TRIGGERnometry - ＂Labour Abandoned the Working Class＂： Paul Embery

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:08.800 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.760 Our brilliant guest this week is a firefighter, trade unionist and a columnist for the UnHerd website.

00:00:20.100 Paul Embry, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:22.240 Nice to be back.

00:00:23.100 Yeah, you're back faster than most of our other guests because a lot of things have happened.

00:00:27.760 not least with your career. You've had a bit of a change

00:00:31.820 since the last time we spoke to you. So tell us a little bit about the situation

00:00:36.020 with you and your union. Yeah, I had a bit of an enforced

00:00:39.800 change. It wasn't something that I was

00:00:43.760 particularly asking for. But the last time I was on the

00:00:47.880 show, I was sitting on the national executive of the Fire Brigades Union. I'm a firefighter

00:00:51.860 by trade. I was also a senior official in the Fire Brigades Union.

00:00:55.920 But I made the fatal error of speaking at a pro-Brexit rally on the 29th of March last

00:01:05.360 year, which was the date we were originally supposed to leave the European Union.

00:01:09.780 And I spoke at a cross-party rally.

00:01:12.680 And within the speech that I gave, I was specifically critical of leaders of the labour movement

00:01:21.340 over their position on Brexit.

00:01:24.180 and I expressed some degree of criticism.

00:01:27.260 And that was it.

00:01:29.300 That was the impetus for the Fire Brigade Union

00:01:33.520 to take me through an internal discipline process

00:01:36.080 and to find that even though I'd given that speech in my own time

00:01:41.740 on a Friday evening,

00:01:44.220 even though I hadn't spoken on behalf of the Fire Brigade Union,

00:01:47.320 there was no mention of the Fire Brigade Union,

00:01:49.040 I was speaking on behalf of Trade Unionists against the EU,

00:01:51.580 which is a group I've been involved with for a long time.

00:01:54.180 I had acted in a way prejudicial to the interests of the union and I was kicked out of office and banned from holding office again for two years.

00:02:04.660 So despite the fact that there has historically been a really rich tradition within the Fire Brigades Union of open debate and people being allowed to express their view,

00:02:12.580 particularly when they're doing it in a personal capacity, this was pretty much an unprecedented move.

00:02:19.580 And it's disappointing because I've been an FPU official for 20 years.

00:02:23.320 But that was that.

00:02:24.820 I don't think it's quite over yet because I'm pursuing it through other avenues.

00:02:29.340 But, yeah, there was some fallout from that.

00:02:31.860 And I think it's fair to say that it's backfired to a certain degree on the people responsible for it.

00:02:36.820 But there we go.

00:02:38.020 Well, let's see what we can do more to make it backfire more.

00:02:40.380 But essentially what you're talking about is being punished for expressing your political views in a private capacity.

00:02:46.880 So you're just short of Harry Miller, who we've recently had on the show.

00:02:50.100 You didn't have the police call you up and check your thinking on Brexit.

00:02:53.320 No, not quite.

00:02:55.900 But I'm sure some people might have wanted to put the police on to me if they could have got away with it.

00:03:00.540 But, yeah, that's exactly right.

00:03:03.760 I mean, obviously, if you are an official for a trade union, particularly when you're in a senior capacity,

00:03:08.420 then when you're acting in your capacity as a union official, you have to represent the union's position,

00:03:13.980 or at least to explain what the union's position is.

00:03:20.060 But as I say, it's a rich tradition, not just within the FPU,

00:03:23.300 but in the trade union movement generally,

00:03:25.380 that if you're not acting in your union capacity,

00:03:27.740 you're free to express your own view in your own personal time.

00:03:31.400 So, for example, when there are trade union meetings,

00:03:34.180 it's not uncommon to see flyers for that meeting

00:03:37.120 where trade union officials are speaking,

00:03:40.220 but they're not necessarily putting the union views.

00:03:43.000 So you'll have in brackets after their name, personal capacity, interpersonal capacity.

00:03:47.460 That's very, very common in the trade union movement.

00:03:51.080 And as I say, you know, it's always been very much a feature of my trade union previously that we had the freedom to do that.

00:03:57.460 But on this occasion, they decided that no criticising leaders of the labour movement for their position on Brexit was wrong and worthy of being kicked out of office.

00:04:07.960 So that's what happened.

00:04:09.840 And that strikes me as incredible.

00:04:12.240 So, essentially, they fired you for having a political opinion.

00:04:16.520 How did they justify it?

00:04:18.760 Was there any justification or was it a simple...

00:04:21.560 Well, the interesting thing is that since it happened and, you know, there was, as I said, quite a fierce backlash.

00:04:29.440 There's been coverage in national newspapers.

00:04:32.180 The Daily Mirror ran an investigation in their investigations column.

00:04:35.800 There was a big backlash on social media from members of the Fibergazer Union and even from

00:04:41.200 people who are not members of the Fibergazer Union. There were Labour MPs who wrote blogs

00:04:44.800 about it saying they were shocked and concerned at the implications of it.

00:04:49.920 And since the decision, no, they haven't actually really even tried to justify it.

00:04:53.460 Now, I think probably because they suspect it's gone badly wrong and it looks very poor

00:04:58.520 for the union. And no one, the General Secretary who submitted the original complaint which led

00:05:04.420 to the investigation against me, nor anybody else within the sort of senior echelons of the union

00:05:10.500 has ever really come out and sought to publicly defend it. They've sort of gone into the bunker

00:05:16.200 over it, really, even though, you know, it's garnered quite a lot of coverage. And I think

00:05:21.920 that's probably an indication of the fact that, as I said, they realise it hasn't turned out the

00:05:26.860 way they expected. Well, hopefully, through the other avenues that you're pursuing, you get

00:05:31.640 you get some what you might call justice. We'll see. He's got that little devil look in his eye

00:05:40.100 like he's going to get his own, which is great. But coming back to the broader reason we wanted

00:05:45.100 to get you back so soon is we looked at our former guest who we just felt had been massively

00:05:51.660 vindicated by the election outcome a month ago as we record this. And you were absolutely at

00:06:00.060 the top of the list, because you've been talking about Labour's abandonment of the working class

00:06:05.460 and the potential for losing whole swathes of the country, which had traditionally voted for

00:06:11.240 the Labour Party. And that is exactly what happened in December 2019. It must be a bittersweet

00:06:17.860 moment for you personally, because you're a lifelong Labour person. So I'm guessing you

00:06:23.640 were happy to be right, but also very probably despondent about the election results for your

00:06:29.220 party. Yeah, and I wouldn't have chosen the result that we got. I would have liked genuinely to have

00:06:34.800 been proved wrong. But it's been clear to me for a long time that that schism between Labour

