TRIGGERnometry - ＂The Conservatives Are Imploding＂ - Matt Goodwin

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00:00:30.480 Matt, are we going to have a winter of discontent?

00:00:33.440 Yes.

00:00:34.460 The new Prime Minister coming in now, this month, they're going to look around and realise,

00:00:39.060 actually the Conservatives don't own anything now.

00:00:41.320 Not the economy, not law and order, not immigration. 0.70

00:00:45.180 80% of people say they're managing Brexit badly.

00:00:48.380 Cost of living crisis.

00:00:49.420 This, historically, really has only happened when those parties then have been wiped out.

00:00:56.560 Like, I'm not convinced that I want some of the people in the House of Commons.

00:01:02.020 You know, I look at some of the people on the front bench, both parties, and I just think, really, is that the best that we can produce?

00:01:08.860 I'll tell you, I was speaking to a finance director from a major, major company in the country that everybody would recognise.

00:01:16.020 They already forecast that by Christmas, a third of them will not be able to pay their bills.

00:01:22.700 And these are the kinds of things that are happening in boardrooms across the country, because people can sense that actually what we're going into is going to be massive.

00:01:30.560 What we are seeing playing out now is the tension, always there, always at the heart of the Brexit vote,

00:01:37.860 between the Liberal-Lever vision of Brexit and what Brexit Britain would be all about,

00:01:43.660 and the cultural Conservative vision of what Brexit Britain was going to be all about.

00:01:49.080 And this group hasn't yet realised, I think, that this group has just put into place something very different.

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00:03:19.980 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:03:24.120 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:03:25.220 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:03:30.740 Our brilliant guest today is a writer, author, and political scientist who's always on the show

00:03:35.940 whenever there's a massive transition happening in British politics.

00:03:38.920 He's our go-to guy for analysis and everything that's happening in this country.

00:03:42.300 Matt Goodwin, welcome back.

00:03:43.560 Thanks for having me.

00:03:44.460 It's great to have you back.

00:03:46.040 You have been writing and talking a lot about some of the things that are about to happen

00:03:51.420 and have already happened.

00:03:53.460 We are sitting here recording this on the eve of what will almost certainly be

00:03:57.480 Liz Truss's election as leader of the Conservative Party and therefore Prime Minister.

00:04:02.440 And you have just written a couple of pieces, the first one of which is

00:04:05.640 the Conservatives are falling apart, basically, on your sub-stack, which I recommend every subscribe to.

00:04:12.520 And that is a feeling that I have, but you've got receipts, as the kids say nowadays.

00:04:16.960 So tell us what's going on.

00:04:18.740 Yeah, so basically, I was thinking on the way here, when was I last here?

00:04:22.460 It was actually the aftermath of the 2019 general election with the big Boris Johnson realignment.

00:04:28.700 And we talked a lot about how the underlying axis of politics is changing,

00:04:33.940 not only in Britain, but across the West.

00:04:35.480 And I think fast forward to where we are now, and basically what's happened is the,

00:04:40.220 let's just pull all the scandals and party gate, let's just put that to one side for a second.

00:04:43.940 So basically, what's happened is the Conservative Party has really failed to make the most out of

00:04:49.680 this moment that we're in politically.

00:04:52.500 About half of the people today that voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 now no longer plan

00:04:58.740 to vote for the Conservatives at the next election.

00:05:01.180 So a lot of the key groups that were central to that realignment, working class voters, pensioners,

00:05:08.560 non-graduates, voters in the North, the Midlands, the Industrial Red Wall,

00:05:13.240 a lot of those voters have essentially now stepped away from the Conservative Party.

00:05:17.800 They haven't gone to Labour, about one in ten have gone to Labour, but most are now saying

00:05:21.920 actually they're not sure who they're going to vote for, or they don't know who they're

00:05:25.640 going to support at the next election.

00:05:27.460 So that unique coalition that kind of came together through Johnson, through the promise

00:05:32.580 to get Brexit done, has fractured and fragmented.

00:05:36.940 And at the same time, and this is where things start to get really worrying for the Conservative Party,

00:05:41.980 the parties lost ownership of all of the big issues in British politics.

00:05:49.060 So the only parties historically that have really done well in politics are the parties

00:05:53.600 that own the big issues, that seem to be competent managers of the big issues.

00:05:58.740 So you think about 79 and Thatcher.

00:06:00.960 She owned really inflation, unemployment, industrial disputes. 0.98

00:06:05.580 You then think about Blair in 97, he owned the NHS, he owned education, he owned public services,

00:06:11.920 all the things people wanted to talk about.

00:06:13.840 You think about Johnson in 2019, he owned Brexit, he owned migration, all of those big new salient issues.

00:06:19.760 The new Prime Minister coming in now, this month, they're going to look around and realise

00:06:24.620 actually the Conservatives don't own anything now, not the economy, not law and order, not immigration.

00:06:30.580 80% of people say they're managing Brexit badly, cost of living crisis.

00:06:35.800 Most people tend now to back Labour, not the Conservatives.

00:06:39.460 This historically really has only happened when those parties then have been wiped out.

00:06:46.420 So a parallel case would be 97, John Major, 2001, William Hague.

00:06:51.340 Both of those politicians would tell you, actually, it wasn't a great experience.

00:06:55.880 So whoever comes in, and I think you're right, Liz Truss, they're going to have to get their

00:07:01.660 hands around this coalition that's fragmenting, and we'll come back and talk about it, and

00:07:05.680 they're going to have to get some ownership over some of these big issues.

00:07:08.100 And if they don't do those things, Conservative Party is going to stay where it is, which is

00:07:12.400 averaging about 29% of the vote in the polls.

00:07:15.720 I mean, this is like rock bottom.

00:07:17.620 This is like core vote.

00:07:19.220 The only people who are still there are kind of tribal Tories in Surrey, right? 0.94

00:07:23.080 I mean, that's basically where the party is at the moment.

00:07:24.980 Everyone else who kind of got them into that massive majority in 2019 is basically now

00:07:29.480 sitting out.

00:07:31.160 This is, you know, quickly introducing a nightmare scenario.

00:07:34.500 And add to that, I mean, you talk about the big issues on the economy.

00:07:37.780 There's a gigantic cost of living crisis, the rising cost of fuel and gas and so on.

00:07:43.560 On immigration, as you talk about in your second piece, which I want to come to later,

00:07:47.540 numbers are higher, frankly, than they have been.

00:07:50.220 You know, the idea that Brexit solved that question.

00:07:53.340 Absolute nonsense.

00:07:54.100 I mean, maybe defence.

00:07:58.160 But again, I don't know that people are all that invested in support for Ukraine at this

00:08:02.880 point.

00:08:03.860 I don't, I mean, how are they, the election would be in 2024, the latest.

00:08:08.460 How are the Conservatives ever going to get a grip on any of those issues before,

00:08:12.940 in time, to be able to actually make an impact on people's perception?

00:08:16.100 Well, it's going to be difficult.

00:08:17.940 It's not impossible.

00:08:19.340 I mean, the fundamental problem for the Conservatives is they've become disconnected from this new

00:08:24.800 coalition that they've pulled together ever since Brexit, right?

00:08:28.260 Now, you could say that's because Boris Johnson was not suited to high office.

00:08:33.040 That's because COVID swept through the country and they've managed it, you know, not great at

00:08:39.880 some points.

00:08:40.460 It might be because of the war in Ukraine, might be because of cost of living, whatever.

00:08:43.980 But I think the broader problem is that the Conservative Party basically inherited this

00:08:51.480 realignment after Brexit and then didn't know what to do with it.

00:08:54.860 They didn't know where to take it.

00:08:56.020 And Conservative MPs and Conservative donors and Conservative activists were both economically

00:09:04.060 and culturally in a very different space from any of the people that were voting for them.

00:09:08.500 Many of the people who run the Conservative Party essentially want to, or are very supportive

00:09:15.740 of this sort of, you know, Davos on Thames, let's slash tax, let's slash regulation, let's embrace

00:09:22.860 free trade, let's embrace globalisation, let's look back at the 1980s and say, yeah, let's

00:09:28.280 do all of that again and let's put it on steroids. 1.00

00:09:31.120 They're basically, you know, economic liberals, sometimes hyper-economic liberals, and they

00:09:36.540 want to roll back the frontiers of the state.

00:09:38.900 What they, I think, have failed to really fully grasp is that there is now a large chunk in

00:09:45.720 the Conservative electorate, like there is in every other Western democracy, pretty much,

00:09:49.720 that actually doesn't really want that, that is quite comfortable with an interventionist

00:09:55.740 state, if it means it's going to level the playing field, it's going to fix a rigged economy,

00:10:00.840 is just as concerned about cultural freedom as economic freedom.

00:10:05.460 It wants to roll back not just the frontiers of the state, but also a radical progressive

00:10:11.120 authoritarianism that people are increasingly worried about, women's rights, child welfare,

00:10:16.360 and political correctness, what we can say about the nation state, about who we are, and

00:10:22.920 also within that, these new identity and cultural issues around migration, borders, security,

00:10:28.740 a sense of belonging.

