TRIGGERnometry - Owen Jones vs. TRIGGERnometry

00:00:01.000 I think the real disagreement here is I don't think you understand how the market works.

00:00:05.000 So how could those things that happened in 1984 and 85 cause a recession in 1980?

00:00:11.000 It says these policies helped plunge Britain and the US into dire recession in the early 80s.

00:00:16.000 But the policies happened five years later.

00:00:18.000 No, that's not true. Deregulation begins immediately.

00:00:22.000 People feel they're competing for scarce resources.

00:00:25.000 scarce resources, immigration has actually, without immigration, our economies would be

00:00:30.080 poorer. My policy is that we're much more selective about who we let into this country. 0.98

00:00:34.920 Do you understand the word selective? No, I know what you're saying. I know what you're 0.96

00:00:38.380 saying, but it doesn't, I'm saying, what does that mean in practice? I'm trying to tell you.

00:00:42.020 Tell me. It's funny talking about economic insanity and problematic. It's one of the

00:00:46.420 most insane economic ideas I've ever heard. Well, the market. Are you interviewing me here?

00:00:51.200 Well, it feels like I am now, yeah. Yeah, well, maybe you should stop.

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00:01:21.400 Owen Jones, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:23.000 Here I am in the heart of the beast.

00:01:24.800 beautiful studio it's a really beautiful studio by the way of course well thank you very much

00:01:29.000 we open with a compliment who says people who disagree can't disagree let's keep it up let's

00:01:35.620 keep it up i don't think we're looking very dapper thank you you also not as dapper but still you

00:01:41.200 know presentable i'm in a brown shirt so keeping with the character he said it but anyway um it's

00:01:49.100 so good to have you on thank you very much for coming on and really enjoyed the book and one of

00:01:53.480 the things you talk about a lot is neoliberalism and I think it's really important before we delve

00:01:58.580 into all the issues could you just define what you mean by it because it's a word we hear all

00:02:02.600 the time I don't think a lot of people know what it means no yeah that's totally fair enough I

00:02:06.380 think neoliberalism is it's privatization of state assets it's slashing taxes on uh on on

00:02:12.220 those with assets and with wealth um it's curtailing organized labor it's uh promoting

00:02:18.800 marketization um it's in practice it's financialization it's about rewarding assets

00:02:26.480 um and finance over the productive economy um it means uh an economy which is geared towards

00:02:33.360 finance i mean 80 of finance is recirculated through finance insurance and real estate

00:02:40.240 rather than going to the productive economy so it's the financialization of everything everything

00:02:44.800 It becomes a financial product.

00:02:46.720 Companies don't invest anymore in the way they should in their own company.

00:02:51.120 It goes to share buybacks.

00:02:52.500 It goes to share dividends.

00:02:54.560 So, yeah, I think it's marketization, privatization.

00:02:59.100 It's financialization.

00:03:01.720 That's the kind of gist, I guess.

00:03:03.360 Right.

00:03:03.620 Okay.

00:03:04.000 And so what are your issues with that?

00:03:05.580 Let's just pick this apart.

00:03:07.600 So what it's done in practice is less growth, which is less equitably distributed.

00:03:13.240 So the average growth in the 1970s was almost the same as it was in the 1980s.

00:03:18.240 The 1970s is portrayed as Britain is in a catastrophic meltdown.

00:03:23.240 It's a sick man of Europe. It's stagflation and all the rest of it.

00:03:28.240 And no question, Britain and the West were in a bit of a mess in the 70s,

00:03:32.240 mainly because of the oil shop of the early 70s.

00:03:36.240 A bit of deja vu, because we're kind of going through that again,

00:03:39.240 because of conflicts in the Middle East.

00:03:41.240 73 onwards, you get the Arab states imposing an oil embargo.

00:03:46.060 And later, as well, with the Iranian revolution, you get another oil shock.

00:03:49.360 So you get massive inflation, but it's also caused by the Vietnam War

00:03:53.720 because the Americans didn't print money, or sorry, they did print money.

00:03:58.260 They didn't raise taxes to pay for the war.

00:03:59.680 They printed money.

00:04:00.440 So you get this inflationary wage.

00:04:02.760 The international financial framework, Bretton Woods, collapses under Richard Nixon.

00:04:08.040 So the West is in this mess in the 1970s because of that.

00:04:11.240 But Thatcher and Reagan spun a story, this is because of the state, it's because of the unions, but what you get in the 80s is the same amount of growth in Aboriginal Britain, in the 90s, the growth is less, in the noughties, it's lower, in the tens, it's about the same, and in the 20s, again, it's very weak growth.

00:04:32.860 So what you've had since that tourism is 80s, the same growth as the 70s, less equity distributed every decade after that, it's lower growth than the 1970s.

00:04:43.880 You get the privatisation of utilities, shit in our water, railways, which are obviously a ripoff, inefficient mess, which are subsidised by the public, even though they're privatised.

00:04:56.340 You get a housing crisis. Four in ten of the homes flogged off by right to buy are now rented out by private landlords charging twice the rent. 0.97

00:05:06.340 You get, because of the smashing of the unions, you get stagnating wages.

00:05:12.340 Even before the crash, they were stagnating for millions of workers.

00:05:15.340 But the average British worker now, their wages are pretty similar to what they were in 2008.

00:05:20.340 You've got the financial crisis, which was all about, that was what financialization led to.

00:05:26.140 So we've ended up with an economic model, which is, again, it's all about assets rather than productive industry.

00:05:33.540 It's about complex financial products rather than making things.

00:05:37.860 And which is why even the likes of Donald Trump talk about that legacy.

00:05:41.300 They talk about de-industrialization.

00:05:42.580 They don't talk about the reasons why.

00:05:43.800 But we've ended up with an economic model, which works very well for a certain elite.

00:05:49.460 But actually for millions of workers in America, again, wages in America have been stagnant for decades. And for British workers and for workers across the Western world, this is an economic model which has led to insecurity, stagnation, a public realm which is underfunded and crumbling.

00:06:08.360 So I think neoliberalism, it's obviously failed.

00:06:11.340 I don't even see what the defence is, because by definition,

00:06:14.380 if you look back to even the 60s,

00:06:17.540 when you have high tax public ownership and strong trade unions,

00:06:21.560 that's the decade with the highest growth that Britain has,

00:06:24.160 and it's more equitably distributed.

00:06:26.040 You get sustained rises in living standards,

00:06:28.620 of constantly improving public services, but that's all gone.

00:06:31.920 We do have stagnation and decline.

00:06:34.160 That's economic stagnation and decline.

00:06:36.260 social progress has come to an end technology improves you get more advanced phones we've got

00:06:41.300 ai but in terms of how people's people's lived experience it's it's insecurity and stagnation

00:06:48.500 except for the people at the top i don't know what's the difference i don't know what the

00:06:51.060 defense of the economic model is i don't see just any the stats speak for themselves i think

00:06:54.900 well and this is the central uh thesis of your book that neoliberalism at home as you call it

00:07:00.260 all of the things that you described plus adventurism or militarism or imperialism

00:07:05.060 and whatever you might want to call it, abroad, these two things combined are the reason where

00:07:10.740 the West is. And you do a fairly good summation, actually. I'd say 90%. There's 10% where we can

00:07:18.760 talk about later, perhaps. But 90%, you do a very good summation of the kind of mainstream

00:07:23.540 alternative arguments for the position the West finds itself in today. And the kind of central

00:07:31.240 right-wing arguments you you you explain what they are uh faithfully actually which is to your

00:07:36.560 credit um and then you explain what you've just explained uh and so the central thesis is

00:07:42.580 neoliberalism at home uh the way you've described it combined with militarism abroad let's say

00:07:48.280 is that a fair summation exactly so they collide together so you get this economic model which

00:07:53.700 just factually speaking doesn't deliver the growth it did and it's less equity distributed

00:07:58.040 And it's going to all these financial products and the financial sector rather than making things.

00:08:03.040 At the same time, we've had military adventurism.

00:08:07.040 I mean, how many wars is the West supposed to suffer a strategic defeat in before Western elites face a reckoning?

00:08:16.040 There was the war in Afghanistan, which was a two decade long occupation, following, as I detail in the book, the West arming and supporting...

00:08:24.040 Do you mind if we just stick with the neoliberalism part?

00:08:26.980 I have more questions about that.

00:08:28.140 Okay, as long as we come to military dentures...

00:08:30.260 We may, depending on how much time we have.

00:08:32.940 Oh, come on.

00:08:34.500 The reason it's not interesting to me personally

00:08:36.700 is we actually agree on that completely.

00:08:38.420 We were both completely opposed to the neoliberalism.

00:08:39.380 Okay, but the way they fuse, though,

00:08:40.600 the way they fuse...

00:08:41.400 Sure. 0.96

00:08:41.840 Because obviously Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Iran 0.97

00:08:44.680 are all absolute catastrophes which have disgraced... 0.74

00:08:47.100 And we disagree with all those wars,

00:08:48.700 so that's why it's not that interesting to talk about.

00:08:50.300 Fair enough, but the reason they collide

00:08:52.700 with the economic model, in part, is you get destabilisation

00:08:57.660 and population movements as a result. 0.60

00:08:59.920 I mean, Libya's a really striking example. 0.99

00:09:01.560 That's a failed state.

00:09:02.460 It's collapsed into catastrophe. 1.00

00:09:06.340 And what that meant, a population movement arriving in Europe 0.86

00:09:12.220 seven years after the financial crash, in particular,

00:09:16.040 where you get stagnating wages and that insecurity I spoke about,

00:09:21.040 And then you get this population movement who are then scapegoated for the economic model.

00:09:26.500 And the way Muslims are portrayed, I think, is very important.

00:09:30.920 We will get to this part. We will definitely get to it.

00:09:33.020 Do you mind if we just stick just with the economics?

00:09:35.320 But the reason that's then the problem...

00:09:37.220 I get the argument you're making. I think everybody watching will understand what you're saying.

00:09:40.400 And we will talk about this.

00:09:41.620 The problem with the economic model, though, is because after the crash, you get a great reverse.

00:09:45.840 Because with the end of the Cold War, the West goes, we've won...

00:09:48.860 This is where I want to get to. 0.70

00:09:49.800 Yeah, exactly. But with the economic model, people feel they're competing for scarce resources.

00:09:56.420 I understand. Because there's no growth. I get it.

00:09:58.380 And then when the far right, as I would describe it, say it's because of migrants that you're struggling,

00:10:04.320 people feel if there's no alternative, then they feel they're competing. 1.00

00:10:06.960 I totally get it. I promise you we will get to all this.

00:10:09.040 The only reason I was interjecting is I want to talk about the neoliberalism part first.

00:10:13.360 We will definitely talk about mass immigration and all of that in a second.

00:10:16.460 So the central thesis, the one thing that I missed out in my summation of your central thesis is that you say the reason that people thought neoliberalism was a great economic vision and economic set of policies was that it was dominant and supreme at the time the Cold War ended.

00:10:35.140 And so you've basically got a victory. I'm using your inverted commas, let's say, for the purposes of this.

00:10:43.100 The West wins the Cold War with neoliberalism, therefore neoliberalism good. Fair summation?

00:10:49.640 Yes. So if you've got the Cold War ending during the 60s, for example, then social democracy is dominant at the time.

00:10:56.700 So that form of capitalism would be the one that would be seen as triumphant.

00:10:59.420 And in the introduction, I just want to bring this quote up because it's kind of, it sums up your point of view, and this is what I wanted to talk about.

00:11:05.420 So you say, the Soviet Union's demise came at the very high point of what is variously known as Thatcherism, Reaganism, or neoliberalism, the selling off of state assets, slashing taxes on big business, the wealthy, and the wealthy deregulation, subordinating the real economy to financial institutions, and hobbling organized labor.

00:11:22.540 all the stuff we talked about, and you say such policies helped plunge Britain and the US into

00:11:27.020 dire recession in the 1980s, but later in the 1990s, the economies were booming.

00:11:34.060 So in the late 1980s, in the early 1990s, you get another recession, because you get now,

00:11:39.060 because of this, you get these endemic, big recessions, which caused massive de-industrialization.

00:11:43.200 But the first recessions that these policies caused were in the early 80s.

00:11:46.440 Early 80s, so exactly. So I went back to Sheffield, where I was born, and that's a city that was

00:11:50.840 devastated you get industries that just disappear immediately so entire communities have their hearts

00:11:55.820 ripped out these are places where people have you know they're they're often male dominated their

00:12:00.680 father their grandfather the great grandfathers worked there entire communities based around them

00:12:05.200 they just disappear overnight and you get this i mean those many of those communities never

00:12:10.840 recovered you get you know it's and and this was done deliberately because what what thatcherism

00:12:17.320 did is hike up interest rates to a very high level um but also uh use fritted away north sea oil

00:12:25.980 in in our case rather than norway which invested in a in a sovereign wealth fund

00:12:30.040 um and what it did is it made our exports very very uncompetitive artificially which then just

00:12:36.120 wiped out industries which could no longer compete okay so the reason i bring this up is this is the

00:12:41.280 first point in the book where i was like maybe i'm misunderstanding this so i went i we used

00:12:46.040 venicei to fact check stuff so i went and looked at it and this way it didn't make sense to me

00:12:50.020 because the privatizations that you talk about the bt and other british companies they were

00:12:55.620 sold in 1984 yeah the recession was in 1980 uh the deregulation of the city when you talk about

00:13:02.040 financialization the big bang deregulation that was 1986 yeah but hold on so the tax cuts they

00:13:08.600 i don't so i don't understand the criticism sorry you need to i'm gonna spell it out yeah okay you

00:13:12.020 You've got to let me make the point.

00:13:13.300 So, deregulation of the financial services, 1986.

00:13:17.060 The tax cuts happened at the very beginning of the downturn by the time...

00:13:21.360 1981.

00:13:22.120 1981, exactly.

00:13:23.340 Yeah, so two years in...

00:13:24.100 Recession started in 1980.

00:13:26.580 And the showdown with the miners that Thatcher had happened in mid-90s.

00:13:31.000 1984 and 1985.

00:13:32.220 Right.

00:13:32.440 So, how could those things that happened in 1984 and 1985 cause a recession in 1980?

00:13:38.920 Well, firstly...

00:13:39.900 Which is what you say.

00:13:40.620 It says these policies helped plunge Britain and the US

00:13:44.000 into dire recession in the early 80s.

00:13:45.860 But the policies happened five years later.

00:13:48.240 No, that's not true.

00:13:49.580 Obviously, facts like monetarism,

00:13:51.920 which is what you get from the early 80s onwards,

00:13:54.560 is, you know, as I said, what they did is they make

00:13:58.500 British exports less competitive.

00:14:00.500 But what happens is you get, in the 80s, in the early 80s,

00:14:04.940 you get that rapid deindustrialisation which takes place.

00:14:08.240 And then what that does is suck growth permanently out of the economy.

00:14:12.020 So you get this artificial boom in the late 80s,

00:14:14.080 which then ends in a crash.

00:14:15.460 It ends in the early 90s.

00:14:16.880 Oh, and I'm talking about, you say that these policies,

00:14:19.560 so I just want to read this quote back.

00:14:21.640 So you say selling off of state assets, that's privatisation, right?

00:14:25.880 Yes.

00:14:26.780 Slashing taxes, deregulation and financial reform, right?

00:14:31.480 These things you say, and hobbling organised labour.

00:14:33.780 Yeah, hobbling organised labour.

00:14:34.560 These things caused a recession in Britain and the US in the early 80s,

00:14:38.680 but all of these things happened later.

00:14:40.260 They happened after the recession.

00:14:42.020 Well, firstly, deregulation begins immediately.

00:14:45.800 So in 1980, for example, you get...

00:14:48.640 That's when, for example, right to buy,

00:14:50.260 they start announcing privatisation then.

00:14:52.920 And you get the removal of import controls and so on.

00:14:58.640 So you suddenly allow, at the time when monetarism is being introduced in Britain,

00:15:03.280 you suddenly get the ability to, so capital can leave and inflows and outflows at the same time

00:15:11.260 when they're hiking interest rates.

00:15:15.840 Well, they're hiking interest rates to deal with the inflationary pressures of the oil shocks.

00:15:20.860 But I'm not trying to...

00:15:21.700 No, not because of the oil shocks.

00:15:22.680 OK, but let's park that for a second.

00:15:24.920 Owen, I'm not trying to catch you in a quote that you've kind of got wrong or whatever.

00:15:29.740 The reason I'm picking this bit out specifically is it challenges the entire thread of your argument.

00:15:35.740 Hold on, let me explain my argument before you challenge it.

00:15:38.720 I really welcome you pushing back on this.

00:15:40.840 I'm just trying to stress, as we do with everybody, trying to stress test your argument.

00:15:44.940 So your central thesis, as we established, is Thatcher and Reagan come in, they do privatisation, they break up trade unions, they do all the stuff that you mentioned, and that causes the economic stagnation and problems that we have.

00:15:58.300 Which then we have permanently.

00:15:59.740 Right.

00:16:00.200 Because in the 90s, what they do is they introduce this boom and bust.

00:16:04.780 Oh, you've got to let me finish my question.

00:16:05.620 Yeah, of course, yeah, sure.

00:16:06.600 Sorry.

00:16:07.400 So you say all these things cause a recession,

00:16:09.700 but what I'm saying to you is the things you say cause the recession

00:16:13.040 happened five years after the recession you say it caused.

00:16:15.740 Privatisation does begin in the 1980s, in the first term of the 1980s.

00:16:18.740 So when was BT privatised?

00:16:20.180 BT was...

00:16:21.020 84.

00:16:21.560 84, 85.

00:16:22.040 And all of these other big companies that were privatised,

00:16:24.840 they only really got going in 84,

00:16:26.680 but the recession happened three years before that.

00:16:28.520 So is it possible that your argument sort of breaks down on that basis because what the counter argument to your argument is, you have these two oil shocks, 73 and 79.