00:06:43.000 heartlands and the Labour Party was going to play out in a general election where we lost a number

00:06:49.600 of traditional Labour seats, something that I'd been predicting for a long time. A few other

00:06:55.740 people had been predicting it within the party for for quite some time um and you don't take any

00:07:01.840 pleasure in saying i told you so um you know i think you're probably justified in saying i told

00:07:08.460 you so particularly when you take a little bit of pleasure maybe and particularly when you know

00:07:13.580 opponents within the party um have you know given you a bucket loads of criticism and abuse over the

00:07:20.420 years for for arguing what you've been arguing and i don't mind that i mean it's water off a

00:07:24.320 duck's back. But it would be nice to think that some of these people are a little bit contrite

00:07:28.660 about their position and what they've been arguing and how spectacularly wrong they've

00:07:33.980 been proved to be. I suspect they won't be particularly contrite. I suspect there won't

00:07:38.060 be much self-reflection. And partly, I think, because some of these people are just so certain

00:07:43.440 that they're right. And even now, when you look at the scale of the defeat, there are people within

00:07:50.700 the party who just think it can be explained away by hostile media or just simply the issue

00:07:59.660 of Brexit. I mean, that was a significant issue, no doubt. It wasn't the only issue

00:08:03.600 in the election. Or the worst one, particularly people who come from the far left, is false 0.94

00:08:10.260 consciousness. These millions of working class people who voted Tory, they really are in

00:08:16.260 favor of our manifesto they really are in favor of our worldview of society they really are secret

00:08:22.340 you know cosmopolitan globalists they just don't know it yet and you know as long as as long as

00:08:31.600 we just need the one more heave mentality we just need to i'll tell you something recently it reminds

00:08:36.900 me of um you know it's slightly stereotypical i guess but you know when an english tourist goes

00:08:42.540 into a shop in Spain or something, speaks English to the assistant.

00:08:47.760 And when it's clear that the assistant doesn't speak English,

00:08:50.540 they just start talking louder.

00:08:52.840 They think suddenly, you know, the assistant's going to understand.

00:08:56.540 And that strikes me as, you know, what lots of people in the Labour Party

00:09:00.300 are doing at the moment, that they think they got it right,

00:09:03.940 the working class got it wrong, and that all they have to do 1.00

00:09:06.980 is shout a little bit louder at the working class,

00:09:09.320 and all of a sudden the working class will go, 0.94

00:09:11.260 suddenly I understand. You're absolutely right. So this is genuinely, yes, it's a bit of a cliche

00:09:18.480 to say it's a crossroads moment, but I think it genuinely is for the Labour Party. I mean,

00:09:22.900 we've suffered our worst defeat since 1935. The list of places that we have lost, places that

00:09:32.080 have been Labour since the 1920s in some cases. Bolsover. Bolsover, Dennis Skinner, you know,

00:09:37.740 mining community, Blythe Valley, Bassett Law, Grimsby, Wrexham, Don Valley, Redcar, Lee,

00:09:46.320 all of these places.

00:09:48.240 Hot beds of racism now, mate.

00:09:50.620 Some people would have us believe that.

00:09:53.240 And, you know, it's the old saying that, you know, these were places that didn't count

00:09:57.800 the Labour votes.

00:09:58.480 They weighed the Labour votes.

00:10:00.120 And what you've got to consider as well is this is after a decade of a Tory government

00:10:06.980 which has imposed austerity on the country with all of the detrimental consequences of that for

00:10:14.580 so many working-class communities and working-class people. After three and a half years of absolute

00:10:20.500 political chaos that this government has presided over, I mean, I'm obviously pro-Brexit, but

00:10:26.400 nonetheless, I think the way it's been handled has been pretty chaotic. And Labour didn't even

00:10:32.800 Treadwater, they got absolutely smashed. We got absolutely smashed by an old Etonian who is 1.00

00:10:39.260 winning some of those places that we listed. And you look at some of the other figures,

00:10:46.940 the sort of C2DEs, which is regarded broadly as the sort of occupational working class.

00:10:54.820 And I know that's not a perfect sort of categorization because it also includes

00:10:59.060 pensioners but nonetheless it's as close to what we can get really to define working class people

00:11:05.220 when it comes to elections. They broke 48% for the Tories and 33% for Labour and you've got to start

00:11:13.180 as a Labour person you have to ask yourself why after 10 years of austerity as a Tory party led

00:11:19.440 by an old Etonian after three and a half years of political chaos absolutely wiped us out in some of

00:11:25.160 our traditional working class heartlands. And it's because of the fact that the Labour Party

00:11:31.500 increasingly, and I've argued that it's not just a Jeremy Corbyn thing. I think this is a phenomenon

00:11:37.800 that predates Jeremy Corbyn's time in power. This is something that's been going on for years.

00:11:42.320 The Labour Party has slowly been hemorrhaging votes in those communities over the years and was

00:11:48.560 really losing a cultural war that it didn't even realise that it was fighting. And you saw

00:11:54.840 with the Brexit vote in 2016 and how that broke

00:11:59.100 and how some of these traditional working-class areas

00:12:03.040 and Labour heartlands were sort of voting for leave

00:12:07.540 as a means to hit back at the dominant sort of liberal agenda

00:12:10.680 that Labour was completely signed up to.

00:12:13.660 You saw it in the 2017 election where large parts of the Labour Party

00:12:18.600 were triumphalist almost after that election

00:12:22.160 you know, because we in the party did better than anyone thought. It wasn't quite the catastrophe

00:12:27.500 people expected. It was treated as a victory. And in some respects, that was the worst outcome

00:12:32.920 for Labour, because what it meant is the party didn't examine seriously why it was so removed

00:12:40.640 and was losing so many votes in its working class heartlands. That 2017 election masked,

00:12:45.840 if you like, what the real problem was. And then I think, you know, the failure to honour

00:12:51.600 the referendum result. And it was a key thing that in 2017, the Labour manifesto said we would

00:12:55.840 honour the referendum result in 2019. Clearly, Labour wasn't prepared to do that. And I think

00:13:01.120 that was also a significant factor. So I think Brexit was important. I think Corbyn, to a certain

00:13:06.700 degree, clearly wasn't popular on the doorstep. But these problems have been germinating inside

00:13:12.100 the Labour Party for years and years.

00:13:21.600 kid from brooklyn destined for something more featuring all the songs you love including

00:13:26.240 america forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey voice and beautiful the next musical

00:13:32.640 mega hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise now through june 7th 2026

00:13:38.740 at the princess of wells theater get tickets at mirvish.com

00:13:42.740 and how much responsibility does momentum need to type for all this

00:13:47.840 Well, I mean, I'm not somebody who says that we should be sectarian about it. We should seek to drum these people out of the party. You know, in some respects, I wasn't particularly anti-Corbyn, to be honest. I mean, I think on the question of austerity, he was absolutely right that austerity was a political choice and not an economic necessity.