00:10:30.340 And the Conservatives, I think, in the Johnson era, really never fully reconciled themselves

00:10:36.900 to what that realignment was all about.

00:10:39.800 And as a consequence, they've rapidly come unstuck.

00:10:43.180 And this isn't just unique to the British Conservatives, you can see the same debate in America, where

00:10:47.760 US Republicans are basically saying, the answers to the problems that are in politics today are

00:10:54.100 not going to be found in 1980s economic liberalism.

00:10:57.240 Like, that's not where we are now.

00:10:59.120 That was a different set of answers to a different set of questions.

00:11:03.640 The new Conservatives, who I think are a minority, but the new, interesting, clever Conservatives

00:11:10.700 are the ones who are saying, actually, we're going to have to devise a whole new set of answers

00:11:16.400 to these problems if we're going to keep this coalition together, if we're going to unite

00:11:21.600 middle-class professionals with working-class voters and pensioners, who often share many

00:11:28.440 similar values on these big cultural questions, and sometimes on some of these economic questions.

00:11:35.440 But it means the Conservative Party is going to have to put itself in a place where it

00:11:39.220 feels uncomfortable, and it isn't traditional territory.

00:11:41.860 Now, if you're a pessimist, you'd say, actually, the Conservative Party just can never bring

00:11:45.800 itself to do that because of path dependency, because of where it's come from, because of

00:11:49.680 its donor class, because of its MPs, because of its ideological, you know, straitjacket that

00:11:55.060 it's in.

00:11:55.940 If you're an optimist, you say, well, actually, increasingly over the last 10 years, the Conservatives

00:12:00.780 actually have sort of moved themselves into this position where they have tailored their

00:12:06.360 message for this new moment.

00:12:08.540 So we'll see, with this new Prime Minister, whether they are going to lean into this realignment

00:12:13.740 and keep pushing it forward, or whether actually they're going to revert to their comfort blanket

00:12:20.140 and then they'll face a nightmare scenario and they'll lose both of these flanks at the same

00:12:25.720 time.

00:12:26.100 They'll lose the red wall, because they won't be giving those voters what they want, and

00:12:29.820 they'll lose the blue wall, which is full of university graduates and millennials and 1.00

00:12:33.040 Zoomers who, to be frank, are never going to vote Conservative at the next election, no 1.00

00:12:36.320 matter what Liz Truss or the next leader does.

00:12:39.120 I mean, those people are gone for 10 years, probably.

00:12:43.020 So I think, you know, the only answer for the party is to lean into this realignment.

00:12:46.840 Matt, isn't the problem as well that every political party has its day?

00:12:52.680 They've been in power a long time now, and isn't it just that they've just run out of

00:12:56.720 ideas, they've run out of steam, and it's time for another party to take office and make 0.94

00:13:01.440 an absolute arse of it.

00:13:02.840 Well, don't forget you're talking about the most successful political party in the history 0.99

00:13:06.160 of modern democracy.

00:13:08.520 I mean, one of the great puzzles in British politics has been why the Conservatives have

00:13:12.180 been so successful for so long.

00:13:14.940 And if you go from people being given the vote to the next general election, the Conservatives

00:13:19.200 will have governed Britain for about 74% of the time.

00:13:24.260 The answer to that riddle is reinvention.

00:13:28.020 The Conservatives have always reinvented themselves.

00:13:31.340 They've reinvented themselves at different points in the early 20th century, through to

00:13:37.620 Thatcherism, through to David Cameron, through to Boris Johnson.

00:13:39.980 They've constantly reinvented.

00:13:41.360 Labour have always struggled to reinvent.

00:13:43.680 They're a much more rigid party.

00:13:45.860 And now they are constrained on many of these cultural issues by their activists, their

00:13:49.680 MPs, and lots of things you've talked about on your podcast.

00:13:53.360 But the Conservatives now, ultimately, will need to reinvent themselves again if they're

00:13:56.700 going to have a fighting chance at the next election.

00:13:59.320 They're going to have to really tackle some of the sacred values in the Conservative camp.

00:14:06.400 You know, take free trade and globalisation.

00:14:08.280 The evidence in economics now is overwhelming, I think, that many of the reforms that were brought

00:14:12.680 in in the 80s and the 90s.

00:14:14.460 At the time, you could argue they were necessary.

00:14:17.200 And at the time, you could argue, and you can still today, they made Britain a more prosperous

00:14:22.080 country overall.

00:14:23.700 But they came with massive costs.

00:14:25.960 And we can now see that.

00:14:27.140 You know, there is a consensus in economics that what I would call hyper-globalisation,

00:14:32.240 you know, opening the borders of the country to growing trade from China, from Asia, from

00:14:37.460 other parts of the world, had a disproportionately negative impact upon working-class communities,

00:14:44.960 working-class men.

00:14:46.740 It undermined jobs.

00:14:48.380 It lowered wages.

00:14:49.260 And also, crucially, this is something Conservatives always ignore.

00:14:53.300 It also undermined the social fabric of community life.

00:14:56.760 There's a lot of research to suggest that hyper-globalisation undermined families.

00:15:01.460 It undermined the social fabric of, you know, social capital, community engagement, the little

00:15:09.000 platoons that Edmund Burke and others have talked about.

00:15:12.060 And Conservatives are kind of blind on this spot, right?

00:15:14.440 Because they are so wedded to promoting and championing free trade that they really sort

00:15:20.620 of, you know, turn away when you say, well, you know, look at some of the consequences that

00:15:24.140 have actually happened.

00:15:25.100 And they've been pretty negative.

00:15:26.740 So we haven't compensated the losers as well as we should have done.

00:15:31.360 And that partly explains why Johnson was able to do what he did in 2019, because he kind

00:15:35.460 of gave a nod to lots of those groups who had lost out, that he was a different kind

00:15:39.460 of Conservative.

00:15:40.820 And they responded to that.

00:15:42.340 Leveling up was really ultimately about compensating losers in the globalisation process, or certainly

00:15:47.680 losers in a geographical settlement that has favoured London and the South East for over

00:15:52.540 a century, and still does and will continue to do so. 0.89

00:15:55.400 But they weren't revolutionary about it.

00:15:57.760 Like, the Conservatives never kind of embraced this and said, you know, geez, it's not just

00:16:01.440 we've demolished half the red wall.

00:16:03.360 You could have been in power for, you know, 10, 15 years if you just acted competently,

00:16:08.540 run number 10 in a fairly disciplined manner, and delivered on the promises that you set forward

00:16:13.300 in 2019, even in the face of COVID and the war in Ukraine.

00:16:17.720 But even still, they managed to kind of, you know, implode as a result.

00:16:22.120 And now will those voters come back?

00:16:23.560 Like, maybe.

00:16:25.800 My gut instinct is probably the end result of this is going to be more apathy, more political

00:16:31.080 disengagement.

00:16:31.980 People just saying, well, no one's going to change the dial.

00:16:35.920 And that's a real problem.

00:16:36.960 Because what happens then is you just get disillusioned people who no longer believe in the system,

00:16:41.420 which means there's a void in that system, which can then be filled either by a populist

00:16:47.160 movement or something more nefarious.

00:16:49.660 Well, my, yeah, my concern about British politics now is, so if you go back 10 years, all the

00:16:54.700 conditions that we had that were in place for, you know, say, Nigel Farage and the kind

00:16:59.360 of UK Independence Party and then the Brexit Party and that sort of, that very turbulent

00:17:03.480 period in British politics, what did you have?

00:17:06.180 A collapse of public confidence over immigration, high levels of distrust in the system, and a

00:17:11.640 strong sense among many voters that an issue they really cared about, in that case, the

00:17:15.980 EU, freedom of movement, was not being taken seriously by people in Westminster.

00:17:22.000 Those were basically the conditions.

00:17:24.320 And that found its expression through the Brexit referendum.

00:17:27.200 It then found its expression through Theresa May beginning to pull down the red wall and

00:17:31.860 then Boris Johnson.

00:17:32.700 So you had this kind of trilogy of events.

00:17:34.620 And now we are finding ourselves back where we were in 2012, 2013, 2014, because what do

00:17:42.380 we see in the polls and the surveys?

00:17:44.220 Public confidence over the new immigration system that we'll come to talk about has collapsed.

00:17:49.640 People no longer see Labour or the Conservatives really as the preferred political party.

00:17:55.820 There's a palpable sense in the country that politics is no longer speaking to a large chunk

00:18:02.140 of the country.

00:18:02.960 And there are new issues that people really want to talk about, but they can sense that

00:18:07.720 the political establishment doesn't really want to talk about them.

00:18:10.880 You know, whether that relates to what's happening to kids in schools, what we're teaching around

00:18:15.540 sex, gender, race, whether it's about women's rights, whether it's about political correctness,

00:18:20.700 whether it's about immigration, whether it's about the illegal crossings in the English

00:18:24.940 Channel.