00:16:40.800 And the reason that Thatcher, and this is kind of the established narrative, let me lay it out, you can then argue with it, is that the reason that we had a recession in 1980 was not because of neoliberalism, but because a decision was made, we either choose inflation or unemployment.

00:16:55.580 Hold on. Let me just finish the argument and then you can answer it.

00:16:59.460 And we either choose inflation or we choose unemployment.

00:17:03.160 And the decision was made to hike interest rates to prevent inflation from spiralling.

00:17:07.180 So what happens, privatisation is a process which begins in the first term.

00:17:11.060 Because what they do with these state-owned firms is they prepare them for privatisation.

00:17:16.120 So what they do is they remove the state subsidies from those state-owned industries.

00:17:20.200 And the removal of that, which is part of preparing for the privatisation, which they did, of mining, for example.

00:17:27.340 So mining is a really striking example.

00:17:30.100 You get the beginning of the privatisation, which takes place in the first term of Thatcher's government.

00:17:35.460 What that means is market discipline is imposed on British coal.

00:17:40.600 Now, is British coal privatised in the first term of the Thatcher government? No.

00:17:47.180 But is the state subsidies removed from these state-owned industries in preparation for privatisation?

00:17:53.740 Yes. Does that then cause, in part, because what happened in the early 80s,

00:17:58.060 and this is part of the deregulation I talk about, is state subsidies are removed from various industries

00:18:04.300 on the basis of the state, this was their argument at the time, was picking winners and losers.

00:18:10.520 So their view, the argument of thatcherism was, we are going to remove this state intervention,

00:18:16.140 There's state support in preparation for privatisation.

00:18:19.340 We're going to impose market discipline.

00:18:21.780 And that happened at the very moment they'd hiked interest rates

00:18:24.860 and allowed the outflow and inflow of capital without state intervention.

00:18:30.180 So that is deregulation.

00:18:31.700 And that is the policy of privatisation because it's the beginning.

00:18:34.400 It's the removal of state support.

00:18:36.640 Is that deregulation?

00:18:37.380 Yes, of course it is.

00:18:38.040 Of course that's deregulation.

00:18:39.120 What are you talking about?

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00:20:02.840 no deregulation is when you remove regulations what you're talking about is removing state

00:20:08.660 subsidies well it's the withdrawal of the state that's what i'm talking about the with what

00:20:12.900 facturism does is roll back the frontiers of the state that begins in the as soon as she comes to 0.93

00:20:18.780 power it comes to power with the imposition of market discipline as she would describe it 0.92

00:20:23.800 on state industries which she regards and argues are bloated and and and inefficient and we and

00:20:31.240 therefore state support needs to be withdrawn.

00:20:33.080 And it happened at the very worst moment possible

00:20:35.520 because interest rates had been hyped to such a high degree

00:20:39.620 and North Sea oil was also discovered,

00:20:41.400 which also then made those exports uncompetitive.

00:20:43.860 Did she privatize all those industries, including mining?

00:20:46.700 Mining came significantly later, actually. 1.00

00:20:48.720 No, but she imposed those policies 1.00

00:20:51.760 of withdrawing the state from the economy at that time. 1.00

00:20:56.100 And that is what caused the massive recession.

00:20:58.020 So of course, I stand by what I said.

00:20:59.280 Privatization is a process.

00:21:01.020 But what the state did, I mean, you can see this with the railways.

00:21:03.900 What Thatcherism did is starve the railways of resources.

00:21:07.900 And then the argument was, well, the railways aren't properly,

00:21:10.740 they look at them, they're disintegrating the state ownership

00:21:12.720 and they need private investment and so on.

00:21:14.660 But it's wrong to look at privatization as this happened in, for example,

00:21:19.840 on this particular day without looking at how she removed the state's support

00:21:24.440 for those industries in preparation for privatization.

00:21:27.360 It's a process, of course it is.

00:21:28.440 But the same is true in the United States, where the recession was in 1981 and 1982.

00:21:33.560 And again, all of the things that you talk about, breaking up unions and all that happened in 1986.

00:21:40.480 That's false.

00:21:41.560 That's false.

00:21:42.380 Sorry, that's completely false.

00:21:43.360 When is the first bus stop between Ronald Reagan and the organised labour movement?

00:21:48.220 It's not about the first bus stop.

00:21:49.460 When they actually did the labour bus thing was 1986.

00:21:53.520 That's not true in America.

00:21:55.220 What's the big turning point with the labour movement?

00:21:57.420 You must know this.

00:21:58.120 Tell us.

00:21:58.440 It's the air traffic controllers, 1981, immediately.

00:22:02.220 But that doesn't cause a recession, right?

00:22:04.140 No, what it does, what that did is unleash a massive spate of union busting all across the United States of America.

00:22:12.060 And what that did is remove the organising, the power of organised labour to sustain the living standards of workers.

00:22:21.080 But that doesn't cause a recession, right?

00:22:22.840 That sucks demand out of the economy. Of course, that's what happens.

00:22:26.260 But at the same time, I mean, under Thatcher, under Reaganism, again, you get the withdrawal of, they didn't have the same levels of state interventionism that the social democratic consensus existed in America.

00:22:39.560 And yet they also had a recession. Wouldn't that be more likely because by the old fight?

00:22:42.600 No, because what they did is they started, they immediately introduced cuts to public expenses.

00:22:46.680 I mean, this is, sorry, the other point, which was completely missing here, is the cuts, because this is what I was talking about, is the withdrawal of the states.

00:22:53.380 That's what we're talking about. So what Thatcher does in the early 80s, as soon as he comes to power, is impose sweeping cuts, not just on the subsidies I'm talking about, but on state, from state investment.

00:23:05.900 Ronald Reagan does the exact same thing. That sucks demand out the economy. And that's that rolling back of the states, which is what they all did.

00:23:13.120 And they did it on the basis of the let the market let rip and that will raise prosperity.

00:23:17.520 But the cutting of state expenditure under Reagan and Thatcher during a recession, unlike the Keynesian argument is you invest at this time because then that will, you know, it's counter cyclical and so on.

00:23:30.720 What they both did is they were ideologically committed to rolling back the state.

00:23:34.380 And that is what made those recessions in America and Britain so profound.

00:23:41.100 And they did it at the time where they disciplined organized labor, which is what obviously Reagan did, reducing the bargaining power of unions in order to raise the wages of the workers.

00:23:51.940 So, of course, yes. I mean, everyone knows Reaganism and Thatcherism at the beginning rolled back the states.

00:23:58.540 I'm not disputing that.

00:23:59.860 No one questioned that then caused a huge recession. The argument was...

00:24:03.980 The recessions lasted about a year. There was a double-dip recession in the US.

00:24:07.840 And in the UK, it lasted from, I think, Q1 in 1980 to Q2 in 1981.

00:24:14.180 So they weren't that long.

00:24:15.600 They were about a year long.

00:24:16.540 And what's interesting to me would be how do you explain the rapid recovery you see after that?

00:24:21.520 Well, I mean, just firstly on that, what they all did is inflict lasting catastrophic damage.

00:24:28.220 Possessions do, sure.

00:24:29.340 No, but that's not fair or reasonable.

00:24:32.180 Actually, I'm kind of surprised at the argument, given the way Trumpism has particularly postured in defence of the Rust Belt communities, for example.

00:24:40.400 Because in all of these cases, you get a rapid fall, particularly in Britain.

00:24:45.300 And Britain is the worst case where you get deindustrialisation in a really rapid scale.

00:24:51.860 And those communities then never actually recover.

00:24:55.340 Sure.

00:24:55.520 And then you get a boom, which is because, as I've said, in the 1980s, the average growth is the same as the 1970s.

00:25:06.320 Yeah.

00:25:06.860 But what you get is a, the way to explain that is because you get a boom and bust.

00:25:12.140 And what the boom does is it's based partly on the inflation of asset prices.

00:25:17.680 You get the, and of big finance.

00:25:20.760 you obviously don't get the Big Bang for several years in Britain

00:25:26.980 but that is such a misnomer in terms of how people think of financialisation

00:25:30.600 financialisation actually started in the early 70s under the Ted Heath government

00:25:34.620 when they basically liberalised cheap credit

00:25:36.740 but in the early 80s after the abolition of exchange controls

00:25:43.200 that obviously has a huge impact in the financialisation of the British economy

00:25:47.320 So you get a boom, which becomes about inflating asset prices and big finance.

00:25:56.980 And obviously, some people do very well out of that.

00:25:58.800 And some people did very well, not least in the southeast.

00:26:02.160 But at the same time, industry was falling apart in the north.

00:26:06.540 You get then an economic recovery, which is extremely weighted.

00:26:11.660 And it's weighted in favor of people who are affluent.

00:26:14.320 And you do get, for example, people, I mean, you know, short-term sugar rushes, people, for example, right to buy.

00:26:19.920 Did some people, working class people, benefit from that? Yes. 0.83

00:26:22.960 The question is what happens to their children and their grandchildren when four in ten of the properties rented out to right to buy are now rented out by private landlords charging twice the rent.

00:26:31.920 So the issue is you get, you know, when you get growth and no one questions you, you've got growth in, for example, you've got a boom.

00:26:39.240 You get an actual boom in the late 80s in particular.

00:26:42.580 That boom actually helps build the economic model,

00:26:46.980 which I would argue is one that delivers overall less improvements

00:26:52.220 to living standards and wages.

00:26:53.840 And that's what happens.

00:26:54.780 I mean, you get a boom in the 80s,

00:26:56.640 which cements the financial sector as the epicentre of the British economy.

00:27:02.580 And then in the 90s and the noughties,

00:27:05.540 wages in America and Britain stagnate.

00:27:07.300 And the only way that's compensated for, where people don't feel they're actually getting poorer, is because of cheap credit. But what happens then with the financial crash? So yes, I mean, you could say, did Reaganism and Thatcherism, by rolling back the state and withdrawing the state from the economy, which is what happened immediately, which was my point, did that cause a recession?

00:27:28.480 Yes. Did their policies also cause a sugar rush, which causes a big boom in the late 80s, which benefits some sections of society at the expense of others?

00:27:39.480 Yes. Does that build an economic model?

00:27:41.660 And that's true of everything.

00:27:42.940 Is that an economic model then, which overall produces less rises in living?

00:27:47.460 I understand what you're saying, but that's true of any policy, policy of subsidizing industry to the tune that Britain was subsidizing industry.

00:27:54.660 It also benefits some section of society at the expense of others.

00:27:58.980 So all policies create these trade-offs, right?

00:28:02.120 Yes, but...

00:28:03.280 So South Korea was an example that I looked at in the book.

00:28:06.060 Because South Korea is cited by Thatcher and Reagan as a vindication of capitalism.

00:28:11.420 Now, that's because you could go, well, there's North Korea, a self-declared communist state,

00:28:16.180 and then there's South Korea, a capitalist state.

00:28:19.140 South Korea, North Korea originally is more industrialised

00:28:23.900 and better off than South Korea.

00:28:25.520 South Korea then leapfogs it and does much better.

00:28:28.340 Hey, presto, that shows capitalism is innately superior to communism.

00:28:34.280 Now, Stalinism doesn't work.

00:28:35.940 The Stalinist undemocratic command economy doesn't work.

00:28:38.760 It can industrialise a country quite quickly, often at great cost.

00:28:41.680 See, we do agree on some things.

00:28:43.000 There we go.

00:28:44.140 But can we believe...

00:28:44.980 No, obviously a thank you.

00:28:46.040 But can it deal with a complex consumer economy?

00:28:50.600 It absolutely cannot do that, no.

00:28:51.940 And you need, I mean, that's one reason,

00:28:53.820 without democracy, how can you allocate resources properly?

00:28:56.380 Full stop.

00:28:56.820 If you just have bureaucrats controlling everything

00:28:58.340 from the centre, you can't do that.

00:29:00.340 But South Korea is, you know,

00:29:02.540 if people advocated for the policy South Korea has

00:29:06.500 in this country, they would be called not just communists,

00:29:09.460 they'd be called extreme communists.

00:29:11.120 Because in South Korea, the whole policy was based on

00:29:13.220 the nationalisation of the entire financial sector, pretty much,

00:29:17.740 as well as the commanding heights of the economy.

00:29:20.020 And the point there about winners and losers is

00:29:21.700 what they did is they strategically invested the money

00:29:25.480 in the industries that they wanted to grow

00:29:27.920 and they wanted to expand.

00:29:29.060 I'm in favour of that.

00:29:29.940 But you see, then you can't support Thatcherism.

00:29:33.140 I don't support Thatcherism.

00:29:34.420 I'm just asking you questions about your book.

00:29:36.700 No, oh, fair enough.

00:29:38.000 But that's my job.

00:29:39.600 But yeah, true.

00:29:40.360 Sorry, I didn't know.

00:29:41.060 Politically, I thought you would have supported Thatcher.

00:29:42.560 But the problem is, so Thatcher went in the opposite direction, that's the problem.

00:29:47.120 But Owen, this is very black and white.

00:29:48.880 It's like, I support some things Thatcher did without supporting all of it.

00:29:52.180 What I'm saying is, my view has always been that the government borrowing money to invest in the right things,

00:29:57.580 that I think are the right things, is perfectly valid and a reasonable thing to do at certain points in the economic cycle.

00:30:03.520 So, this is not a black and white conversation.

00:30:06.080 But in this conversation, I'm really interested in stress testing the arguments that you're making.

00:30:10.100 That's it.

00:30:10.480 Okay, so...

00:30:11.100 So, let's leave that there.

00:30:12.120 No, no, just on South Korea.

00:30:13.840 You made your point.

00:30:14.400 No, you're right. Fair enough, though.

00:30:15.420 But that is why, if you look at the policy of the early...

00:30:18.000 Well, I think we should invest way more money in nuclear energy, for example,

00:30:20.880 in this country, and should make it way easier to build nuclear power plants.

00:30:23.640 It was a good example.

00:30:24.140 But you want an industrial active policy, fair enough.

00:30:26.040 But the point is, it's what Thatcher's and regularism did,

00:30:28.200 is abdicate responsibility to the market.

00:30:30.100 You let the market...

00:30:31.060 You made a point.

00:30:31.700 But South Korea, which they venerated, did the exact opposite.

00:30:34.820 And actually, if you look at all those sorts of economies in Asia,

00:30:38.180 that's what they did.

00:30:38.940 And they didn't have the, you know, we pursued economic policies which led to decline, an economic model which doesn't deliver rising living standards, improve public services and improve security.

00:30:48.340 That ended in the 80s.

00:30:50.700 So we're talking about alternatives.

00:30:53.640 One of the countries that you thought really worked at the time was Venezuela.

00:30:58.200 You said it was an inspiration to the world, showed that there was an alternative.

00:31:02.140 And somebody, and everybody would know this on the show, they can drink.

00:31:05.080 My mother's from Venezuela. 0.91

00:31:06.040 I saw in real time what happened when Venezuela literally descended into, basically, let's be honest about it, a form of hell.

00:31:12.940 78% poverty, 38% extreme poverty.

00:31:16.960 That means you effectively can't eat.

00:31:18.740 75% of Venezuelans lost 19 pounds on average.

00:31:22.800 And obviously the poorest lost a lot more.

00:31:24.980 Inflation, 10,000%.

00:31:26.540 And then it just skyrocketed.

00:31:28.900 Caracas was the murder capital of the world, the kidnapped capital of the world.

00:31:32.560 I mean, it doesn't give me any pleasure to say this.

00:31:35.520 It's a failed state, isn't it?

00:31:37.020 No, I know that that's a completely reasonable point.

00:31:38.780 And, you know, when I wrote about that in 2012, that wasn't the case.

00:31:43.360 What happened under Chavez from 1998 to 2012 was poverty objectively fell very, very deeply.

00:31:51.420 You did get public investment in public services and so on.

00:31:54.380 I went there in 2012.

00:31:55.620 I went and, you know, and, you know, there was certainly the big issue that came up in 2012 when I went there was the question of violent crime.

00:32:05.280 I would argue that that wasn't specific to Chavez.

00:32:08.540 I mean, Venezuela in the 1980s also had very high levels of violent crime.

00:32:13.800 And equally, I would know in the 1980s, under what I would term

00:32:17.720 neoliberal administration in Venezuela, you had as well,

00:32:21.500 you had hyperinflation in the 1980s.

00:32:24.040 Not to the same extent.

00:32:25.440 Not to the same extent, but it was very high inflation.

00:32:28.760 And the reason I think, you know, because there were other examples

00:32:33.060 in latin america which didn't end up in that catastrophe which pursued like bolivia for

00:32:37.300 example which which again um reduced poverty to a large to a huge degree expanded public services

00:32:43.540 and which didn't end up like venezuela and the the big mistake of venezuela um and which you know

00:32:50.900 which which i should have obviously thought of at the time and definitely was something that

00:32:55.620 i guess i've learned from is you know they they they made fossil fuels they made oil their

00:33:00.660 absolute centerpiece and 98 of our economy was dependent well of course and and what you know

00:33:07.780 the that that was a disastrous policy as as we saw i do think u.s sanctions have obviously played

00:33:14.100 a role like that's obviously throttled the economy so i wouldn't you know that is a contributing

00:33:18.580 factor it was basically a siege on venezuela um but nonetheless the model the kind of petro-socialist

00:33:25.780 model is not a model which works. And that is a model we can see from 2013, 2014, just

00:33:33.340 collapse. And you can see it collapsing. US sanctions did obviously play their role. But

00:33:37.300 in 2012, Venezuela wasn't. I mean, as I said, violent crime is definitely a big problem.