00:14:10.920 I think previous Labour leadership had shied away from making that case.

00:14:16.720 And in fact, in terms of the economics of it, which was sort of demonised as a sort of hard left Marxist sort of Soviet style economics, actually, it was just broadly a Keynesian sort of philosophy, which you see really in some of the social democratic countries in Scandinavia, for example.

00:14:35.880 So on that side of things, I don't think necessarily he was wrong at all.

00:14:41.820 Momentum, I think, in some respects, brought a lot of energy to the party, brought a lot of campaigning ideas to the party, brought a lot of enthusiasm to the party.

00:14:52.920 I don't think we need a civil war, a sectarian war.

00:14:56.520 I just ask politely that these people realize that they got it fundamentally wrong and that their prescriptions for leading us to power have been proven to be disastrous.

00:15:09.200 the strategies they employed, have absolutely crashed and burned.

00:15:14.360 And actually to show a little bit of respect to those of us on the other side of the argument

00:15:18.200 who have called it riot and said this was going to happen when everyone was telling us in the party,

00:15:23.580 no, you're exaggerating, you've got an outdated view of the working class,

00:15:26.920 you're just peddling a sort of nativist reactionary line.

00:15:31.340 And I remember standing up at Labour Party fringe meetings, for example,

00:15:34.740 and in trade union meetings within the Labour movement and saying to people,

00:15:38.680 I'm telling you that we are creating a huge schism with our heartlands and it's going to cause a calamity and a massive rupture at a future general election sometime soon.

00:15:48.840 And people looking bewildered that anyone could even argue that because they mistook the sort of internal enthusiasm in the party and the fact that we were now a mass membership party with half a million members and there was this vibrancy and energy within the party as, you know, almost like a microcosm of what was going on in the country.

00:16:07.860 And it really wasn't. And that's the danger of all political parties. You end up speaking to your own membership and looking at your own membership as a reflection of broader society. And the failure on that has been absolutely huge. And people have got to start recognizing it in the party.

00:16:23.580 And where does the Labour Party go from here? I mean, we've talked about kind of how we are, where we are with Matt Goodwin, with Eric Kaufman, and you've just spent a good chunk of time laying it out. Where does the Labour Party go from here? Because it seems to me that one of the difficulties is creating a coalition between this kind of metropolitan, degree-educated elite and the traditional working-class heartlands.

00:16:50.580 is very difficult because culturally the value systems are so different.

00:16:55.180 So does the Labour Party now have to make a choice?

00:16:57.760 Does it become a party of the liberal metropolitan elite

00:17:00.380 or a party of the traditional working class?

00:17:02.840 Is there a way to bring those two groups together?

00:17:04.840 How does the Labour Party survive, I mean, frankly, at this point?

00:17:09.100 I think there is a way to bring them together.

00:17:11.900 And in fact, whenever Labour has won power in the past,

00:17:14.980 it's generally been by doing that.

00:17:17.800 So my view is, for any political party, you have to start with your base, your core vote, and then build outwards.

00:17:24.960 And for Labour, if you look at the history of the Labour Party, its core vote is working class people.

00:17:31.240 You know, that's who it was set up to represent in those, you know, some of those constituencies we listed that have now gone Tory.

00:17:39.700 That's where you start as a Labour Party.

00:17:41.480 Now, Labour will only succeed electorally, in my view, and has historically only succeeded electorally when it's been able to maintain the trust of its core vote at the same time as appealing to a sufficient layer of, if you like, more middle class, more liberal, less tribal voters.

00:18:03.940 And I'm certainly not somebody who says that the path to victory in the future for the Labour Party is just to appeal exclusively to the old industrial working class.

00:18:16.620 That, you know, what we've got to do is appeal to the people in the Don Valleys and the Bolsovers and that's it.

00:18:22.320 We're back on the path to victory.

00:18:23.720 Actually, you know, I think it's good that we can win other places like Canterbury and Kensington and places like that.

00:18:30.240 I think the problem has been, certainly more recently, is that we have won some of those other places at the expense, if you like, of the traditional working class areas.

00:18:41.060 And that's because as a party, we have become so obsessed with one part of that equation, which is the sort of middle class liberal part of the equation, whilst almost ignoring the sort of more traditional working class part of the equation.

00:18:57.180 And I think that that a big reason for that is because the party itself, the composition of the party, the demographic of the party has changed so significantly over recent years.

00:19:06.720 I've been in the party for 25 years. And actually, in my time, the party's changed hugely.

00:19:12.540 I mean, there was a time where, you know, you go to Labour Party conferences, for example, and there would be, you know, strong working class voices there, people who had come up through the trade union movement, manual workers, blue collar workers who are now trade unionists and ordinary grassroots members of constituency Labour parties.

00:19:32.400 going to Labour Party conference. Over the years, those voices have become fewer and fewer,

00:19:39.540 and the more dominant voices have become those sort of middle class, like woke, sort of liberal,

00:19:45.440 cosmopolitan voices, to the degree now where you go to Labour Party conferences and you just

00:19:50.920 realise that it really isn't a reflection of the country at large. 77% of the party

00:19:58.280 come from the sort of ABC1 middle-class social grade.

00:20:04.360 The party has got hardly any roots now in many of those constituencies,

00:20:09.520 those sort of working-class constituencies.

00:20:11.260 So unless the party can find a way of shifting the emphasis, if you like,

00:20:19.620 from the sort of middle-class, liberal, globalist, cosmopolitan, city-based element of it,

00:20:27.620 back to, you know, the traditional working class areas 0.91

00:20:32.640 and trying to build a coalition, you know, as I say,

00:20:35.540 build from your base and work out rather than, you know,

00:20:37.820 look to that sort of new constituency

00:20:40.180 and hope that the working class stays with you, which it didn't, 0.98

00:20:43.740 then unless the Labour Party can do that,

00:20:46.200 then I think, frankly, it could be out of power for at least 10 years.

00:20:50.300 I think there's a question over the future of the Labour Party

00:20:52.280 as a party of government at all.

00:20:53.660 I think there's a danger it becomes a permanent protest movement.

00:20:56.100 And the signs since the election are not good.

00:21:01.120 You know, if you look at some of the front runners for the Labour leadership, I think they've got nothing against them personally, but I think they're everything that's wrong with the Labour Party to a certain degree.

00:21:10.740 You know, I've pitched it as we've become all Hampstead and not enough Hartlepool over recent years.

00:21:15.960 And I think if you look at people like Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry and Clive Lewis, those people are not going to win back some of those constituencies that we need to win back.