00:18:25.380 All of those issues now, I'm worried actually, are going to become a sort of ideal breeding

00:18:32.300 ground for something that may actually end up leaving Nigel Farage looking like quite

00:18:39.120 a moderate sort of populist in comparison to what may come later in the 2020s, which is

00:18:45.060 why I wrote the piece recently in my substack saying that actually I do think we need to revisit

00:18:53.960 the immigration conversation because what we've put in place, what Boris Johnson has put in

00:18:58.860 place, I think is going to be a recipe for considerable political turmoil in the years

00:19:03.560 ahead.

00:19:04.360 Tell everybody, before I ask you the question, I was going to ask you a little bit about what

00:19:07.800 he's actually done because it was quite eye-opening reading your piece in which you talk about

00:19:12.340 a conservative prime minister actually who promised to reduce immigration along with all of the 0.87

00:19:17.780 previous Tory prime ministers actually making it way easier for people to come here.

00:19:22.280 Yeah, so Boris Johnson's done some interesting things that I don't think many people in the

00:19:27.540 country have properly noticed yet.

00:19:29.740 So the big promise was to take back control, regain control over the immigration system.

00:19:34.340 And to some extent, Boris Johnson and the Conservatives have done that.

00:19:38.240 We can now set our own immigration policy and it's independent of the European Union.

00:19:43.960 But the specific migration policy that we now have, yes, it's made it harder for EU nationals

00:19:50.480 to come and work and stay in the United Kingdom, but it's made it a lot easier for people from

00:19:59.280 outside of Europe now to migrate into the UK, whether to work, to settle, or as family, relatives

00:20:06.300 of workers and students, and then to remain in the country.

00:20:09.660 So things that they've done, for example, employers are no longer having to advertise jobs in the UK

00:20:17.660 first and to show that they cannot be done by somebody in the UK, that's gone.

00:20:24.540 The Skilled Worker Visa Programme is a very liberal migration policy.

00:20:30.600 You can essentially come to the UK if you have found a job that pays as little as about £20,000

00:20:36.820 in some sectors, or usually about £24,000, £25,000, which is lower than the median average salary

00:20:44.320 in this country.

00:20:45.860 Some of the previous limits on international students have been removed.

00:20:50.840 Some of the family routes around migration have been eased.

00:20:55.220 And the end result, which we're now seeing in the data, because of course COVID disrupted

00:20:58.680 this after 2020-21, the data was affected by the big lockdown and so on.

00:21:05.440 But now what we're beginning to see actually, I think, is a watershed moment in Britain's

00:21:10.520 immigration story.

00:21:11.620 So the numbers of migrants coming over from India, Philippines, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, whether

00:21:20.380 to work or study, is now increasing dramatically compared to 2019.

00:21:25.700 And so the source of migration into the UK is also changing.

00:21:30.820 It's not European, not Central or Eastern European. 0.90

00:21:33.740 It is now predominantly coming from countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Philippines.

00:21:39.340 So in the next few years, this will become visible very quickly to lots of people in the

00:21:44.220 country who perhaps are currently thinking, well, we've got this new immigration policy and

00:21:48.680 it's much more restrictive, when in reality, what I suspect we'll end up having, and I'm

00:21:54.140 happy to be wrong on this, but I think our net migration levels are going to be much higher

00:21:59.220 than they were before COVID.

00:22:02.220 I think they're going to end up being significantly higher.

00:22:05.380 The source of migration will be very different.

00:22:07.760 And I think that's going to raise some really salient and quite tough discussions in the

00:22:15.440 country about what this means around the housing crisis, around healthcare, around security,

00:22:22.020 around national culture.

00:22:24.220 But the biggest one of them, Matt, and this is what I always say as someone who's a legal

00:22:28.240 immigrant to this country, who's happy with reasonable levels of immigration, who wants 0.99

00:22:33.160 people who are skilled and talented and who are going to be a contribution to this country

00:22:37.100 to come.

00:22:38.080 The biggest issue of all on that list that you gave is actually democracy.

00:22:43.960 The problem that we have in this country is that nobody voted for what is happening.

00:22:49.140 And I know it will be easy for a lot of people and tempting for a lot of people to say, well,

00:22:53.700 yeah, of course, you know, Johnson was a liberal Tory, but these are sequential failures

00:22:58.540 over a long period of time on probably one of the most demanded commitments that the

00:23:04.020 Tory party made all the way back in 2010, which is tens of thousands.

00:23:08.100 So why have the Tories not addressed this issue?

00:23:11.840 Well, you could argue that people did vote for the Australian-based points system, which

00:23:15.940 is what Boris Johnson was promoting.

00:23:18.360 My view is a lot of voters, especially Conservatives and Leavers, just didn't understand what that

00:23:24.820 would mean in practice.

00:23:26.180 Hey, Francis, do you like journalism?

00:23:29.560 Of course.

00:23:30.320 So who's your favourite journalist then?

00:23:32.020 Superman.

00:23:33.000 What?

00:23:33.720 Superman.

00:23:34.760 Superman isn't a real person, Francis.

00:23:37.240 He's an alien.

00:23:38.360 He's not a journalist. 1.00

00:23:39.500 And more importantly, he's fucking fictional, mate. 0.99

00:23:42.220 If he was fictional, then why did Friedrich Nietzsche write about Superman, otherwise known 0.99

00:23:47.760 as Übermensch, in his seminal work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, published in 1883, but still

00:23:54.640 widely quoted today by both students and intellectuals alike.

00:23:59.260 Sometimes, Francis, I feel as if I have no clue who you really are.

00:24:03.560 But if you do like journalism, then you have to check out the Epoch Times.

00:24:07.460 The Epoch Times, unlike most media organisations, is produced without the influence of any government,

00:24:13.520 corporation or political party.

00:24:15.620 They distill a story down to the facts and get readers as close to the truth as they

00:24:20.320 can.

00:24:21.100 The articles are free from the influence of big tech, corporate media and socialist and

00:24:25.780 communist forces as well.

00:24:27.280 The Epoch Times believe the more facts you have at your disposal, the better able you are

00:24:32.680 to preserve your rights.

00:24:34.240 Here's what the readers say about them.

00:24:36.000 The articles present a factual picture of the news from a conservative and American perspective.

00:24:40.800 I feel the Epoch Times is the only publication out there that gives me factual information

00:24:46.300 about stories in the news that other outlets and publications blatantly report with liberal

00:24:52.720 political biases.

00:24:54.200 Go to epochtim.es forward slash trigonometry and click the link.

00:25:00.460 That's epochtim.es slash trigonometry.

00:25:08.540 A few things have happened since Brexit and it's important we recognise them.

00:25:12.760 Number one is overall, a significant chunk of the country have become more positive about

00:25:18.460 immigration.

00:25:19.500 So Remainers have doubled down on their liberal values, partly to disassociate themselves from

00:25:23.760 Brexit and Boris Johnson.

00:25:25.040 And they say, I'm liberal and I'm proud of it and I like immigration and immigration is

00:25:28.640 positive.

00:25:29.500 And Leavers, some Leavers have become more positive too because they're now saying, well,

00:25:33.180 I've got the control back and I don't want to be seen as being anti-immigration.

00:25:37.620 And, you know, look at us and our new immigration system.

00:25:40.320 So those things have happened.

00:25:41.740 At the same time, Brits remain overwhelmingly welcoming of Ukrainians, Hong Kongers, Afghan

00:25:49.020 interpreters, refugees and so on.

00:25:50.820 So those two things we just, I want to note, they're really important.

00:25:53.560 We need to recognise them.

00:25:54.820 At the same time, I just don't think people have tuned into the reality of just how quickly

00:25:58.700 now the country is going to be transformed by this new migration policy where you've seen

00:26:05.000 as a home office release last week, new data showing the number of international students

00:26:10.540 has just now reached a record high.

00:26:13.240 The number of visas being issued to dependents of international students and also workers

00:26:18.500 is now reaching a very high, if not record high levels.

00:26:24.000 We've had over a million visas that have been issued to workers, students, family members

00:26:29.700 and others this year, which again is a record high.

00:26:33.380 And some of the increases in numbers, for example, the percentage increases in students

00:26:38.620 from Nigeria is around 600%.

00:26:42.480 Indians is around 100%, 150%. 1.00

00:26:45.300 So we're seeing pretty significant increases.

00:26:47.700 And, you know, most voters out there would say, okay, international students, fine, don't

00:26:52.880 have an issue with that.

00:26:54.140 High-skilled migration, okay, don't have an issue with that.

00:26:56.580 But we're not talking about, I don't think we're talking about high-skilled migration.

00:27:00.040 We're talking about workers coming in on visas, on salaries that are between £20,000

00:27:04.420 and £25,000 a year.

00:27:06.080 So this is, I think, going to end up in a big kind of reckoning.

00:27:09.880 The reason why the Conservatives have done this, to answer your question, is because what

00:27:13.160 we are seeing playing out now is the tension, always there, always at the heart of the Brexit

00:27:19.900 vote, between the Liberal-Lever vision of Brexit and what Brexit Britain would be all about.

00:27:26.580 And the cultural conservative vision of what Brexit Britain was going to be all about.

00:27:32.260 This small group, and it is a small group, said lots of immigration, lots of globalisation,

00:27:37.880 but not in the EU.