00:33:42.340 I don't think that was specific to that period. But, you know, poverty had objectively collapsed

00:33:47.180 in Venezuela. And it was also civil rights abuses, let's be fair. Chavez was an authoritarian

00:33:51.900 regime. I had family members who were... I'll tell you a story. One of my family members was

00:33:57.340 literally... He was the president of the Bank of Venezuela. He had a meeting with Chávez 2004,

00:34:02.080 2005. Chávez demanded he hand over the gold reserves to him. My relative refused. He went

00:34:09.480 on Hola Presidente, which was the show where he took over all of the TV channels, said the words

00:34:15.260 Diego Luis Fuera, and put him under house arrest until he handed over the gold reserves.

00:34:20.520 My cousins were journalists.

00:34:22.100 I mean, they were pretty much told from 2005 onwards,

00:34:25.500 if you criticise the government,

00:34:27.200 you were going to be in very serious trouble.

00:34:29.180 I think what I'd push back there,

00:34:31.380 I mean, obviously I'm not denying the experiences

00:34:33.680 that your family had there at all,

00:34:35.480 and I don't know the specifics and so on,

00:34:37.860 is I met the opposition while I was there,

00:34:39.960 and I spoke to the opposition,

00:34:41.420 and they were obviously very denunciatory of Chavez

00:34:45.860 and opposed him, but they didn't,

00:34:47.040 when I asked them specifically as a dictator,

00:34:48.480 They said, no, but it's our job to stop him creating a dictatorship.

00:34:52.220 And they spoke to what they regarded as his demagogic tendencies.

00:34:55.160 And all the way through that period, the Venezuelan media was not just bitterly, overwhelmingly opposed to Chavez, but kind of beyond parody opposed.

00:35:04.200 And what happened in the early...

00:35:05.720 But to be fair...

00:35:06.120 Just quickly, in the early 2000s, there was a Pinochet-style coup against...

00:35:12.120 Chavez led a coup before that.

00:35:14.100 Yeah, well, I'm not a coup guy. And obviously, you know, he should. But this was an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government, which no one questioned Chavez won those elections in the noughties. No one claims that he didn't win those elections.

00:35:31.680 There was a coup which overthrew him, and a lot of governments after a coup against them would actually probably end up doing a far more authoritarian crackdown than that government ended up doing, actually.

00:35:44.480 I mean, you know, my parents took in, as I read in the book, Chilean refugees who fled Augusto Pinochet's regime, who was obviously put in power partly by the West to overthrow a democratically socialist government.

00:35:57.620 And I would know in Venezuela, in the 80s, you had a Western-backed government, which massacred, in the late 80s, hundreds, if not more people.

00:36:07.620 It was like Tiananmen Square.

00:36:09.480 So I would argue, we can talk definitely Maduro and what happened then, which I'm not going to defend.

00:36:15.260 But actually, the human rights abuses in Venezuela, and I'm not denying that there weren't examples, but you had a coup against them.

00:36:22.560 The media was, you could literally, almost the entire media.

00:36:26.540 But that's their right, Owen.

00:36:27.320 If it happened in the United States, and look, there are many people on the American right who said what the press have done against President Donald Trump is disgraceful, disgusting.

00:36:38.900 If Trump had done that, I would have, and the crackdown, shutting down 32 media outlets.

00:36:44.700 Well, I don't support shutting down any media outlets, but OK, let's just do a hypothetical here, shall we?

00:36:50.080 Let's do a hypothetical.

00:36:50.720 Donald Trump is overthrown in a coup

00:36:54.820 And the entire American media incite the coup, support the coup

00:37:00.460 How did the Venezuela media incite the coup?

00:37:02.880 Because they supported it

00:37:03.700 The vast majority of the media outlets supported that coup

00:37:05.320 You know that, come on, you know that

00:37:06.560 I mean, I read, I saw, look, they were literally broadcasting

00:37:10.340 And inciting people to come and join the coup

00:37:11.740 I mean, it was, and did they all get arrested afterwards?

00:37:14.780 No

00:37:15.100 In America, if CNN and MSNBC and all the rest of it

00:37:20.260 literally called for people to overthrow the government

00:37:22.460 and succeeded in a military coup or whatever

00:37:25.800 against Donald Trump,

00:37:27.360 what would happen to those media outlets afterwards?

00:37:28.900 Just genuinely, what would happen?

00:37:30.960 What would happen?

00:37:32.180 There would be a risk.

00:37:33.100 But that didn't happen in Venezuela, actually.

00:37:35.580 So you're saying he was not an authoritarian, then?

00:37:38.880 I don't think Chavez was a dictator, no.

00:37:41.460 I think he was a democratically elected...

00:37:42.580 Oh, and come on.

00:37:43.420 There was a very famous case in 2001.

00:37:45.400 I mean, I met the opposition.

00:37:46.440 They didn't think he was a dictator when I met him.

00:37:48.580 They literally live there.

00:37:49.460 Perhaps you can talk a little bit about that.

00:37:50.620 So in 2009, it's a very famous case.

00:37:53.020 You can look this up.

00:37:55.060 Chavez put a Venezuelan dissident in prison.

00:37:58.320 It went to the Supreme Court.

00:38:00.520 The judge let this person go.

00:38:03.280 Chavez, on national TV, called her a bandita.

00:38:06.360 The UN published a report on this

00:38:08.980 and said it was completely egregious.

00:38:11.360 And we can bring it up on Venezia.

00:38:13.520 She then let him go. 0.99

00:38:16.400 She was then put in prison.

00:38:17.820 Chavez said he wanted her to go to prison for 30 years

00:38:20.560 She went to prison in the end for one year

00:38:22.740 In one of the most notorious prisons in Venezuela

00:38:25.140 I honestly don't know the circumstance of that

00:38:27.160 All I'd say is

00:38:28.220 I just do not think

00:38:29.960 In Britain or anywhere else

00:38:32.180 That if you'd had a coup against an elected government

00:38:34.040 That there would

00:38:35.300 I would argue the government

00:38:37.520 That was then restored

00:38:38.780 You don't think Chavez was a dictator

00:38:40.480 Hold on

00:38:41.580 I don't think you argue actually he was a dictator

00:38:44.740 I think you'd argue he was a dictator

00:38:45.880 I think he was a dictator

00:38:47.100 So you don't think he won those elections?

00:38:49.120 I think he won the first election fair and square.

00:38:51.140 Just like Vladimir Putin won the first election.

00:38:52.680 No, no, no.

00:38:53.280 I was in 20...

00:38:54.360 You can still be a dictator after winning an election.

00:38:55.820 I was there in 2012, and I went round from polling station to polling station.

00:38:59.740 And every polling station had an observer from the opposition and from the government to look over the process.

00:39:08.160 They had a double lock on voting, where people voted on paper and then voted electronically.

00:39:15.740 and then those different votes were then separately checked

00:39:20.080 to make sure that there wasn't any disparities.

00:39:22.180 No one's arguing with you that he won the first election.

00:39:24.680 What we're arguing about is whether he then became a dictator after that.

00:39:28.340 That was 2012. That's just before he died.

00:39:30.620 And at the time, the Venezuelan media was largely opposed to him.

00:39:33.660 So it's not the same as Russia where you have media outlets

00:39:36.360 which almost... You don't get dissident media in Russia.

00:39:40.020 It doesn't exist.

00:39:40.580 No, yeah, it does. It does.

00:39:42.380 They just have to say we're a foreign agent.

00:39:44.480 That's the way it works in Russia.

00:39:45.460 Dissident journalists, dissident media outlets are, you know...

00:39:50.000 Oh, and I'm Russian. I know about Russian media.

00:39:51.940 You do not have mass media in Russia.

00:39:53.760 No, not mass media.

00:39:54.640 Okay, but that's what we're talking about.

00:39:56.020 In Venezuela, you have mass media, including TV channels,

00:39:59.140 which were very against and opposed to Chavez in 2012.

00:40:02.440 Does that change? Yes.

00:40:03.660 And obviously, Venezuela descends into outright authoritarianism,

00:40:06.860 which I would not in any way deny under Maduro.

00:40:08.840 There's no question about that whatsoever.

00:40:10.780 But did, was, you know, if you go to a government,

00:40:13.560 But if you go to a country, at the time, which I did,

00:40:16.780 and you see media outlets largely opposed to the president,

00:40:21.240 you meet opposition leaders who are obviously very angry

00:40:24.260 and denunciatory about the government.

00:40:26.240 Most of the things at the time they were talking about

00:40:28.220 was a violent disorder, I would just know,

00:40:30.160 who themselves said, we don't regard him as a dictator.

00:40:33.900 They did seem as demagogic.

00:40:35.120 They said that. 0.68

00:40:35.800 I totally accept all that kind of stuff.

00:40:37.700 In the context where you had a coup d'etat to overthrow him

00:40:41.500 and install a Pinochet-style dictatorship

00:40:44.360 of the sort that the Americans in the West

00:40:46.980 backed in Latin America, 0.66

00:40:48.020 which slaughtered thousands of people. 0.98

00:40:50.180 Do I, I mean, again, I just, you know,

00:40:52.380 I don't see that as a dictatorship.

00:40:54.720 The economic model at the time did reduce poverty,

00:40:58.440 but it wasn't sustainable because it was based on oil.

00:41:00.620 I'm glad you said that.

00:41:01.320 But that's what I accept.

00:41:02.820 Well, let's talk about this.

00:41:04.980 If you own gold, you probably bought it

00:41:07.060 for the same reason I did,

00:41:08.640 because you looked at what central banks

00:41:10.260 are doing to currencies and decided you wanted something they can't print. Good reasoning.

00:41:15.340 But here's the thing nobody talks about after you make that decision. Your gold is just sitting

00:41:19.720 there. It's not doing anything. You're paying to store it, you're paying to insure it, and in the

00:41:24.260 meantime, it earns precisely nothing. Until now. What you're about to hear is not a normal gold

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00:42:23.580 trigonometry. Well, it's not just petrosocialism. I mean, there are people who've experienced

00:42:28.100 socialism like myself and Francis too, who would argue that very often what tends to happen,

00:42:33.600 and particularly with Western leftists who see socialism as the answer

00:42:37.080 and as the alternative, as you said Venezuela was at the time,

00:42:40.280 they have a very short-term vision because it's like saying,

00:42:43.560 you know, well, you know, in the 1930s, the Soviet Union really did great.

00:42:48.240 And there were lots of people in the West, by the way, at the time,

00:42:50.900 who were saying it's wonderful to look at the re-industrialization,

00:42:53.460 look at the order, look at this, look at the grand buildings

00:42:56.480 that were being built, etc.

00:42:58.200 And they look at a very short-term picture.

00:43:01.420 they draw conclusions from it because it fits their priors,

00:43:04.720 and they don't think about the long-term consequences.

00:43:07.420 And if you speak to people in many countries

00:43:09.280 which have gone through these experiments,

00:43:11.440 what they would say is the reason socialism doesn't work.

00:43:13.660 You mentioned earlier that you thought, you know,

00:43:15.640 you need democracy even in a communist country

00:43:18.420 because otherwise you've got bureaucrats making...

00:43:21.280 I don't support any of those Stalinists, sorry.

00:43:22.560 No, no, not Stalinists.

00:43:23.720 But they wouldn't be, well, they wouldn't be...

00:43:25.480 No, I wasn't saying you support Stalinism.

00:43:27.840 I'm making a point about the structure of a society.

00:43:30.700 You were saying you need democracy because otherwise you've got bureaucrats doing everything.

00:43:35.520 It's not democracy that prevents bureaucrats from doing everything, it's the market that

00:43:39.260 prevents bureaucrats from doing everything.

00:43:41.340 Even if you elect bureaucrats, they still end up running the country.

00:43:44.580 What then happens is, this is a structural argument about these types of societies not

00:43:49.040 working, and we saw this in the Soviet Union, is when instead of having the market being

00:43:55.280 the power that makes these decisions, when you have people with this much power, money

00:44:00.640 doesn't matter as much as the power does. And then you get a very corrupt society, which is

00:44:05.060 exactly what Venezuela became. And what all of these societies eventually become, where people

00:44:09.920 will use bribes and influence, et cetera, to make these decisions instead of the market making them

00:44:14.920 through financial points. And so you end up with a very corrupt society, which is why these societies

00:44:21.440 eventually break down. Just on that, because I mean, firstly in Venezuela, I mean, Venezuela

00:44:26.240 Australia in 2012 with Hugo Chavez had a smaller state sector than Britain has now.

00:44:32.760 Are you saying he wasn't a socialist?

00:44:34.520 Well, I mean, what he did is use, actually, the proceeds from oil revenues to invest in social services and in poverty reduction.

00:44:44.000 You did get nationalisation in oil.

00:44:45.740 Did he do widespread nationalisation of the rest of the industry?

00:44:48.060 But I'm asking you, are you saying he was not a socialist?

00:44:50.480 Because you supported him and you said he's an inspiration.

00:44:52.460 Well, I'm calling it, well, I mean, you know, I said it's a form of petro-socialism.

00:44:57.500 I mean, I'm a democratic socialist, and I believe in, you know,

00:45:02.060 am I arguing for, you know, the abolition of all market relations?

00:45:06.320 No, I'm not arguing that. I've never argued for that.

00:45:08.720 But in terms of Venezuela, did you have a government,

00:45:11.580 which was a progressive government?

00:45:13.000 It doesn't matter what label you put to it.

00:45:14.460 It was a government that in that period, I thought, was using oil revenues

00:45:18.180 to benefit people who were struggling in a way that I thought

00:45:21.700 improve their lives, which it did until it all fell apart. But that's what I'm saying is these

00:45:25.200 societies fall apart and you're only looking at the short-term picture because you like the ideas.

00:45:29.540 No, I'm not because it didn't fall apart in the other Latin American countries. It didn't fall

00:45:33.300 apart in Bolivia. It didn't fall apart in Ecuador. I mean, Ecuador then you end up with a right-wing

00:45:38.000 government partly because a member of the ruling party when he was elected then shifted dramatically

00:45:44.220 off to the right. But actually in Ecuador, in Bolivia, in these other Latin American countries

00:45:50.740 where you had left-wing governments.

00:45:52.640 None of these left-wing governments abolished capitalism.

00:45:54.500 None of them did that.

00:45:55.620 But they did, you know, this was called the Pink Revolution at the time.

00:45:58.940 It wasn't called the Red Revolution at the time.

00:46:00.680 But what they did is they were all different sorts of governments,

00:46:04.520 but they used, you know, progressive policies to improve people's lives.

00:46:09.440 Venezuela was the one that fell apart.

00:46:11.140 Bolivia didn't fall apart.

00:46:12.400 Ecuador didn't fall apart.

00:46:13.740 So I don't accept that premise.

00:46:15.520 And also we can't...

00:46:16.240 Which premise?

00:46:16.980 Well, because what you're doing is you're basically saying

00:46:20.660 you know, all of these governments and regimes

00:46:23.520 are all in the same bracket.

00:46:25.280 I didn't say anything about those regimes.

00:46:27.100 No, you said Venezuela and the Soviet bloc,

00:46:28.980 but Venezuela did not introduce a Soviet-style system at all.

00:46:31.740 No one claims that.

00:46:32.520 The vast majority of the country was privately run.

00:46:34.440 What I'm asking is, do you not think that...

00:46:36.800 Francis, is it fair to say that Venezuela

00:46:38.200 became incredibly corrupt?

00:46:39.600 Yes, yeah, the corruption...

00:46:40.720 That's what I'm asking. 0.52

00:46:41.780 These systems create the incentives for corruption,

00:46:44.940 which is what you saw in Venezuela.

00:46:46.020 Yeah, but then again, so again,

00:46:48.160 this is where I think it's quite interesting.

00:46:49.220 When I went to Venezuela, it was a very capitalist society in lots of ways.

00:46:54.160 It was like adverts everywhere, shops everywhere.

00:46:56.380 They also seized private property.

00:46:58.680 You have to accept that.

00:47:00.040 They seized private property from farmers.

00:47:01.860 The state sector was smaller than it is now.

00:47:04.200 In Britain, sorry.

00:47:05.640 It's not a state-run society.

00:47:08.340 South Korea, which I've noted, South Korea nationalised all their banks.

00:47:13.100 They nationalised the top tiers of their economy.

00:47:15.160 South Korea didn't.

00:47:17.060 You know what this experience is like?

00:47:18.800 It's like boxing jello, as the Americans would say.

00:47:20.700 But I don't accept...

00:47:22.140 I'm asking you...

00:47:22.920 What am I supposed to say when it's a case of I don't accept the argument that you're making?

00:47:26.020 Because factually, Venezuela didn't become a state-run society.

00:47:29.140 A society that has an authoritarian dictatorship.

00:47:32.660 You don't agree.

00:47:33.620 It's an authoritarian system in which people seize private property

00:47:36.960 and under popular demagoguery take from the rich and give to the masses.

00:47:42.220 Is that a socialist society?

00:47:44.460 You clearly thought it was a good society.

00:47:46.760 I didn't think it was a socialist society.

00:47:48.040 I thought it was a progressive government, which was a reducing policy.

00:47:51.060 And just to clarify, Chavez, in multiple speeches, identified that as socialism.

00:47:56.460 Yeah, but Chavez was really quite a complex political character,

00:48:00.920 because when he came to power, he called his policies the third way

00:48:05.300 and said he was emulating Tony Blair.

00:48:07.660 I mean, he went on all sorts of fascinating political journeys, obviously.

00:48:12.100 And obviously they called it 21st century socialism.

00:48:15.160 In practice, did any of those Latin American countries enact mass nationalisation of the economy?

00:48:20.340 None of them did, including Venezuela. That just did not happen.

00:48:22.840 They did seize private property.

00:48:24.020 The vast majority of Venezuela remained in private hands.

00:48:27.620 No one can dispute that. That's factually what happened.

00:48:31.940 After World War II, when Britain nationalised the railways and a fifth of the industrial economy,

00:48:39.140 do you regard that as...

00:48:40.120 But they didn't seize it.

00:48:41.360 No, I don't support seizures. I support population.

00:48:43.960 That's what they did in Venezuela.

