00:04:30.300As well as the kind of worry about escalating language on social media
00:04:34.020and the effect it has, sometimes quite serious issues about,
00:04:38.020as Claire says, abusive language on social media,
00:04:39.700is happening at a time in which we've got a broader political issue going on,
00:04:44.100which is a quite deep fear of the public and a fear of the masses and quite a lot of prejudice going on.
00:04:50.820And so there's this sort of when people, especially people in political power, talk about the fear of demagogues or Nazis or whoever it is inciting violence through their speech and the need to kind of everyone to calm down.
00:05:06.960And what it really is, is saying is we're quite scared of having a public debate, because if that public debate happens, then, you know, the mob are going to grab their pitchforks and are going to come after us.
00:05:17.380And of course, that's one entirely not true. But it also is it's escalating and creating a problem that they're afraid of.
00:05:25.820They're afraid that people are going to get violent, get rebellious and cause problems.
00:05:32.040But at the same time, they're saying no one talk about anything, no one criticise us, no one do anything.
00:05:37.540Anything you say is not just wrong, but illegal.
00:05:40.280And I tell you, there's one, this is what people who are interested in free speech always point out.
00:05:43.600And it's true that if you want to make a problem out of something, push it underground, censor it, give it a kind of glamour that it shouldn't necessarily enjoy.
00:05:54.040So the antidote is always sunlight, is always more debate, is always more speech.
00:05:59.440and you've got at the moment a political establishment which is just so hostile to
00:06:04.400any kind of discussion about its actions which i think isn't going to end well if it keeps going
00:06:10.000down this very sensorial route and this is where the battle of ideas the festival that you guys
00:06:14.480run every year comes in because one of the great things about that is you genuinely get people from
00:06:19.020all over the political spectrum i mean you know we'll be interviewing lord adonis who is not going
00:06:24.440to be that popular with most of our pro breaks of view, as I imagine. But you get people from
00:06:29.480across the spectrum genuinely. And that's one of the things I really enjoyed. I'm curious how you
00:06:34.480managed to do that, actually, because we struggle to get like, you know, kind of woke leftist guests
00:06:40.460on because they are afraid to be even tarnished by association. So how do you get all these people
00:06:46.380together? Well, I mean, I think people understand that. I think people are cautious about things
00:06:51.580being a setup. And so a lot of the time in political debate in the media, for example,
00:06:56.400anyone who's ever done it knows that you get put into a room and you get told to kind of battle it
00:07:00.260out with each other. It can often be quite fractious. The difference about the festival
00:07:04.200is because it's centered around public debate, actually, the focus is not on the speakers
00:07:09.440themselves, but within their interaction with a wider audience. And so people understand that
00:07:14.820this is a genuine platform where you will be given a fair shot to try and win over the audience.
00:07:20.660And I think anyone who's serious about their political views, whether you are a socialist or a hard right person, whatever view you have, what we're essentially saying is go for it.
00:07:31.980And you might well completely win over the audience. And I might be devastated because I've lost the argument.
00:07:37.180But it is a fair game and it has been a fair game for 15 years. And I think people really appreciate that space to do it.
00:07:43.100And as it happens, as it often is the case that at the festival, I will enter a room hating someone's political views and ready to make a contribution to the floor and really nail them and come out being convinced that actually I was being completely one sided about something.
00:07:59.000So it's it's that kind of a it's a different space for public debate than happens within media discussions or other places.
00:08:06.360Yeah, I mean, a couple of things to add. I think that to go back to our prior conversation in terms of why people maybe would be reluctant to come on your show or sometimes we were reluctant to speak at a festival like the Battle of Ideas.
00:08:18.940I think that one of the more worrying aspects of what's happened in recent years, and this is relatively new, is that labels have been used to delegitimize different opponents.
00:08:32.000So, and basically, you know, if you are a kind of far-right fascist,
00:08:38.020if you see what I mean, like the way these terms are bandied ground,
00:08:43.060you know, and you want to go, no, actually, I'm on the left
00:08:45.160and I'm just kind of a reasonable Democrat,
00:08:47.500but you kind of can't get the word in.
00:08:49.300You're delegitimate because what that says is you aren't worth engaging with.
00:14:34.960to get gotcha moments to be clipped on Twitter.