00:27:39.360 And this bigger group, much bigger group, said, okay, outside of the EU, but moderate levels

00:27:45.340 of migration, ideally about 100,000 per year, not 300,000 in terms of net migration.

00:27:52.420 And this group hasn't yet realised, I think, that this group has just put into place something

00:27:59.100 very different.

00:27:59.960 And this is going to find its expression politically.

00:28:03.040 It will either find its expression in something like, you know, Brexit Party 2.0, except the

00:28:08.900 conversation won't be about Europe.

00:28:10.260 It will all be about migration and borders.

00:28:12.080 Or it will find its expression in, for example, a new Conservative Party leader, you know, perhaps

00:28:19.280 making up names, for example, saying, actually, we don't want Britain to be doubling down on

00:28:26.560 mass immigration in this way.

00:28:28.760 It's time to perhaps slow things down and start to ensure that we're investing as much as we can

00:28:33.600 in domestic workers and domestic companies and so on.

00:28:39.120 I don't see how this ends without creating some sort of political disturbance.

00:28:46.080 The picture you're painting is very bleak, because what you're effectively saying is we

00:28:52.820 have this group of people who've been ignored for generations.

00:28:56.300 They've got a chance to have their voice heard.

00:28:59.480 They're being ignored again.

00:29:02.320 So where do we go from here?

00:29:03.780 Because the Labour Party aren't going to do anything.

00:29:06.000 If anything, they're going to be even more pro-immigration than the Conservatives.

00:29:09.500 Yeah, Labour can't move right on culture because of its activists and its MPs.

00:29:14.120 So there's some great research over the last year that surveyed Britain's MPs.

00:29:19.320 And so it found that Conservative MPs are more economically right-wing and more culturally

00:29:24.860 left-wing than many of their voters, which again is the root of the Conservative Party's

00:29:31.040 problem.

00:29:32.080 Labour MPs were economically comparable to the average voter, but culturally were like in

00:29:39.560 this other galaxy.

00:29:40.500 They were like 100 miles that way when it comes to things like law and order, respecting British 1.00

00:29:45.960 values, attitudes towards migration.

00:29:48.620 So Labour won't move into this space.

00:29:51.280 The Conservatives on this cultural axis, it is theirs to own as long as they move to it.

00:29:58.860 But there is going to come a point, I think, where voters will realise that actually the

00:30:03.920 Conservative Party is not going to deliver on those issues in the way that they would like

00:30:10.160 the Conservative Party to deliver.

00:30:11.800 And then you're talking about things like what the Canadians have seen, for example, a reconfiguration

00:30:17.160 of the right or what the French have seen more recently, a kind of a much deeper reconfiguration

00:30:23.220 of politics where you have MPs, maybe Red Wall MPs and others saying, actually, this sort

00:30:28.720 of more neoliberal brand of conservatism that is actually quite culturally liberal in many

00:30:33.080 respects is not really what we want the Conservative Party to be about.

00:30:38.320 Very difficult for a new party, a new challenger to become mainstream in the first-past-the-post

00:30:43.560 system, almost impossible.

00:30:45.480 I mean, you know, Farage tried it for 10 years and really only managed to get where he got

00:30:50.080 because of the first proportional representation under European elections.

00:30:54.700 So very difficult to do that.

00:30:56.420 But I think this is going to find its expression in some form or another.

00:31:00.480 And, you know, a critic of the Conservative Party would say, you know, Conservatives have

00:31:04.480 been in power for 12 years.

00:31:05.900 But on a lot of the cultural issues that you spend your time talking to guests about and

00:31:09.980 so on, often it's been the Conservative Party that has either introduced those changes or

00:31:14.080 has failed to slow those changes down.

00:31:15.780 And I think that's where you begin to maybe get closer to an American scenario in the later

00:31:23.020 2020s, 2030s, where actually perhaps people start to say, on these cultural issues, the

00:31:28.920 Conservative Party is just simply not able to connect with the country in a way that the

00:31:33.640 country wants their elected leaders to connect.

00:31:36.580 And there's nothing wrong with saying we should have a target or we should have a new policy

00:31:41.480 of having net migration no higher than 100,000 a year.

00:31:44.340 That's a pretty good policy.

00:31:45.720 And you could have high-skilled migration.

00:31:47.700 You could prioritise NHS, social care workers.

00:31:50.880 That's a good, progressive, nice, interesting policy that's fair.

00:31:56.060 We don't need, really, to be running net migration at 300,000, 400,000, 500,000.

00:32:01.880 And we don't need to be doing that.

00:32:04.060 And we don't need to be in a position after Brexit of not requiring employers to first

00:32:10.820 look at whether the jobs can be done in Britain before advertising them overseas.

00:32:13.960 That, to me, just seems completely bonkers, given everything that Brexit was about, which

00:32:18.560 was about reasserting, more broadly, the interests of the national community.

00:32:23.880 Well, a lot of people will agree with you on that.

00:32:27.080 But if I listen to what you're saying and play the movie forward a little bit, that

00:32:32.340 realignment isn't going to be immediate because it's going to take people time to catch up

00:32:36.000 to what's going on.

00:32:36.760 So the most likely outcome is the election in 2024.

00:32:41.160 The Conservatives get booted out simply because of the accumulated frustrations over time.

00:32:46.360 And these people who you're talking about, who are dissatisfied with the Tories for being

00:32:52.260 too liberal, they're going to end up with a Labour government or a Labour-LibDem coalition.

00:33:00.420 How's that going to go?

00:33:02.600 Well, for Labour to win a majority, the Labour Party will need to be around 12 points ahead

00:33:06.460 in the opinion polls, which it is comfortably at the moment.

00:33:09.220 It's about 15, 16 points as we're talking today.

00:33:12.440 So more than enough for a Labour majority.

00:33:14.460 And that is going to take us closer to where America is at the moment with the Democrats

00:33:19.820 and the Republicans in opposition and will probably, I think, end up increasing the salience

00:33:25.780 of some of the issues that we're talking about.

00:33:28.060 So it's true that everybody in the country wants to talk about cost of living, energy,

00:33:32.680 just getting through a very difficult few years, right?

00:33:35.280 But voters don't just think of these issues and then they don't think of other issues.

00:33:39.020 I mean, other salient issues will include channel crossings, overall migration,

00:33:44.460 levels, what's happening in schools, universities, council culture, freedom of speech, women's rights.

00:33:50.420 And I think one of the interesting things about Conservatives today is that they have accepted

00:33:55.940 this culture war framing, right?

00:33:58.320 They've sort of accepted the language that is used by progressives and Labour activists.

00:34:06.420 And many Conservatives feel the quote-unquote culture wars are beneath them and they don't want to talk about them.

00:34:14.340 And so Conservatives have ceded like this massive amount of territory, you know,

00:34:19.500 when in reality what perhaps they should have said is, well, women's rights isn't culture war. 0.98

00:34:24.620 Child welfare isn't culture war.

00:34:26.520 The ability to speak freely in a modern, mature democracy is not a culture war.

00:34:31.940 Ensuring that our institutions are representative of a wide range of voices is not a culture war.

00:34:37.540 It's the foundation of civilisation, right?

00:34:39.900 But they've sort of embraced this language and then it's sort of left them with nowhere to go.

00:34:45.060 So now they are terrified often, as we saw with Boris Johnson and his administration.

00:34:50.480 They're sort of terrified of getting involved in these big debates because, you know,

00:34:54.640 they simultaneously think they're above these cultural debates.

00:34:58.900 And at the same time, they don't want to be seen to be the nasty party and for people to say,

00:35:03.180 well, they're a bit racist and, you know, xenophobic and whatever.

00:35:06.680 And like, it's not nice to be in these debates.

00:35:08.400 Anyone who writes on these topics or says anything remotely countercultural,

00:35:13.480 as I'm sure you guys know, it's not nice to be in that position,

00:35:16.920 but sometimes it's absolutely necessary to be making that countercultural position

00:35:21.740 very clearly and very loudly so that marketplace of ideas can exist and can continue.

00:35:28.340 Otherwise, the result is orthodoxy and it's a very narrow marketplace of ideas

00:35:33.960 and everyone else gets shut out.

00:35:36.360 So I think the Conservatives somehow need to regain their intellectual confidence.

00:35:40.100 I mean, if you look at this current prime minister, the outgoing prime minister,

00:35:44.740 one of the remarkable things about the Johnson government, in my eyes,

00:35:47.580 is there were no real, like, there were no serious thinkers around Johnson.

00:35:51.520 It wasn't like Thatcher.

00:35:52.500 I mean, Thatcher really had a stable of very, very bright, interesting intellectuals and thinkers

00:35:57.540 around her who really did have a well-thought-out ideological blueprint

00:36:03.120 for what they wanted to do with the country.

00:36:05.000 Now, you might disagree with it, but it was there.

00:36:06.880 Johnson really didn't have much of that at all, so he didn't really know where he wanted to go.

00:36:13.320 The new prime minister, I would imagine, I would hope, given any prime minister should have it,

00:36:20.320 will have a stable of interesting, forward-looking thinkers who have a blueprint

00:36:26.640 for where they want to take the country.

00:36:28.000 Because if she or he doesn't have that, it's going to come apart very quickly.