00:21:26.040 What about Rebecca Long-Bailey? Because she thought that Corbyn's leadership was 10 out of 10. 1.00

00:21:30.520 Yeah, she's the one more heave candidate. That's the truth of it. And again, nothing personal.

00:21:36.220 I'm sure she's a very decent, principled woman. But the idea that we just didn't try hard enough and we didn't push hard enough.

00:21:50.860 And these people really are on board with what we're arguing.

00:21:54.960 We just need, you know, one more heave.

00:21:56.600 We just need to redouble our efforts, I think, is delusional.

00:21:59.920 There needs to be a fundamental rethinking of what the party is about and what it stands for.

00:22:06.360 There needs to be a change in emphasis.

00:22:08.140 There needs to be a change in language.

00:22:09.740 We've got to stop going to places and speaking about issues that are not what I would call sort of solar plexus issues.

00:22:17.520 and they're not issues that hit voters in the gut when you talk about them

00:22:20.860 because they really resonate with them.

00:22:23.020 So, for example, Labour activists will obsess and talk incessantly

00:22:26.900 about things like climate change and human rights and gender fluidity

00:22:33.140 and LGBT issues and migrant rights and stuff like that.

00:22:37.320 I'm not saying those things don't have their place.

00:22:39.400 Of course, those things need to be discussed.

00:22:41.320 But for many Labour activists, it seems to be all they want to talk about.

00:22:44.400 Because if you go to some of those communities where we lost, the things that people want to talk about are the things that actually really matter to them.

00:22:51.120 People want to talk about work.

00:22:52.660 They want to talk about family.

00:22:54.020 They want to talk about law and order.

00:22:56.700 They want to talk about immigration and the impacts of immigration.

00:22:59.920 They want to talk about having a welfare system that is based more around the principle of reciprocity, you know, something for something rather than universal entitlement.

00:23:07.420 which issues actually that once upon a time were the labour movement broadly

00:23:13.120 was entirely comfortable speaking about because these were working class issues

00:23:16.980 and the Labour Party represented working class people.

00:23:19.960 But when you speak to labour activists about those issues now,

00:23:23.780 they'll either sort of look down and shuffle their shoes in embarrassment

00:23:26.440 or they just dismiss you as some sort of bigger, and it's a huge problem in the past.

00:23:31.640 I'm sorry to interrupt, but I would love to, please record that,

00:23:35.720 A Labour activist talking about gender fluidity in Hartlepool.

00:23:40.760 Plenty of examples.

00:23:42.100 That'd be a good YouTube show for sure.

00:23:43.840 You should go to Labour.com.

00:23:45.300 But as you're listing all those things, you know, law and order, right?

00:23:49.920 What were some of the other things you said?

00:23:51.520 You said law and order, work, family, immigration, society, right?

00:23:57.740 There was a party in the last election that spoke about all of those things,

00:24:01.080 the Conservative Party.

00:24:01.960 And that's why they presumably they won those seats and they won those people because they're actually speaking the language of of that group of people.

00:24:10.900 They got it. They got it. Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson got it totally.

00:24:15.360 And it pains me to say I am a bitter opponent of Boris Johnson.

00:24:19.740 Boris, I'm a firefighter and Boris Johnson closed 10 of our fire stations in London a few years ago when he was mayor of London.

00:24:25.260 And we fought and campaigned against him. And Boris Johnson has got no time for trade unions.

00:24:31.960 Boris Johnson is somebody who sits on the complete opposite side of the political spectrum to me.

00:24:38.240 But he understood, and I think more pertinently, Dominic Cummings behind the scenes understood that actually there was Matthew Goodwin,

00:24:47.660 one of your former guests, has described it as a sweet spot in British politics.

00:24:50.940 And I think he's right, which is a place where millions of people are.

00:24:56.080 And until now, most mainstream parties just weren't getting it, which is where people, yes, sit on the left economically.

00:25:05.440 So they're very happy to have a party that says, actually, the gap between rich and poor is too wide.

00:25:10.300 We need to close it. Actually, there's a lack of investment in some of our regions.

00:25:14.320 And we need to have a government that intervenes and invests in infrastructure, you know, government that sort of raises the minimum wage, for example, government that addresses those regional inequalities.

00:25:25.420 a government that is tough on some of the ballroom scandals

00:25:29.440 and the corporate fat cats.

00:25:32.180 And some of that stuff's been described as Corbynomics,

00:25:35.460 and I think some of that stuff really did resonate with working-class people.

00:25:39.060 That's where they were.

00:25:40.740 What the Tories got this time around and what Labour hasn't got for years

00:25:43.940 is that those people are also, if you like, cultural traditionalists

00:25:49.260 and want not just economic security and fairness,

00:25:52.020 but cultural security, cultural stability as well,

00:25:54.600 Not in a, which some people would describe as some sort of xenophobic, nativist, white supremacist sort of way.

00:26:03.280 That's the level of debate with some people.

00:26:06.420 But actually just the type of politics where their sense of place is respected, their sense of belonging is respected.

00:26:12.380 They don't like the negative effects of globalization in the way that, you know, it can uproot communities.

00:26:18.860 It can deracinate communities and families and it just leaves them, you know, leaves them scattered to the four winds.

00:26:26.380 And, you know, they like stability and tradition and custom.

00:26:32.320 So if you like, you know, people are left when it comes to economics and a bit right when it comes to culture and social policy.

00:26:40.760 And the Tories, I think, exploited that perfectly.

00:26:43.800 And that's why, you know, after after 10 years of Tory austerity, they were still able to go into those communities and win and win Labour votes.

00:26:52.560 Now, I think the problem for the Labour Party is that there are so few people, first, who understand that analysis and second, are actually prepared to do something about it.

00:27:05.620 So, you know, I talked about the I talked about the leadership election.

00:27:08.680 I mean, so far as some of the candidates are talking about, at least Anandi is one, for example, who's articulating some of these ideas, you get the feeling that it doesn't really come from the gut, that actually it's just really a hard-headed assessment of where we need to be to get Labour back to power.

00:27:26.220 Now, OK, at least she's talking about it, but we need people in the party at the top level of the party and at the grassroots of the party who get this from the gut, if you like.

00:27:38.400 And the only way to do that is to have a much greater sort of influence within the party from those working class communities.

00:27:44.340 But the truth is people, traditional Labour voters, tribal Labour voters or once upon a time tribal Labour voters in these communities now look at the party more and more and say, actually, the leadership of the party, the membership of the party doesn't look like me, doesn't speak like me, doesn't work in jobs like me, doesn't understand, you know, my priorities.

00:28:04.000 Why should I vote for them? And that chasm is going to be very, very difficult to close.