00:48:45.800 Well, again, they didn't largely because they didn't...

00:48:48.040 No, no, they did.

00:48:48.860 They just didn't seize everything.

00:48:50.460 They didn't seize the vast majority of the economy.

00:48:54.120 That's exactly what I just said.

00:48:55.500 They didn't seize the vast majority.

00:48:57.140 I support nationalisation, which means you transfer assets

00:49:01.660 from the private sector into the public sector.

00:49:03.620 Just pause.

00:49:04.220 OK.

00:49:04.560 OK, we've got into this argumentative back and forth,

00:49:07.120 so we can't actually talk about this stuff.

00:49:08.920 What Francis is saying is, and what I'm saying is,

00:49:11.240 there's a massive difference between nationalization as in, I am the government, I will give you money

00:49:16.280 for this thing that you own, and now it comes into private property. Andy Burnham, for example,

00:49:20.360 has talked about nationalizing potentially water and rail, etc. I don't imagine he will do it by

00:49:26.140 taking it against the will of its current owners. He'll have to pay for it. But what happened...

00:49:30.700 Yeah, I mean, that's what I advocate. Yeah.

00:49:32.400 But what happened in Venezuela, which you supported at the time, was people were seizing

00:49:38.140 property without paying anyone a thing again i mean what list what you're talking about which

00:49:44.540 which aspects of the economy you're talking about francis have to tell you what was what was seized

00:49:48.380 or we can look it up so it's farmlands pretend to what what what percentage of the farmland was

00:49:52.620 seized that i do not why does that matter well i mean i just i don't know about that i mean if

00:49:56.300 100 farms were seized which is not a lot by the scale i just is that okay i guess the question

00:50:00.540 so you didn't know is no i didn't know about it i don't know about that that's fine you didn't know

00:50:03.660 So I'd be interested to know what...

00:50:05.960 Because I'd have to know what the context is and all the rest of it.

00:50:08.860 I just don't know about agricultural policy in Venezuela and the Chavez.

00:50:12.620 At the time, you know, what I thought was a big success

00:50:16.960 was the massive reduction of poverty by using oil revenues

00:50:19.520 to invest in social programs.

00:50:21.140 That did succeed.

00:50:22.040 It didn't succeed, obviously, when...

00:50:24.320 So what did you learn from getting that one wrong?

00:50:28.940 That I think you can...

00:50:30.660 Just because a model which you can see is working in terms of reducing poverty for, you know, at the time, 15 years, that's how long it reduced poverty for, that you should you should look under the bonnet.

00:50:41.900 How is it? How is it working? And I think, you know, just using using this case, fossil fuels in order to, you know, to bet the house on that to invest in your social programs is not a good idea.

00:50:56.140 and that's what Ecuador and Bolivia didn't do

00:50:59.720 because they didn't depend on oil.

00:51:01.560 Oil, you know, that is something which obviously

00:51:05.340 I think all of us who thought Venezuela was working

00:51:09.460 in that sense should have thought about.

00:51:11.300 I mean, when you say, you know, I'm saying Petro,

00:51:14.260 it doesn't matter if Petro...

00:51:15.100 So you think if Venezuela didn't have oil,

00:51:16.960 it would have been fine?

00:51:18.840 Well, they would have had to do something else,

00:51:21.300 which is what Ecuador and Bolivia did.

00:51:22.420 So you wouldn't have had what you've had?

00:51:24.540 Well, you can, again, you can just compare the neighbouring countries, but that's why I don't, I don't support, obviously, the Soviet system. I don't support that at all. 0.62

00:51:32.980 No one's accusing you of that. I would have been locked up in the Soviet system.

00:51:34.940 No one's accusing you of that.

00:51:36.060 Well, no, because you started talking about that then, you brought that in, while I was talking about Venezuela, and I don't think they're comparable because one is an overwhelmingly privately run economy, in which state intervention is actually less than it is.

00:51:46.660 Do you accept that there's a spectrum of political systems? Like, at one end you have fascism, at the other end you have communism, let's say?

00:51:53.640 I mean, I personally think it's a bit of a circle, but it doesn't really matter, right?

00:51:56.900 So would Venezuela be towards the communist side or towards the fascist side?

00:52:02.340 I mean...

00:52:03.300 Probably towards the communist side. Can we agree on that?

00:52:05.540 Well, I mean, you could say we're closer to communism in Britain than we are to fascism.

00:52:09.380 We are, but it doesn't matter.

00:52:11.160 I don't know how helpful that is.

00:52:13.120 Because their taxes on the rich were lower than ours, for example.

00:52:16.460 They didn't hike taxes on the rich either.

00:52:18.560 Communism is not just about taxes on the rich.

00:52:20.500 But what made it communist then?

00:52:22.020 Seizure of private property.

00:52:23.280 on authoritarian government so if they had if they hadn't i don't know what farmland or how

00:52:27.700 much of that farmland we're talking about the rhetoric of ugo chavez about the rhetoric i think

00:52:31.720 there's rhetoric and substance um but i don't you're making the pro donald trump argument there

00:52:35.940 well that's well there is true because trump trump 1.0 and trump 2.0 are very different

00:52:42.180 uh politically but trump rhetoric and trump practice is also i just i i no i don't i mean

00:52:48.800 The big problem, I would argue, with Venezuela, actually, is one of the big problems is they did reduce poverty, but they didn't actually redistribute wealth, particularly.

00:52:58.000 There wasn't some redistribution of wealth. They didn't hike taxes.

00:53:00.440 They were also highly corrupt.

00:53:02.820 Well, there's no question that you got... I mean, I don't think that's specific to Venezuela, by the way.

00:53:07.660 No, no, no.

00:53:08.040 Lots of poorer countries have endemic corruption in them.

00:53:10.960 And I don't think, you know, I mean, we could look across various poorer countries.

00:53:15.560 Poorer countries and corruption, that often goes together.

00:53:17.920 And it particular happens when you have, you know, a big, for example, rich resource that's susceptible to corruption.

00:53:26.240 But Venezuela, you know, I think looking back, you know, I think just saying, well, they're reducing poverty to a large degree, which they did.

00:53:33.560 Therefore, that this is a successful model.

00:53:35.620 First, you can't export it because it's oil dependent.

00:53:38.280 And secondly, they didn't actually change Venezuelan society.

00:53:40.680 They didn't redistribute the wealth.

00:53:41.800 You still got the big oligarchs in Venezuela.

00:53:43.460 They didn't.

00:53:43.940 That's what always happens in socialist societies.

00:53:46.320 That's the point.

00:53:47.160 That's the point. 0.71

00:53:47.920 The people at the top always seize a lot of the wealth and keep it for themselves.

00:53:51.840 Yeah, but under a Stalinist system...

00:53:54.100 No, not under Stalinist.

00:53:54.900 Well, under...

00:53:55.800 I mean, under a Soviet system, whatever you want to call it.

00:53:58.640 No, no, no.

00:53:59.900 In societies that have this level of disparity between the power of different people at the top... 0.52

00:54:05.460 But Venezuela always had that.

00:54:07.260 That's the problem.

00:54:07.820 Latin America is full of very unequal societies.

00:54:10.480 That's not caused by Hugo Chavez.

00:54:12.620 He came to power because Venezuela was such an unequal society.

00:54:16.740 And kept it exactly the same.

00:54:17.800 But he didn't...

00:54:18.200 Well, yes, I agree.

00:54:19.040 Just like the communists did in Russia, just like they do in every country that they take over. 0.65

00:54:22.900 Well, that's really...

00:54:23.680 Are you saying the people at the top of the Chinese Communist Party aren't the super-rich?

00:54:28.520 No, I'm not disputing that.

00:54:29.840 But that's obviously...

00:54:31.300 Are you saying the people at the top of the North Korean Communist Party?

00:54:33.620 This is what I don't understand as well.

00:54:35.140 Sorry, hold on a minute.

00:54:36.100 Hold on.

00:54:36.500 Let's pause this.

00:54:37.140 In those countries, what they did is they expropriated the rich, the bourgeoisie, if you like, the capitalist class, and the major landlords.

00:54:46.540 They confiscated. They did. I mean, you've got expropriation on a large scale.

00:54:51.800 Those people then didn't become the top of the Communist Party. These are different people altogether.

00:54:55.540 In Venezuela, he came to power. He didn't challenge the existing oligarchs.

00:55:01.820 What he did is use oil revenues to put into social programs

00:55:06.260 which reduce poverty.

00:55:07.440 That's not...

00:55:07.760 There's no...

00:55:08.700 I don't see what the comparison is,

00:55:10.180 because he didn't hike taxes on the rich

00:55:11.680 and he didn't engage in mass nationalisation of the economy.

00:55:14.020 There is actually no comparison.

00:55:15.660 Did it work in the end?

00:55:16.820 Absolutely not.

00:55:17.800 Should they have bet the house on fossil fuels?

00:55:19.700 Clearly not.

00:55:20.800 But there isn't actually a parallel,

00:55:22.620 because they didn't hike the taxes

00:55:24.500 and they didn't engage in mass nationalisation,

00:55:26.400 and they ended up with lower taxes

00:55:28.160 and less state intervention in the economy

00:55:30.220 than we have in this country.

00:55:31.540 Well, they weren't socialist enough.

00:55:32.920 All right.

00:55:33.240 Well, but they weren't.

00:55:34.120 Obviously, they were less state interventionists than we are.

00:55:36.080 That's just a fact.

00:55:38.080 So Venezuela and Hugo Chavez was more right-wing.

00:55:41.080 Did they have a lower...

00:55:42.660 Did they have a lower state sex? 0.79

00:55:43.780 You made your point. 0.75

00:55:44.760 Let's move on.

00:55:46.580 To come closer to home,

00:55:47.760 we spent a lot of time talking about this fairly abstract thing.

00:55:50.160 I fear no one's watching at this point.

00:55:53.180 Let's talk about Europe and the UK

00:55:57.660 and the argument you started to make at the beginning

00:56:00.880 about the fact that effectively we've got these two decades now of stagnation,

00:56:06.600 which you do after the financial crisis in 2008.

00:56:10.400 And the reason people are upset about mass immigration and illegal immigration,

00:56:16.000 we can bundle them together for this purpose,

00:56:18.420 people are upset about both because their wages are stagnating.

00:56:22.380 Not just. That gives it the intensity.

00:56:25.240 That gives it the intensity or more intensity?

00:56:28.300 I think the reason you get such an intense anger and fury, in my opinion, is people feel they're competing for scarce resources.

00:56:38.800 Factually speaking, if you look at Britain, Germany, you know, people don't think in terms of studies and statistics.

00:56:44.900 We've gone through that. But immigration has actually, without immigration, our economies would be poorer. 0.68

00:56:51.420 I mean, with, I mean. 0.69

00:56:52.700 Our GDP would be smaller, yes.

00:56:54.760 Well, no.

00:56:55.360 Our GDP per capita would be higher.

00:56:57.520 bad tax revenues. Tax revenues would be lower. And also, migrants, on average, tend to be

00:57:03.480 younger. So that means they're less dependent on public services. So they are net, overall,

00:57:09.300 tend to be net contributors to the exchequer.

00:57:11.340 Well, right now they are. 20 years from now, when they get older and need healthcare and

00:57:15.660 pupil places and schools and all of that.

00:57:18.160 What was the argument there, given our birth rates collapsing? I mean, without them, we'd

00:57:21.580 be in an even worse situation.

00:57:23.160 I'll tell you what the argument is. 0.95

00:57:24.160 We'd have a smaller working population and we'd have a bigger managing population.

00:57:27.960 I'll tell you what the argument is. 1.00

00:57:28.800 So the argument is that people make, which is accurate,

00:57:33.280 when you bring bodies in, you increase your GDP,

00:57:36.220 and some of them will work, therefore you increase your tax revenues, right?

00:57:40.680 But if you divide your GDP or your tax revenues

00:57:44.020 by the number of people who are now in the country

00:57:46.240 and include the cost of all the infrastructure that you then have to create,

00:57:50.100 hold on, all the infrastructure that you're going to have to build,

00:57:52.680 When you do it on a per capita basis, our per capita GDP, despite these massive waves of immigration that we've had, is flatlined, right?

00:58:00.700 Which is what you mean when you say people's living standards are flatlined.

00:58:03.780 Firstly, obviously, you can't divide GDP per capita because that's not how much money we all have.

00:58:13.420 We don't live in a society where GDP has been equally distributed amongst the public.

00:58:17.820 That's not what happened.

00:58:18.980 But what is just factually true is we would have less tax revenues in Britain and in Germany. 0.64

00:58:24.420 And we'd have a smaller working age population and a bigger ageing population. 0.96

00:58:29.700 That's the problem.

00:58:30.280 OK, but let's just take, let's make this really simple for people, OK?

00:58:33.400 Let's say you have a cake and the cake has 10 pieces, OK?

00:58:37.900 And there's 10 people.

00:58:38.740 So each person gets a piece, one piece of the cake and they're all the same size.

00:58:41.720 Hold on, hold on.

00:58:42.740 Just let me finish the argument and then we'll talk about what you disagree with.

00:58:46.260 There's 10 cake, 10 pieces, 10 people.

00:58:48.980 You've now added two more people,

00:58:51.480 one of whom has brought in a piece of cake.

00:58:53.160 So you've got 11 pieces, you've got a bigger GDP,

00:58:56.500 you've got more tax revenue,

00:58:57.540 but there's now 12 people that you have to spread the cake over.

00:58:59.800 No, I know, but this is a zero-sum fallacy.

00:59:02.500 It's just bad. It's just very bad.

00:59:04.140 It's a very popular fallacy on the left, yeah.

00:59:06.480 No, it's a really bad, it's just really bad economics.

00:59:09.640 Because? 1.00

00:59:09.820 Because migrants expand the cake beyond their own needs.

00:59:17.020 So what you mean, you end up, because of migration, people who are less dependent on public services, they're less likely to use their health services, for example, and what they do is they create economic output.

00:59:31.500 They bring tax revenues, but they also increase economic activity.

00:59:36.840 So what they do is they expand the economy in a way that means other people become better off as a consequence, because there's more taxes going into going.

00:59:48.080 They are spending more on the in terms of the exchequer than they are receiving from the state.

00:59:53.020 In order for that to be true, they would have to earn more than the average British person in income and pay more tax than the average person.

01:00:01.760 Well, I mean, study after study shows it's just I mean, this is just basic logic.

01:00:05.680 But if there's 10 pieces of cake...

01:00:08.440 If studies show that they're net contributors to the executive...

01:00:10.300 Oh, and hold on a second.

01:00:11.120 Just let's use basic logic instead of studies,

01:00:13.020 because there are studies that show otherwise too.

01:00:14.600 But it doesn't show that, by the way,

01:00:15.740 because they're less dependent on the state

01:00:17.480 in terms of what they've received.

01:00:18.460 Well, they are right now, right.

01:00:20.040 But what do you mean?

01:00:20.580 I don't understand what you mean by that.

01:00:21.620 OK, I'm an immigrant to this country.

01:00:23.180 Yes.

01:00:23.520 OK, 20 years ago,

01:00:24.880 I was making less than the average person in this country,

01:00:28.420 but I was also consuming less than the average person

01:00:30.740 in NHS services and whatever.

01:00:32.860 I am now in my mid-40s.

01:00:34.440 I have two children.

01:00:35.680 I am now probably going to use all of the services that the state has to pay for more.

01:00:40.320 I've remained an immigrant.

01:00:41.800 And if I wasn't earning more than the average person, I would now be a net drain.

01:00:45.660 And my children would be, and their children would be, and this carries on, right?

01:00:49.600 So my basic argument is very simple. 1.00

01:00:51.340 When you have a large wave of low skill, badly paid immigration, which is what we've had,

01:00:57.200 by the way, under the Tories, just the same as we did under Labour,

01:01:00.540 that reduces your GDP per capita instead of increasing it,

01:01:04.420 which is exactly what the statistics show.

01:01:06.960 No, it doesn't.

01:01:07.640 Our GDP...

01:01:08.820 Every study shows that economic growth.

01:01:11.300 Every study shows that economic growth.

01:01:12.380 May I finish my point?

01:01:13.320 You've had plenty of time to talk, have you not?

01:01:16.020 We are sixth in GDP,

01:01:17.840 and people say we're the sixth largest economy in the world.

01:01:19.740 We're 29th, or 27th, depending on how you measure it,

01:01:23.500 in GDP per capita.

01:01:25.340 But it's a bad statistic.

01:01:27.860 Despite the wave of immigration that we've had,

01:01:31.540 we are not seeing people getting prosperous

01:01:33.680 No, no, I know. You're absolutely right.

01:01:35.600 No, but that's because of the economic model.

01:01:37.120 What the evidence, what the research shows over and over again,

01:01:40.320 and I cite the evidence, I cite the studies into this,

01:01:43.120 is that we have had weak economic growth, which we agree on,

01:01:46.720 but without immigration, it would be even weaker.

01:01:49.120 That's the problem, okay?

01:01:50.640 So no one is saying immigration has solved the problem of the economic model.

01:01:55.920 Why would I be a socialist? 0.91

01:01:56.960 I would go, well, we don't need to get rid of the economic model, 0.72

01:01:58.640 we'll just have mass immigration, that will solve the problem. 0.94

01:02:00.400 Who's arguing that? No one's arguing this. 0.82

01:02:01.680 Well, you want both.

01:02:03.340 I believe that immigration has enriched this country

01:02:06.040 factually, economically and socially 0.92

01:02:07.800 compared to what it would have done.

01:02:09.660 But these two things...

01:02:10.500 But also, what would happen with the care sector?

01:02:12.400 What would happen to the care sector?

01:02:13.560 Hold on, hold on.

01:02:14.860 So this is where it's actually really important

01:02:16.740 to have the discussion

01:02:17.500 because you say immigration has enriched this country.