00:36:32.620 Matt, don't you think the problem is, as well, we had Darren McGarvey literally sitting in that very chair

00:36:39.340 a couple of days ago, and he made the point that a large problem with our political class

00:36:45.680 is that they are fundamentally disconnected with the ordinary British public.

00:36:51.060 They don't, they've never really encountered them.

00:36:53.500 They went to different schools, a majority of them went to private schools.

00:36:56.520 They went to elite universities.

00:36:58.340 A lot of them haven't even had a job.

00:36:59.860 They all went into political researchers' jobs, and then they moved their way into government.

00:37:04.500 How can you possibly lead a country?

00:37:06.560 How can you possibly know what a country needs if you don't have any kind of connection with the ordinary person?

00:37:12.300 Well, I think there's some truth to that, but it's not just politics, right?

00:37:18.200 Most of the institutions that shape and cultivate the conversation about who we are as a country

00:37:25.800 are dominated by a minority of university graduates,

00:37:30.960 typically elite university graduates from Russell Group or Oxbridge universities,

00:37:35.020 who tend to hold the same values.

00:37:36.440 So if you look at politics, media, creative industries, cultural institutions,

00:37:44.360 academia, educational institutions, they are overwhelmingly dominated by elite graduates

00:37:51.540 who tend to see the world in a very particular way.

00:37:54.420 Now, the data on this is pretty clear.

00:37:56.840 Some academics call it diploma democracy, and all of the institutions are basically run by graduates.

00:38:02.000 And so what's happening over time across the West is we are going through what's often called education polarization,

00:38:10.560 which is a fancy way of simply saying that graduates are drifting ever more leftwards on cultural issues.

00:38:16.200 And non-graduates, and some graduates, especially those who don't go through the elite institutions,

00:38:21.120 are drifting further away on those cultural issues.

00:38:24.580 So as that polarization is rippling through on Brexit, on immigration, on women's rights,

00:38:29.640 on trans issues, on gender, sex, kids' education, all that stuff,

00:38:34.740 if the institutions are disproportionately dominated by graduates,

00:38:38.100 then graduates take the institutions with them,

00:38:40.320 and the institutions drift further and further to the left on cultural questions.

00:38:44.800 And you can see that.

00:38:45.680 Like, I feel like I've seen that in my lifetime the last 20 years.

00:38:48.580 If I look at media, if I look at universities, if I look at, you know, how kids are taught at school,

00:38:55.540 like, I feel like that's a point that you can't really dispute.

00:39:00.100 I think the evidence also backs me up, and I'd be happy to discuss it with anybody who thinks that's not the case.

00:39:05.780 And so what I think we need to do is basically reform the institutions

00:39:10.680 so we have a much more diverse array of voices in the institutions.

00:39:14.960 Like, that was the obvious response to Trump.

00:39:16.720 That was the obvious response to Brexit, is to say, look at all these people that feel like they're not in the conversation.

00:39:21.820 Let's make sure they're in the institutions.

00:39:23.680 Like, let's not have, you know, over half of the journalists in Britain having come from Oxbridge.

00:39:29.400 Like, that to me is, you know, crazy.

00:39:31.820 Or let's ensure that most of the people who are running the BBC

00:39:34.820 and deciding BBC news content behind the headlines,

00:39:38.620 that most of them haven't either gone to private school, gone to an elite university,

00:39:43.320 or their parents also do not come from the graduate class.

00:39:46.480 Like, let's break it up a bit.

00:39:48.100 Let's have some real social mobility in this country.

00:39:50.540 Let's get some real voices in the mix.

00:39:52.820 But that hasn't happened.

00:39:53.880 Like, if anything, as you've seen with some prominent journalists in the country

00:39:58.020 who have given very prominent lectures,

00:40:00.380 like, it's been a real insight into how the media see the last few years.

00:40:03.640 Like, they genuinely see this as a sort of, like, dystopian threat to liberal democracy,

00:40:08.380 as opposed to voters simply saying,

00:40:10.380 I want to be in a conversation.

00:40:12.660 Like, I want to be in a conversation about who we are as a country and where we're going.

00:40:17.260 And if you're not going to let me into this conversation, I'm going to go somewhere else,

00:40:20.640 whether it's, you know, GB News, Unheard, Trigonometry.

00:40:25.240 And what's interesting is, and I can't say this is my idea,

00:40:28.540 David Goodhart has made this idea, so I'll attribute it to him.

00:40:31.620 But for the first time in a long time, we now have an economically independent thinking class

00:40:37.940 that isn't beholden to the institutions.

00:40:40.080 If you think about what you guys are doing,

00:40:41.620 you think about what's happening on places like, you know,

00:40:44.440 Substack, Medium, blogging, all of that.

00:40:47.640 We now have a generation of thinkers who are not wedded to institutions.

00:40:52.620 They don't have to please an editor at The Times to get published.

00:40:55.560 They don't have to please a university to get published.

00:40:58.060 They're out there, they're creating their own revenue,

00:40:59.700 and they're building their own audience, right?

00:41:01.620 And so that economically independent thinking class, interesting, countercultural,

00:41:07.760 I think is a positive sign because those voices are coming back into the marketplace of ideas.

00:41:13.300 And it's up to the legacy institutions now if they want to keep up with that.

00:41:16.700 Or be destroyed in the process, which is what will happen to them if they don't.

00:41:20.320 Well, I mean, I've seen, I can tell you, I've seen the viewing figures of all the TV channels in this country,

00:41:24.340 and I can say, like, it's not what you think.

00:41:27.120 And I mean, you know, the big players are being challenged in a major way.

00:41:33.100 And it's visible and it's palpable.

00:41:35.580 And I think that, again, is the aftermath of the last 10 years,

00:41:39.340 that people can sense this kind of stifling orthodoxy,

00:41:42.540 orthodoxy, and they can sense that people who don't subscribe to it are being persecuted and harassed.

00:41:48.000 And we've talked about cases in universities.

00:41:50.720 We've talked about cases in comedy and media.

00:41:53.860 And I think that is all sort of culminating in this push to get a wider array of voices into the conversation.

00:42:01.120 That's positive.

00:42:02.140 No, that's great.

00:42:03.080 That's a correction.

00:42:04.200 I agree with you.

00:42:05.160 That is a very necessary correction in the system.

00:42:08.420 Let's come back to the political conversation for a moment.

00:42:11.500 You mentioned the cost of living crisis, as it's now called.

00:42:14.820 And what's interesting to me is the short-sightedness with which we're addressing that problem,

00:42:20.560 because Nigel Farage was sitting in that chair many months ago before the war in Ukraine.

00:42:26.640 And halfway through the interview, we started talking about, you know, cost of living, inflation,

00:42:32.420 and we've had people predicting this inflation would come for years since COVID broke out and before, frankly.

00:42:40.360 And Nigel Farage, before the war in Ukraine, said,

00:42:43.160 I still don't think people understand what's about to happen.

00:42:46.500 I really don't think they understand the first week of April when those bills hit the mat for their Q1 gas and electricity bills.

00:42:55.260 There's going to be absolute shock and outrage.

00:42:57.680 I think we've got this hopelessly, catastrophically wrong, and it's about to blow up this year.

00:43:03.440 It's about to blow up.

00:43:05.380 Then, of course, you add on top of that the war in Ukraine,

00:43:08.300 and suddenly we're all aware that printing money nonstop for 14 years was a bad idea.

00:43:13.780 But that isn't being framed in that way.

00:43:16.920 And because of that, I fear that it's not going to get properly addressed.

00:43:20.120 The inflationary bubble that we ourselves are blowing up by printing all this money to do some very necessary things, people would argue.

00:43:29.860 We're not going to address that because we're going to go, well, evil Putin, agreed, is pumping up the price of gas.

00:43:35.760 This is why we've got this problem now.

00:43:38.340 How, well, I mean, I was going to say the Conservative Party, whoever.

00:43:42.240 How is that problem going to get resolved politically?

00:43:44.380 But it's not just the Conservatives.

00:43:46.120 It's left, right, and the centre.

00:43:47.760 It's basically what we're seeing, I think, is an indictment of the last 20, 30 years of political leadership in the country

00:43:53.720 who weren't really thinking, dare I say, a bit like the Chinese in terms of let's have a 30 to 50 year game plan 0.99

00:44:01.380 and let's think about where we're going to be in terms of energy and in terms of resources, you know, come 2040, 2050.

00:44:08.520 We don't think like that in our, you know, liberal Western democracies.

00:44:12.540 We're incredibly short term.

00:44:13.900 Well, I just saw Boris Johnson.

00:44:15.180 He's decided we need to build eight nuclear power plants.

00:44:17.560 Just like, you know, just, you know.

00:44:19.520 I think we get, what, 15% of our energy from nuclear, something like that.

00:44:23.280 I think the French get about 70%, right? 0.95

00:44:25.560 And there's a, you know, and I think if you.

00:44:27.140 Should have been doing that for decades is my point.

00:44:28.700 Well, you're preaching to the choir.

00:44:30.420 I mean, I agree with you.