00:14:37.380I mean, that's just like their modus operandi now.
00:14:40.480Pin the politician, get them to say the bad thing, put it on Twitter.
00:14:44.360What that means is you often spend five minutes listening
00:14:47.720to an incredibly dull conversation on the Today programme
00:14:51.440or on Newsnight or on Channel 4, wherever it is,
00:14:54.060where you're just waiting for the gotcha moment and it often doesn't happen.
00:14:57.040There's countless times where I've sat listening to the morning radio,
00:15:00.820hearing someone ask a politician the same question,
00:15:02.660you know they're not going to get the answer out of it.
00:15:04.240it's like a poor man's Paxman and it just doesn't work and it's really really boring and it is
00:15:09.480really frustrating because then you do end up wanting to go on Twitter and saying what the
00:15:12.680fucking hell are you doing what talk about the news and the other side of it is that I have had
00:15:18.520countless experiences in green rooms and back rooms before and after shows where people kind
00:15:25.260of forget that you are not part of the mix of things you're not part of the media establishment
00:15:30.680And so they start talking about politics. And what's really interesting is they often talk about how utterly boring. Oh, God, we have to talk about Brexit again. Oh, God, we have to talk about this again. And what they don't realise is that for many people, on leave and remain side, this is actually a very exciting moment in politics because things seem to be up in the air.
00:15:47.980And if you had a sensible sense of news producers being able to galvanise on that, you could do something really interesting with this.
00:15:55.400You could actually really engage an audience. You could actually, you know, you've got a political space in which people want to talk about things.
00:16:01.600So use that. But I think they're still stuck in this notion of what they want is just for the current political mess to go away.
00:16:08.120So they can get back to doing, you know, the kind of things that you saw on the thick of it, you know, launching a policy, talking about it, doing all these sort of mundane things.
00:16:17.120They want to go back to business as usual. That's politicians and the media establishment.
00:16:21.040They just don't want to deal with the current fray. And that's coming across as either very
00:16:26.280dull or very febrile exchanges. And I don't think any of us come out any better off from either
00:16:32.180watching or being part of it. Because one of the things when we started the festival,
00:16:35.840and before it was fashionable, we always used to say about the battle of ideas,
00:16:39.520you know, get out of your echo chamber. I mean, now that's a cliche, but at the time,
00:16:42.840it was quite an important declaration as far as we were concerned that you should come and
00:16:47.460hear other opinions beyond your own. But I think that what's now incredible is that when people
00:16:54.320actually do have civilised exchanges over even very febrile issues like Brexit, people actually
00:17:02.100don't want that to occur. So, for example, UK and a changing Europe, who were actually involved in
00:17:08.680the festival this year who are academics who are you know broadly speaking based on the research
00:17:13.640not that keen that we leave the european union and and i don't agree with the number of the
00:17:18.080the the the statements that they come out but they're actually really interesting i read their
00:17:25.040publications i'm interested you know and this works both ways but they did a podcast with me
00:17:29.480and they got abused for interviewing me by their own followers why is that woman on and i and i
00:17:34.700also did my first MEP blog for them, as they asked me to. And again, they got a lot of abuse for
00:17:44.520allowing me a platform. And by the way, just to show I'm being fair minded about it, it was also
00:17:51.120the case that when I retweeted and said it's worth reading this from UK and Changing Europe
00:17:55.400and what's the problems with a no deal Brexit and some of the real challenges of it, people who are
00:18:02.780My supporters will say, why are you retweeting that?
00:18:05.820And I'm like, because I think everyone should read more generally.
00:18:10.680And, you know, if they're wrong, we should argue against it.
00:18:13.700So I think that the media, the mainstream media, sadly, are far too prepared to put the label on you.
00:18:27.060And if you don't kind of do, you know, it's like that kind of, what was that community used to go?
00:18:30.600Fight, fight, you know, but it was like that sort of like.
00:18:32.440If you don't perform as some sort of like fighting, you know, horrible kind of like spitting at each other, which actually often spontaneously happens.
00:18:41.180But if you don't, because you think, oh, that's a reasonable point, I think this.
00:18:44.540They're almost disappointed that you're not giving them the gotcha moment or the kind of clip that you can then say, this is real live politics.