00:28:09.580 And do you think in many ways,

00:28:10.880 so when we were talking about the Labour Party,

00:28:12.520 it just occurred to me now,

00:28:13.580 I mean, what we're really talking about

00:28:14.940 is the Lib Dems, aren't we?

00:28:16.620 That's what they've sort of turned into

00:28:18.260 with a slightly more left of centre economic policy.

00:28:21.380 I mean, I've been involved in politics

00:28:23.820 pretty much all my adult life

00:28:25.260 and I've never quite understood

00:28:26.740 what the Lib Dems existed for me.

00:28:30.980 I've tried to work it out over the years.

00:28:32.800 There's one viewer in Twickenham

00:28:33.940 who's now switched off.

00:28:36.540 No loss.

00:28:37.380 Well, presumably then it's a big problem

00:28:38.960 that Labour seems like it's moving towards that direction

00:28:41.920 where they're increasingly talking to a smaller and smaller sliver of society.

00:28:46.140 Yeah, I think there are people in the Labour Party

00:28:47.560 who would be comfortable with just being a protest movement, to be honest.

00:28:53.720 It's a very unappealing mix now, the Labour Party,

00:28:56.840 of what I would sort of describe as, on the one hand,

00:29:01.320 a sort of very middle-class, woke, liberal contingent,

00:29:07.420 liberal cosmopolitan contingent on the one hand and on the other through momentum and other sort

00:29:16.080 of organizations a more sort of far left I would call a bit of a toy town revolutionary group of

00:29:24.320 people and I've sort of described it as a party of Lenin and Lenin John Lenin which really you know

00:29:34.180 It doesn't resonate with ordinary working class people at all in many respects.

00:29:40.200 And there are people, particularly from the sort of second part of that equation,

00:29:45.840 the sort of far left revolutionary type of that equation,

00:29:50.180 you know, lots of students, for example, who are in their early years of political activity

00:29:55.840 and are quite enthused by going out and shouting at Tory MPs and protesting on the streets.

00:30:02.680 And, you know, we've all been there and done it. But actually, if you if you're serious about it, you have to recognize that if you're serious about winning power, it's about compromise.

00:30:12.100 It's about recognizing that sometimes you might be wrong on stuff and being prepared to reflect on stuff, not just trying to dismiss the fact that working class people don't agree with you as false consciousness.

00:30:22.120 and being prepared to sort of take the hard decisions

00:30:27.120 and make the tough ideological leaps sometimes

00:30:31.280 to realise what it needs to take power.

00:30:33.780 But, you know, that element of the party,

00:30:36.140 there are lots of people who, I mean,

00:30:38.400 I had a debate with one of them on Twitter recently

00:30:40.480 and he said something like, you know,

00:30:43.520 he started the new year as he left the old year,

00:30:47.020 getting pissed, defending free movement

00:30:49.140 and denouncing Paul Embry.

00:30:52.120 And I think he was a Labour Party member or certainly, you know, someone active on the fringes of the Labour Party.

00:30:58.080 Someone's got life goals, haven't they?

00:30:59.480 Yeah, it's great, isn't it?

00:31:00.420 You know, you can make yourself feel good in that way.

00:31:02.660 But actually, there are people out there who need a Labour government.

00:31:05.440 And the Labour Party was set up to win power to represent those people.

00:31:08.320 And if you, having just been absolutely annihilated in an election, respond to that by saying, I'm not going to change my thinking.

00:31:15.680 I was right.

00:31:16.700 The voters were wrong.

00:31:17.960 We've been virtually wiped out.

00:31:19.680 But I'm just going to get drunk and have a laugh about it.

00:31:22.540 You know, you're not a serious, you're not a serious political player.

00:31:25.420 And you're actually letting down the people you claim to be speaking for.

00:31:28.220 Isn't the problem here, Paul, that we've had a busy day.

00:31:31.400 As you know, we interviewed Eric Kaufman earlier today and Luke Kittes as well.

00:31:35.480 I mean, one of the things that Eric was talking about is essentially it's very difficult for

00:31:39.000 someone like yourself or the views that you represent to get to a high prominent position

00:31:45.320 now in the Labour Party, because the woke fringe and also that momentum fringe essentially would

00:31:51.380 immediately destroy anyone who moves to the right on culture and talks about immigration and family

00:31:57.420 and all that kind of stuff as racist, nativist, etc. So if the solution, which the consensus

00:32:04.340 seemed to be the solution to Labour's problems, is a center-left person who's maybe culturally on

00:32:11.020 the socially conservative side of things, economically, could be quite far left, actually,

00:32:14.520 depending on how you look at it, that person cannot succeed in the Labour Party as it's constituted

00:32:20.260 because they would never get anywhere with those views. I think that's a fair assessment. I mean,

00:32:26.120 and that's why I've said that I think the Labour Party could be out of power for at least 10 years

00:32:31.040 and may not actually ever be a party of government again, because I'm not convinced that within the

00:32:37.180 party, you know, lie enough people who understand this and are willing to do something about it.

00:32:45.540 Now, in truth, there's no real alternative at the moment. I mean, I certainly would never

00:32:52.500 recommend that working class people vote Tory. And I certainly would never recommend that we 1.00

00:32:56.280 all go off and join the Tory party because that's not, in my view, the answer to the problems of

00:33:00.220 working class people and the economic inequalities and social injustices in society. But no, we need 0.98

00:33:06.680 to find ways within the party, A, to develop the argument and to win the argument and to

00:33:11.420 bring people into the party or back into the party who have abandoned the party to support

00:33:17.540 that argument. I mean, my view is that for the moment, the movement is still supporting

00:33:23.320 the Labour Party. So the trade union movement, which is ostensibly at least the voice of

00:33:28.200 workers in this country, still supports the Labour Party. And for as long as the movement

00:33:34.000 is there, and for as long as the workers see the Labour Party as, or at least the trade unions see

00:33:41.440 the Labour Party as their party, rather than any other party, that's where the argument is going to

00:33:46.180 be. Political parties that have been set up with the idea of storming to power have not traditionally

00:33:54.260 had much success in this country. It's been tried with the SDP and other organisations over the

00:34:01.420 years, but we're still pretty much a two-party state in that way. So out of the two, I much

00:34:10.220 prefer a Labour government than a Tory government. I think part of the problem as well around what

00:34:14.980 you talked about is the lack of MPs who come from that working class background now. I mean,

00:34:20.920 if you went back 20 or 30 years ago, you would see on the Labour side of the house a significant

00:34:26.500 number of people who can genuinely claim to come from working class backgrounds would have done

00:34:32.340 ordinary jobs. You know, some of the older working class MPs would have, you know, worked in the

00:34:38.220 shipyards or down the mines or in the steelworks and things like that. Now, obviously, we've gone

00:34:43.720 through de-industrialization, so a lot of those jobs don't exist anymore. But even so, the proportion

00:34:50.560 of MPs who come through on what I've called that conveyor belt, if you like, where they go to

00:34:55.800 university and then they get a job in a think tank or a charity and then as a research assistant

00:35:01.100 to an MP and then they're parachuted into into a safe seat themselves and consequently have no real

00:35:07.400 understanding of the lives of ordinary of ordinary working class people that has become a problem

00:35:12.220 because as I said working class people look at those those people say we just don't share the

00:35:17.040 same background we don't share the same priorities I mean there are still people in the party who do

00:35:23.260 get it. You know, I'm involved with the Blue Labour group within the party. It's small,

00:35:28.640 but it punches above its weight. And it's been completely vindicated by recent events.