00:44:31.520 But again, it's about a lack of, I think it's a lack of long term thinking.

00:44:34.320 But it's also, I just think we are not incentivizing the right people to come into politics.

00:44:42.540 And I really think the more, you know, the more I look at all the problems that are mounting up, I think it just comes back to, like, I'm not convinced that I want some of the people in the House of Commons that we currently have managing our national economy, managing our healthcare system, managing.

00:44:59.720 You know, I look at some of the people on the front bench, both parties, and I just think, really, is that the best that we can produce?

00:45:07.460 You know, and the answer is we're not incentivizing people.

00:45:09.960 Like, if you're, I don't want to pick names, but if you're somebody who's run a major investment bank for 30, 40 years, that has a good handle on the economy, where we're going, and the mistakes we've made in the past, and so on.

00:45:22.540 Why would you go into politics now? Why would you go in for 60 grand, for constant harassment on social media, for this incredibly toxic, combative culture?

00:45:32.260 You wouldn't do it. Like, you have to be pathological, right? Or an extreme narcissist to go into politics today.

00:45:38.500 And I think it's an unpopular point, but maybe what we ultimately need to do is jack up the salaries for MPs, improve the conditions, incentivize business leaders with a significant amount of experience to be involved in public services,

00:45:56.400 or even somehow make more use of people who have spent their lifetime leading public services, who then just drift into retirement and, you know, do nothing for 20 years.

00:46:06.360 I mean, if you look at the NHS, you know, I mean, speaking personally, my father was a chief executive in the NHS for his whole life, you know, and we have a generation of people who have gone through all of the crunch reforms through the Thatcher years, through the major years, through the Blair years,

00:46:20.460 who have a very good handle of where the NHS has gone wrong and how we need to integrate NHS with social care and fix various problems, and we're not making the most out of that talent in the same way we're not making the most out of business talent.

00:46:33.180 So I think it is a supply problem in politics. We're just getting the wrong people into these roles. But you're right to say long-term thinking. Absolutely.

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00:48:19.120 Do you find it interesting that we're now seeing more of these sort of old-school, I would call them, left-wing people like the Mick Lynch's, the Eddie Dempsey's?

00:48:29.120 Whereas before, six years ago, all of a sudden, they'd be dismissed as, you know, gammon-y Brexit type.

00:48:35.120 The gammon's are back in business.

00:48:36.120 That's basically it, mate. They're back. We're back, baby.

00:48:41.120 If you put that on a t-shirt, you're going to make a lot of money.

00:48:43.120 The gammon's are back in business. Brilliant. 0.99

00:48:45.120 But I find it very interesting that all of a sudden, these people who would, even by their own team, would be seen as, you know,

00:48:51.120 oh, God, they're all, you know, it's a bit old-school.

00:48:53.120 Whereas now, they're embraced, they're invited on all these programs.

00:48:58.120 Do you see that as quite significant, almost?

00:49:02.120 Well, I think what they do well is they do tap into a sense of authenticity, which some of our politicians have lost.

00:49:08.120 Like, authenticity is an incredibly powerful political drug.

00:49:11.120 Like, it really connects with voters.

00:49:14.120 And I think, you know, the new prime minister, if she or he were clever, they would hold their hands up immediately,

00:49:20.120 because they're going to get five minutes with the country, right, where they can frame who they are and what they're about.

00:49:24.120 They should hold their hands up and say, you know, conservatives made lots of mistakes over the last 12 years.

00:49:29.120 Here's a few of them.

00:49:30.120 I'm not perfect. Here are my flaws. Just be real with people.

00:49:34.120 Yeah, I agree.

00:49:35.120 Good afternoon.

00:49:37.120 I have just accepted Her Majesty the Queen's kind invitation to form a new government.

00:49:45.120 Let me pay tribute to my predecessor.

00:49:48.120 Boris Johnson delivered Brexit, the Covid vaccine and stood up to Russian aggression. 0.74

00:49:55.120 History will see him as a hugely consequential prime minister.

00:50:02.120 Dump all the spin nonsense. Just be completely real.

00:50:05.120 And I think some of the names that you mentioned, I think those guys do a good job of that.

00:50:08.120 Another person, I do a lot of polling, somebody who always polls, like, leagues above politicians, Martin Lewis.

00:50:15.120 Now, you might not agree with everything Martin Lewis says, right?

00:50:18.120 But what does he convey?

00:50:19.120 Compassion, serious concern for people, a sense that actually Westminster is not doing its job.

00:50:25.120 Now, his brand in politics is very, very strong.

00:50:29.120 If you were to give Martin Lewis 10 million quid and a couple of political advisers, he would probably be polling at 10 to 15 percent.

00:50:37.120 Like, that's how volatile the system is at the moment.

00:50:40.120 But it's about conveying that authenticity and that freedom to speak outside of the ideological straitjacket, right?

00:50:49.120 That comes with left and right politics.

00:50:51.120 And ultimately, what we are dealing with are two political parties, not just in the UK, but across the West,

00:50:57.120 two political parties or two traditions that were basically forged by the Industrial Revolution

00:51:02.120 and were basically forged by debates that were principally about redistribution.

00:51:08.120 And we are now, I firmly believe, entering into a new era in politics,

00:51:13.120 which is no longer simply about left-right economic redistribution,

00:51:17.120 but is now also about liberal and traditionalist values on the nation and family and community.

00:51:25.120 And the old parties are struggling to adapt to this two-dimensional space, right?

00:51:30.120 So, Labour is struggling and it's kind of doubled down on social liberals

00:51:35.120 and it's said the future is left-wing economics and extreme social liberalism.

00:51:39.120 It's not going to work for lots of reasons.

00:51:42.120 Geography, those voters are concentrated in the same kinds of areas.

00:51:45.120 And Conservatives have also really continued to double down on free market economics

00:51:51.120 and haven't really made a bet on the value space, right?

00:51:55.120 They're sort of torn between establishment liberals that kind of run the party

00:51:59.120 and their new kind of cultural conservative MPs.

00:52:02.120 So they've kind of struggled, I think, to really adapt to that two-dimensional space.

00:52:08.120 And that's kind of where we are.

00:52:09.120 So that, you know, some of these voices are leftovers from a previous era that still have a star quality.

00:52:15.120 But I don't think the next movement, the next leader, the next voice that genuinely cuts through has actually appeared yet.

00:52:24.120 I don't think that's happened yet.

00:52:26.120 And I don't think if there is another populist wave or whatever you want to call it, it won't look anything like what we've had before.

00:52:33.120 I don't think it will look like a, it won't be a UK Independence Party type movement.

00:52:37.120 It will be something completely different.

00:52:39.120 Why do you say that, mate?

00:52:40.120 Because I think the issues and the context will demand it.

00:52:45.120 You know, Europe as an issue in British politics is basically resolved.

00:52:49.120 I think it's going to be about a new generation who are coming through.

00:52:54.120 It will be about the Gen Xers. 0.86

00:52:55.120 It will be the millennials. 0.90

00:52:56.120 It won't be coming from the baby boomers. 0.97

00:53:00.120 It will be something very different.

00:53:02.120 But aren't the millennials all mostly quite liberal on many of these issues?

00:53:06.120 Some of them are. Some of them are. Not all of them.

00:53:09.120 There's a bit of evidence to suggest that even some Gen Z Zoomers are actually in some respects quite conservative. 1.00

00:53:16.120 I mean, I talk to my students on some of these issues.

00:53:19.120 They're not as kind of, you know, quote unquote woke as you might think actually on a lot of these issues.

00:53:24.120 Especially interesting when it comes to their personal lives.

00:53:27.120 Fitness and diet and regime. Incredibly conservative.

00:53:30.120 Interesting.

00:53:31.120 Matt, are we going to have a winter of discontent?

00:53:34.120 Yes. It's going to be very difficult.

00:53:36.120 This is going to be a very, very difficult winter for everybody.

00:53:40.120 And it's going to be unpleasant.

00:53:43.120 And it's going to have a lot of social and political effects.

00:53:47.120 Whenever we talk to people about, like, it's going to be unpleasant.

00:53:51.120 Look, no one's got a crystal ball, et cetera, et cetera.

00:53:54.120 What do we actually mean by that?

00:53:56.120 I'll give you a stat.

00:53:57.120 Probably the average worker in this country might be pulling about, let's say, 28, 30 grand.

00:54:02.120 So it's probably taking home after tax about $1,400, $1,500, something like that maybe.

00:54:08.120 Yeah.

00:54:09.120 Around that figure.

00:54:10.120 If the forecaster writes somewhere between 33% and 40% of their take home pay after tax is going to be going on bills.

00:54:21.120 Like, that's huge.

00:54:22.120 That's going to be a monumental, before you get to rent and mortgage.

00:54:27.120 Like, I'm talking like energy utility.

00:54:29.120 Like, it's going to be massive.

00:54:31.120 It's going to hit people hard, especially people further down the ladder.

00:54:34.120 I can tell you, I was speaking to a finance director for a major, major company in the country that everybody would recognize.

00:54:41.120 And they said to me that their forecasts suggest that of their customers, all of their customers, they already forecast that by Christmas, a third of them will not be able to pay their bills to that core service provider.