01:02:19.980 I agree. 1.00

01:02:20.880 Immigration has also damaged this country. 1.00

01:02:22.600 These two things can be true at the same time 1.00

01:02:24.380 and I'll explain why. 1.00

01:02:26.120 Not all immigrants are the same. 1.00

01:02:27.500 Some immigrants contribute more. 1.00

01:02:29.340 Some immigrants contribute less.

01:02:30.620 Some immigrants are conducive to the cohesion of society and they start businesses and they create jobs. 1.00

01:02:37.140 And some immigrants commit crime, right? 1.00

01:02:39.140 Immigration is a word, but what it hides underneath it is millions of people who have different behavioral patterns, 0.99

01:02:44.900 different cultural attitudes, different ways of being, different rates of committing certain crimes. 0.51

01:02:50.280 Some of them are way more likely to sexual assault women and others less so, right?

01:02:54.060 So when you talk about immigration has enriched this country,

01:02:56.640 that includes people who've come here and opened a restaurant that we all go to and enjoy and have

01:03:00.740 a chat in and also people who commit grooming gangs offenses right so when you talk about

01:03:05.260 immigration it's not a catch-all there there's you could be more selective about it and i mean i

01:03:10.440 think which is what i believe in the selective immigration system where you get the best of the

01:03:14.160 world and you don't get the worst of the world and we've had pretty much the reverse here's something

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01:04:49.780 You're absolutely right that migrants are people like anyone else. 0.99

01:04:53.980 There was a whole breadth of experiences, of attitudes and all the rest. 1.00

01:05:03.500 Factually speaking, we would have been in a far worse state because entire sectors of the economy would have collapsed.

01:05:10.580 The NHS would have collapsed, the care service would collapse, whole swathes of industry wouldn't exist.

01:05:18.180 and we would have a smaller working age population

01:05:20.880 supporting an increasingly ageing population.

01:05:24.060 In a 10-year period between 2014 and 2024,

01:05:28.640 the number of people over the age of 65 increased by 1.5 million.

01:05:32.420 Our birth rate at the same time is collapsing,

01:05:34.220 partly because the government, under our economic order,

01:05:36.580 people cannot afford childcare and they can't afford the cost of kids

01:05:39.940 because of a housing crisis and how expensive childcare is.

01:05:42.880 So just factually speaking, if you end up with a low birth rate

01:05:46.600 and an expanding ageing population, and you don't deal with that,

01:05:50.280 you end up in a massive crisis.

01:05:52.240 And you can see a demographic crisis in the places like Japan,

01:05:55.140 where they haven't had mass immigration,

01:05:56.900 and their economy has now been stagnant for about 30 to 40 years.

01:06:01.900 So we can see that experiment in real time.

01:06:04.640 In terms of migrants, you know, I mean, in terms of criminal offences,

01:06:08.080 the percentage overall of migrants who commit offences

01:06:12.940 is roughly the same as, it's proportionate to the British population. 0.99

01:06:17.260 Hold on, but again, you're pooling people together in order to do this. 0.89

01:06:20.760 So yes, it's true if you take Swedes and you take Russians and you take Ukrainians

01:06:25.700 and you take people from the Indian subcontinent and you take people from Eritrea

01:06:29.100 and you take people from Somalia and then you average all of them out, 0.77

01:06:32.320 yes, you will get the same rate of offending average as the British public.

01:06:36.140 But that is not true when you drill down into the statistics. 1.00

01:06:38.760 People from parts of the world where women are treated as second-class citizens 0.93

01:06:42.200 where, like in Afghanistan, they're effectively not allowed to go outside without a chaperone.

01:06:46.800 People from those parts of the world...

01:06:48.400 So people fleeing the Taliban?

01:06:49.500 Hold on, hold on.

01:06:50.860 People from those parts of the world, we know this in the same studies that you talk about,

01:06:54.920 and if the government allowed us to look into this and measure these things properly,

01:06:58.480 we would see even more so. 1.00

01:07:00.200 People from these parts of the world commit sexual offences, for example, 1.00

01:07:04.160 at a way higher rate than the average British person.

01:07:07.080 Way higher rate.

01:07:08.220 And so the average British person might be saying, why are we bringing them in?

01:07:11.560 I think, I mean, Afghanistan's quite an interesting example.

01:07:13.960 I've met Afghan refugees.

01:07:15.280 You like studies, so talk about the stats that I'm giving you. 1.00

01:07:18.080 People from certain parts of the world commit sexual offences

01:07:20.700 at a much higher rate than the average person. 1.00

01:07:22.920 Why would we bring them here? 1.00

01:07:24.800 Well, I mean, in terms of Afghanistan, for example,

01:07:27.260 because, I mean, firstly, as I've said, overall, there is no disparity.

01:07:30.900 I mean, you said it's about averaging out.

01:07:32.240 Yes, it is.

01:07:32.620 You said it's about averaging out.

01:07:33.520 I'm saying, people from parts of the world...

01:07:35.500 No, I'll give you an example.

01:07:36.360 No, OK, I'll give you an example.

01:07:37.560 I'll give you an example.

01:07:38.340 No, I think it's a really good example.

01:07:39.420 Well, take, because this comes up in terms of the grooming scandals

01:07:42.360 and so on, because you mentioned that, you mentioned that.

01:07:45.340 What is the rate of child sex offences amongst Pakistani British men?

01:07:51.920 Tell me, what percentage?

01:07:54.100 No, what percentage?

01:07:54.900 Owen, can you just come back to the...

01:07:56.360 No, I am, I am.

01:07:57.080 No, but that's...

01:07:58.240 No, you're not.

01:07:58.980 Yes, I am.

01:07:59.740 No, you're not.

01:08:00.560 You're saying people...

01:08:01.500 You brought up grooming guys, which I mentioned half an hour ago.

01:08:03.100 Just come back to the question.

01:08:04.120 I am, though.

01:08:04.740 Owen, could you just come...

01:08:05.580 I'm giving an example.

01:08:06.680 I'm giving an example.

01:08:07.580 Everyone watching can see that you're dodging.

01:08:09.340 No, I'm not dodging.

01:08:10.080 Just come back. 1.00

01:08:10.600 Do you think Pakistan is an example?

01:08:12.440 Is Pakistan one of those places?

01:08:15.060 Can you come back to...

01:08:15.820 Is Pakistan one of those places? 0.98

01:08:16.900 Just come back to the argument I made. 0.99

01:08:18.420 I am.

01:08:18.800 People commit sexual offences at different rates, depending on where they come from. 0.98

01:08:22.580 Is Pakistan an example of a place you regard as a place...

01:08:24.660 I don't have the stat that you're asking.

01:08:26.200 Okay, I don't need to answer the stat.

01:08:28.000 You answer this question instead, please.

01:08:29.960 Do you regard Pakistan as a country in the world where there are problematic attitudes towards women...

01:08:36.880 Do you?

01:08:37.920 I think...

01:08:39.200 do you yeah i think pakistan is a place where there's a need for a struggle obviously like

01:08:43.520 lots of countries against misogyny and so on but i'm asking so it's a place where people treat

01:08:47.600 women badly is it the role of women in pakistan is well i mean they've had they've had a female

01:08:54.080 leader unlike the united states of america is there and is there huge problems of misogyny

01:08:58.480 and so in pakistan yes okay so we agree then so what so what's your point what because if you look

01:09:02.800 at sex offenses yeah committed by british pakistani men yeah they are i'm not talking 0.51

01:09:07.520 I'm talking about British Pakistani men. I'm talking about immigrants. 0.99

01:09:09.760 Okay, talking Pakistani full stop. People of Pakistani origin.

01:09:12.880 These are British people, aren't they?

01:09:14.080 Would you agree that they're British?

01:09:15.120 Yes, but I'm saying this includes people who were born here or who have moved here from Pakistan.

01:09:19.360 That's not who I'm talking about.

01:09:20.400 Who are you talking about? This is ridiculous. 0.99

01:09:21.920 Immigrants. We were talking about immigrants. 1.00

01:09:23.920 So you consider British Pakistani immigrants?

01:09:26.080 No, you're saying that people from other parts of the world, when they come here,

01:09:30.720 some commit sexual offences more than others because of where they're from. 0.92

01:09:33.520 And then you brought a British Pakistani to a British and therefore not immigrants. 0.95

01:09:36.720 The statistics include people who were born in Pakistan and are migrants

01:09:40.160 and people who are born in this country who are British.

01:09:42.940 I'm talking about immigrants. 0.98

01:09:44.740 I'm talking about first-generation immigrants who are not British. 0.99

01:09:47.600 People who are quote-unquote fresh off the boat from Somalia and Eritrea 1.00

01:09:51.880 commit sexual offences at a higher rate than the British population. 1.00

01:09:55.660 That would mean, in the case, for example, of those who are of Pakistani heritage 0.97

01:09:59.320 in this country, that would mean they would have had an outsized impact 0.96

01:10:04.060 on those offences. 0.80

01:10:05.180 They're not immigrants, they're British.

01:10:06.300 No, the statistics include people born in fact, born in fact.

01:10:09.800 Not the statistics.

01:10:11.800 Which statistics then?

01:10:12.800 Which ones are you talking about?

01:10:13.800 You're talking about such small sample sizes.

01:10:15.800 You can't, you can't talk about them and you can't extrapolate them.

01:10:18.300 Which ones?

01:10:19.300 There are studies from all over Europe where you're actually allowed to measure this.

01:10:22.300 We can bring them up on the screen for people watching, which show-

01:10:25.300 You shouldn't do that because you need to bring the studies to me.

01:10:27.800 You can't just say-

01:10:28.300 Okay, no worries.

01:10:29.300 Dean, could you get my phone, please?

01:10:30.300 We'll get Vanessa to show us this.

01:10:33.800 So Owen, we took a little break to look this up.

01:10:35.800 I just want to remind you where we pause this, okay?

01:10:38.740 I made the very simple argument,

01:10:40.200 which is people from certain countries around the world,

01:10:42.740 particularly countries where treatment of women

01:10:44.980 is not what we would all like it to be,

01:10:46.860 are more likely to commit sexual offences.

01:10:48.660 And I think a lot of people are reasonably going to ask

01:10:50.720 in that situation, why would we not be more selective about...

01:10:54.020 Is that a fair summation of where we parted?

01:10:55.700 Yeah, yes, that's fine, yeah.

01:10:56.660 Cool. And I said there are studies that show this,

01:10:59.300 and we argued, you tried to bring up British-Pakistanis,

01:11:01.940 and I made the point, well, I'm talking about immigrants

01:11:03.720 because British-Pakistanis are British, blah, blah, blah. 0.98

01:11:05.800 So, here are the studies from Europe that I'm talking about. 1.00

01:11:09.240 Finland, there was a study in 2017-2018 that found that foreign-born offenders represented 27.2% of suspects versus 7% of the population. 0.63

01:11:21.780 So, they're several times more likely than native Finns to commit that offense.

01:11:26.880 In particular, Iraqi men are 12.8 times more likely to be suspected of a sexual offense.

01:11:32.020 and for specifically I think it's 1.31 per thousand people

01:11:37.420 versus 0.08 for Finnish men.

01:11:40.420 These studies are replicated in Germany, in Sweden and in Europe

01:11:44.600 and by the way we're not allowed,

01:11:46.020 the government does not collect these statistics deliberately in this country

01:11:49.140 and many people would argue that's to conceal the reality

01:11:52.440 to quote protect community cohesion.

01:11:55.960 So do you accept that this is, I'm reading out here,

01:11:59.700 This is from Venice AI, all these studies that you asked for.

01:12:02.880 Do you accept this?

01:12:04.660 I don't know those particular figures, but I will take the figures that you just said.

01:12:07.620 So we can accept them for a second.

01:12:08.780 Okay, cool.

01:12:09.480 So, hold on.

01:12:10.280 So, if it's the case that foreign-born people from certain parts of the world 0.89

01:12:16.140 are way, way more likely to commit rape, and we all, I think, agree rape is bad, 1.00

01:12:21.260 wouldn't we be reasonable to be more selective about allowing people 1.00

01:12:24.640 from that part of the world to come here?

01:12:26.040 So the problem is it's not controlling for age in particular?

01:12:28.260 No, these studies do control for age, and it reduces some of the effect.

01:12:31.860 I've got, I mean, okay, because I'm looking here.

01:12:34.340 So it says, for example, and...

01:12:36.480 It reduces some of the effect, but you...

01:12:39.300 Germany is a really striking example, for example,

01:12:41.760 because that dramatically reduces it.

01:12:44.040 But it's still significantly different to the native population.

01:12:47.820 That's, I mean, for example, a 2026 peer-reviewed study

01:12:50.760 looked at all 23, 33 countries from 2008 to 23,

01:12:55.020 obviously 2015 being the big population movement,

01:12:57.120 and it found there was no statistically significant relationship

01:13:00.480 between immigration inflows and recorded sexual crime.

01:13:03.760 But that's not what I'm talking about.

01:13:05.380 But you are, because we're talking about the increase in...

01:13:07.220 No, you're backing your own point.

01:13:09.340 But I'm not, because you're talking...

01:13:10.800 I've got to be able to answer it.

01:13:12.060 The figures that I'm talking here, so for example, it says...

01:13:14.280 I accept what you said and let me answer it.

01:13:15.980 But we're talking here particularly about places with higher levels of immigration.

01:13:19.720 No, no, you just said immigration doesn't seem to increase the number of sexual offences.

01:13:23.100 That matches your earlier statement that overall immigrants don't commit sexual crimes at a high rate.

01:13:29.020 It was looking at asylum specifically as well.

01:13:30.820 Well, fine, but that still doesn't change the argument.

01:13:33.740 My argument is not all immigration is the same, and the evidence clearly bears that out.

01:13:39.000 Now, you say, if you include the fact that these people are younger... 0.75

01:13:42.540 Young men.

01:13:43.360 Young men.

01:13:43.840 Yeah, because that's what...

01:13:45.100 Yeah, and those are the groups that are more likely to commit sexual offences.

01:13:48.340 Then it's not as skewed.

01:13:49.700 It's still skewed, but it's not as skewed.

01:13:51.240 But that's the same argument you made about the NHS.

01:13:53.720 You say these people are great to have because they're young.

01:13:56.100 And I'm saying, yeah, but they're young also means they commit to a higher rate.

01:13:59.680 So wouldn't we be more selective?

01:14:01.260 And particularly the point I'm trying to get you to accept is that not all people from all parts of the world are the same.

01:14:06.960 They have different cultural values.

01:14:08.420 And some of those cultural values we might not want here.

01:14:11.100 Well, again, I mean, what you're arguing there is about partly about assimilation.

01:14:15.000 No, it's not.

01:14:15.840 No, it's not about assimilation.

01:14:16.940 Well, with all due respect, it is, because, again, I don't know why we keep dismissing, not least because it keeps coming up in this whole discussion, which is the main discussion we've had in this country about this whole issue, which is about the issue of grooming gangs, is that...

01:14:31.860 I'm not talking about grooming gangs.

01:14:32.980 Yeah.

01:14:33.980 I'm not, though.

01:14:34.400 We're talking about sex offences.

01:14:36.040 We're talking about those who commit sex offences.

01:14:37.500 Yeah.

01:14:38.280 Okay.

01:14:38.880 We've accepted, all of us, that in Pakistan, the position of women is significantly worse than it is in this country. 0.94

01:14:46.220 Mm-hmm. 0.99

01:14:46.940 We have a large, settled Pakistani population,

01:14:50.100 but we also have large numbers of people arriving from Pakistan.

01:14:55.080 The evidence shows that they are not more likely

01:14:58.200 to commit sex offences than the overall population. 0.92

01:15:01.520 And we've had, obviously, an assimilation of,

01:15:04.420 despite people claiming that Muslims are not assimilated in this country.

01:15:06.980 I know you said they're not assimilated in this country.

01:15:09.100 I said they're not assimilated.

01:15:10.680 When did I say that?

01:15:11.260 I looked up, you said about British Muslims not being assimilated.

01:15:14.340 When did I say that?

01:15:15.060 I can look it up if you want

01:15:17.900 You can if you want

01:15:19.400 The one stat I've always

01:15:20.560 Whenever I've talked about this

01:15:22.140 That I've always given is

01:15:23.080 I've said that

01:15:23.860 I quoted the Guardian

01:15:25.060 Which I imagine you're a fan of

01:15:26.720 Which said that more Muslims

01:15:27.800 Have joined ISIS and al-Nusra

01:15:29.480 Than have joined the British army 0.80

01:15:30.700 Right

01:15:31.180 So I don't think that's

01:15:32.980 Evidence of assimilation

01:15:33.920 But a large number of Muslims

01:15:35.860 Are very well assimilated

01:15:36.840 In this country

01:15:37.320 A large number are not

01:15:38.080 I just

01:15:38.280 But I think that part

01:15:39.820 We have a huge Pakistani population

01:15:42.480 Of British Pakistani origin

01:15:44.560 And we have large migrant flows from Pakistan to Britain that you don't have, despite what we said about within Pakistan in terms of problems that women face, that women don't face problems in this country, you don't see that.

01:15:58.060 And that is to do, obviously, with the fact that you obviously can bring people in from different parts of the world and people can assimilate. 0.98

01:16:05.680 The point you make about Afghanistan, I just really have to just make this point because I think it is absolutely key, is this country helped destroy Afghanistan. 0.96

01:16:13.220 We funded the jihadis, the mujahideen, in the 1980s. 0.99

01:16:17.220 I don't know if you support that or not.

01:16:19.220 Do you support the West's support of jihadis in the 1980s in Afghanistan?

01:16:23.220 I was about... When did the war start?

01:16:26.220 No, come on. I oppose it. Look, I'm a geriatric millennial.

01:16:29.220 I don't know how old you are.

01:16:30.220 Yeah, I'm similar age.

01:16:31.220 Okay, we don't need to piss around there, come on.

01:16:34.220 You either support it or you don't, in hindsight.