00:35:34.600 You know, within Blue Labour, we've been arguing for some time now that this was going to happen.

00:35:39.540 And, you know, Blue Labour has been talking the language of family, the language of patriotism,

00:35:45.880 the language of community, isn't afraid to discuss issues around immigration.

00:35:49.920 um so you know hopefully some of that stuff can break through but even even with that you see the

00:35:55.480 response to you know since the election blue labor's taken off to a certain degree i mean

00:36:00.680 thousands more followers on on social media and people are starting to take an interest in its

00:36:04.480 ideas um but even around that you see some people in the party saying you know we don't hand the

00:36:09.480 over to these racists and you know and and you realize you know what you know what distance there

00:36:15.560 is to there is to travel but but what else can you do but have a go but so you're saying blue

00:36:20.640 labour now that is a term that i've heard used and explain what blue labour is what your modus

00:36:26.480 operandi is essentially and how you differ from the modern day labour party so i heard someone

00:36:32.080 say once it was a very good description that blue labour is socialism with a small c and i think

00:36:38.700 it's a pretty good way of describing it so so it's some people call it blairism and absolutely not

00:36:44.940 Blue Labour were amongst Blair's strongest critics because of his infatuation with the market.

00:36:53.740 So it's certainly not Blairite in that respect, but it's not particularly Corbynite either,

00:37:00.400 although it's expressed a lot of sympathy, quite rightly, in my view, with some of the

00:37:05.140 sort of economics around Corbynism and the need to tackle austerity and stuff.

00:37:10.640 But it's a group of people who actually understand that we are social and parochial beings with an attachment to community and to country and to family.

00:37:24.660 And that if you violate that, whether it's through having an unfettered market where vast movements of capital which can leave destruction in its wake, where money can just fly abroad and you see de-industrialization, etc.

00:37:44.340 on the one hand or you know vast movements of people on the other which are brought about

00:37:51.300 through you know an unregulated market and through the philosophy of open borders and

00:37:56.180 liberal cosmopolitanism that can also violate people's sense of community and sense of stability

00:38:01.960 and that if you're going to do these things if you're going to if you're going to bring on

00:38:06.220 changing communities and change will always happen in communities no community is ever going to stay

00:38:10.020 the same and if that's what anyone's arguing for then they're in for a nasty surprise change will

00:38:14.080 happen. People will move on. Capitalism is a system where you're not going to stop that

00:38:18.900 change to a certain degree. But what you can do is have measures to ameliorate it. And

00:38:23.540 what you can do is make sure it's done in such a way where people's sense of place and

00:38:29.120 belonging is not violated. And that's something that people within the Labour Party and beyond

00:38:34.760 just have not understood. So Blue Labour is trying to articulate some of those arguments

00:38:39.440 that we don't want an unregulated, all-dominant market on the one hand. We don't particularly

00:38:45.540 want an overbearing state on the other hand. We want politics to be much more about community,

00:38:50.720 much more democratic, rooted in our local democratic institutions. And also, you've got

00:38:56.040 to respect people's place and belonging and community. I'm going to ask you quite a grim

00:39:01.420 question now, Paul. I listened to that. And as a voter, if you put that forward to me,

00:39:05.900 I would vote for it in a heartbeat.

00:39:08.220 That's essentially what I believe in.

00:39:10.320 However, do you not think, and you look at the Labour Party the way it is now,

00:39:14.100 the range of candidates, and just think you're fighting a losing battle here?

00:39:18.260 I think it's a tough challenge.

00:39:20.980 That's a politician's answer right there.

00:39:24.940 Yeah, that's probably the most optimistic way I could describe it.

00:39:29.440 It's pretty tough.

00:39:30.560 Um, but, but no, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not, uh, I'm not claiming that, um, that

00:39:37.580 the Labour Party is going to sort of change in the way that I want to see it change anytime

00:39:40.980 soon and that we're going to, we're going to win power on that basis.

00:39:43.500 I think we are, we're in for a real long slog in the Labour Party and I'm not completely

00:39:48.340 optimistic that we, we're going to win that battle.

00:39:50.800 Um, you know, because I think, because as I said, the party is so dominated by people

00:39:55.840 who are so entrenched in their own ideology,

00:39:59.540 you know, on the one hand,

00:40:01.160 the sort of liberal, cosmopolitan, globalist,

00:40:03.660 open borders, middle class, woke liberal view. 0.96

00:40:07.220 And on the other, the sort of far left revolutionary view

00:40:10.380 that it's very difficult to,

00:40:12.900 and even this, even what's happened with this election

00:40:17.000 is not shifting many of those people.

00:40:19.580 Even showing them the stats of the election

00:40:22.020 and saying, look, these are the places we lost

00:40:25.220 the working class voted this way for a Tory government and they are not coming to us 1.00

00:40:30.100 and these are the reasons and some of them

00:40:34.060 refuse to accept it and it's difficult for people to be honest you know you can't

00:40:38.000 you can't expect people to change their minds overnight when they've

00:40:41.980 been wedded to a particular principle or ideology or philosophy for so long

00:40:46.220 it's difficult for people to sort of

00:40:50.020 shift their position and so you do have to be a little bit sensitive

00:40:53.900 if with people around that. But at the moment, I've seen no real signs among lots of people

00:40:59.080 that there's even any willingness to accept what the electorate has just told them. So

00:41:03.800 it's, you know, we're in for a battle.

00:41:06.120 Well, it sounds like the Labour Party doesn't represent your views anymore, very much. Why

00:41:12.140 are you still in the Labour Party?

00:41:14.300 Well, I mean, first of all, I mean, I've been in the Labour Party for 25 years. I'm not,

00:41:20.140 particularly keen to just give up the fight and to hand it over to people, in some cases who

00:41:26.680 have only been in the Labour Party five minutes. I don't mean that in a disparaging way,

00:41:31.720 because I'm happy for people to come into the party and to argue their case. But yeah,

00:41:37.660 I don't believe that because the party has shifted its stance, even though that shift

00:41:43.920 has been pretty significant, you just give up the fight. And actually, if you look at the history

00:41:47.780 of the Labour Party, it has swung from left to right and, you know, all manner of things in

00:41:54.820 between in the sort of 100 years or so, 114 years that the party as a party has been in existence.

