of that is –

00:53:14.220 like you say you're a Marxist, but none of that is really a Marxist thing, right?

00:53:19.000 So where does the Marxism come in?

00:53:20.620 Yeah, so for instance, I would have a national development bank.

00:53:24.200 I would have a bank which is owned by the state,

00:53:27.140 which goes around really financing businesses.

00:53:30.640 It's led by business people, right?

00:53:32.640 It's not just financing every Dominic and Harry.

00:53:35.340 But it's, for instance, looking to grow businesses in underdeveloped areas.

00:53:38.800 Oh, mate, I've said this for ages.

00:53:40.540 Like, why doesn't the government buy a piece of land in the centre of London somewhere

00:53:44.240 or close to the centre and start something for people like us

00:53:47.900 where you get subsidised rent on a space that is suitable for the new tech industries,

00:53:53.480 the new media, whatever, where you can rent a podcast studio to launch yourself.

00:53:57.220 And then once you've done well, you go off and you do it by your paper.

00:53:59.460 An incubator, yeah.

00:54:00.320 Yeah, an incubator, exactly.

00:54:01.940 Like, I'm totally with that.

00:54:03.480 Can we come back to the kind of more, like, big idea principle?

00:54:07.400 Because you mentioned something about workers having a bigger share

00:54:11.060 of the productive stuff that they create, basically, right?

00:54:16.680 And I was curious about this.

00:54:17.860 And please understand, this is not a gotcha.

00:54:19.700 Please, go for it.

00:54:20.800 Get the tweets out.

00:54:23.400 I don't know what your situation is with Navarra,

00:54:26.220 but if you found it, I imagine you have a chunk of the equity.

00:54:29.280 Is that fair to say?

00:54:29.760 There's no equity.

00:54:30.420 Is it not a business, or...?

00:54:33.320 So, I'm not even a director.

00:54:34.980 You know what? 1.00

00:54:35.400 Fuck it, then. 1.00

00:54:35.920 It doesn't matter. 1.00

00:54:37.400 Because I'm not trying to catch you out.

00:54:38.660 No, you can.

00:54:39.280 No, no.

00:54:39.540 No, but I don't want to.

00:54:40.600 I'm trying to have a conversation.

00:54:41.940 So, trigonometry, right?

00:54:44.460 Me and Francis started it.

00:54:46.460 We owned 50-50.

00:54:48.800 We also then had someone come in and be our executive producer.

00:54:52.320 He owns some of the equity of it.

00:54:54.020 We owe it.

00:54:54.580 There's the three of us.

00:54:55.360 Socialists.

00:54:56.420 Well, no.

00:54:58.080 We're capitalists.

00:54:59.020 We knew that for him to be fully invested in it,

00:55:02.180 and also for him to accept the terribly low wage we could pay him at the time...

00:55:05.380 Yeah, exploitative.

00:55:06.440 Exactly.

00:55:06.940 The exploitative wage he was paid at the time.

00:55:09.180 I mean, we owned nothing at that time, so we were happy with it.

00:55:12.180 Anyway, my point is, right, we created this.

00:55:14.540 We took all the entrepreneurial risk.

00:55:17.560 We put our own money into it for years without taking any money out of it, right?

00:55:21.880 We worked incredibly hard.

00:55:23.420 Yes, someone who comes in now and contributes £30 worth of work an hour should get a significant chunk of that.

00:55:33.080 But what about the fact that someone had to start this and take all of the risk for the worker to then come in and actually do it?

00:55:39.820 Because we don't really live in the world that Marx was writing about where all you needed was a loom in a factory and then you just get some bodies in there to work it.

00:55:49.880 Do you know what I mean?

00:55:50.380 No, you're entirely right.

00:55:51.120 It's a very different world.

00:55:51.820 It's a very different world to what it was 50, 60 years ago when our parents were our age or, you know, a bit younger.

00:55:59.540 It's a very fair point.

00:56:01.340 And as somebody who's, you know, also co-founded a media organisation, I feel your pain, you know?

00:56:05.880 It's no pain.

00:56:06.660 It's your baby.

00:56:07.360 No, but I think you're right.

00:56:08.260 There's no pain.

00:56:08.880 I'm very happy to pay people what I think is a fair wage, but it's not going to look like what you think is a fair wage, is my point.

00:56:14.480 Well, so let's say you guys get a cleaner.