01:16:36.220 I think the West should not... 0.97

01:16:38.220 Do I, in hindsight, support the West giving money to the mujahideen? No. 0.99

01:16:41.740 We agree.

01:16:43.260 But we agree.

01:16:44.920 Well, no, that's not controversial.

01:16:46.040 Because lots of people still defend that.

01:16:47.740 They defend that on the basis of bringing down the Soviet Union and all the rest.

01:16:51.020 So that, I mean, that is not...

01:16:52.580 I don't know.

01:16:53.560 I've never seen you comment on this.

01:16:54.680 So what's your argument? 1.00

01:16:55.440 We helped destroy Afghanistan there, but we have to accept their rapists. 0.98

01:16:58.120 And then, we committed heinous war crimes in Afghanistan. 0.99

01:17:03.240 Do you know what we did to Afghanistan? 0.99

01:17:04.280 I do. 0.96

01:17:04.580 Do you know about the war crimes we committed? 0.93

01:17:05.540 I do. 0.95

01:17:06.120 Right. 1.00

01:17:06.520 So we have to bring in their rapists now. 0.99

01:17:08.500 No, because the vast majority of Afghan refugees are not rapists. 0.99

01:17:10.840 No, they're not.

01:17:11.400 No. And what we have, in my view, is an obligation to people in countries we've helped, in my opinion, destroy.

01:17:20.140 And if you don't want to bring in refugees from those countries, then you should have loudly marched and opposed. 1.00

01:17:25.280 I did. 1.00

01:17:25.800 Did you march against the war in Afghanistan?

01:17:26.980 I marched the war in Iraq, against the war in Iraq. Afghanistan was a bit...

01:17:29.620 Well, I'm talking about Afghanistan. Did you support the war in Afghanistan?

01:17:31.540 Do you think we should have gone in? At the time, look, I was young.

01:17:34.620 Did you support going into Afghanistan?

01:17:36.080 I didn't have a strong opinion at the time because I was very young.

01:17:38.900 But my view on it was always it would have been better to go in

01:17:41.580 and take out Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda with special forces.

01:17:44.840 So did you vocally oppose the occupation when it was happening at any point?

01:17:49.100 I was probably, what, 16 at the time?

01:17:50.940 No, you weren't. It ended in 2021.

01:17:52.840 Did you oppose the occupation?

01:17:53.700 Oh, yeah, yeah. I think I pretty much said it.

01:17:55.780 I said one time I appeared on GB News.

01:17:57.980 It was a catastrophic mistake.

01:17:59.720 No, no, I'm not saying after it happened.

01:18:01.800 I'm saying during the occupation, what did you do to oppose it?

01:18:06.700 What did you say about it?

01:18:07.480 I was against it.

01:18:09.480 Come on, can you cite an example of you publicly?

01:18:12.480 Did you protest about it? Did you write articles denouncing it?

01:18:14.480 Did you do videos about the West occupation of Afghanistan?

01:18:17.480 Did you do any of those things?

01:18:19.480 Owen, I became a public figure about six years ago.

01:18:22.480 So in that time I've said it was a mistake.

01:18:26.480 You were a citizen of this country and you could have used your position to speak out about this.

01:18:33.480 What position?

01:18:34.480 You could have protested.

01:18:36.480 You could have...

01:18:37.360 Look, I encourage people to use social media as part of activism.

01:18:40.360 There wasn't social media when the war in Afghanistan started.

01:18:42.680 There was social media in 2021.

01:18:44.220 There was social media in 2020.

01:18:45.440 There was social media in 2019. 0.99

01:18:46.720 Don't be silly. 1.00

01:18:47.240 You're being ridiculous. 1.00

01:18:47.780 And I've always said I oppose what happened in Afghanistan. 0.99

01:18:49.160 So did you post...

01:18:50.500 Did you use whatever limited position you have in British society?

01:18:54.940 Did you post opposing...

01:18:56.300 Did you say anything opposing it? 0.97

01:18:57.220 This is ridiculous, aren't you? 0.97

01:18:58.040 It isn't. 0.99

01:18:58.720 It's absolutely ridiculous.

01:19:00.020 Do you think everyone in this country who opposed the invasion of Afghanistan 0.75

01:19:02.800 has tweeted about it?

01:19:03.880 Is that what you think?

01:19:04.520 But I think...

01:19:05.500 So there you go.

01:19:06.060 I think that if you're someone who's vocally now speaking out about taking refugees in from Afghanistan, 1.00

01:19:12.260 then you should, in my opinion, have taken a position against what we did to that country. 0.98

01:19:17.500 I'm not. Hold on.

01:19:18.440 And we committed heinous atrocities against people.

01:19:21.440 We shot innocent people.

01:19:22.780 I hear you.

01:19:23.380 What war crimes did we commit?

01:19:24.440 Did you ever have the war crimes?

01:19:25.120 No, no, no.

01:19:25.480 We're not going to play this game.

01:19:26.840 It's not a game.

01:19:27.480 It's not a game.

01:19:28.420 Owen, just stop.

01:19:29.020 We helped.

01:19:29.500 Owen, you're just talking over me now.

01:19:31.460 You've got to stop.

01:19:31.980 You're talking over me.

01:19:32.760 I'm not. 1.00

01:19:33.060 We helped wreck Afghanistan. 1.00

01:19:34.620 I accept that. 1.00

01:19:35.380 You want to take responsibility.

01:19:36.360 I agree with you.

01:19:36.900 So take responsibility.

01:19:37.820 I am taking responsibility.

01:19:39.040 So what I'm saying to you is

01:19:40.040 I can only take responsibility for my actions.

01:19:42.380 My actions on this is I opposed it

01:19:45.000 when I became a public figure, and I've always said so.

01:19:47.440 However, I do not...

01:19:48.780 I'll look that up.

01:19:49.220 Owen, just stop talking.

01:19:51.260 However, I do not think we should not take 0.65

01:19:53.840 any refugees from Afghanistan.

01:19:55.140 I've never said so.

01:19:56.700 So what's the argument?

01:19:57.140 I have never said so.

01:19:58.040 What's the argument?

01:19:58.580 I said very clearly in language,

01:20:00.720 and people can come back and watch it, 1.00

01:20:02.100 we should be more selective about accepting people 1.00

01:20:04.960 from certain parts of the world 1.00

01:20:06.380 where we clearly see,

01:20:07.960 as we do in the studies,

01:20:09.120 which you challenged, right?

01:20:10.340 We see clearly in the studies

01:20:12.100 that people from certain countries, 1.00

01:20:13.780 hold on, hold on,

01:20:15.600 from Iraq, for example,

01:20:16.820 in the study that I quoted you,

01:20:18.540 are 13 times more likely

01:20:20.160 to commit sexual offences in that study.

01:20:23.420 Should we not be a little bit more selective 1.00

01:20:25.580 before letting people in from that part of the world? 1.00

01:20:27.440 Again, again, we really,

01:20:28.640 look, as I spoke about in that book,

01:20:30.720 as I spoke about in that book,

01:20:32.140 I went to Iraq,

01:20:33.740 I went to Baghdad,

01:20:34.580 And when people found out I was British, they said to me, you destroyed this country.

01:20:38.980 Our forces in that country include the Americans predominantly, but also the British.

01:20:43.740 I'm afraid to say...

01:20:44.300 You're dodging the argument.

01:20:44.940 No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not at all.

01:20:46.620 I'm saying we have a responsibility.

01:20:49.400 You're saying we should be more...

01:20:50.460 Selective. Selective.

01:20:51.780 Yeah, but what do you mean by selective?

01:20:52.840 I can tell you. If you're interested, I can tell you.

01:20:54.900 How are you screening for people who are potentially rapists or not?

01:20:57.300 I don't understand your argument here. What's your argument?

01:20:59.380 Well, one of the arguments is you might be more careful about who you're in.

01:21:02.980 That means you do extra checks.

01:21:04.460 That means that you don't let in people with certain criminal convictions,

01:21:07.100 which we currently do.

01:21:08.400 That means that we don't...

01:21:09.220 How do you do that?

01:21:10.260 How do you do what?

01:21:11.060 Sorry, I'm really...

01:21:12.660 I'm interested in what you are doing.

01:21:13.500 If you are right...

01:21:14.120 Because you don't disagree, as far as I can tell.

01:21:16.540 I'm trying to work out the disagreement, actually.

01:21:18.180 If you let me talk, you'll find it out.

01:21:19.800 No, but you're dragging this out. 0.86

01:21:21.620 You support Afghan refugees and people from Iraq... 1.00

01:21:25.400 No, I don't. 1.00

01:21:26.000 So you don't support any of them coming in?

01:21:27.120 No, that's not what I said.

01:21:28.460 Well, then what are we disagreeing on?

01:21:29.740 What we're disagreeing on is, instead of listening,

01:21:31.480 you keep interrupting me and talking over me.

01:21:33.600 Tell me what your policy is.

01:21:35.340 My policy is that we're much more selective 0.99

01:21:37.540 about who we let into this country. 0.99

01:21:39.260 Do you understand the word selective? 0.64

01:21:40.620 No, I know what you're saying.

01:21:42.080 I know what you're saying,

01:21:43.160 but I'm saying, what does that mean in practice?

01:21:45.300 I'm trying to tell you.

01:21:46.340 Tell me.

01:21:47.280 So first and foremost, 1.00

01:21:48.700 I think anyone who comes into this country illegally, 1.00

01:21:51.380 that is on a small boat, on a lorry, et cetera,

01:21:53.900 is to me immediately far more suspect than anybody else.

01:21:56.720 What's your evidence for that?

01:21:58.700 I'm telling you my opinion.

01:22:00.600 I know, but I'm not interested in opinions.

01:22:02.520 I thought we were doing empirical facts.

01:22:03.960 You've got to let me explain what I'm saying. 1.00

01:22:05.500 Why is an Afghan... 1.00

01:22:06.360 Oh, and this is just degenerated and you interrupting me. 1.00

01:22:08.420 No, it's just you doing...

01:22:09.380 You asked me to explain.

01:22:10.640 I'm trying to explain.

01:22:11.320 So just be quiet for a moment and I'll explain.

01:22:13.060 Calm down, though.

01:22:14.160 Chill out. 1.00

01:22:14.840 If you are coming into this country by the first act that you do is you violate the laws 1.00

01:22:20.080 of this country, right? 1.00

01:22:21.200 You are coming in here deliberately to avoid our immigration system because you can apply

01:22:25.080 for asylum, right?

01:22:26.360 I have friends from all over the world who've come here by applying for asylum. 0.73

01:22:29.440 If you don't do that and you come here on a small boat or you come here on a lorry by breaking the laws of this country, it's clear to me that you should be subjected to a far higher standard of scrutiny because you are, in my opinion, far more likely to be doing so in order to get around the immigration system, which would never have let you in in the first place. 0.56

01:22:47.540 Before we just talk about applying for asylum, look, am I allowed to ask or is it just going to be just, OK. 0.68

01:22:51.420 So is your argument, first of all, there, that your argument isn't even a blanket rejection of people who arrive on boats?

01:22:58.600 It is a blanket rejection. 0.99

01:22:59.800 So is that Afghan... 1.00

01:23:01.900 So anyone who's... 1.00

01:23:03.960 If they were an Afghan woman, for example, would you reject them? 1.00

01:23:07.660 I'm saying... 1.00

01:23:08.780 Would you?

01:23:09.900 Honestly, I'm not trying to trick you up.

01:23:11.860 I just want to work out what you're saying.

01:23:12.940 Fine.

01:23:13.340 I would definitely not reject an Afghan woman who applied for asylum

01:23:16.420 and is entitled to asylum. 0.99

01:23:17.940 No, if she arrived on a small boat. 0.99

01:23:21.540 How are Afghans supposed to apply to asylum?

01:23:24.200 What we should do is create refugee processing centres in the region

01:23:27.800 Well, here we go. Great. Oh, look, it sounds to me...

01:23:30.420 When you let me finish, we find out that we actually agree on more,

01:23:32.640 but you keep interrupting and misrepresenting.

01:23:34.100 I'm not trying to misrepresent it, because originally what you were saying

01:23:36.960 is we need to do extra checks.

01:23:38.140 It's like, we'll just ring up the Afghan police and ask if they've got in trouble

01:23:42.420 with the authorities. I don't think that's going to work, obviously.

01:23:44.720 Obviously, the problem we've got is we shut down safe and legal routes. 0.89

01:23:47.760 That's why you've got a massive increase in people arriving by small boats. 1.00

01:23:51.040 In the early 2000s, the rate of people arriving in this country

01:23:53.760 as asylum seekers is not actually that different at its peak

01:23:56.940 from the level of today, for example,

01:23:59.240 that they weren't arriving on small boats.

01:24:01.260 What we did is we closed down safe and legal routes. 1.00

01:24:04.880 So when I met Afghan refugees, 1.00

01:24:06.320 I don't know if you've met these people

01:24:07.440 who arrived on these boats.

01:24:08.480 Have you ever spoke to an Afghan refugee?

01:24:10.360 The guy who runs the taxi company

01:24:12.120 that I use all the time in my local city

01:24:14.440 is an Afghan refugee.

01:24:15.080 Who arrived on a small boat, I'm asking.

01:24:16.220 I don't think he arrived on a small boat,

01:24:17.960 which is why I...

01:24:18.740 But have you spoke to any...

01:24:19.000 Okay, fair enough.

01:24:20.200 Look, I went to Calais in 2015

01:24:22.420 and I spoke to people who were there.

01:24:24.580 The reason they're arriving, they're moving to Britain is they speak English, almost all of them.

01:24:31.000 I mean, they spoke English very fluently. They don't speak French.

01:24:33.740 People from the Democratic Republic of Congo stay in France because they speak French. 0.60

01:24:37.960 That, you know, is a fairly straightforward explanation for that one.

01:24:42.160 And, you know, in one case, I met a 15-year-old boy whose father had been murdered by the Taliban.

01:24:51.000 In another case, I met someone who'd lived in Britain for...

01:24:54.760 He came here as a kid, and then he was deported from the country

01:24:59.420 because he was classed as an illegal migrant.

01:25:02.720 And he went back to Afghanistan, and then he was jailed by the Taliban.

01:25:06.440 And then he fled, and then he...

01:25:08.520 Sorry, he wasn't jailed by the Taliban.

01:25:10.000 He was captured and tortured by the Taliban, I believe, at the time,

01:25:12.880 because this was before the Taliban took over the whole of Afghanistan.

01:25:15.220 Then they took over parts of Afghanistan, not the big cities.

01:25:18.580 These were, you know, we destabilised a country.

01:25:23.120 We both agree, as far as I can tell, that we need safe and legal routes,

01:25:27.520 which would then reduce the number of people arriving by small boats.

01:25:30.000 I don't really know what the disagreement is.

01:25:31.580 I can explain to you what the disagreement is.

01:25:33.380 I believe those numbers should be far smaller than they are.

01:25:35.860 So an example, just for people understanding the context of this,

01:25:40.500 when I came to Britain in 1995, 96 actually is probably more accurate,

01:25:44.620 There was about 55,000 people coming here legally every year.

01:25:49.260 Legally.

01:25:49.940 Sorry, say again.

01:25:51.080 1996, total net immigration into Britain was about 55,000.

01:25:56.400 We now have hundreds of thousands of people coming legally,

01:25:59.860 and we also have tens of thousands,

01:26:02.280 maybe more than 55,000 a year, coming illegally.

01:26:05.620 Yeah, it's a very small proportion of overall immigration, 1.00

01:26:07.500 but yeah, that's true.

01:26:08.220 Overall levels of immigration have massively increased, yeah. 0.98

01:26:10.900 My view is we wouldn't be able to afford public services, 1.00

01:26:14.160 they wouldn't function our economy would collapse we wouldn't support a raging population if they

01:26:17.840 didn't but not we're not having flashbacks to jimmy the giant here um fair enough 55 000 people

01:26:25.440 a year were coming totally legally yeah when i came 30 years ago right now that's the number of

01:26:31.840 people who come here legally now you can say it's a small proportion of the total immigration but

01:26:35.920 that's only because overall immigration has shut up and the point i'm making to you is we now have

01:26:40.320 more people coming illegally than were coming legally 30 years ago and don't you think that

01:26:46.320 that is a far better explanation of why people are upset about immigration than your argument

01:26:51.520 i think we shut down legal and safe routes which had consequences and we then helped destabilize

01:26:57.760 the middle east and also central asia we we we shouldn't have we shouldn't have done what we

01:27:03.600 did in afghanistan sure we shouldn't have invaded iraq and slaughtered huge numbers of people um

01:27:08.720 And if we hadn't have done that, then we wouldn't have large numbers. 0.90

01:27:12.280 And Libya, where huge numbers of people, I mean, without Libya,

01:27:14.840 people wouldn't even be passing that route is obviously absolutely central

01:27:17.820 to people crossing the Mediterranean.

01:27:19.320 My view is, you know, if you break it, you own it.

01:27:22.940 And you shouldn't go around launching wars which slaughter

01:27:26.360 hundreds of thousands of people more.

01:27:29.020 I mean, in Iraq alone, the excess death toll is about 400,000.

01:27:31.980 That was back in 2013. 0.63

01:27:34.100 You shouldn't commit terrible crimes, destabilize entire countries,

01:27:38.720 And then when people from those countries arrive, then demonise them.

01:27:42.040 And I would notice...

01:27:42.460 I'm not demonising anyone.

01:27:43.420 Or, well, you're...

01:27:44.500 I'm not, I haven't...

01:27:45.220 When have I demonised anyone? 0.54

01:27:46.400 Well, I mean, we're talking, basically what we're saying is that all Afghan men should be seen as potential rapists. 1.00

01:27:53.440 I think that is obviously...

01:27:54.280 That's not what I said.

01:27:54.800 You are, because that's...

01:27:55.540 No, I said they can...

01:27:57.100 Do you understand what per capita means?