00:54:58.120 And they are already moving on to a retention model of lowering bills as quickly as possible to try and retain customers, even if it means they take massive losses.

00:55:08.120 And these are the kinds of things that are happening in boardrooms across the country because people can sense that actually what we're going into is going to be massive.

00:55:16.120 I just polled, actually.

00:55:17.120 I asked a nationally representative sample of voters, do you agree?

00:55:22.120 Would you support the calls to refuse to pay your bills until they come down?

00:55:28.120 Which is some of the grassroots campaigns that we've had are saying just cancel your direct debits.

00:55:33.120 If you can't afford to pay your bills, just do it.

00:55:35.120 It's going to be a mass protest.

00:55:36.120 And I think about 200,000 people have signed this petition for that.

00:55:40.120 So I polled it.

00:55:41.120 So one third of people in the country, one third of adults, say they support that action.

00:55:46.120 Like if that were to happen, I mean, how many companies would go out of business?

00:55:51.120 Right?

00:55:52.120 Many.

00:55:53.120 So there is a sense, a palpable sense that actually we may be on the cusp of something that is going to be very significant and very difficult, right, for people.

00:56:03.120 And I think about my, take my students as an example.

00:56:07.120 Students arriving this month in university were born in 2004.

00:56:11.120 Oh, don't say that.

00:56:12.120 I know.

00:56:13.120 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:56:14.120 So they were too young to vote in a Brexit referendum, the 2017 election, the 2019 election, right?

00:56:18.120 And they are the COVID kids, right?

00:56:21.120 They are the kids that had their, all of their, the last year their GCSE and all of their A-levels were in lockdown, basically were disrupted by COVID.

00:56:28.120 Wow.

00:56:29.120 So this cohort, this group is a really unique group of students.

00:56:34.120 But think about what they've seen, you know, in their life.

00:56:38.120 They were four when the global financial crash happened.

00:56:42.120 They were six when austerity happened.

00:56:46.120 They were 12 when Trump and Brexit happened.

00:56:53.120 Then they had COVID when they were 16.

00:56:58.120 Now they've got war in Ukraine.

00:57:00.120 Now they've got the energy crisis and never mind the housing crisis and all the other stuff that we can come to.

00:57:07.120 Now, of course, you can point to all generations that have had difficult times.

00:57:10.120 It wasn't like this for our generation.

00:57:11.120 No.

00:57:12.120 I mean, I was born in 81.

00:57:13.120 So, I mean, I, you know, for me, the 90s were like, you know, great.

00:57:16.120 But in the early, every, in my mind, everything until 9-11 was, was good.

00:57:21.120 And then everything just kind of like.

00:57:22.120 Music was better.

00:57:23.120 Yeah, it was.

00:57:24.120 I mean, the 90s were.

00:57:25.120 Summers lasted longer.

00:57:26.120 Free social media.

00:57:27.120 I'm telling you, social media killed everything.

00:57:28.120 Yeah.

00:57:29.120 You know, having to write letters to girls, for example.

00:57:32.120 Yeah.

00:57:33.120 Lost art form.

00:57:34.120 Lost art form.

00:57:35.120 And I feel really worried about them because it's going to be, for that generation, it's 1.00

00:57:41.120 going to be brutal.

00:57:42.120 I mean, even if you took the labor plan on energy and you said, okay, let's, you know,

00:57:47.120 spend a hundred billion, which the energy companies think it's going to cost long term to fix this

00:57:51.120 problem, to provide loans, to keep prices low.

00:57:54.120 We're talking 30 billion more than furlough.

00:57:57.120 We're talking about my daughter and her kids, if she has kids, paying this off.

00:58:02.120 And your daughter's ten months old.

00:58:03.120 The generations.

00:58:04.120 My daughter's ten months old.

00:58:05.120 So we're talking about massive amounts of debt being built up to deal with this problem.

00:58:09.120 Again, and this is my point.

00:58:10.120 Again, we're not solving the problem with any of this.

00:58:13.120 No, I agree.

00:58:14.120 We're not solving the problem.

00:58:15.120 We're not going to get off the needle, which is just printing more money to get out

00:58:19.120 of our way, to get out of the way of the consequences of our own actions.

00:58:23.120 I don't really, I don't understand.

00:58:27.120 Like to me, this feels like this, these chickens will come home to roost a lot sooner than people think.

00:58:32.120 Well, QE is beginning.

00:58:33.120 I mean, it is coming to an end.

00:58:35.120 We won't, we won't continue to print on the scale that we have been printing.

00:58:38.120 And COVID was slightly, you know, was unique.

00:58:41.120 And touch wood, we're not going to have another pandemic in our lifetime.

00:58:44.120 But I agree with you.

00:58:47.120 I think we are not doing anywhere near enough forward, forward planning.

00:58:52.120 We're not thinking about where's the next, where are the next 50 years.

00:58:55.120 We're not even thinking about, I mean, how do we fix a productivity problem in this country?

00:59:00.120 How do we genuinely get serious regional economic growth?

00:59:05.120 I mean, it's, it's been six years since Brexit.

00:59:08.120 And in some ways it feels like six lost years.

00:59:11.120 This moment could have been genuinely revolutionary for the country.

00:59:14.120 We could have had, and I think there are two things that went on, actually.

00:59:17.120 We could have had a genuinely interesting moment of national renewal.

00:59:21.120 But I think two things happened.

00:59:22.120 One is conservatives didn't really bring big ideas to the table.

00:59:26.120 You know, they did a few things, right?

00:59:28.120 So, yeah, we left the EU, they reformed migration, but that was kind of like about it.

00:59:32.120 And then COVID hit and everything got shut down.

00:59:34.120 And then I think labor and very intelligent liberal folks didn't really want to play the game.

00:59:43.120 They didn't really want to come to the table and bring new, bold, interesting ideas for how we were going to make this moment work.

00:59:49.120 And I think probably now the severity of the situation, I would hope, would now push us into a much more interesting national conversation about what we're going to do about what's a 2050 plan?

01:00:01.120 Right.

01:00:02.120 What's a 2100 plan? 0.98

01:00:03.120 But this is a problem because all Labor seem to do is just basically shut their mouths and let the Tories make an ass of it. 1.00

01:00:10.120 Well, oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them.

01:00:13.120 Yeah.

01:00:14.120 And essentially that's what's happening.

01:00:15.120 I mean, are you telling me Labor are on 41% of the polls because people have fallen in love with Keir Starmer?

01:00:21.120 I don't see that.

01:00:22.120 In all the polling I'm doing, Keir Starmer is weak as he was when he came in.

01:00:25.120 Like, people don't really like Starmer.

01:00:27.120 But it's the incumbency that is driving them from right to left.

01:00:32.120 There is no compelling, you know, I would argue there's no compelling, credible, intellectually interesting, timely alternative.

01:00:43.120 There was.

01:00:44.120 In the very leadership election, which is about to finish, was that candidate not being elected.

01:00:49.120 With...

01:00:50.120 With...

01:00:51.120 Well, on the conservative side, true.

01:00:52.120 But if I was being even critical of, of Kemi, and I'm not, I mean, I was very on the record of saying I think Kemi would be a really interesting conservative leader.

01:01:01.120 But even then, like, it's going to take more than the culture stuff to fix these problems.

01:01:07.120 I would have loved for Kemi or Suella, Braverman or so on, any others to come out and say, right, you know, just forget the next five years.

01:01:16.120 Like, here's the 2050 plan.

01:01:18.120 Like, this is what we need.

01:01:20.120 It's got to be big.

01:01:21.120 It's got to be bold.

01:01:22.120 It's got to be ambitious.

01:01:23.120 And, you know, go back to 2008 and the financial crash.

01:01:27.120 Say what you want about Gordon Brown.

01:01:30.120 But at least he captured the urgency of the situation, which was, we don't need to think about this domestically.

01:01:36.120 We need to think about this globally.

01:01:38.120 We need a much bigger, broader plan than anything that's been put forward.

01:01:43.120 And I feel like this crisis isn't generating that same kind of response from our leaders.

01:01:48.120 I mean, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak haven't really got into it on the leadership campaign trail in the way that they should have done.

01:01:57.120 I mean, remember the U.S. presidential election before the global financial crash.

01:02:01.120 You know, I mean, Obama was sitting in meetings with Bush and the economic advisory groups actually talking about what was likely to happen and where things were going.

01:02:11.120 We haven't really seen that kind of coordination and, you know, forward thinking this time around.

01:02:16.120 It's been very, people have remained in their silos.

01:02:20.120 And I think that's worrying given the severity of the problems that are going to come down the line.

01:02:24.120 It's a complete lack of vision on all sides, which I think just speaks to the lack of talent.

01:02:30.120 Yeah, I think, well, again, I mean, I think we need to incentivize people to better people to come into politics because the risk if we don't is we're going to end up, you know, perpetuating this, you know, and maintaining the status quo as we go forward.

01:02:44.120 And, you know, let's see what happens.

01:02:46.120 I mean, you look across Europe at the moment, look at Italy, you know, big election this month in Italy, of course, new parties are popping up left, right and center.