00:56:16.820 Yeah.

00:56:17.000 And I don't know what the arrangement is for you guys.

00:56:19.840 You get a cleaner.

00:56:22.000 I presume you would, you know, so you wouldn't say, let's give her a minimum wage. 1.00

00:56:25.080 I don't know what your values are.

00:56:26.520 But if you're paid decent money and you're doing well and your audience likes you, I genuinely think it's a perfectly normal, humane response to say, yeah, give the cleaner 15, 16 quid an hour.

00:56:37.740 She does a great job.

00:56:38.560 The place is clean.

00:56:39.560 We value a clean studio.

00:56:40.940 We actually pay a cleaner more than that. 1.00

00:56:42.340 Yeah, there you go, right?

00:56:43.080 So, well, here's the thing.

00:56:44.760 And it's not even necessarily a criticism of capitalism then, right?

00:56:47.960 We're going to something different, things like outsourcing.

00:56:50.400 And that's actually how lots of this country works today, right?

00:56:53.160 And I feel like sometimes we're having debates at, like, the wrong level.

00:56:56.900 Serco, Colas, G4S, Sodexo. 0.99

00:57:01.560 These companies are disgusting. 0.99

00:57:04.080 They shouldn't exist. 0.97

00:57:05.100 Because what they do is they'll go into a workplace, let's say a hospital or whatever, or a school, and, you know, they function on a similar-ish way to what we just sort of discussed.

00:57:15.480 Somebody's paid relatively well.

00:57:17.820 Colas will go in there and they say, you know what?

00:57:19.960 They're not, they're paid too much.

00:57:21.640 We need to reduce costs.

00:57:22.440 The whole point of outsourcing is screwing working people over.

00:57:25.920 So, there's a few layers here.

00:57:28.100 And I think, frankly, too much of the UK economy looks like that, right?

00:57:32.620 If people were like yourselves, starting businesses, and I think that's the natural human impulse and instinct, they'd do a good job.

00:57:38.840 Pay them a fair wage.

00:57:39.760 Right.

00:57:39.840 But that isn't where we are as a country.

00:57:42.220 That isn't where we are, right?

00:57:43.340 Well, it's where we are.

00:57:44.260 That's where you are.

00:57:45.260 And my point is, I feel quite often the conversation we have about these issues sort of fails to take that nuance into account.

00:57:52.440 Now, this is not unusual for political debate, admittedly.

00:57:54.900 They never take nuance into account.

00:57:57.440 Look, on all this big government outsourcing with these companies that abuse people, I completely agree with that.

00:58:03.180 But, so, the other...

00:58:04.460 I mean, I don't agree with them.

00:58:05.560 I agree with you is what I'm trying to say.

00:58:06.940 I guess the one point that someone would make is, look, Aaron, automation is coming in.

00:58:12.860 We're seeing it.

00:58:13.640 We're seeing it with AI.

00:58:15.560 We're seeing it with robots.

00:58:17.480 If you're going to pay people a lot and you're saying to them, you know, they deserve a fairer chunk, which emotionally...

00:58:23.860 And look, my mum, first-generation immigrant, before the minimum wage, I think she was on like £2.30 an hour. 0.95

00:58:30.360 It was something like that in the 90s.

00:58:32.000 She earned literally nothing, had no rights to a pension. 0.94

00:58:34.800 She's disabled now, entirely dependent on my dad. 0.97

00:58:38.120 And with me helping them, they scrape by.

00:58:40.980 So, I get what you're saying.

00:58:42.880 And it resonates with me.

00:58:45.380 I guess we're looking down the line at AI, automation.

00:58:49.940 And you're going, are we not just going to make people, millions of jobs obsolete?

00:58:55.000 Is that not the danger here as well?

00:58:57.960 I wrote a book about it.

00:58:59.000 You did?

00:58:59.380 You did.

00:59:00.140 Fully automated electric communism.

00:59:02.720 I think...

00:59:03.300 And this is why, you know, I use the C word.

00:59:06.860 Yeah.

00:59:07.040 And this is why I use the C word.

00:59:08.860 Because I think...

00:59:10.380 And the trajectory here is 50, 100 years.

00:59:13.580 Realistically, we're looking at a situation when basically every human task can be automated.

00:59:18.340 I think.

00:59:18.880 Within 50, 200 years.