01:27:59.760 That's the de facto argument.

01:28:00.780 I said we should be more selective.

01:28:01.980 I think, well, look, I believe we should have safe and legal routes

01:28:05.360 and that those safe and legal routes should judge cases based on their merits.

01:28:09.280 So I don't disagree with you on that.

01:28:10.840 I don't see what the disagreement is in that sense.

01:28:13.280 I don't think a lot of your supporters would support opening safe and legal routes.

01:28:17.080 The reason we had safe and legal routes for Ukraine, for Hong Kong,

01:28:20.900 for the vast majority of the world, those were all gone.

01:28:23.520 You can't apply for asylum in the vast majority of the world to Britain. 0.83

01:28:26.040 You just cannot do that. 1.00

01:28:27.000 So people should just break our law and come here.

01:28:28.160 The only way you can do that is, it's not breaking the law.

01:28:30.040 Well, it's not, you know, it's...

01:28:33.260 They're breaking into our country. 1.00

01:28:34.860 You don't have to claim asylum under international law 1.00

01:28:37.780 in the first country you end up. 0.66

01:28:39.240 But they are breaking our laws. 0.98

01:28:40.700 They're crossing our borders without our consent.

01:28:42.020 We shouldn't have broken international law 0.99

01:28:43.760 and invaded Iraq, then, should we? 0.92

01:28:44.940 We literally broke into... 0.99

01:28:46.920 So that entitles them to break into our country. 0.99

01:28:48.540 We broke into Afghanistan. 0.99

01:28:50.120 We broke into Iraq. 1.00

01:28:50.960 I agree, and I was against that. 1.00

01:28:52.060 And we slaughtered...

01:28:53.360 Well, not very vocally, but I saw some things,

01:28:55.080 but we slaughtered huge numbers of people.

01:28:56.980 We destabilised those countries.

01:28:59.100 And what I find so offensive about what you're saying is

01:29:02.900 millions of people were displaced because of those wars

01:29:05.820 and the vast majority of them stayed either internally displaced

01:29:09.280 or in their poorer neighbouring countries.

01:29:11.640 Your argument, your argument in practice is

01:29:13.860 the countries surrounding the nations we destabilised,

01:29:17.820 they should bear the brunt.

01:29:19.720 They're the ones who should carry the burden on what we did.

01:29:22.500 Why? Why should Pakistan, which opposed the war in Iraq, 0.95

01:29:25.880 and, for example, well, sorry, Pakistan is Afghanistan. 1.00

01:29:29.500 Why should Pakistan, why should that be the place 0.97

01:29:32.280 where millions of Afghan refugees,

01:29:35.280 although the Pakistani regime has been driving them back to Afghanistan,

01:29:38.700 why should they take in millions of Afghan refugees

01:29:41.000 when we're the ones who invaded and occupied Afghanistan? 0.99

01:29:43.520 Why, in the case of Iraq, why should its neighbouring countries 0.98

01:29:46.360 take in all those refugees when they didn't invade Iraq? 0.96

01:29:49.760 Why? Your argument is, we did the displacing, you accept that, 1.00

01:29:53.900 But you're saying it's the poorest, the poorer countries surrounding those nations, which do take almost the vast majority.

01:30:01.640 The tiny percentage of Afghan refugees and Iraqi refugees come here.

01:30:07.740 There were millions of Afghan refugees, although there were in Iran and Afghanistan, sorry, in Pakistan.

01:30:13.120 There were millions of Iraqi refugees which fled into the neighboring countries.

01:30:18.360 A tiny, tiny percentage, a tiny percentage came to this country. 1.00

01:30:22.640 and you think that's a huge outrage 1.00

01:30:26.080 and they're breaking into this country.

01:30:28.140 But they are. 0.99

01:30:29.040 Well, again, we shouldn't have broken into their countries. 0.88

01:30:30.800 I'll just let you talk uninterrupted for a very long time.

01:30:34.320 I am perfectly happy for us to accept, you know,

01:30:37.220 Afghan translators and other people who helped coalition forces

01:30:40.680 and there will be other people who are at particular risk,

01:30:42.880 et cetera, et cetera, particularly if they're carefully vetted.

01:30:45.820 But what I'm saying to you is just because the West did this

01:30:49.340 or did that does not entitle people

01:30:51.520 to break into our country against, Owen,

01:30:54.780 against the will of the people of this country.

01:30:57.160 Offer them to take the legal reads then?

01:30:58.360 The people of this country have...

01:30:59.860 You believe in democracy, I think, right?

01:31:02.020 The people... Hold on.

01:31:03.720 See, the moment I say anything, you begin interrupting.

01:31:05.740 The people of this country have voted over and over and over and over

01:31:10.640 to reduce immigration and to get illegal immigration to zero. 0.99

01:31:16.220 Why is it right to allow... 1.00

01:31:18.580 You clearly support these people breaking into our country. 1.00

01:31:21.520 Who are you to overrule the wishes of the British people? 0.98

01:31:23.940 I've said that I support safe and legal routes.

01:31:25.940 I don't want people across the challenge.

01:31:27.600 Dangerous for them, for a start.

01:31:28.840 I don't want that.

01:31:29.240 So they shouldn't be coming?

01:31:30.780 Open safe and legal routes, and then you're reducing them. 1.00

01:31:32.500 I'm happy to open a refugee processing centre. 1.00

01:31:35.020 The problem is it wouldn't let in 90% of the people who are coming.

01:31:37.780 Well, I don't know where you're plucking those statistics from.

01:31:41.320 Most of the people who are breaking into this country are not coming from war zones.

01:31:44.200 Why was it under the... 1.00

01:31:46.340 They're economic migrants.

01:31:47.660 Most of them are economic migrants. 1.00

01:31:49.260 Well, we've already gone through, actually. 1.00

01:31:51.420 You know, the numbers of people arriving from Afghanistan and Iraq

01:31:54.460 are two of the great sources of people arriving in this country.

01:31:56.700 I don't think they're economic migrants.

01:31:58.060 I don't think anyone would say that's a reasonable way of describing...

01:32:01.260 I said the majority of the people who are breaking into this country are economic migrants.

01:32:04.340 They're mostly coming from places, actually, of places which have huge conflict,

01:32:09.740 all dictatorships, some of which are supported by the West, I would know.

01:32:12.600 What about Sueta, when you saw tens of thousands of people

01:32:15.640 breaking into Spanish territory in North Africa? 0.55

01:32:19.360 Are they fleeing Moroccan that we overthrew? 1.00

01:32:21.680 No, they're just economic migrants. 1.00

01:32:23.260 They want to come to Europe because it's a better quality of life. 0.82

01:32:25.640 No one is arguing that you should...

01:32:27.760 Well, I'm not, because I think the caricature you're making

01:32:29.880 is that we should abolish borders.

01:32:31.860 In the world in which we live, you can't do it.

01:32:34.600 Well, we haven't, because otherwise, as I've noted, 1.00

01:32:37.260 you wouldn't have the vast majority of the world's refugee population

01:32:41.260 in the poorest or poorer countries. 1.00

01:32:43.320 Because they can't get here.

01:32:44.940 They're not willing to pay people smugglers tens of thousands of euros

01:32:47.780 to get here.

01:32:48.600 I mean, yes, they tend to be better off people who end up coming here, actually.

01:32:51.360 Yes, you're right.

01:32:51.880 And actually, you know, the issue is that the vast majority of refugees fleeing our wars end up in other countries which didn't cause the wars.

01:33:01.800 You've made that point. Fine. 0.94

01:33:02.700 No, I know, but that's why I think it's an absurdity.

01:33:06.580 You made the point.

01:33:07.040 Your view is we should just trash these countries and then we shouldn't...

01:33:11.240 That's not my point.

01:33:12.180 My point is we should never have trashed these countries.

01:33:13.780 We should have shoulder the responsibility.

01:33:15.200 No, that's not my point.

01:33:15.900 My point is we should...

01:33:16.420 It is in practice.

01:33:17.660 My point? 1.00

01:33:18.520 Oh, well, in the same way I could say your point is that people should be allowed to break into our country. 1.00

01:33:22.520 No, I've said safe and legal routes would stop that from happening. 1.00

01:33:24.820 I don't want people crossing the channel.

01:33:26.340 It's really dangerous for them for a start, as I've said.

01:33:28.400 But when people arrive here, I think their case has to be judged on a case-by-case basis.

01:33:31.640 And I'd note, under a Conservative government...

01:33:34.040 Why are you pointing me? I'm not a Conservative.

01:33:35.300 No, no, no, no, no.

01:33:35.920 But, ah, no, this is the point I was going to make.

01:33:38.720 A Conservative government which wanted to reduce immigration.

01:33:41.640 It did. 0.99

01:33:42.520 Why didn't they?

01:33:43.440 What happened?

01:33:43.920 Why was there a massive gap?

01:33:45.600 I'm asking.

01:33:45.920 Oh, the same economic argument he made earlier.

01:33:47.740 I mean, we've had senior conservative politicians like Swell Abram,

01:33:51.020 and she was in the studio last week, making this very same point.

01:33:54.440 The reason the last conservative government refused to cut mass immigration

01:33:58.800 is they didn't want to have to accept that total GDP would fall.

01:34:03.820 No, they knew the economic consequence would be severe.

01:34:06.640 They wanted to reduce immigration. That became the whole thing.

01:34:09.060 They knew that because we measure economic activity with GDP

01:34:13.500 and not GDP per capita.

01:34:15.580 I'm telling you what they said.

01:34:17.060 Can I finish telling you what they said?

01:34:18.460 They knew those economic sectors

01:34:20.460 and those public services

01:34:21.300 would collapse without them.

01:34:22.460 Can I just tell you what they told us?

01:34:24.720 Is that okay?

01:34:25.300 Who are you talking about?

01:34:26.120 Suela Bravman.

01:34:26.860 Oh, God.

01:34:27.900 She was the Home Secretary.

01:34:29.200 Yeah, I know. 0.97

01:34:29.560 She's now a reform politician. 0.99

01:34:30.840 Yeah, but she was the Home Secretary at the time. 0.99

01:34:33.240 We had Liz Truss on the show.

01:34:34.440 We've had Boris Johnson on the show.

01:34:35.720 We've had all these people on the show

01:34:36.680 and we've asked them all these questions.

01:34:37.880 So I'm telling you what they said.

01:34:39.000 Is that okay?

01:34:40.120 Can I do that?

01:34:40.480 That's totally fine.

01:34:41.360 But these are all self-serving comments by them.

01:34:43.500 Well, you said, what did they tell you?

01:34:45.880 I'm trying to tell you, right?

01:34:47.220 What they all said was the reason that you can't cut mass immigration

01:34:51.020 is that the Treasury doesn't want you to

01:34:53.480 because then the headline economic figure of GDP goes down

01:34:56.880 and then people get upset because the media will be able to say

01:35:00.820 you tanked the economy.

01:35:02.100 Can I say why I think they didn't?

01:35:04.720 Oh, so you didn't want to know why they said it?

01:35:06.840 You just wanted to express your mind.

01:35:08.040 Go ahead.

01:35:08.480 You know, I studied history and what we were always told to do

01:35:13.460 is not to take a source at face value.

01:35:16.560 You look at the context and their purpose

01:35:18.540 and particularly self-justification by historical figures.

01:35:22.000 You don't just accept what they say.

01:35:24.240 We accept the headline polling figure

01:35:26.040 that most people in this country want immigration to do. 0.91

01:35:28.280 We accept that. 0.88

01:35:29.820 Yes.

01:35:30.540 Yeah.

01:35:31.260 What happens when you start polling people

01:35:33.180 about the main chunks of immigration?

01:35:36.040 What happens?

01:35:37.220 I don't know what you're talking about.

01:35:39.380 The main subsets of immigration,

01:35:42.160 for example, foreign students.

01:35:43.800 That is a massive subset of who pay £40 billion a year

01:35:48.500 into this country.

01:35:49.760 You poll people about foreign students. 1.00

01:35:52.060 They go, do you want to get rid of them? 1.00

01:35:53.000 No, I don't want to get rid of them.

01:35:54.280 Then you keep going. 1.00

01:35:55.400 You go, what about people from Ukraine and Hong Kong?

01:35:57.480 No, no, no, no.

01:35:57.900 That's, again, we've already got here, by the way,

01:36:00.060 that is a vast chunk of people arriving in this country already.

01:36:03.580 And then you start asking people about, like,

01:36:06.980 healthcare workers, nurses.

01:36:08.920 is when you poll people about the actual subsets of immigration,

01:36:15.020 people, by large margins, say they don't want to remove those migrants.

01:36:20.180 And then when you go...

01:36:21.440 But you end up with a vast majority of immigration. 0.96

01:36:24.740 And that's the problem. 1.00

01:36:25.760 I can tell you exactly the immigration I'd want to reduce. 1.00

01:36:28.560 It's very simple. 0.98

01:36:29.300 It is a tiny proportion of immigration.

01:36:30.720 Whatever you say will be a tiny proportion of immigration.

01:36:32.200 It's not a tiny...

01:36:32.780 Well, Owen, you've got to understand, you know,

01:36:34.340 a lot of people from your position

01:36:35.720 try to paint the opposition to immigration in this country

01:36:38.100 is an extreme position and an extreme...

01:36:39.880 I haven't said that.

01:36:40.840 You haven't said that here,

01:36:41.680 but I think you have said that in the past.

01:36:43.300 No, no, I just...

01:36:44.140 I haven't.

01:36:44.760 I object to the scapegoating

01:36:46.260 of migrants' problems they don't cause.

01:36:47.800 I object to that. 1.00

01:36:48.420 So do I.

01:36:49.340 So do I.

01:36:49.960 Okay, well...

01:36:50.860 And I've said so repeatedly.

01:36:52.040 I just have a video out last week

01:36:53.520 saying immigration debate

01:36:54.960 has become too black and white.

01:36:55.920 The problem is if the Conservative government

01:36:58.960 had massively reduced

01:37:00.880 the number of foreign students,

01:37:02.500 then they would have lost tens of billions...

01:37:03.820 They would have lost billions of pounds,

01:37:05.500 which they then would have happened.

01:37:05.880 But this is why I say I can tell you 1.00

01:37:06.940 the sensible immigration that should be reduced. 1.00

01:37:09.140 First of all, yes, it's true 1.00

01:37:10.760 that a lot of those foreign students

01:37:11.960 are paying high university fees.

01:37:13.760 A lot of them were not going to legitimate universities.

01:37:17.080 And the evidence is very clear on this.

01:37:18.400 There were all sorts of fake schemes

01:37:20.100 to get people into this country

01:37:21.480 under fake student visas who were not actually studying.

01:37:24.240 The same thing is true with some key workers.

01:37:27.020 We've seen restaurants in parts of the country

01:37:29.240 which have had 30 people come in

01:37:30.960 under sort of key worker views, all of this stuff.

01:37:33.480 But really, it's very simple.

01:37:35.100 The way I would reduce it, 0.98

01:37:36.040 I would stop all illegal immigration because it's illegal. 1.00

01:37:38.920 People shouldn't be coming. 1.00

01:37:39.640 You're talking about a tiny percentage.

01:37:40.680 Let me just finish.

01:37:41.720 Well, it's more people than were coming here when I came here a year.

01:37:45.240 That's quite a lot.

01:37:45.800 Okay, fair enough, but it's not...

01:37:47.320 Can I just finish?

01:37:48.200 I know, but I thought it was an interview.

01:37:50.440 Well, an interview requires that you listen to me and I listen to you.

01:37:53.480 I am, I am, but...

01:37:53.960 I have listened to you for a long time,

01:37:55.400 and I'm just trying to make one point and you interrupt, okay?

01:37:58.200 So I would reduce fake students. 1.00

01:38:01.000 I would reduce the number of people who are coming here illegally to zero 0.99

01:38:04.840 because they shouldn't be coming. 1.00

01:38:06.300 I would also reduce the number of people...

01:38:08.220 In fact, not reduce.

01:38:09.060 I would just say there shouldn't be any benefits 1.00

01:38:10.680 for foreign nationals in this country. 1.00

01:38:12.280 There's no reason. 1.00

01:38:13.540 Let me finish, and you can argue with it if you want.

01:38:16.720 So anyone in this country...

01:38:17.760 When I came to this country and I was a student,

01:38:19.580 I had a stamp in my visa which said

01:38:20.920 no recourse to public funds.

01:38:23.020 That should be the case.

01:38:23.800 If you can't support yourself in this country,

01:38:25.160 you shouldn't be here.

01:38:27.340 It's just difficult.

01:38:28.120 If you do these long...

01:38:29.100 It's just such an important point you raised.

01:38:30.740 They're not that long.

01:38:31.940 Okay, keep going, because that's really...

01:38:34.320 Go for it, go on.

01:38:35.260 And at the same time, I would make sure that people who come here

01:38:39.060 who are net contributors, i.e. they're paying more in tax

01:38:41.940 than they're taking, if they are compatible, et cetera, et cetera,

01:38:45.180 we take those people. 0.54

01:38:46.580 So that would be a pretty sensible immigration policy in my view.

01:38:49.700 So you're going to...

01:38:50.260 That wouldn't reduce the good students and all the rest.

01:38:52.800 So you're going to take tax credits off all those care workers 0.95

01:38:55.660 and drive them all into poverty?

01:38:57.320 Is that what you're going to do?

01:38:58.200 No. 1.00

01:38:59.020 You're taking away all benefits from foreign nationals. 0.60

01:39:01.600 Yes. 0.97

01:39:01.900 So you're now going to...

01:39:02.600 If you're a foreign national in this country... 0.75

01:39:04.180 Unless you're part of a very specific sectoral programme where we accept this. 0.97

01:39:08.020 Oh, really? OK, well, I'd be fascinated to know what you mean by that.

01:39:12.460 So people who work in the care sector have very, very low wages.