00:42:02.600 And to be honest, before 2015, who would have predicted Corbynism? You know, who would have

00:42:07.220 thought for a moment that Corbyn had been, you know, a fairly sort of obscure backbencher for

00:42:14.580 for 20-odd, 30-odd years was going to come out of nowhere

00:42:18.240 and storm to victory and completely change the party.

00:42:22.840 Well, not completely change the party,

00:42:24.400 because I think it had been certainly in terms of the liberal globalism

00:42:27.380 had been going in that way for some time,

00:42:29.880 but nonetheless had quite a significant impact on it.

00:42:33.260 So, you know, if you'd have said to someone in Momentum pre-2015,

00:42:38.640 you know, do you ever think you can win the party away

00:42:40.720 from Blairism, Brownism, Ed Miliband?

00:42:43.500 and they'd have probably gone, well, of course not, but it happened.

00:42:45.740 So, yeah, you know, it's not impossible.

00:42:48.020 It's difficult, but it's not impossible.

00:42:49.700 Now, we were talking in a previous interview to Lord Adonis,

00:42:53.800 who's obviously a Labour peer.

00:42:55.560 I'm sure you're a big fan of this.

00:42:58.300 Blocked me on Twitter along with the rest of them.

00:43:00.460 Did he?

00:43:02.020 But he was a bit waxing lyrical and getting very nostalgic about Blair,

00:43:06.920 saying that that's when the Labour Party was at its peak,

00:43:09.740 that's when they were winning elections,

00:43:11.580 that's when they were winning heart and minds,

00:43:13.200 and maybe we need to go back to that.

00:43:16.340 Do you not?

00:43:17.400 No, I think that's a disastrous route.

00:43:19.100 I think if you look at, and I think the thing that proves that,

00:43:21.240 if you look at the Change UK or whatever they called themselves in the end

00:43:25.380 because they kept changing their name,

00:43:26.560 but if you look at the 11 defectors who came from the Tories and Labour

00:43:31.060 and set up Change UK and they said,

00:43:32.960 and that was frankly a Blair Wright project in terms of its philosophy,

00:43:37.900 it was all about centrism, it was all about being pro-EU,

00:43:42.080 being open borders, being liberal, etc.

00:43:45.120 And they died a death.

00:43:47.960 It was completely stillborn, as some of us predicted,

00:43:50.820 because I really don't think there is any desire among people to,

00:43:56.160 certainly not the mass of people, to go back to that.

00:43:59.200 And I think it's probably fair to say that if you look at Blairism,

00:44:03.700 it contributed in many ways to what we saw in 2016 with Brexit

00:44:09.100 and what we've seen since.

00:44:11.800 I mean, my assessment is when you – I'm not someone who completely rubbishes that Labour government, by the way.

00:44:16.400 I think Blair did some good things.

00:44:18.080 I think that Labour government did some good things.

00:44:20.080 I think we have to recognise that.

00:44:22.760 But A, there was such a desire to get rid of the Tories in 97 that a donkey could have stood as a Labour Party leader and become prime minister, frankly.

00:44:31.080 And I think for a number of years after that, the Tories were such a shambles that it was pretty easy for Labour to carry on winning victories.

00:44:41.000 But even if you look at that period, that sort of 10 years of Blairism and three years of Gordon Brown, you saw the stats prove that actually there was a drip, drip away of votes from Labour.

00:44:55.340 I mean, fair enough, it started from a high watermark in 1997 when it had a huge landslide.

00:44:59.540 But nonetheless, it shed millions of voters, including working class voters, up until 2010 when Cameron came to power with the coalition.

00:45:08.980 And that was, I think, because some of this stuff around their philosophy of being pro-EU, being sort of uber-liberal, becoming a party of the cities and the middle class metropolitan elite, the Hampstead rather than Hartlepool, had started to kick in during that period.

00:45:27.840 And I think what happened in 2016 didn't come out of a clear blue sky.

00:45:32.720 It had been brewing for years and some of that stuff can be traced back to Blair.

00:45:36.140 So the idea that, you know, you just set up a new Change UK or you try and push the Labour Party back in that direction, I think is a non-starter.

00:45:46.840 And the SDP, would you join them?

00:45:48.860 Because I'm looking at it on the surface, Paul, and you seem completely aligned with their viewpoints.

00:45:54.140 No, I've no intention to judge.

00:45:55.580 I know some people involved with this new SDP, and they're good people, and I respect them.

00:46:00.680 But no, I've got no intention of joining.

00:46:02.360 As I said before, I mean, there's not a great record of new parties coming out of nowhere and trying to challenge the two main parties.

00:46:10.140 Much of its philosophy is good around much more focus on the communitarian stuff.

00:46:17.200 And part of the difficulty is, frankly, is that if you speak to people in the Labour Party like me, the name SDP is pretty toxic.

00:46:25.580 Because if you go back to the 1980s when the old SDP with the Gang of Four split away from the Labour Party in the early 80s

00:46:31.920 and contributed to 10 years of Thatcherism by splitting the left vote, then there's a lot of that baggage as well.

00:46:41.700 So, no, I wish them well, but I'm a Labour Party.

00:46:45.200 But you don't like the name.

00:46:48.620 Not that I'm superficial in anyway.

00:46:50.160 Yeah. Well, Paul, it's been a great chatting to you again.

00:46:55.580 The last question we normally ask is what's the one thing no one's talking about that we should be talking about?

00:46:59.840 But actually, the question I want to ask you is, I mean, I have to say the most common comment on our previous interview with you, other than all our female viewers saying how much they like you, was the fact that a lot of people were saying, well, if this guy represented the Labour Party, I'd vote for him.

00:47:17.980 And frankly, I don't agree with you on economics on probably most of things, but I'd vote for you.

00:47:24.340 So are you planning to stand at any point for Parliament?

00:47:28.240 That's Constantine flirting with you, by the way.

00:47:30.760 I'm just doing the same thing as the ladies, that's all.

00:47:33.060 Fluttering will get you everywhere.

00:47:37.200 That's a yes.

00:47:40.240 I've got no plans to, and frankly, genuinely,

00:47:42.280 I don't think the Labour Party would have me in Parliament.

00:47:44.120 People like me.

00:47:45.560 There are a few people like me around,

00:47:48.380 and there's lots of very good people within Blue Labour, for example,

00:47:51.620 who are articulating these arguments.

00:47:53.660 And I don't think that large parts of the party want people like me, whether it's me or someone else, putting these ideas at the higher levels of the party or in Parliament, because I think they are just so uncomfortable with them.