00:59:19.800 I think that's quite likely, right?

00:59:22.360 Except podcasts.

00:59:23.460 Except podcasts.

00:59:25.000 And at which point, like you say, that creates massive dysfunctions in a bunch of ways.

00:59:29.200 So, for instance, if you have workers who don't have cash capital to buy goods and services,

00:59:35.040 which are made more productively than ever before because you have so much automation,

00:59:38.180 then you have a crisis of what's called under...

00:59:41.160 A crisis of demand or underconsumption.

00:59:43.500 Which is you don't have people who can buy all the goods and services being made.

00:59:46.900 You know, you have a problem.

00:59:48.180 Another issue is that the remaining jobs that are there,

00:59:51.640 and which are captured by uniquely human sort of characteristics,

00:59:56.100 those are paid better and better and better.

00:59:58.280 Because you can't automate Cristiano Ronaldo or a great TV or podcasters.

01:00:02.940 You can't automate those guys, right?

01:00:04.760 For now.

01:00:05.160 And so what that means is that automation compresses jobs like, you know,

01:00:10.900 we've seen it in manufacturing for decades, but I think it's going to come for driving in a decade or two.

01:00:15.200 And then basically it's going to come for everything.

01:00:17.360 And so I think as a society, we have a bunch of problems there.

01:00:19.280 Like I say, crisis of demand.

01:00:21.060 And if we think inequality is bad now, my God, you know,

01:00:24.280 it's going to be even worse in 30, 40, 50 years' time.

01:00:27.160 And I would also add, Aaron, a crisis of meaning.

01:00:30.100 Because jobs bring dignity and they bring an identity and they bring structure.

01:00:36.080 Well, that's why I used the C word, because this is a profound challenge to capitalism.

01:00:41.040 It's a profound challenge to capitalism.

01:00:42.400 And I think we need to be honest about that.

01:00:45.000 Because, you know, The Economist did a great line about this, I think, in 2013.

01:00:48.140 They said, what happens when capital becomes labour?

01:00:51.520 Which is to say there is no distinction between capital and labour once you can automate pretty much everything.

01:00:56.580 And that, we might not see it.

01:00:58.700 I think we probably will.

01:01:00.020 Our children will see it.

01:01:01.520 And so what's the sort of political economic settlement when that happens?

01:01:04.620 You know, it doesn't look like capitalism.

01:01:07.800 It doesn't look like capitalism as we know it.

01:01:09.260 So that's why I use the C word. 0.96

01:01:10.700 No, but the thing is, I don't think, I don't know about Francis.

01:01:14.700 I certainly don't disagree that in a world where no one has to work, it sort of doesn't make sense that the people who historically have held the capital now own everything and no one else has anything.

01:01:26.880 In a world where no one needs to work and everything is done by robots, a system of distributing resources fairly equally in that world is great, actually, I think.

01:01:37.160 I'm sure there's counterarguments to that that I probably haven't considered, but I'm open to that.

01:01:40.880 But what Francis was asking was something else, which is in the interim, because, you know, we're all going to live in that interim 100 years, right?

01:01:48.720 There's quite a lot of human lives in that.

01:01:51.560 When you raise wages, what you are doing is you're incentivising those jobs out of existence, right?

01:01:58.540 And so isn't there a counterproductive element to some of those drives for higher wages in certain industries?

01:02:06.540 Yes, there's a guy, he just died, actually, a guy called Mario Tronti.

01:02:09.740 He was a Marxist-Italian sort of thinker.

01:02:12.360 And he said exactly this.

01:02:13.720 So historically, people have always thought innovation is driven by capitalists, right?

01:02:18.260 Great levels of automation, new innovations to create things more productively.

01:02:21.520 He says, no, it's created by workers in struggle, them struggling for better work, better paying conditions, more money, is the catalyst for better innovation, because that leads to, like, the things you're talking about.

01:02:33.440 You create incentives.

01:02:34.360 Yeah.

01:02:34.940 And this is literally, like, page one or two of The Wealth of Nations, right?

01:02:38.240 So I think, again, even if you're not on the left, if you want a high-productivity, high-performance economy, there's the argument for higher wages, because you're going to create incentives for businesses to increase productivity, use more fixed capital.

01:02:55.180 Hold on.

01:02:55.520 You care about the working people.

01:02:56.760 I do.

01:02:56.820 You want to automate their jobs out of existence.