01:39:16.540 Most benefits in this, you know, it's not unemployment benefits

01:39:20.780 that make up the working age bill, it's, for example, tax credits,

01:39:24.780 which cost vast sums of money, where the government steps in

01:39:27.820 because the gap between people's income and their ability to live

01:39:32.180 is too big because they're not paid enough. 0.94

01:39:34.180 The care sector depends on foreign nationals. 1.00

01:39:37.400 It does at the moment, yeah. 1.00

01:39:39.180 It does depend on it at the moment.

01:39:41.040 Fair enough. 1.00

01:39:41.380 Until we suddenly have this massive army of British-born care workers, 0.98

01:39:44.440 which we don't have...

01:39:45.000 We have a million young people who are not employed and not trained.

01:39:46.980 Look, look.

01:39:48.160 And they could be doing those low-pay jobs

01:39:50.040 and getting valuable life experience.

01:39:51.920 That's a separate discussion.

01:39:53.180 It's not.

01:39:53.440 It is a separate discussion because it hasn't happened yet.

01:39:55.420 I'm talking about the here and now.

01:39:56.480 Okay.

01:39:56.920 I'm saying, would you strip away tax credits

01:40:01.020 and all other in-work benefits for care workers

01:40:04.880 who literally, the whole country, what?

01:40:08.380 In an already underfunded, understaffed care sector.

01:40:11.960 If you're a foreign national,

01:40:13.280 I'm not saying you do it all overnight, 0.83

01:40:14.980 but a phased-in policy, absolutely.

01:40:16.640 So then they will all leave the country

01:40:18.340 and then we won't have any care workers.

01:40:19.980 That's correct. 0.99

01:40:20.500 Well, who's going to look after all those elderly people now then? 1.00

01:40:22.820 Who's going to look after? 1.00

01:40:23.560 No, tell me.

01:40:24.080 I'm about to, if you let me say it.

01:40:25.840 Okay.

01:40:26.160 Okay.

01:40:26.560 So what I'm saying is, first of all, of course,

01:40:28.460 like with every sector of the economy,

01:40:29.620 You have certain carve-outs for certain groups that you are okay with.

01:40:32.860 But on the broad sweep of things, I'm perfectly fine.

01:40:35.580 So are you saying care workers?

01:40:36.600 Can I finish, for God's sake?

01:40:38.160 Do care workers keep their minimum benefits or not?

01:40:39.920 I'm asking.

01:40:40.860 Are you interviewing me here?

01:40:42.920 Well, it feels like I am now, yeah.

01:40:44.200 Yeah, well, maybe you should stop.

01:40:45.720 Well, it's just because of these long, long discursive talks.

01:40:48.540 I don't know.

01:40:48.900 I'm just asking.

01:40:49.580 It doesn't...

01:40:49.960 I'm saying...

01:40:50.520 I got about a sentence in to my answer.

01:40:54.160 I'm perfectly happy to have a policy that foreign nationals in this country 0.99

01:40:58.500 do not have access to the benefit system. 0.99

01:41:01.340 There may be some temporary carve-outs

01:41:03.000 for certain industries

01:41:03.940 where that transition will take some time.

01:41:05.800 But in a country in which we have

01:41:07.060 a million young people

01:41:07.980 who are neither in employment

01:41:09.100 nor in education,

01:41:10.540 the idea that we can't find...

01:41:12.580 You know, people make this argument

01:41:13.600 about the hospitality sector.

01:41:15.460 Oh, it's completely dependent 0.99

01:41:16.580 on foreign labour. 0.64

01:41:17.280 It is. It is. 0.59

01:41:18.600 You can't go into a restaurant

01:41:19.920 in this country

01:41:20.640 without encountering someone

01:41:22.380 who's foreign.

01:41:23.600 However, those jobs,

01:41:25.420 when I first started,

01:41:28.500 came here were being done by british people and yes they've all now been replaced by people from 1.00

01:41:32.820 other countries who are happy to work in worse conditions for less money it's true but the 0.99

01:41:37.540 moment you prevent the system from topping up the wages of those foreign people who are here 0.96

01:41:42.980 british people will do those jobs and the prices by the way will go up and so will working conditions

01:41:47.380 is your genuine argument i just really want to absorb what you're saying here yeah are you saying

01:41:51.700 that you're going to take away in-work benefits

01:41:54.500 from migrant workers in the care service,

01:41:58.660 hospitality, retail, which will leave, 1.00

01:42:01.720 and there's no question, them unable to live 0.91

01:42:04.120 and pay their rent and look after their kids.

01:42:08.200 They will, the vast majority of them, 0.97

01:42:09.420 almost certainly leave the country. 0.99

01:42:10.480 They will no longer be able to...

01:42:11.120 That's the purpose of the policy, yeah.

01:42:12.740 And then you're saying that all of a sudden,

01:42:16.100 now all these sectors with millions, in some cases,

01:42:21.160 if you top them together, of migrant low-paid workers

01:42:24.200 who are propping up these sectors, which are often... 0.87

01:42:26.820 We are propping them up. The government's propping them up.

01:42:28.800 Which are understat. No, we're subsidising them

01:42:30.780 because their wages are too large. 0.99

01:42:31.560 That's what propping up means. 0.95

01:42:32.460 We're subsidising the bosses who aren't paying them properly.

01:42:34.560 But all of a sudden, you're saying,

01:42:36.040 these sectors will suddenly...

01:42:38.040 There'll be all these people in this country 1.00

01:42:39.480 to just start looking after elderly people, 1.00

01:42:42.560 keeping hospitality running. 1.00

01:42:44.120 They will just...

01:42:44.940 All of that will happen,

01:42:46.180 and those industries won't just collapse?

01:42:47.720 Are you serious?

01:42:48.580 If you do it overnight...

01:42:49.460 This is madness.

01:42:50.120 Owen, just hold on.

01:42:51.160 You're misrepresenting the argument. I'm saying you do it overnight. I said phased-in policy.

01:42:55.020 So how long? How long a period? Because you're betting the House on all these sectors being able to get care workers, retail workers, hospitality workers to fill in what you're saying will be, I mean, we're talking potentially millions of people.

01:43:10.420 Migrant workers, I don't know how many in-work benefits.

01:43:13.460 Do you notice that? I think the real disagreement here is I don't think you understand how the market works, which is maybe why the basis of your entire worldview.

01:43:21.160 Do you know how the market works?

01:43:22.820 If there's a shortage of labour in a particular sector,

01:43:25.640 particularly a low-skilled sector like hospitality,

01:43:28.000 it's not... I've been away, it's not that hard, let's be honest, right?

01:43:30.920 What happens is, if you can't find enough staff, what do you do...

01:43:33.600 Why are they understaffed?

01:43:34.700 Can I just finish this argument? Yeah?

01:43:38.040 What happens is, when there's not enough staff for a particular job,

01:43:41.240 what do you do as an employer?

01:43:42.800 You put the wages up so that you attract more people.

01:43:46.360 And when that is the case,

01:43:47.960 you make it a more appealing job for people to do.

01:43:50.140 So is your genuine argument, because at the moment the care service, you'd accept as understaffed, we don't have enough care workers, even though we have, obviously. 0.95

01:43:56.220 So your argument is that what will happen is when these foreign care workers at the moment, literally, including, I'm sure, people watching, 0.98

01:44:05.100 looking after their elderly parents and grandparents and doing an incredibly difficult, arduous job for very little wages,

01:44:13.380 they will now be made literally unwelcome in the country because they won't be able to live.

01:44:17.500 They won't be unwelcome.

01:44:18.260 They will be in welcome because you can't afford, if you take away from, if you take away people on that low pay, if you take away in work benefits, not least when they have families, they won't be able to afford to live here.

01:44:28.320 Then you're arguing that there will be a massive hike in wages and there will be this army of British born people who will start doing care work, retail and hospitality, including in companies with very little profit margins, if we're going to be brutally honest about it.

01:44:42.160 Is that honestly your view? That's going to happen. And these sectors aren't just going to collapse.

01:44:46.600 Well, if you do it overnight, they'll collapse.

01:44:48.980 But if you do it over time, of course that will happen.

01:44:51.300 This is, I think, it's funny talking about economic insanity and problematic.

01:44:55.060 It's one of the most insane economic ideas I've ever heard.

01:44:57.660 Well, the market.

01:44:59.020 The market.

01:45:00.360 If the market worked, then you wouldn't.

01:45:02.880 Oh, and we run a small business.

01:45:04.200 I'm telling you my experience as a business owner.

01:45:05.620 Why is the care service on to staff then?

01:45:07.160 Because the wages are too low. 0.83

01:45:08.620 That's why.

01:45:09.420 If you paid me. 0.91

01:45:10.280 So why aren't they increasing the wages now in order to attack more care workers?

01:45:15.080 Why hasn't that happened?

01:45:16.260 For a very simple reason, because you are getting the government

01:45:20.440 to give poor people from the third world money to come and fill those jobs. 0.98

01:45:24.460 That's why. 0.92

01:45:25.400 So why aren't we getting enough to do it then?

01:45:27.700 Because the wages are still too low.

01:45:29.460 Yeah, but I'm asking, if clearly immigration is not filling,

01:45:33.100 we have all these industries where you still have vacancies,

01:45:35.600 so why hasn't they increased the wages to increase the number of people working

01:45:41.140 based on the fact that they aren't getting people from these poorer countries

01:45:44.060 to fill these vacancies?

01:45:44.880 They're getting lots and lots of people from poor countries.

01:45:47.460 It's understaffed.

01:45:48.840 Yes, because there's such a massive opposition to immigration.

01:45:51.340 You can't bring in people who are going to work for five quid an hour. 0.98

01:45:53.820 So then they should improve the wages, but they're not.

01:45:56.760 But they haven't done that.

01:45:58.240 They won't. 0.87

01:45:58.840 As long as you have cheap foreign labour, they will never improve the wage. 1.00

01:46:01.340 You're saying if there are vacancies, the market will adjust for that by improving wages. 0.96

01:46:06.020 I'm saying that is not happening because there are vacancies and they're not improving the wages. 1.00

01:46:09.540 Because there's massive downward pressure on wages by having millions of people from foreign labour. 1.00

01:46:13.920 But then that's not enough to deal with the staffing point. 0.99

01:46:16.180 Okay, we can leave it there.

01:46:17.180 But all I'm saying is you would crash the economy

01:46:21.800 in a most devastating fashion.

01:46:23.980 You are not obviously going to get people to suddenly fill all these...

01:46:28.440 So British people can't do those jobs? 0.98

01:46:30.080 I'm saying...

01:46:30.900 That million people, million young people

01:46:32.960 who are not in education or training,

01:46:34.820 they can't serve a plate of food?

01:46:37.360 It depends on the circumstances of the young person.

01:46:39.020 Because they've got too much ADHD or anxiety or whatever?

01:46:41.380 Well, some of them actually are people who are disabled, yes.

01:46:43.340 Some of them are.

01:46:43.920 But not all of them are.

01:46:44.760 But also, it's not a static population.

01:46:46.600 This is the problem as well.

01:46:47.440 You don't seem to offer this.

01:46:48.740 One million is not.

01:46:50.240 These are people who are.

01:46:51.840 They're going in and out, of course.

01:46:52.800 They're going in and out of often low-paid. 0.79

01:46:53.860 So let's get them more jobs that are better paid.

01:46:55.420 They're often in low-paid, insecure jobs or zero-hour contracts.

01:46:58.420 Which is what I don't want.

01:46:59.800 Fine.

01:47:00.180 But the reason they're in low-paid.

01:47:00.840 You want to build a socialist state, like Comrade.

01:47:02.860 But the fact is they're in insecure work, which is often transient.

01:47:06.120 Right.

01:47:06.400 Which is that that's the nature of the service sector and the hospitality sector and all the rest of it.

01:47:09.980 So if there were more jobs for them in those sectors and the wages were higher, they'd be better.

01:47:13.560 Well, no, because you're reducing, firstly, the demand in the economy

01:47:16.120 because there will be less people paying in the economy.

01:47:20.080 That's what you'll do.

01:47:20.660 You'll withdraw from the economy demand 0.81

01:47:23.080 by huge numbers of people leaving the country.

01:47:25.140 Yeah, but you said yourself they need subsidies just to be able to live.

01:47:28.380 Yes, their wages are too low.

01:47:29.280 So we are paying them.

01:47:30.380 The government's paying these people.

01:47:30.560 But that money is then circulated in their local communities

01:47:34.140 because they go and pay. 1.00

01:47:34.160 So you want to take from British people, give to foreigners 0.98

01:47:36.300 so they spend money here. 1.00

01:47:37.420 That's what you want.

01:47:38.940 I'm saying those sectors would collapse.

01:47:42.500 That's what those subsidies do. 0.99

01:47:43.840 Those subsidies are for British people,

01:47:46.280 and it doesn't matter where you're from

01:47:47.680 if you're in these low-paid jobs. 0.82

01:47:51.000 British people, most in-work benefits 0.89

01:47:52.860 are going to British people,

01:47:54.340 and it's because wages are too low.

01:47:56.160 I want to increase wages,

01:47:57.260 which is why I support a strong trade union movement,

01:47:59.200 and that's why I want collective bargaining.

01:48:00.680 This is what you should support.

01:48:01.500 You should support collective bargaining

01:48:02.800 in the care sector.

01:48:04.040 The point about care sector,

01:48:05.560 about care bargaining,

01:48:06.860 sorry, the point about collective bargaining

01:48:08.540 is it enables workers

01:48:10.320 to use their collective power

01:48:12.320 to improve their wages on the basis the market will not do that.

01:48:15.460 That's why it exists.

01:48:16.340 And in a place like Finland, you mentioned Finland before,

01:48:18.320 they have collective bargaining and they have higher wages and so on.

01:48:21.380 But what you're arguing in practice would be,

01:48:24.620 it would literally mean millions of people potentially,

01:48:28.120 a vast number of people would leave sexes dependent on migrant workers

01:48:31.240 without some huge army of people waiting to fill those jobs.

01:48:34.520 And you stop demand out of the economy.

01:48:36.080 Let me say the final thing on it and then we'll move on

01:48:38.080 because we've got to let you go soon.

01:48:40.380 What I'm saying is, over time, 1.00

01:48:42.640 I would like to replace people who come into this country 1.00

01:48:45.020 who can't even earn enough money to pay enough tax 0.99

01:48:47.220 to be net contributors with British people doing those jobs. 0.53

01:48:50.280 You don't agree?

01:48:51.520 I know, but can I...

01:48:52.320 You don't... No, no.

01:48:53.380 You don't agree.

01:48:54.300 I think that's perfectly possible.

01:48:56.040 That's our disagreement.

01:48:57.100 Just quickly, lastly, just lastly, though,

01:48:58.920 you do accept, because there's lots of costs to that,

01:49:00.880 one of them is that the working age population

01:49:04.680 will shrink relative to pensioners. 1.00

01:49:06.800 You must accept that. 0.54

01:49:07.640 It will reduce, yes.

01:49:08.720 do you not see that imposes really quite steep costs at the same time that you've just collapsed

01:49:12.960 all these industries by the way but do you know i haven't collapsed any industries you have but

01:49:16.480 do you not see that you have left which industries have i collapsed what are you talking about

01:49:20.800 retail hospitality large huge numbers of huge huge i mean you have look low-paid cleaners i mean

01:49:28.960 you suddenly get we're going back around in circles you've said you accept you get a smaller 0.89

01:49:33.120 working age population and that that imposes costs because you have an aging population sure 0.65

01:49:38.000 Okay. Okay, fair enough. 0.99

01:49:40.000 Owen, thank you so much for coming on the show.

01:49:42.200 Final question is always the same.

01:49:43.320 What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? 0.92

01:49:46.620 Male suicide.

01:49:48.020 Biggest killer of men under 50 is suicide.

01:49:50.720 And suicide, for anyone who's been touched by it,

01:49:54.160 is just like a nuclear bomb going off in people's lives.

01:49:56.960 And even though the rate of depression and mental distress

01:50:00.180 is higher amongst women, the suicide rate is much higher amongst men.

01:50:04.220 And that's often to do with it being seen as unmanly

01:50:06.860 to talk about people's feelings and problems there's a stigma attached to it um one thing

01:50:12.060 i've written about before which i don't think comes might sound a bit surprising is homophobia

01:50:15.980 against straight men because um most straight men get homophobic these at some point if they're seen

01:50:21.500 as not manly manly enough not aggressive enough not getting into fights not talking about women

01:50:26.220 in a degrading way and you know i interviewed straight men who were homophobically bullied

01:50:30.700 throughout their childhood beaten up attacked and all the rest of it in a way that i wasn't

01:50:34.060 as a gay man um but that has a wider impact because homophobia is used i think to enforce

01:50:39.740 gender norms and um one of the down one of the way straight men suffer is talking about feelings

01:50:46.060 and problems is seen as unmanly and gay so i just for me it's about the stigma there and it's about

01:50:51.500 mental health and it's about making sure that men who need help and need support get it and

01:50:56.140 feel able to get support so owen thank you so much for coming on the show you know to fact to

01:51:01.340 to have someone on

01:51:02.060 from a different point of view,

01:51:03.120 having discussions

01:51:03.860 has been really, really heartening.

01:51:05.760 Thank you so much.

01:51:06.280 Yeah, bless you.

01:51:06.800 Thanks for coming on, mate.

01:51:08.020 Cheers, thank you.

01:51:08.700 Cheers, cheers.

01:51:09.560 And your book is out now,

01:51:11.260 Owen Jones, The Fall of the West.

01:51:12.900 And, well, we got into such...

01:51:14.660 How they really lost it.

01:51:15.520 How they really lost it.

01:51:16.660 And we got into such a conversation

01:51:18.260 that we don't have time for Substack.

01:51:20.360 But we'll see you again next time.

01:51:31.340 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - October 10, 2026

Owen Jones vs. TRIGGERnometry

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