01:02:55.120 Look at what just happened in the French election, left, left and right completely imploded, almost replaced by radical left, radical right parties.

01:03:03.120 Look at Germany, look at Sweden, look at Portugal, look at Spain.

01:03:07.120 We're seeing levels of volatility in politics that we haven't really seen in quite a long time.

01:03:13.120 We've seen high levels of fragmentation, lots of new parties coming on board.

01:03:17.120 Maybe, maybe that happens in Britain.

01:03:20.120 Watch this space.

01:03:21.120 Matt, one of the things that strikes me about the evolution of our political system.

01:03:26.120 Now, of course, this was always the case to some extent, but it seems to me that we it's kind of our fault, too, because we massively disincentivize politicians from telling the truth about difficult things.

01:03:38.120 And as you talk about, you know, Liz Truss, she will be elected, I'm sure, on Monday.

01:03:45.120 And she needs to come out and say, well, these are the mistakes we've made.

01:03:50.120 But I actually haven't heard anyone say what you've said on our show today, which is there's definitely going to be a winter of discontent.

01:03:56.120 Right. And I think it would actually be quite important for a leader.

01:04:00.120 I mean, what do people think is going to happen?

01:04:02.120 Well, they don't.

01:04:04.120 Right.

01:04:05.120 They don't.

01:04:06.120 This is my point, because no one is saying to them the winter will be quite difficult.

01:04:10.120 You need to prepare.

01:04:11.120 You need to set some money aside now.

01:04:13.120 You need to do this.

01:04:14.120 You need to.

01:04:15.120 Like, I appreciate a politician has, you know, the challenge of also not panicking people.

01:04:19.120 But I also think the politician has a responsibility to level with the country about the nature and the scale of what's coming.

01:04:26.120 Yeah.

01:04:27.120 And they're not doing that.

01:04:28.120 Well, if you read what's coming out of sort of, you know, team trust, I think the plan seems to be the first hundred days will basically be about survival,

01:04:37.120 will be about just deal with the energy crisis, get on top of it.

01:04:41.120 Aspirational stuff.

01:04:42.120 Just, just, just get through the winter.

01:04:44.120 Yeah.

01:04:45.120 Right.

01:04:46.120 And then, you know, into 23, start to lay out, you know, the ideas for the big, big policy stuff.

01:04:51.120 I mean, I haven't been told that.

01:04:52.120 That's what I read.

01:04:53.120 And I think it was the FT that did a piece on that.

01:04:55.120 That seems to be the rough plan, like coming.

01:04:58.120 And, you know, in all fairness, when you're polling at 29, 30 percent, you know, I think probably that that's the only thing really that she's going to be really incentivized to do is just to make sure she doesn't have a rebellion within the conservative.

01:05:11.120 And within the conservative party, first and foremost, because don't forget, I mean, a lot of conservative MPs did not back Truss.

01:05:17.120 Right.

01:05:18.120 If she ends up becoming the next leader, a lot of MPs back Penny Morden, which is an interesting decision, a few others.

01:05:24.120 And, you know, I think that's, that's going to leave her in a bit of a potentially a vulnerable place. 0.98

01:05:29.120 But then after Christmas, potentially she wants to get into that situation where she can look back and say, you know, we've got through it.

01:05:36.120 Now let's not ruin it.

01:05:38.120 Let's stay on course, et cetera.

01:05:40.120 So there's going to be that return to the David Cameron narrative of 2015.

01:05:44.120 You know, don't let Labour and the SNP ruin it at the next election.

01:05:48.120 Let's stay on course.

01:05:49.120 Yes, things are difficult, but here's what we've done.

01:05:51.120 I mean, that I imagine will be the playbook.

01:05:53.120 You know, delivered, done what we could with Brexit, with signing trade deals, with trying to do X, Y, Z.

01:06:00.120 You know, don't put Nicola Sturgeon into number 10 with Keir Starmer.

01:06:03.120 I imagine that will be the strategy.

01:06:05.120 And in a sense, it will be, you know, try and mobilise England again against the SNP and non-London England against the SNP and Labour.

01:06:15.120 And that strategy has been successful for them in the past, but it's whether they can reconnect with those groups that I talked about.

01:06:22.120 And I'm currently sceptical.

01:06:25.120 Matt, you're someone who is obviously very knowledgeable about politics.

01:06:30.120 You spent your life studying it.

01:06:32.120 But just talking as a human being to a human being, how worried are you about what you're seeing in our country?

01:06:39.120 Because I'm a layman. 0.98

01:06:40.120 And to put it bluntly, I'm fucking terrified.

01:06:43.120 Would you share those? 0.96

01:06:45.120 You mean in terms of the economic?

01:06:47.120 The economics, the culture, the social.

01:06:49.120 I'm talking about the very fabric of our country.

01:06:52.120 Well, I wouldn't say I'm...

01:06:56.120 I'm more of an optimist.

01:06:58.120 We have a remarkable...

01:07:02.120 Let's just play the upside for a second.

01:07:04.120 We have a remarkable, resilient political system.

01:07:06.120 And we do.

01:07:07.120 I mean, put all the liberal shrieking of the last two years to one side, right?

01:07:11.120 We have never come close to having a serious meltdown in our political system.

01:07:18.120 Like, never in recent history.

01:07:20.120 And there's optimism point one.

01:07:22.120 Optimism point two is we remain a very moderate political culture in this country.

01:07:28.120 I know it doesn't feel like that sometimes, but compared to our Italian and our American

01:07:33.120 and our many other neighbors and counterparts, we have a very moderate political culture.

01:07:39.120 I think that is a plus.

01:07:41.120 We are not as tribal as many other people.

01:07:46.120 I mean, I do genuinely think that's the case.

01:07:49.120 And thirdly, we have lots of things that still ultimately bring us together.

01:07:54.120 And I think many of the things that Orwell and Blair and Johnson and many others have pointed to are valid.

01:08:02.120 We have still many points of unity in this country that are not always political relating to sense of humor,

01:08:10.120 our respect for certain institutions that are not always in politics, our sense of fair play,

01:08:16.120 which, of course, Boris Johnson discovered what happens when you violate that, as did Dominic Cummings.

01:08:21.120 You know, our sense of tolerance and fairness.

01:08:25.120 These are things that I think are ingrained, actually, in our national culture.

01:08:30.120 And you might say I'm being naive, but I think the British and the English culture is very resilient to many of the things that we have been talking about.

01:08:40.120 And, yes, it's going to be a difficult winter and it's going to be a difficult five years ahead.

01:08:44.120 And lots of people are going to find it very, very difficult.

01:08:47.120 You know, and I'm very aware of that.

01:08:49.120 We have also been through things like this before.

01:08:52.120 We've been through the three-day working week.

01:08:55.120 We've had winters of discontent before.

01:08:57.120 We've had major global depressions, financial crises, credit crunches, you name it.

01:09:02.120 And we've not descended into mass revolt and upheaval.

01:09:08.120 We've got on with it.

01:09:09.120 And that's what we do in this country.

01:09:11.120 We get on with it.

01:09:12.120 Keep calm and carry on.

01:09:13.120 Keep calm and carry on, yeah.

01:09:15.120 Well, the only positive note of the interview, and that is why we will end it.

01:09:19.120 Maybe we should have started with that.

01:09:21.120 But, Matt, thank you so much for coming back.

01:09:24.120 Thanks for having me.

01:09:25.120 It's always a pleasure to have you on.

01:09:26.120 Before we let you go, we should tell everybody to read your substack and follow your work on Twitter as well.

01:09:31.120 But, of course, our last question is always the same, even though it produces a different answer every time,

01:09:36.120 which is what's the one thing we're not talking about in our society that we really should be?

01:09:41.120 I think we need to talk a lot more about family breakdown.

01:09:44.120 I've just finished reading a great new report by the Nuffield, Angus Deaton Review, the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

01:09:54.120 I've just put this report out on the scale of family breakdown in the UK and the effects that it is having on children and the effects of this much more fluid environment that we're in.

01:10:07.120 And I think in terms of policy, in terms of politics, in terms of society, we need leaders who are going to stand up and say,

01:10:14.120 actually, we need to now start putting family at the centre of our politics and our country.

01:10:21.120 And I think that would be very popular.

01:10:23.120 And the return on investment is enormous. It's enormous. It's a no-brainer from a policy perspective.

01:10:30.120 Strong families, stronger society, fewer problems, less addiction, less crime, less mental health issues.

01:10:42.120 You name it. It's a range of benefits.

01:10:45.120 Absolutely. Matt, thank you so much for coming back and thank you guys for watching and listening.

01:10:50.120 We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show.

01:10:54.120 All of them go out at 7pm UK time.

01:10:56.120 And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast.

01:11:01.120 Take care and see you soon, guys.

01:11:03.120 We're going to ask a couple of questions of Matt that you've already submitted for our locals.

01:11:07.120 So join our locals to see those. See you there.

01:11:10.120 What is the best strategy for Labour to use in the next election?

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TRIGGERnometry - September 12, 2022

＂The Conservatives Are Imploding＂ - Matt Goodwin

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