00:18:53.440Well, actually, it's not. No, it's not. It's a bitchy, unpleasant exchange.
00:18:57.680Why don't we actually have an attempt at understanding each other's perspectives?
00:19:01.180Well, just to show that we are fair-minded, whenever we talk about the mainstream media, one thing that should be mentioned, actually, a lot of people on our side in terms of new media are doing the same thing as well.
00:19:10.680There's lots of people who are not being fair or reasonable or objective in any way.
00:19:15.020And that's just a long way of constant in saying he wants to go back on Good Morning Britain.
00:19:19.460I've been on that show plenty, but actually that's mainstream media.
00:19:22.440And yes, one of the things they do is they they they they're very careful to make sure, as you'll know, to make sure that, you know, you kept in a separate room from the other guests who you're supposedly debating.
00:19:36.000It was quite funny. I was on a radio program the other day and a woman who didn't know me, I was chatting to her.
00:19:40.640She didn't know who it was. And she was saying, oh, yeah, you know, good morning, Britain, when, you know, that that kind of debate where they have someone who's black talking about racism and then they get a racist on against them.
00:19:51.320And I was like, well, I'm usually the racist in that debate.
00:19:54.580Well, you are Russian, mate, so it's entirely in case.
00:19:56.500It's in my genes, so it's part of my culture.
00:28:42.160it has been largely attempted to be defined by identity politics. And so you've got to engage
00:28:47.020with it. Even if you are like me and Claire, someone who's very sceptical of the benefits
00:28:51.620of seeing things through an identity politics lens, it is actually more and more becoming
00:28:57.700the established way of thinking, which is, we've just been talking about the mainstream
00:29:01.280media, the way they cast debates will be through an identity politics lens, the way they see
00:29:05.860having topics will be around an identity politics lens. So that's the realm we're in. We're
00:29:11.520happy to take that on what we're not happy to do is be count by it so that's what but i think that
00:29:16.720that we a caution to us all i mean i'm a great fan of titania mcgrath or you know rather as the
00:29:23.820and and i i love that and you've done lots of things on the issues of identity and had some
00:29:29.500great guests on trigonometry discussing this but i i do think that i've got to say to myself all the
00:29:35.980time you know i don't want to over lampoon them because the reason i mentioned titania mcgrath is
00:29:39.680easy make fun of because the most ludicrous sides of these things are let's be frank you know easy
00:29:47.440to satirize and say for god's sake and it can be like that but there are obviously things that one
00:29:53.780needs to engage in and although i hate the promiscuous use of the word far-right or racist
00:29:59.340and so on there are racists i encountered them um you know there's there's there's quite a lot
00:30:04.080people at the moment who are having a big campaign against the Brexit party on the basis
00:30:09.700that it's too politically correct for having allowed a commie pro-migrant like me in it,
00:30:15.600in its ranks. And they are more than willing to explain their views on deportations and
00:30:21.620immigration. And they are openly racist, right? And so I don't want, and you can see that people,
00:30:28.280when they're on the receiving end of some pretty nasty attacks, if you're a woman or if you're
00:30:33.520black or what have you, you look to different political ways of organising. I don't think
00:30:39.420that identity politics is the way forward. I think it's really aggressive. But I don't want
00:30:44.300to suggest that there's no issues in society that need to be confronted and tackled. And that's
00:30:50.000where the interesting political argument comes. Well, how do you tackle that then? Should it be
00:30:54.640through kind of saying we as ethnic minorities want to organise in this way? Or should it be
00:30:59.820more open anti-racist companies so on and so forth so we try and take these things seriously
00:31:03.780rather than just dismissing them all i apologize you turned that into a question sorry no it's
00:31:09.980fine i was just gonna say it doesn't affect me because i don't see race or gender but anyway
00:31:13.200guys just to let you know my show all well that ends well which i advertised earlier the bill
00:31:19.500murray that is now very close to selling out so we've had to open up another day i will be doing
00:31:24.120it again with francis i'm seeing it again on the 24th of november the links in the description i'm
00:31:29.160also coming to Cambridge in November as well. So check that out. Absolutely. Please come down.
00:31:34.580It's going to be a great show when I'm on. And then when Constantine's on, you just enjoy the
00:31:39.680interval. There is no interval, by the way. So it's just me and Francis. We'll see you there.
00:31:47.980So, I mean, we were talking about identity politics. Identity politics is something,
00:31:52.340I mean, it's been embraced by the right, but very much by the left and labels and all the rest of
00:31:56.640And I see you two, if I would give you a label, it'd be homeless lefties.
00:32:01.860And like me, we are of the left, but we look at the left and we go, oh, for fuck's sake.
00:32:08.500And we just go, I mean, I can't vote Labour in the next election.
00:32:11.620I just can't. Could you tell us, number one, what being left wing means?
00:32:16.860And is it compatible with now being a Labour voter?
00:32:19.460But I don't, from my opinion anyway, I don't think being left wing in the interests of working class liberation has ever been compatible with the voting with the Labour Party for a number of reasons that are historically too long to go into in this interview.
00:32:37.460But the funny thing is, I think, Claire, you said this before as well, is that my views in terms of what I want from society and societal change haven't changed.
00:32:47.360So whether they're left wing or not, or, you know, it often feels quite lazy to call yourself left wing now because it's just like saying I'm a nice person because right wing has become evil.
00:32:58.260But my views haven't changed in terms of what I want to see in a future society.
00:33:03.000But I think what has changed is the rest of the conversation.
00:33:06.660So people who now still call themselves left-wing in that quite lazy way are, for example, if you take a figure like Paul Mason, who is a lefty by all accounts of he's understood to be one, but has become this incredible cheerleader for the European Union, who to my mind is the antithesis of all kind of left-wing Euroscepticism and left-wing thought of workers' liberation.
00:33:29.840So these things have become completely confused. And part of the problem is that the left as a kind of block have just moved towards a sort of centrist establishment outlook from my point of view.
00:33:43.240So it's not about, you know, challenging the nature of the way society is organized and arguing for more for everyone.
00:33:50.780And, you know, let's make massive societal change.
00:33:54.020It's about sort of tinkering at the edges and, you know, making working life slightly nicer for people, slightly raising the minimum wage, taxing rich people a little bit more.
00:34:02.900It's all this kind of stuff that for me seems like really boring centrism or kind of socialism light.
00:34:09.620And I think what you have to assess if you are someone like myself, perhaps Claire, who still holds on to some of the serious and concrete left-wing values, like freedom of speech, like Euroscepticism at the moment, and other things, where is the debate today?
00:34:29.820And the debate, I think, rightly or wrongly, isn't any more about left or right. It isn't about these clear political distinctions, because we're not in the 1980s. We're not in the same world as we were when class politics was a very real thing. So you have to face up to the fact that it is just politically lazy and rather dishonest to keep going on about we're the lefties and you're the right wingers.
00:34:53.620because the vast majority of the population out there
00:34:56.220just don't see things in that way anymore.
00:34:59.000That might be a good thing, that might be a bad thing.
00:35:43.680I feel politically homeless and I'm so frustrated
00:35:46.220about the non-delivery of the vote to leave in the referendum,
00:35:50.320that then you kind of have a party that comes along with the title of the Brexit Party and sweeps up that constituency.
00:35:58.240And so therefore it's not the traditional political party that we've known from the past.
00:36:03.460And its slogan, Change Politics for Good, has got a much greater resonance than I thought it would.
00:36:09.200Because when I go and talk to people, people say, yeah, we need new political movements, new parties.
00:36:13.260You know, they want a kind of refreshing of politics because they do feel politically homeless.
00:36:17.200I mean, there was a very moving moment that I was at a meeting and one woman stood up and said, you know, I've I've been in the Conservative Party for 20 years and until recently, I'd never met a trade unionist ever.
00:36:33.280And now I'm going to leave meetings and I'm meeting, you know, there's Communist Party members over there.
00:36:38.860There's members of the RMT. There's the Conservatives, all sorts of people here. Right.
00:37:09.980But the other thing I wanted to say was, you know, I was interviewed by a number of publications in the last week or so, Washington Post, New York.
00:37:20.120And they all sort of start off and they say, well, you've had a fascinating, you know, one minute you're the revolutionary communist party and the next minute you're Brexit party.
00:37:30.860I mean, it's a kind of odd one that, right?
00:37:36.760You know, because what's happened is because I actually and it was unusual when I stood up and said, you know, I didn't think I was going to end up on the same platform as Nigel Frodge when I first was announced as a candidate.
00:37:47.680You know, I've come from the left. I wasn't expecting this to then mean that there was a kind of wholesale going over everything that was ever written by the Revolutionary Communist Party that I was in 25 years ago and then trying to suggest that I'd said it two seconds ago.
00:38:01.020So and I'm not denouncing that past, but there's a lot of water gone under the bridge since then in terms of politics.
00:38:08.260I mean, I mean by that that it didn't used to be that if you were a free speech absolutist, that people would then say, so you're far right.
00:38:17.740I mean, the left embraced, you know, actually still in America is the case that people on the left are associated with free speech.
00:38:24.640I consider this to be part of the enlightenment gain that you would have free speech and open mind.
00:38:29.900And, you know, Ella's already mentioned, you know, that the left has had the major, were the major figures in Euroscepticism and the emergence of the EU.
00:38:41.160Tony Benn, I mean, the one thing that I agreed with Jeremy Corbyn for, for 25 years, was his attitude to democracy in relation to the imposition and anti-democratic nature of the European Union.
00:38:55.580I mean, it's not my fault he's changed his mind or being cowardly or whatever has happened to him, right?
00:39:53.440which had previously been living Marxism
00:39:55.100I was in the revolutionary communist party
00:39:57.100into my 30s before it closed itself down um but i so i broadly of course i think of myself as on
00:40:03.700the left i've had some sort of but the world around me and what constitutes left wing has
00:40:08.780changed and when i see people who are the leaders of left-wing movements arguing for censorship
00:40:14.260arguing for people to lose their jobs not be platforming someone because they said something
00:40:20.120that somebody found offensive i think actually i don't want anything to do with that if that's
00:40:24.220the left, right? I don't want that label anymore. You know, I can't bring myself now to simply say
00:40:31.280I'm a left winger without a caveat, which says, but not in the contemporary way of understanding
00:40:36.560the left. This is something I wanted to ask you about in terms of running the battle of ideas
00:40:41.080and censorship and platformings. There is this idea that giving people a platform is in a way
00:40:48.300enabling their views. And therefore, if they have bad views or the wrong views, you are therefore
00:40:53.480responsible. What is your attitude to, you know, giving a space for people to talk from across the
00:40:59.420spectrum and to critics that might say, well, you've given a platform to this person that I
00:41:04.920personally disagree with. Therefore, you are all evil and bad and whatever else that comes out of
00:41:09.200it. I think the golden rule for us is if it's politically relevant and if it's interesting,
00:41:14.380then we will look to give it a platform. If it's a debate that we think needs to happen,
00:41:20.060then it's something that we should facilitate and something that we should get involved in.
00:41:25.320So that, you know, everyone, whether you're the editor of a magazine or the organiser of a festival,
00:41:30.800you have to look at what is going to produce a good debate and a successful debate.
00:41:35.520And one, actually, a debate that we're sort of politically interested in expanding the conversation.
00:41:40.220So that doesn't mean that you, we've just had discussions about, talked about people being set up.
00:41:45.900That doesn't mean you find the mad person who's got the really extreme views on, you know, anti-abortion or whatever it is, the kind of really, really crazy view.
00:41:56.720And you put them on a platform then with some very mild person, let them battle it out.
00:42:01.760And that's not no platforming someone, by the way.
00:42:03.960That's just having a sensible view of how to put on an event or how to have a discussion.
00:42:07.520But the cold panic about no platform is a really disingenuous conversation because actually it's not about, you know, it's it never has.
00:42:16.500I've never looked at a panel that's been questioned on no platform.
00:42:20.340And I've been involved in this for many years, both with Spiked and when I was at university at the University of Sussex and there was campaigns around no platforming there.
00:42:28.840Every panel that's been challenged has, to my mind, been really quite mild.
00:42:32.660I mean, in terms of whether it's been Julie Bindle or someone from the Tory party, it's never a kind of rabid, kind of viciously murderous person who you think, God, why would anyone want to listen to them?
00:42:46.300It's always just someone who's a bit politically contentious.
00:42:49.720And so the fear about no platforming often just comes from people not wanting to have the person that they disagree with heard.
00:42:57.860But once you guess over that, you have to say that a platform, what is a platform?
00:43:02.920If you've got, for example, our debates, most of them take place where you've got sort of five people, two or three on each side and then a chair.
00:43:11.180If you have a strong chair who can facilitate a public debate, then you really don't have to worry about what's being said and its effect on the audience.
00:43:20.380Because there's this other thing in relation to platforming that, you know, this is the crazy thing about universities and especially when I was at Sussex.
00:43:26.460They would never have a UKIP person on a platform, even though actually at that time UKIP was doing relatively well in the polls.
00:43:33.000And it was actually something interesting to investigate what their views were.
00:43:38.040People at the University of Sussex and students were terrified that UKIP, this UKIP guy was going to get up and say, you know, whatever they thought he was going to say, all black people should be deported.
00:43:47.440And then all the student populace of Sussex would be like, yeah.
00:43:50.180I mean, it was just a complete misunderstanding of both the power of that speaker and the nature
00:43:56.040of the audience. So it all comes down to a distrust of people's ability to challenge
00:44:01.060things. You know, I've been almost hounded off panels before because I've spoken about
00:44:05.520controversial things at university and, you know, the students have not been swayed by my point of
00:44:09.600view. The opposite has happened. I think we, the problem with the no platforming panic is it's
00:44:15.400again i mean this is a theme it's again it's a distrust of the public's ability to hold people
00:44:20.900to account to challenge people um and it's also the case that there's also this sort of idea that
00:44:28.180we've just been talking about labels if you have someone that's slightly more hardened in their
00:44:33.620position that they're somehow an extremist and what are we supposed to have beige panels with
00:44:37.900everyone who's going to say roughly the same kind of middling thing i mean who wants to go and see
00:44:42.280that exactly because it you know you can sanitize debate by basically saying nobody's saying anything
00:44:48.720that is going to upset anyone anywhere in the room in which case this festival would attract
00:44:54.240no one because it would just be you know boring basically but i i think that we confront two
00:45:01.100problems one is the the way that people are labeled bigots and we've all made jokes about
00:45:07.660it here and you've said you know we're nazis and all the rest of it and it is quite ludicrous but
00:45:12.820actually genuinely it's not pleasant no no of course i mean i mean you know actually you know
00:45:17.540when people call me a nazi or say i'm a fascist enabler and i don't just mean using the label i
00:45:22.460mean seriously accuse me of enabling fascism or replicating enoch powell's rivers of blood
00:45:29.040speeches these are you know to your face i mean these are very serious things to suggest you know
00:45:36.180Somebody responsible for the murderous, I mean, the idea that I have to explain that the Holocaust of Jewish people is not something that I not only agree with, but that I have any remote truck with is ludicrous.
00:45:52.520But when they say you're enabling the rise of fascism in this country, a militarized, vicious, anti-humanist, nihilistic ideology, which I despise, and I have to go, no, I'm not.
00:46:03.980It sounds pathetic, but if you label people bigots, and we know that there's a whole new range, transphobic, Islamophobic, there's all sorts of things which you can be labelled not because you are a bigot, but because you've said something that goes against what a very narrow group of people representing that community, but not voted by that community, have decided to label Islamophobic.
00:46:26.420So you will know there are many people who are transgender, don't agree with trans activists.
00:46:32.540Millions of people who are Muslims don't agree with the people who say on behalf of all Muslims, I call you Islamophobic.
00:46:39.160So that's one problem. We would just basically have to go and check the list of who somebody else has called a bigot.
00:46:44.680They're not going to do that. But on the other hand, that's a good way of finding speakers, though, if they've been called all the right names.
00:46:51.540But on the UNAN, and this is what I was going to say,
00:46:53.360was a lot of students I talk to are kind of newly espousing free speech.
00:46:57.440And I like to think that we've at least opened their minds to it.
00:47:00.460And, you know, a lot of free speech studies have kind of, you know,
00:47:04.400somebody would invite me because they've read my book
00:47:06.700and they're all enthused, we're going to do this.
00:47:08.120And then they'll say, we're going to invite so-and-so.
00:47:10.720And actually, they're going to invite a bigot, a real bigot,
00:47:15.140because they think that the way to confront the bands
00:47:18.700is to invite somebody for the sake of annoying everybody.