01:02:58.780 No, no, no.

01:02:59.140 But if you have working-class representation, you have labour organisations, and the state is on their side, they can be reallocated to other parts of the labour market.

01:03:06.940 They can be retrained, or you can say, look...

01:03:09.500 The evidence is very poor on people being retrained.

01:03:11.600 No, I agree with you.

01:03:12.360 Well, in an ageing population, we probably will need to retrain some people to help, you know, with regards to elderly care work, for instance.

01:03:19.560 I don't mean, like, retrain, design an app. 0.98

01:03:22.540 That's bullshit. 0.99

01:03:23.300 I agree with you there. 0.99

01:03:24.580 But on things like, I think, I mean really demographic ageing.

01:03:27.500 So I think in the US, over 50% of the jobs which are growing significantly are in relation to health and elderly care services.

01:03:36.100 Because we're getting older as a society.

01:03:38.880 We're having fewer babies, and people are living longer, generally speaking.

01:03:43.120 So I suppose the quick answer is, in the interim, what do we do?

01:03:47.120 I think there's a bunch of challenges in the 21st century that we need to take head on in, to borrow a phrase from Keir Starmer, a mission-oriented sense.

01:03:56.860 I agree with that.

01:03:58.240 I think one is demographic ageing.

01:04:00.300 I think another is the housing crisis.

01:04:02.220 And I think a third is climate change.

01:04:03.820 Now, people might be watching this going, oh, climate change, look at the weather outside.

01:04:07.020 Globally speaking, it's a huge challenge, particularly for sort of countries to our south.

01:04:10.600 They're going to really struggle.

01:04:12.040 And I think, you know, we're going to have to gear up to a world which looks very different to today.

01:04:16.180 So those will be what I say.

01:04:18.160 We need to use the dividend of technological change to human genius to address those challenges in the interim.

01:04:23.940 Because like you say, full automation is decades away.

01:04:26.480 Yeah.

01:04:26.960 I wish we hadn't run out of time there, because I'd love to talk to you about climate change.

01:04:31.180 But we're going to go to locals, where we'll continue the conversation with questions from our audience, so people can follow us there.

01:04:36.660 But before we do, we always end with the same question.

01:04:39.180 What's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

01:04:43.560 I've just used my demographic ageing card.

01:04:46.840 But you can talk about it.

01:04:47.660 Let's talk about it more.

01:04:48.520 Just give us a brief headline of what you're talking about.

01:04:51.380 We talk about climate change.

01:04:53.120 We talk about a bunch of other crises.

01:04:54.580 I think for the West, over the next 50 years, demographic ageing is the biggest problem.

01:04:59.460 Because you have people living longer.

01:05:02.200 You have the portion of the oldest old, people over 85, mushrooming.

01:05:07.340 Good.

01:05:07.720 That's a success story.

01:05:09.380 But they have incredibly expensive care needs.

01:05:11.360 At the same time, the tax base, the working age population, is comparatively shrinking.

01:05:15.900 It has so many challenges with regards to growth, with regards to what healthy political culture looks like, and how you fund public services.

01:05:23.800 So this is the thing, which I think it's a terrifying challenge, although it comes from a very good place, us living longer.

01:05:32.140 And we generally don't talk about it enough.

01:05:33.640 We need to do what you and I are doing, which is have more babies.

01:05:36.580 That's it.

01:05:37.120 Yeah, mine's on the way.

01:05:38.120 You need to do like Elon Musk, you know?

01:05:40.420 I mean, there's different ways of doing it.

01:05:43.160 Seven or eight, right?

01:05:44.120 Yeah.

01:05:44.620 But I sort of feel like if you're going to have children, you should really be there, is how I feel.

01:05:50.480 And this isn't a go at Elon Musk.

01:05:52.020 This is a go at everyone.

01:05:54.240 Aaron Bastani, thank you so much for coming on.

01:05:56.560 If you like Aaron's work, follow him at Navarra Media.

01:05:59.880 But join us on Locals for your questions and answers.

01:06:03.880 You know what? 1.00

01:06:04.960 Fuck it. 1.00

01:06:05.460 We've got time. 1.00

01:06:06.560 Well, not much, but we've got some time.

01:06:08.120 Climate change.

01:06:10.420 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - August 27, 2023

An Honest Conversation with a Marxist - Aaron Bastani

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