00:48:07.840 And it just, you know, it just runs completely up against their own philosophy that they would that they would hate the idea of Paul Embry being in Parliament speaking on behalf of the Labour Party.

00:48:22.440 So I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

00:48:24.600 To me, that's a huge problem to me, Paul.

00:48:27.480 The fact that that is the case is a huge problem for the Labour Party.

00:48:30.860 I mean, as you say, until someone like you can stand for the Labour Party and be elected as an MP or even prime minister, frankly, I don't see how they're ever going to win back the country.

00:48:42.020 I just don't see that as possible because what you represent is the views of millions of people up and down the country.

00:48:47.880 and if they can't have someone like you even present

00:48:52.180 as part of a broader conversation,

00:48:55.720 they're not going to win the country back.

00:48:58.080 It's just not going to happen.

00:49:00.680 Well, as I said before, it's a tough challenge.

00:49:04.360 Not only is he going to run,

00:49:06.080 he's already got the politician's answer for you.

00:49:08.320 Yeah, yeah, it's true.

00:49:09.540 I mean, that could be your campaign slogan.

00:49:11.000 It's a tough challenge.

00:49:13.400 Well, he wouldn't do any worse than we just started.

00:49:15.260 Let's be honest about it.

00:49:16.380 Yeah, let's be honest.

00:49:18.120 You know what was interesting is when you were talking about Blue Labour,

00:49:21.120 isn't that what just Corbyn represented, if he was just being honest?

00:49:24.560 Really?

00:49:25.940 Corbyn, a Blue Labourer?

00:49:27.380 Yeah.

00:49:28.480 Corbyn was certainly a Brexiteer, and he's still in his heart a Brexiteer,

00:49:32.340 but as someone said, and I think it was a good way of putting it,

00:49:34.540 he was placed under ideological house arrest by the rest of the Labour Party.

00:49:39.100 But he's a Brexiteer.

00:49:40.500 No, I don't think he would be Blue Labour.

00:49:42.160 I think certainly on some of the economic stuff,

00:49:44.580 You know, he would have, Blue Labour and Corbyn would have a lot of sympathy with each other.

00:49:48.880 I don't think Corbyn gets the sort of cultural side of it at all.

00:49:53.740 I think partly because he's embedded in his Linton constituency and he's got very much that North London world view where he, you know, what's been called citizens of nowhere.

00:50:05.620 that view of that the world should be open borders

00:50:11.280 and that there should be this constant churn in society

00:50:14.860 and we should all be sort of very liberal,

00:50:17.060 that sort of John Lennon approach to society.

00:50:21.060 And I don't think he...

00:50:22.860 I think he's a nice guy, by the way, I've got to say that.

00:50:24.900 I mean, I was a firefighter at his Linton Fire Station for many years.

00:50:27.700 He was a local MP.

00:50:28.600 He'd come and stand on our picket lines when we were on strike.

00:50:31.600 I think some of the treatment meted out to him

00:50:33.700 has been pretty disgraceful.

00:50:35.620 so on a personal level, I think he's a nice guy.

00:50:39.540 But no, I don't think he understands the Blue Labour argument very much.

00:50:43.820 I just think he got beaten up by Ash Sarkar every day.

00:50:46.780 I think he started out as a, you know, bring pro-Brexit and Ash slowly.

00:50:52.660 Well, that's one of the problems.

00:50:53.880 The Ash Sarkars and the Owen Joneses and the Paul Masons,

00:50:57.960 I think whose ideology got us into this mess,

00:51:01.040 are now trying to tell us how to get out of it.

00:51:05.620 I respect them, but they're not the answer.

00:51:08.840 They've got it so spectacularly wrong

00:51:10.560 that actually people need to think hard

00:51:13.540 before investing any faith in their strategy

00:51:16.200 for putting things right.

00:51:18.400 Well, I do hope that we at some point live in a world

00:51:21.460 where people like you can represent the Labour Party

00:51:23.440 because I think that would be a much better world

00:51:25.220 than the one we live in today.

00:51:26.340 But it's going to be a tough challenge.

00:51:29.700 But it will be a tough challenge.

00:51:32.080 All right, well, Paul, thank you so much

00:51:33.760 for coming back on the show.

00:51:34.700 It's been a pleasure.

00:51:35.240 Is there anything else you want to say before we go?

00:51:37.560 Because we haven't asked you our final questions.

00:51:39.340 Is there any issue that's been burning in the back of your mind other than the Labour Party?

00:51:43.320 The issue that's always burning away that never really gets much coverage,

00:51:47.720 I may have mentioned this on the previous edition.

00:51:49.940 If I did, I apologise, but I'll say it again anyway,

00:51:52.960 is the issue of cuts to the fire and rescue service in this country.

00:51:56.560 I'm a firefighter by trade.

00:51:57.940 I've been a firefighter for 23 years or whatever it is now.

00:52:03.040 We have seen huge attacks to the Fire and Rescue Service.

00:52:06.160 Very few media organizations report it.

00:52:08.740 We've seen a reduction in the number of firefighters over the last 10 years of something like 12,000.

00:52:13.740 A quarter of all firefighters, firefighter posts have gone.

00:52:16.800 We've seen scores of fire stations up and down the country shut, all in the name of austerity.

00:52:21.400 We're seeing response times getting longer.

00:52:24.260 We're seeing a rise in the number of deaths by fire in some places.

00:52:27.180 and firefighters who constantly put their lives on the line,

00:52:31.180 as we saw with tragic incidents like Grenfell Tower,

00:52:34.780 are not being given the tools to do the job.

00:52:37.700 You know, they're not particularly paid well,

00:52:39.460 but they just simply ask that they get the tools to do the job

00:52:42.500 that they're brave enough to do.

00:52:44.080 And more and more, those resources are being taken away from them.

00:52:47.260 And it's a huge issue, and it deserves to get more attention than it does.

00:52:50.760 Well, I apologise for my insensitive question of saying,

00:52:54.020 is there any issue burning at the back of your mind?

00:52:55.980 but you brought up well

00:52:59.000 and we did talk about it last time

00:53:00.360 and it's a very important issue

00:53:01.400 so thank you for raising it

00:53:02.560 thank you for coming back

00:53:03.740 as always we'll put Paul's social media details

00:53:06.480 in the video

00:53:08.200 and make sure you read his columns on Unheard

00:53:10.480 he's always really really interesting

00:53:12.220 thank you for watching

00:53:13.640 and we'll see you in a week's time

00:53:14.860 with another brilliant episode

00:53:15.880 take care see you next week guys

00:53:25.980 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - February 09, 2020

＂Labour Abandoned the Working Class＂： Paul Embery

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript