TRIGGERnometry - ＂The Left Must Stop Despising Working People＂ - Paul Embery

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kissin and this is a show

00:00:40.940 for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people a wonderful returning for

00:00:46.900 the third time now guest today is a firefighter trade unionist unheard columnist blue labor guy

00:00:53.580 paul embri welcome back to trigonometry lovely to be back and one thing i didn't mention the

00:00:57.980 introduction, but I really should, is the fact that you're the author of Despised, which is this

00:01:01.600 great book here, which is one of the reasons we really wanted to talk with you again. Last time

00:01:07.420 we talked about I was pushing you to run for Parliament, if you remember that. That hasn't

00:01:12.800 happened yet. Are you happy that centrist dad, Keir Starmer, is now leader and is going to reform

00:01:17.840 the Labour Party in the direction that you want? He wouldn't have been my choice. He's not the

00:01:23.900 leader of choice for for me uh having said that i don't think it was a particularly uh appealing

00:01:29.940 field and i think there's i think there's an issue around look keir starmer at the end of the day is

00:01:37.260 a north london liberal lawyer um i think instinctively uh he doesn't necessarily

00:01:43.980 understand the working classes the people that the labour party needs to win back if they're

00:01:48.280 ever going to win power again. He comes from that wing of the party, which now dominates the party

00:01:54.900 that is completely obsessed with promoting cosmopolitan liberalism. And, you know, I think

00:02:03.720 he's got a real mountain to climb. That said, I think he's done okay. I think he's had a steady

00:02:08.080 start. I think he's got some good people around him. I think the director of policy, a woman

00:02:14.400 called Claire Ainslie, who's written some good stuff over recent years about the need to connect

00:02:20.980 with the working class and how to do it. I think some of his early speeches have been good. I think

00:02:26.540 his conference speech was good in terms of pressing the buttons of patriotism, national security,

00:02:32.880 family, etc. But like I said, there's a massive way to go. But he's had a reasonable start,

00:02:38.940 to be fair. I guess the reason I brought up and maybe in a slightly sort of spuriously cheap way,

00:02:43.160 But I guess my point is, and this is something that you talk about in the book quite a bit

00:02:50.060 because you're juxtaposing what you believe with people like Tony Blair, etc., etc.

00:02:55.840 And there seems to be this sort of thing when we think about the Labour Party

00:03:00.000 and look back to when was a successful period in its history,

00:03:04.640 a lot of people certainly our age and younger would look towards Blair.

00:03:07.820 But that isn't a position that you particularly advocate for the Labour Party.

00:03:10.920 So where does it go?

00:03:11.760 Well, I think Blair did right in the sense that he was able to build that coalition which Labour always needs if it's going to win power, which is hanging on to its traditional working class base, if you like, but also reaching out to a layout of more middle class people, you know, people perhaps part of the professional and managerial classes who are sympathetic to Labour because they want a fairer society, fairer economy, etc, etc.

00:03:36.900 I think Blair was able to do that. And historically, actually, Labour has always been, when it's been its most successful, it's been an electoral compromise between those two elements. I describe it as mainly Hartlepool, but with a dash of Hampstead. I think that's when Labour has been at its best. And Labour can't really win just with one part of that equation.

00:03:57.840 I think the problem with Blair is he just squandered a golden opportunity to really kind of reform the economy and to shape it in such a way where it was delivering more in favour of working class people to confront vested interests, to take on the rich and powerful when it was necessary to do so.

00:04:17.700 I think he embraced neoliberalism too much, Thatcherite ideology too much. And in doing so,

00:04:24.280 I think he combined that with a very sort of relaxed approach to immigration. You know,

00:04:30.620 Labour at that time had embraced both economic liberalism and social liberalism. And that just

00:04:36.420 began, I think, to alienate working class people. And, you know, I think particularly over the last 0.65

00:04:42.580 15 or 20 years, that process has just intensified and Labour has hemorrhaged votes in working

00:04:50.300 class communities, in places that were once its absolute bedrock in provincial Britain,

00:04:55.100 small town Britain. And that ended up with Labour being annihilated, as we know, in December. So

00:05:01.880 that was a process that began under Tony Blair, however successful he was electorally. I think

00:05:07.900 he has to recognise that actually, you know, the ideology that he drove through alienated

00:05:13.220 millions of working class people in this country.

00:05:15.520 Don't you think part of the problem now that Labour faces with itself is the fact that

00:05:20.520 the party, dare I say, is unsustainable? Can they really hold all these people together

00:05:25.500 under one coalition?

00:05:27.400 Well, this is the problem. They haven't done that. And they've alienated that heartless

00:05:32.860 side of the equation in large numbers um and unless they can build that coalition again so

00:05:41.420 so to to appeal again to those working class communities who they've alienated um which will

00:05:48.380 mean that more kind of middle class um liberal element of the party will have to make sacrifices

00:05:54.880 just as the working class element did when Blair was so obsessed with with bringing you know more

00:06:00.160 middle class people on board. But unless it does that, then no, frankly, it's finished or it will 0.99

00:06:06.280 just become a protest group. You know, it needs radical change. The ideology of the party needs

00:06:12.900 to change, the language of the party needs to change. It needs to stop obsessing about what

00:06:18.320 many people see as secondary issues in their lives, fringe issues. I'm not saying that those

00:06:22.660 issues are not important, but they're not the issues that working class people are talking about.

00:06:26.660 So, you know, you would hear, I know this as a Labour Party member for 26 years, you will hear people constantly in the movement talking about things like climate change and LGBT rights and migrant rights and that kind of thing, human rights, etc.

00:06:43.820 and those things are important I'm not dismissing them but actually when you go on the doorstep

00:06:48.580 when you go to working class communities what people are talking about are you know jobs and

00:06:53.660 the threat of unemployment and low wages and housing but also you know what many labour people

00:06:59.440 would dismiss as Tory issues you know law and order you know there's for example you know there's a

00:07:05.620 drug dealer dealing on my estate outside the front door how can I deal with that as a working class

00:07:10.480 person or issues around immigration you know people seeing pressure on public services and

00:07:17.260 perhaps their wages suffering suffering downward pressure as a result of immigration into their

00:07:23.320 communities or large-scale immigration these are the you know people talking about family and

00:07:29.060 perhaps traditional values these are issues that labor activists will when they're raised on the

00:07:34.960 doorstep or in conversation will look down at the ground and shuffle their feet in embarrassment

00:07:40.100 because they're not comfortable about talking about those issues.

00:07:44.340 And the problem is people out there are people who once upon a time were Labour,

00:07:48.900 felt instinctively, tribally Labour,

00:07:51.740 and the Labour Party was welcoming to those people

00:07:54.440 and knew that it had to reflect the concerns of those people

00:07:57.820 and speak about the issues.

00:07:59.480 As Labour over the last 20 or 30 years has become more middle class, 0.70

00:08:05.840 more focused on or set in the cities,

00:08:09.200 particularly London-centric, quite bourgeois in its outlook, more cosmopolitan, more liberal.

00:08:16.340 It just doesn't want to talk about those issues anymore. It's no coincidence that working-class 1.00

00:08:19.860 people have just gravitated away from the party as the party no longer reflects their everyday

00:08:24.360 concerns. But Paul, I would go even deeper to say that there's a large swathe of the Labour Party

00:08:29.980 who feel complete and absolute contempt for white working-class people in particular, dare I say it.

00:08:35.320 They do. And I mean, the book is called Despised, Why the Modern Left Loads the Working Class. 1.00

00:08:41.300 And there is undoubtedly an element who do go further than just kind of sneering at working class values,

00:08:50.480 but actually hate, you know, the people who espouse those values and treat them as I've described it in the book,

00:08:58.300 treat them like some sort of embarrassing elderly relative.

00:09:01.600 you know they want their votes at election time so they know they've kind of got to try and keep

00:09:06.700 them on board not alienate them too much but they don't want to be seen in public with them because

00:09:11.020 you know these people are embarrassing they've got old-fashioned working class values um 0.93

00:09:15.420 like you're your incredibly right-wing mum yeah exactly um and and you know there is there is a

00:09:22.120 there is a contempt and you know when i when i was a guest on the show before i talked about things

00:09:27.160 like the Gordon Brown incident with Gillian Duffy

00:09:30.180 and I talked about Emily Thornberry with the St. George's flag.

00:09:32.580 Well, you've got the white van on the cover of the book,

00:09:35.340 which I think I'm imagining is a reference to that very common

00:09:37.720 because it's such a visceral thing, isn't it?

00:09:39.980 Yeah, and, you know, the thing about Emily Thornberry is 0.91

00:09:42.920 she obviously, I mean, she's part of that middle-class liberal 1.00

00:09:46.220 Islintonian set who really don't understand,

00:09:50.560 I don't think, people in communities where they do fly St. George's flags

00:09:53.240 and drive white vans and, you know, saw what she saw

00:09:55.800 and thought it was so noteworthy that it was worth it was worth tweeting about um but that

00:10:01.040 you know there's no there's no question there there is a significant disconnect between large

00:10:06.720 parts of the left and the working class because parts of the left do actively despise the the

00:10:11.900 working class and those values and their own values are completely out of sync with the the

00:10:16.300 working class and i've seen that develop um particularly as i said the last 15 or 20 years

00:10:21.720 From my vantage point, as somebody on the left, somebody inside the Labour Party, active in the Labour movement, who has seen the Labour movement itself change quite radically over that period, and as it's done so, the contempt in which parts of it hold working-class communities has just increased.

00:10:40.560 Paul, we've touched on the disconnect.

00:10:44.400 We've touched on working class people being despised.

00:10:47.920 And we've touched on Tony Blair.

00:10:49.020 And if we connect all those three things together,

00:10:51.020 I would argue that Tony Blair would likely have been perceived

00:10:54.160 as very, very successful had it not been number one for the Iraq war

00:10:58.040 and number two for mass immigration,

00:11:00.260 the impact of which was starting to be felt by the time he'd already gone.

00:11:04.280 But, you know, when we talk about people being despised for their views,

00:11:07.440 I think there is no bigger issue than immigration on which the disconnect is as bad and as fierce.

00:11:13.980 So what should a healthy left-wing position on immigration be in our society?

00:11:20.960 Well, I believe that there's nothing incompatible on the left about believing in regulation of the labour supply.

00:11:26.500 And in fact, until fairly recently, that was a mainstream position on the left.

00:11:29.880 You know, you knew that the labour supply was a market dynamic,

00:11:32.780 which, like all market dynamics, needed to be regulated so as to provide the best possible outcome for workers.

00:11:39.980 That wasn't particularly a controversial position on the left.

00:11:43.040 Now it is. If you say you're in favour of regulating immigration, you're a bigot and, you know, you're a xenophobe and all of this sort of stuff.

00:11:50.280 And people will just hit you with, you know, old slogans about migrants are not to blame, 1.00

00:11:55.120 as if you're blaming migrants personally, which, of course, most people, when they argue in favour of regulation of the labour supply, are not doing that.

00:12:02.780 So that position has changed fundamentally. And, you know, I think the idea that anyone on the left should campaign in favour of unrestricted immigration, bearing in mind the impact that it can have on wages.

00:12:19.120 I mean, broadly, overall, the impact is negligible in this country, but it can have more significant impacts on things like wage distribution and the wages of people at the lower end of the scale.

00:12:32.520 And it shouldn't be controversial to say that actually, you know, also when it comes to things around planning for a government, you know, you've got a plan around welfare and housing and employment and things like that.

00:12:41.320 You need to know the numbers of people that are coming into your country.

00:12:46.040 And, you know, I argue in the book that you can look at a country like Japan, for example.

00:12:52.400 And Japan has fairly tight immigration policy.

00:12:56.400 I mean, it doesn't close its borders completely, but it does manage numbers and numbers are modest.

00:13:01.800 um and it will say you know there's a culture in japan that says if you come to japan we're japan

00:13:08.340 and we expect you to to assimilate um we like being japan we don't particularly want to to be 0.82

00:13:13.340 anything different um japan no one could seriously argue that japan is anything other than a highly

00:13:20.580 advanced civilized safe clean modern democracy um and the fact that it manages its its immigration 0.99

00:13:30.860 levels doesn't mean that it's somehow uncivilized or uncultured or all its people are xenophobic

00:13:38.060 and that's the sort of thing that I would like to see in in Britain I'm pro-immigration I've

00:13:42.720 always been pro-immigration I think it's brought benefits to our country but like anything you can

00:13:47.500 have too much of a good thing sometimes you know I like a glass of wine but I know too much wine

00:13:51.400 can can sometimes cause problems you know I like exercising I know if you exercise to an extreme

00:13:56.460 it can cause problems um so you know i think good things in in moderation is the is the approach

00:14:02.220 that we should take and i think the really sad thing is actually i think that's the view probably

00:14:06.360 of most people in this country most people i'm certain and i'll quote some statistics in the

00:14:10.280 book i think most people see immigration as a good thing but they don't particularly want porous 0.90

00:14:14.280 borders they don't want unrestricted immigration neither do they want to put the barriers up

00:14:18.560 completely i think the problem is where the policy has been so relaxed and people in those working

00:14:24.160 class communities which have to deal with the impacts more than any other communities of large

00:14:29.420 scale immigration and I saw it in as I described in the book in the community where I grew up in

00:14:34.560 Barking and Dagenham it poisoned the whole debate and what you had and what you've seen in this

00:14:40.400 country now is is a country that was pretty tolerant towards immigration and by and large I

00:14:46.540 think still is because their trust has been abused and because they've been dismissed as bigots and

00:14:52.800 xenophobes for saying, actually, look, can we slow this down? Can we have a properly managed

00:14:56.640 regulated system? That has toxified the whole debate and has caused in many respects a culture

00:15:04.540 war over the whole issue. And frankly, until the left gets to grips with it, I guess Brexit allows

00:15:11.700 us to do it to a certain degree, but until the left gets to grip with that issue and its impact

00:15:17.620 on working-class communities and stops just simply sloganising

00:15:21.560 and dismissing working-class concerns as being driven by bigotry and xenophobia,

00:15:26.800 then they will never win back the people that they need to win back.

00:15:29.780 And part of the problem, isn't it, also as well,

00:15:32.140 the people advocating open borders, freedom of movement, blah, blah, blah,

00:15:36.440 their jobs aren't a threat, their wages aren't being impacted by them.

00:15:39.940 So by them advocating that position, they've got no skin in the game really, have they?

00:15:43.840 That's exactly the point.

00:15:44.920 And it tends to be the, you know, the very people whose wages and, as you say, jobs won't necessarily be under threat, who, of course, are the most relaxed about it.

00:15:55.100 I read something recently. I mean, obviously, I'm in the trade union movement and every trade union leader you could meet would probably disagree with me vehemently on this.

00:16:02.820 And as someone said, you know, if there was competition for jobs as general secretaries of trade union movements as a result of an oversupply of labour from abroad, then all of a sudden, you know, you might see a different approach.

00:16:16.400 So it's certainly true. And again, you know, it's individuals who are not affected by it and, you know, don't always live in the communities that are affected by it.

00:16:25.560 And I guess from the book's point of view, I describe this in quite graphic detail.

00:16:31.200 You know, I lived for 35 years.

00:16:32.840 I grew up in Barking and Dagenham.

00:16:34.300 And that was very much what you would call a red wall seat in Barking and Dagenham, two separate constituencies, but both what you would call red wall seats.

00:16:43.820 Traditionally, Labour, very sort of blue collar, very working class.

00:16:47.860 and at the turn of the century was was really caught in the eye of the storm in the debate

00:16:53.960 over globalization and immigration i mean there were and i saw it myself large numbers of people

00:16:58.740 coming in mainly very decent nice law-abiding people um but often competing for jobs with

00:17:05.920 local people often not much in common culturally with local people there were language barriers

00:17:10.760 etc. The whole area went through a process of very, very rapid change. And people were uneasy

00:17:19.040 about it. And not because their sense of race had been violated, but because their sense of order

00:17:23.960 had been violated. A very kind of settled and stable community was suddenly undergoing very

00:17:29.380 rapid demographic and to a certain degree, economic change. And when they looked to politicians and

00:17:34.860 said, look, actually, can you address this? Can you maybe slow things down? They were told that

00:17:39.740 they were bigots and that they were xenophobes. And tragically, what that meant in Barking and

00:17:44.160 Dagenham is in the council elections in 2006, the BNP won 12 seats on the local council. Their

00:17:49.740 best ever performance in local government came out of nowhere. I mean, they had a foothold in

00:17:55.860 other parts of East London prior to that. But all of a sudden, they're the official opposition on

00:18:00.560 my local council. And, you know, it's then that I started to realise, actually, I think the left

00:18:07.440 has got this debate completely and utterly wrong and simply going to people in communities like

00:18:12.780 this as i was doing as somebody you know a young activist on the left at the time and preaching to

00:18:17.700 them about you know well it's good for your gdp you'll probably be a few bit better off at the

00:18:23.080 end of the month you know as that as if that's the only thing that mattered was actually a

00:18:26.820 thatcherite argument you know it's all about the equality about the economy and not quality of life

00:18:31.160 um or you know telling telling people like i remember having a conversation with my old man

00:18:36.700 who'd lived there for about 60 years and she was now in her 80s and this place was her old street

00:18:41.900 was changing around her and trying to convince her that you know the benefits of vibrant

00:18:46.900 cosmopolitanism was really in her interests um you know you can look back on some of that stuff

00:18:51.920 and cringe now but um but you know the truth is that's that's the sort of thing that people were

00:18:56.720 told in communities like that and told by people on the left and told by labor politicians um and

00:19:02.680 And so, you know, the challenge now, first of all, is to recognise that the left has got that debate completely wrong.

00:19:08.100 And the challenge now is to, yes, to develop a policy where you resolutely oppose prejudice and, you know, you absolutely defend the rights of migrants and you oppose racism, of course.

00:19:23.780 But equally, to build a system and a policy where you have a managed system where people, you know, we need to do much better at assimilating people.

00:19:34.980 We need to do much better at making sure that numbers are dispersed more fairly.

00:19:40.300 And we need to regulate it so that there isn't the impact on people's wages. 0.62

00:19:44.360 There isn't the impact on communities, the like of which I saw in Barking and Dagnum.

00:19:48.320 And I think then if we do that, we can get back to a stage where immigration becomes much less of a debate in the national discourse because we're managing it properly and we don't have the problems that we've faced over the last 15, 20 years.

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00:21:40.260 off by heart. Paul, do you think we've been sold an even bigger lie than the one that you've just

00:21:48.940 described yourself as trying to sell to your granny, which is that Margaret Thatcher tried

00:21:55.300 to convince us there's no such thing as society, but the people who came after us, I feel it's

00:22:00.080 almost like they've tried to convince us there's no such thing as community, or if there is, it's

00:22:04.400 not important. It doesn't matter if you know the people who live left and right and up and down of

00:22:09.600 you it doesn't matter if you know them it doesn't matter if you have anything in common it doesn't

00:22:13.780 matter if you have the same values living in one country all that doesn't matter because we're just

00:22:18.800 all you know free-flowing individuals and and you know as long as we've got latte macchiatos

00:22:24.220 down the road then that's fine right there's a sort of bigger lie when really human beings

00:22:30.340 don't live like that and and i know this for myself you know i live just outside of london

00:22:34.940 and the fact that i get to speak to my neighbors and i know the people around me and we've you

00:22:39.280 know solve problems together whatever else it might be that's a thing that adds to my life

00:22:43.980 and living as an atomized individual in a big city really doesn't feel right to me i think that's

00:22:50.760 absolutely right and you know the truth is that we are as humans we are social and parochial beings

00:22:57.520 with an attachment to place and an attachment to a particular culture of the particular community

00:23:03.680 um and i mean one speech i cite from tony blair in the book i think a speech he gave i think at

00:23:10.320 the late party conference in 2005 where he was extolling the virtues of globalization

00:23:16.320 and you know essentially saying look globalization is no respecter of tradition and history

00:23:24.380 basically get on board with it you know shape up or or ship out and it was it was another way

00:23:31.620 essentially of saying look there's no such thing as community there's just money and there's just

00:23:37.140 trade and this is how the world is now um and somebody somebody i i spoke on a panel with

00:23:44.200 once made i think very insightful point she said that you know that that layer of politician the 0.98

00:23:51.660 the blair riots you know the more middle class middle class people um people who embrace

00:23:57.120 cosmopolitan liberalism are more inclined to see the nation as a shop you know which is there you

00:24:04.320 know it's just a they just have a functional relationship with it it's there for transactions

00:24:09.040 it's about trade etc whereas working class people who are often more rooted and with a greater sense

00:24:17.320 of community are more inclined to see it as a home so you know you have the transactional versus the

00:24:25.180 relational. And I think, you know, the Blairites of this world would see it as a transactional

00:24:29.880 thing, whereas working class people, exactly in the way that you've just expressed, see

00:24:33.940 it as a relational thing. And until we understand that working class people do see things in 0.98

00:24:42.220 that way, then I think, you know, the Labour Party and the people who lead it are really

00:24:46.840 not going to get back in touch with them. And they'd do well to read the book by David

00:24:51.060 good heart the road to the road to somewhere which i think actually describes it very well that that

00:24:56.040 you know there's a split if you like between the somewheres and the anywheres um and the anywheres

00:25:01.500 who tend to earn more money tend to be part of the professional classes probably graduates have

00:25:06.300 broader horizons in terms of work opportunities and travel much more mobile and because of that

00:25:12.200 they don't necessarily have not necessarily their fault on one level it's just you know it's just

00:25:17.340 how they've lived their life, don't necessarily have that sense of community, that sense of being

00:25:23.020 rooted, that sense of belonging, don't particularly yearn for it. Whereas people who are paid much

00:25:29.840 less and whose horizons are much more narrow and don't have those opportunities to travel and

00:25:36.320 go and do a gap year in Italy or something, the whole sense of community and belonging

00:25:42.440 takes on so much more meaning to them um and you know somewheres as david goodhart describes it

00:25:49.120 make up about 50 of the population the anywheres make up about 25 with the other 25 what he calls

00:25:55.000 in between us but the problem as he describes it is that actually the anywheres pretty much

00:25:59.400 dominate the culture of the country and the politics of the country and that means that

00:26:02.980 they often you know make decisions which they think are in the national interest whereas actually

00:26:08.280 They're just in the anywhere interest.

00:26:10.660 And until we, as I said, until we start to get what it is that drives working class people, 0.90

00:26:16.080 what their values are, what their everyday concerns are, what their motivations are,

00:26:19.760 what they want, then these divisions are just going to continue.

00:26:23.480 So we were talking about community, but one thing we haven't touched on is the nation state.

00:26:28.360 Now, before this idea of the nation state not being important,

00:26:31.860 you know, was supported by Conservative and by Labour.

00:26:35.040 but now it seems that we're kind of addressing the fact that actually a lot of people are proud

00:26:40.240 to come from this country they feel a sense of connection with this country do you think that's

00:26:44.620 what Labour needs to do in order to actually win hearts and minds yes and I think Labour you know

00:26:50.300 shouldn't be ashamed to start talking about patriotism and then it needs to understand you

00:26:54.860 know national self-identity as people see it they have a sense of awareness and that that doesn't

00:27:02.780 necessarily have to be hostile to other countries just because you know you fill an affinity with

00:27:07.120 your own country it doesn't mean that you're xenophobic towards other other countries and

00:27:11.260 actually it's ultimate level it's just an extension really of of the affinity that people

00:27:16.940 fill with other things other institutions other you know their street for example their town

00:27:22.560 their school their county their football team the nation-state in many respects is just an

00:27:29.600 extension of that. And also, you know, I think the Labour Party needs to understand the importance

00:27:36.340 of the nation state in terms of if there's going to be some sort of challenge to the dominance of

00:27:42.540 international capital, globalisation, then the nation state has got to play a role in that. And

00:27:47.200 the people, as I identify in the book, there's two groups of people really who would like the

00:27:52.240 nation state to wither away. First of all are, you know, what you would call the financial

00:27:57.100 globalizers the people who don't like the idea of nation states and elected national governments

00:28:03.180 being able to to intervene and stop the free movement of of labor or the free movement of

00:28:08.720 capital want access all areas want as little regulation and barriers in the way as possible

00:28:14.220 particularly the multinationals so that they can outsource you know and then they can open up new

00:28:19.720 new plants factories offices etc around the world and see the the national uh see the nation state

00:28:25.700 and national governments as an obstacle to that.

00:28:29.440 And, of course, it should be, frankly, automatic for people on the left

00:28:34.900 to say we want to challenge that, actually.

00:28:37.840 We don't like the idea that we can just have multinational companies

00:28:41.560 dictate what national governments should do, which, of course, they do.

00:28:45.960 It's a form of blackmail, essentially, where huge companies can say,

00:28:51.100 look, unless you, as a national government, give us what we want

00:28:54.380 in terms of, you know, low taxation and low regulation

00:28:57.960 and whatever other demands that we make,

00:29:00.040 then we'll just sort of divest from your country 0.99

00:29:02.900 and open up elsewhere.

00:29:04.400 And, you know, national governments often feel the pressure

00:29:06.760 and give them what they want.

00:29:07.900 And the other group of people are the, if you like,

00:29:11.380 the sort of political globalisers, if you like,

00:29:14.400 the cultural globalisers, the people who,

00:29:17.220 for reasons we've already touched on,

00:29:18.700 hate the idea of a nation state

00:29:20.120 because they think it divides people

00:29:22.120 and they think that it gives rise to feelings of extreme nationalism and xenophobia

00:29:27.640 and anyone who feels any degree of patriotism must, you know, by definition hate Johnny Forerunner

00:29:33.260 and they want to live in some sort of John Lennon imagined society

00:29:37.400 where there are no such thing as national borders and we're all part of an international community,

00:29:42.740 what some people have kind of called the citizens of nowhere,

00:29:46.240 where they feel no affinity to their immediate community.

00:29:51.180 and the problem is that's actually quite a small number of people who feel that way

00:29:55.440 but they just have significant influence in terms of the politics and culture of the country

00:29:59.640 particularly on the left I mean that that particular mindset is quite dominant on the left

00:30:04.420 and it's part of the reason and particularly in terms of England as well I mean these people will

00:30:09.480 be more sympathetic to the idea of Scottish nationalism or Irish nationalism because they

00:30:14.600 see that as more progressive whereas in any sort of display of English nationalism can only come

00:30:20.160 from a yearning for the old days of empire you know Britain or England rather wants to wants to

00:30:25.900 rule the waves again and actually for most people it's just a sense of look I'm English I feel

00:30:32.480 attached to England I quite like being part of this country I don't want my politicians or people

00:30:37.860 in public life to keep running it down or suggesting that I'm filled with some sort of

00:30:42.180 xenophobia, xenophobia, our hatred towards other nations.

00:30:49.360 Do you think the mainstream media are biased?

00:30:52.020 Yes.

00:30:52.640 That's why you watch Trigonometry.

00:30:54.400 But we all still read the news.

00:30:56.300 And the thing you really want to be doing is comparing how different publications cover

00:31:00.760 the same story.

00:31:02.080 That's where ground news come in.

00:31:03.820 Drawing from 40,000 media outlets around the world and over 30,000 news stories per day,

00:31:10.320 they empower you to arrive at the truth yourself. Don't do that. Just watch Trigonometry.

00:31:15.880 Everyone here at Trigonometry loves ground news because they've got so many brilliant features.

00:31:20.620 But there's one feature in particular that we all find incredibly useful. It's the blind spot

00:31:25.320 feature. It is the news blind spot. And what this allows you to see is what your particular media

00:31:30.860 that you're consuming, whether you're right or left, is not covering. There are certain issues

00:31:35.540 that the right wing media will never cover. And therefore, if you only watch the right wing,

00:31:39.180 you won't know. Equally, on the left, it's the same thing. And what the news blind spot allows

00:31:43.840 you to do is to get the information that the people who you're getting your media from are

00:31:48.500 not telling you. And they've also got an amazing website, which is ground.news. For those of us

00:31:54.200 who live in the 21st century, unlike Francis, and have phones, just download the app from wherever

00:31:59.220 you get your arms. It's a very interesting point you make, Paul, because you can be proud of being

00:32:07.000 a man you fan you can be proud of being from scotland you can be proud of being from i don't

00:32:13.380 know brighton whatever you can be proud of being from a city you can be proud of being from south

00:32:19.100 london but the moment for some reason you get to the nation state level suddenly that's like

00:32:23.620 verboten right and and i don't know how we recover that necessarily because there just is this meme

00:32:31.680 now out there in the culture that to be you know you say to an ordinary person what are british

00:32:37.160 values they'll think you're trying to stitch them up to get them to say something racist

00:32:41.280 and yeah that is that's certainly true um and i think also not just not just from the not just

00:32:48.240 from the kind of cultural or social side of that argument but also in terms of democracy as well

00:32:52.500 i mean the the truth is as i argue in the book the nation state has proved to be the best form

00:32:58.880 of government at its upper level wherever people have tried to corral citizens and nation states

00:33:07.800 into something above that into supranational institutions um you find much lower levels

00:33:14.320 of support for it and the european union is is i guess a good example of that um the you know the

00:33:20.860 The nation state is the unit within which people are prepared to give, to be more generous, if you like.

00:33:29.780 An example I give in the book is if you're a taxpayer in Hampshire and you're part of the same political stroke economic stroke social unit as somebody in Lancashire in a deprived post-industrial town,

00:33:45.520 you're more likely to be prepared to pay through your taxes in order to help regeneration in that

00:33:52.180 town than somebody in Bratislava for example and that's not because the person in Hampshire sees

00:33:57.980 the person in Bratislava as anything less than a human being but they just believe that we're not

00:34:02.720 part of the same political economic unit and actually you know my first priority is here and

00:34:08.000 I think the problem you see it now in the you know with the rails that broke out between Germany and

00:34:13.580 Greece over the Euro, where when Greece needed its bailout, there was a lot of hostility amongst

00:34:20.460 people in Germany, who was Greece's main creditor at the time, of bailing out the Greeks, who many

00:34:28.760 people kind of saw as feckless and they're not part of the same community as us, and why should

00:34:32.500 we bail them out effectively? And that's always the danger. If you try to force communities and

00:34:39.580 countries and citizens of countries into an arrangement that they're not comfortable with

00:34:44.880 at a political and economic level, then you do risk igniting or reigniting, in some cases,

00:34:52.160 old conflicts. And Paul, it seems to me, and it'll probably seem to you, that government after

00:34:58.500 government have failed the working class. They haven't represented them. For a long time,

00:35:03.820 they took their votes, did nothing with them. The Conservative government came in last year,

00:35:08.220 promise big

00:35:09.320 I mean they've had

00:35:10.780 Covid

00:35:11.340 which has obviously

00:35:12.000 been disastrous

00:35:13.660 but chances are

00:35:14.800 they're not going to

00:35:15.200 do a lot for them

00:35:15.820 do you ever worry

00:35:16.960 that there's going to

00:35:17.580 be a figure

00:35:18.100 who's going to come in

00:35:19.060 more nefarious

00:35:20.240 dare I say

00:35:20.880 on the right

00:35:21.480 who will go

00:35:22.380 no one's listening to you

00:35:23.860 I will

00:35:24.760 I think that's a danger

00:35:27.260 I mean I think

00:35:29.020 I think we need to be

00:35:30.300 careful of predicting

00:35:31.800 not that you were

00:35:33.040 predicting it

00:35:33.560 I know

00:35:33.860 but we need to be

00:35:34.480 careful about

00:35:35.260 predicting

00:35:36.520 you know

00:35:37.160 some resurgence

00:35:37.960 of the of the far right because actually i i don't necessarily sense that you will always have people

00:35:43.400 on the far right who are who are racist and who will be rabble rousers and who will try to stir

00:35:48.780 up hatreds between people um but actually we haven't necessarily had that tradition in in

00:35:54.200 britain certainly not as much as they they did on the on the continent let me interrupt you because

00:35:58.700 let's just take that sinister element that france has introduced out of it i mean we've seen

00:36:02.820 God knows how many new parties formed in the last few weeks,

00:36:06.380 or reform, reclaim, rebuild, whatever, heritage.

00:36:11.060 There seems to be a gap there, I guess, is what we're getting at.

00:36:14.860 And it seems that it hasn't quite been filled yet.

00:36:19.680 And I guess what maybe, Francis, is maybe more useful to talk about

00:36:22.820 is that gap is going to get filled one way or another.

00:36:27.360 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:36:28.900 There's a vacuum, and politics hates a vacuum, as the old saying goes.

00:36:32.040 So it's possible.

00:36:34.100 I mean, what I think is that if there was a party...

00:36:38.200 It's always difficult in Britain because, you know,

00:36:39.800 effectively we're a two-party state and it's, you know,

00:36:42.500 parties have come and gone and, you know,

00:36:44.920 the success rate of people who try to create parties

00:36:49.140 to challenge the big two is, you know, not great, frankly.

00:36:53.180 What about Liberal Democrats?

00:36:54.600 Well, do you know what?

00:36:56.140 I've been actively in politics all my adult life

00:36:59.060 and I can honestly say I still have no idea

00:37:01.040 what the Liberal Democrats exist for, genuinely.

00:37:03.100 I have no idea what they're for.

00:37:04.540 I'm sure there's some good people involved.

00:37:05.960 I voted for them twice.

00:37:07.900 Oh, you were the one, were you?

00:37:08.920 Yeah, I was.

00:37:10.440 So, no, I do think there is a gap for...

00:37:14.180 There are millions, and as I describe it in the book,

00:37:17.980 there are millions of people

00:37:19.120 who are a bit to the left on economics

00:37:22.700 and want a fairer economy

00:37:25.040 and want the rich to pay a bit more

00:37:27.300 and don't believe in a galloping gap

00:37:29.900 between rich and poor,

00:37:30.860 want that closed uh want to tackle boardroom excesses want to tackle regional inequalities

00:37:37.000 um happy with an increased minimum wage and all of that sort of thing but equally are a bit to

00:37:43.560 the right on culture and don't particularly want to see cosmopolitan liberalism dominate in this

00:37:52.000 country don't want an open borders philosophy don't want it to be all about the personal autonomy of

00:37:58.840 the individual actually yearn for something a bit more meaningful than that a sense of community

00:38:05.320 sense of belonging sense of you know being part of something um and also on other kind of everyday

00:38:13.000 issues you know want to see crime tackled and the labor party shouldn't be afraid to address those

00:38:20.740 sorts of issues believe in a welfare state and believe it should be generous where people are

00:38:25.940 in genuine need but think it should be a safety net and not a comfort blanket um and the problem

00:38:31.720 is on the left is that when you raise this stuff on the left people will instantly dismiss you and

00:38:36.140 say they're tory values those are tory issues that you're talking about well okay that's fine

00:38:41.920 you don't discuss them but realize that millions of people out there in working class communities

00:38:46.500 are discussing them and if a party and you know as a labor party member i'd like to see it

00:38:51.020 happen from a labor party point of view i'd like it to be a labor party although i'm not

00:38:55.280 particularly predicting it anytime soon. If the Labour Party was to marry that policy of

00:39:02.380 economic justice, great, with a more communitarian policy, which understood working class people's

00:39:08.120 instincts and culture and desire for belonging, then I think that party would do really, really

00:39:14.340 well. Because there's an audience for it out there. But, you know, trying to... And, you know,

00:39:19.820 you mentioned the Conservative Party. I don't, frankly, have much faith in the Conservative

00:39:23.900 of party to deliver some of this stuff i mean it's certainly it's certainly made overtures to

00:39:28.320 the working class at the election which is why why it won uh you know it said we'd get brexit

00:39:32.720 delivered um and it talked about you know it's talked about ending austerity it's talked about

00:39:38.560 regional investment um but it's not part of their nature it's not part of their instinct

00:39:43.620 um and frankly if you look at boris johnson i think he's very much a classical liberal if you

00:39:48.520 see you know whenever stories come out about the madness of of wokery and someone else has been

00:39:53.240 silenced or someone else has been sacked you never see tories coming out and challenging that and

00:39:57.880 saying actually this is nonsense we do need to stand up against this um you do see some to be

00:40:03.360 fair but none of them are anywhere near no no high profile people so and and it's why you know

00:40:09.420 working class people i think just still feel alienated and still feel that there isn't a party

00:40:14.140 that is really speaking for them do you think there'll be a big backlash sorry for us just

00:40:18.120 continuing the Tory point. Do you think, I mean, God knows what's going to happen by 2024,

00:40:23.700 given the year that we've had. But do you think that, let's say, COVID sort of gets sorted out

00:40:29.100 and things just continue as they've been going, where we are now? Do you really, I mean, I don't

00:40:34.400 see people in the red wall voting Tory again after the sort of things that we've seen, whether that's

00:40:39.900 BLM, the reaction to COVID, any of that. Do you? I think the danger for the Tories is they've got

00:40:47.560 one chance of delivering frankly um and if they don't take it not not that i particularly want to

00:40:52.980 see the tories win those seats again and in fact i don't at all want to see the tories win those

00:40:57.360 seats again but if i was sitting here as a tory i'd be thinking right we've got one chance of

00:41:00.980 delivering these people took a lot for these people to vote for us for the first time you

00:41:05.360 know we heard the stories you know people hearing their ancestors whisper in their ear as they were

00:41:09.680 in the ballot box you know you're voting tory it's just not something we do in these places

00:41:14.280 And unless the Tories return that show of faith and deliver,

00:41:20.200 then no, I think you're right.

00:41:21.680 I don't think they will vote for them again.

00:41:23.300 And if you look at some of the stuff that's been going on around COVID

00:41:26.980 and, you know, places like Manchester, for example,

00:41:28.860 where there's now a real feeling of antipathy towards the Tories

00:41:31.880 because of what they've done,

00:41:33.840 then I think the Tories have got a real problem.

00:41:37.160 But, you know, does that mean Labour will win the seats?

00:41:40.100 No, it doesn't.

00:41:40.740 Professor Matthew Goodwin, a previous guest on your show, I know, has explained actually

00:41:45.880 if the Labour Party thinks that things can't get any worse, it should think again, because yes,

00:41:50.380 you know, it lost a hell of a lot of seats in the Red Bull constituencies, but the ones it held

00:41:54.480 on to in some places, the majorities were quite narrow, actually. And unless Labour can win those

00:42:01.520 people back, then, you know, those seats could flip as well. We could see something that I think

00:42:07.060 we started to see during the Blair years and afterwards, which is where millions of working

00:42:12.340 class people previously, Labour will just abstain completely, or will be driven into the arms of 0.50

00:42:18.960 UKIP or, you know, another sort of reincarnated Nigel Farage type party as they did with the

00:42:25.500 Brexit party. And, you know, at the extreme, what you talked about, the possibility is slim,

00:42:31.780 but nonetheless, you can't rule it out of a, you know, more far right figure or party emerging.

00:42:36.700 and saying, look, you know, we will speak for you.

00:42:40.600 And as I say in the book,

00:42:41.860 that's pretty much what happened in Barking and Dagenham

00:42:44.400 when I was living there where I grew up.

00:42:46.060 The BNP tapped into people's concerns.

00:42:50.860 You know, of course, they hid their murky past

00:42:53.260 and the fact that many of their leading lights 0.98

00:42:55.520 were complete thugs and complete racists 0.90

00:42:58.080 and Holocaust deniers in some cases. 0.98

00:43:00.500 But what they did is they went to people and said

00:43:02.380 that these two parties, they're not on your side.

00:43:05.420 They've let you down.

00:43:06.180 they're not interested in your concerns over immigration you know we're we're we are the

00:43:10.840 Labour Party that your grandparents voted for we're the ones who are going to protect your

00:43:15.080 identity and and you know look after your community and they did extremely well and and you know writ

00:43:21.500 large there's always a danger that a party like that I mean thank god they've imploded at a

00:43:25.220 national level but another party like that could come along and do the same sort of thing at some

00:43:29.220 point. But we we touched on the madness of Wokery and to me the peak madness of Wokery was the BLM 0.89

00:43:35.420 movement in, I think it was June, when everybody was on marches for that poor unfortunate George

00:43:42.320 Floyd who was murdered. But at the same time, it was the third anniversary of Grenfell. No one

00:43:47.960 talked about it. No one mentioned it. That was actually something that we need to discuss. If

00:43:53.080 you're on the left, that should be one of the things that you are passionate about. The fact

00:43:57.300 that over 100 people died in that tower as a result of the cladding. And it just got forgotten

00:44:04.800 about yes and i think that's probably a reflection of um priorities on the left in terms of you know

00:44:13.020 anything that smacks of identity politics then it's a bandwagon that needs to be jumped on but

00:44:18.700 grenfell was you could you may if you want do all that play the identity policy all you want with

00:44:23.140 it right because it was mostly people from ethnic minority backgrounds so even that as an explanation

00:44:28.440 doesn't make sense you could do all the identity politics what is it is something else i just i

00:44:34.160 just think parts of the left are completely obsessed about you know what they see as explicit

00:44:38.180 identity politics um causes um which is why you know so many of them were comfortable about the

00:44:43.840 blm movement were not interested in the fact that actually you know it was a even if you go on their 0.78

00:44:49.760 website and look at what they believe in it's pretty clear they're you know marxist movement

00:44:53.320 really they believe in defunding the police they believe in abolishing the nuclear family

00:44:58.080 I argued at the time, look, I believe Black Lives Matter, lowercase, BLM. 0.98

00:45:03.220 I don't support uppercase Black Lives Matter trademark.

00:45:07.840 And there's a clear distinction between the two things.

00:45:11.120 How did that go for you, mate?

00:45:12.540 Well, how do you think it went for me?

00:45:14.880 Yeah, I did that.

00:45:16.280 And now we've got a new studio.

00:45:18.040 Look how great that worked out.

00:45:19.280 And less friends.

00:45:19.840 Well, of course, and I had to don the tin hat.

00:45:23.360 But you do have to make these points.

00:45:25.440 I think some of the stuff, I mean, you know, what happened to George Floyd was, of course, appalling and barbaric.

00:45:32.240 And, you know, you need to you need to challenge racism wherever it rears its head.

00:45:35.920 But you need to do it in a way where you take people with you.

00:45:38.860 And frankly, I don't think you do that by tearing down statues.

00:45:41.400 I think all you do is alienate people.

00:45:43.120 I think you have to try and build a coalition of people if you're trying to win people to a particular cause.

00:45:49.660 And, you know, the whole thing, I think, with the left's embrace of identity politics,

00:45:53.820 It just fragments the working class. 0.82

00:45:55.780 You know, the left doesn't really talk about the issue of class anymore.

00:45:58.480 It talks less and less about issues, you know, some of the issues that we've touched on and, you know, issues around jobs and wages and housing, etc.

00:46:08.640 And he's much more comfortable about talking about identitarian issues.

00:46:14.460 And I think the problem is it's a viper's nest.

00:46:16.860 And, you know, if you look at somewhere, if you look at someone like Martin Luther King, who talks about the need to judge people on the content of their character and not the colour of their skin, I think what's going on at the moment is a complete inversion of that.

00:46:30.780 um and you know where where people are suffering discrimination that needs to be challenged but

00:46:36.000 i think what we're doing now on the left is just dividing people into discrete groups and

00:46:43.080 emphasizing their separateness and treating their individual kind of biological or other

00:46:49.220 characteristics almost as if they're virtuous in themselves uh and all that does i think is is

00:46:55.080 divide people and i think you know there's a whole fragmentation now of the working class and the

00:46:59.920 left has been a big part of bringing that about and it's also made i dare i say it labor unelectable

00:47:04.920 because once you push forward a narrative that if you are white doesn't matter if you're working

00:47:09.540 class doesn't matter if you grew up in poverty doesn't matter what your circumstances are

00:47:12.760 whatever they may be you have got privilege immediately people aren't going to want to

00:47:18.000 listen to that and it's just it's completely unhelpful um because i mean at a base level i

00:47:25.480 guess there's some logic to say look if you take if you take two people whose circumstances literally

00:47:31.280 are exactly the same I mean you know the chance of two people's circumstances being literally the

00:47:36.240 same probably quite slim but if you did then the chances are that the white person probably had

00:47:41.320 some degree of privilege over the black person in terms of getting a job or whatever but it's

00:47:48.280 unhelpful because you know the truth is life is much more complicated than that and people's

00:47:52.680 Circumstances are much more complex than that.

00:47:55.000 And actually, there are people from the black and minority ethnic community who do far better than many people living in white working class communities.

00:48:03.480 You know, if you take somebody, take an Asian person living in London, for example, who might come from a bit of a middle class background, whose parents might be reasonably well off, might have gone to university, got a good job.

00:48:16.580 go to a go to a working class place like Wigan and say to a white young white person who's

00:48:25.940 struggling to get on the housing ladder and can't get a decent job that actually they they benefit

00:48:31.520 from some form of privilege I mean how on earth does that actually advance the cause of the

00:48:36.240 working class as a whole that sort of stuff that divisive stuff just needs to be needs to be

00:48:40.860 challenged head on well that stuff comes from America and I want to talk to you briefly about

00:48:45.140 america uh before we wrap up because at the time of recording it seems uh we don't know

00:48:51.280 the legal challenges haven't happened but it looks like joe biden has won uh so i mean some

00:48:58.360 people on the left are triumphant you know the left has succeeded defeated the right the trumpism

00:49:04.140 is done and i i find it very strange because certainly in my mind if there's no covid trump

00:49:11.140 wins probably a landslide.

00:49:14.220 That's my take on it.

00:49:15.480 Maybe I'm wrong, but certainly he wins.

00:49:17.580 He wins by a clear majority.

00:49:18.820 So if it's not for this once-in-a-century aberration,

00:49:23.600 the economy continues to do well.

00:49:26.360 You would likely see a continuation.

00:49:28.360 And to see that even in these circumstances,

00:49:30.880 the margin of victory, if it is indeed a victory,

00:49:32.980 is this close.

00:49:34.540 I mean, I don't think that's a convincing victory

00:49:38.620 for the left, is it?

00:49:39.460 No, and the danger is that the left interprets that as some sort of, you know, victory whereby it can now just return to normal.

00:49:48.660 And in fact, I've seen Democrat politicians and liberal commentators in America who have argued that very case and said, you know, and they will say this is now a return to normalcy.

00:49:59.940 We say normality, they say normalcy.

00:50:02.800 Actually, it was that normalcy that gave rise to Trump in the first place.

00:50:08.400 It was that normalcy that led to the last four years and the idea that working class people in the Rust Belt and blue collar America who were drawn to Trump because actually he said, yeah, you know, we're going to put America first.

00:50:22.800 Yeah, you know, we're not woke and, you know, we're going to challenge China and we don't like the impacts of globalization in your communities and we're going to repatriate American jobs back into America and industries back into America. 0.82

00:50:37.680 sort of thing that really resonated with those communities those those issues and those

00:50:42.520 sentiments haven't disappeared you know those those sentiments are still there um so you know

00:50:49.840 if the democrats interpret it as as and some of them are doing as you know we're out of the dark

00:50:56.360 age now as they describe it you know we're back onto the road to the sunlit uplands of

00:51:01.020 cosmopolitan liberalism then i think they're in for a nasty shock and i think you're probably

00:51:05.780 right that if it hadn't been for COVID, I think Trump certainly would have stood a much better

00:51:10.820 chance of winning. So no, America's problems, I think, are far from resolved. I mean, I'll shed

00:51:15.860 no tears for Trump. I mean, I'm on the left. I would have voted Democrat if I was in America.

00:51:22.340 Not that I've got much faith, particularly in Biden. I think in many respects, Trump

00:51:27.320 was the worst possible advocate for millions of decent people who actually deserved a decent

00:51:32.760 advocate and had genuine and legitimate grievances uh i mean as a human being i think he left a lot

00:51:38.260 to be desired in terms of you know obviously quite an obnoxious individual in the way that

00:51:43.140 he treated people and the way he referred to women etc um but you know in the debate to be had there

00:51:49.520 paul would be whether a less obnoxious person could have got through given the the stick that's

00:51:58.040 thrown at anyone who tries to address that agenda but i share your view broadly i'm just saying

00:52:02.680 that particular issue is always one I think about, whether somebody, for example, the reason I asked

00:52:08.100 you about America is I'm thinking, what do the left learn in this country from that, right? And

00:52:12.940 I think what you see, and you know this better than anyone, is anyone who tries to address

00:52:17.220 some of these issues, immigration, community, etc., is immediately attacked on personal grounds. And

00:52:24.360 whether you can be a Paul Embry and get through, or do you have to be someone like Donald Trump to

00:52:31.180 to make it in the current climate that's it i don't know some million dollar questions well i

00:52:35.280 think i think trump i mean he obviously presented himself didn't he as as an outsider you know i

00:52:41.180 mean in some respects he's as much part of the establishment as anyone else i mean he's a he's

00:52:44.840 a multi-billionaire for christ's sake and he allegedly yeah um you know so so he wasn't he

00:52:51.540 wasn't uh he didn't sort of come from a working class community you know i'm going to take on the 0.52

00:52:57.640 establishment he was part of the establishment but what he did do is he pushed the buttons of

00:53:01.540 working class people and and kind of said look when they're attacking me they're really attacking

00:53:05.440 you when they say they don't like me what they're saying is they don't like you they think you're 0.98

00:53:09.540 white trash you know they they think you're you're kind of backward and and um they don't like your 0.97

00:53:14.640 values they think your values are bigoted um and yes if the if the left in britain which i suspect 0.98

00:53:21.080 some of them will conclude that all we have to do is do what the Democrats did. We don't really

00:53:29.460 have to change very much. And next time, we'll get over the line when the Tories prove themselves

00:53:35.120 to have not delivered to be unpopular in certain parts of the country. We'll get across the line.

00:53:41.100 I think that's dangerous because, A, I don't think they will. I don't think Labour can win

00:53:45.940 without its working class base um i'm not suggesting for a second that we should seek 1.00

00:53:50.660 to alienate middle class more liberal people i think those that group of people have always

00:53:56.860 been involved in the labor party and the labor party has been the better for that since its

00:54:00.840 existence um but as i touched on the pendulum has swung too far towards that group of people

00:54:05.900 it's gone too much hamstead and not enough harlepool so if they conclude from america that

00:54:10.000 yeah you know we can we can stay focused on hamster we don't really have to worry about

00:54:13.860 at Harlepool, we'll just get over the line. I think they're in for a nasty shot.

00:54:18.720 And what do you say to those people who say, and there's quite a few of them, particularly

00:54:21.920 in the Labour Party, that the reason Corbyn wasn't elected is because the media were against

00:54:27.500 him, you know, everybody was trying to smear him, blah, blah, blah, all the rest of it?

00:54:32.720 I mean, it's just nonsense. People have tried to find on the left all sorts of reasons for

00:54:41.480 for why we weren't elected from you know and some of them are genuine i mean brexit obviously was a

00:54:47.180 big thing corbyn's unpopularity had an effect on the doorstep there's there's no doubt about that

00:54:53.540 um i mean the media was hostile and probably had an effect on on um on some voters at least but

00:54:59.080 the idea that any single one of those explanations can just be pulled out the bag and cited as the

00:55:05.220 real reason we lost you know so you know brexit for example well that's gone now so we don't

00:55:09.500 really have to change. Brexit's over. We'll just carry on down the same road. No, that's

00:55:14.320 completely wrong. And as I argue in the book, Labour's problems and the disconnect from the

00:55:20.480 working class predates Jeremy Corbyn by several years. Anyone who thinks Labour only became

00:55:27.020 unpopular with working class communities when Jeremy Corbyn took over, I think he's completely

00:55:32.260 misread the situation. I mean, as I say in the book, Labour hasn't won the popular vote in England

00:55:36.360 since 2001. At the turn of the century, as the impacts of globalisation, relaxed immigration

00:55:44.100 policy, de-industrialisation started to be felt much more acutely in working-class communities,

00:55:51.100 that really kind of coincides with Labour starting to lose working-class votes and thousands,

00:55:59.080 perhaps millions of working-class people deciding to abstain in elections or flock towards UKIP

00:56:04.160 and others. So these problems actually are very, very deep-seated and, as I say, predate Jeremy

00:56:11.520 Corbyn. Since Labour has become much more of a metropolitan, liberal, city-based, student-y type

00:56:19.920 party, so it has lost millions of working-class votes, that didn't begin with Jeremy Corbyn.

00:56:25.020 Paul, as we wrap up, I want to ask you two quick questions. The first of which,

00:56:28.480 just coming back to America briefly, is there was this calculation on some sections of the left

00:56:33.920 that demography is on our side, right?

00:56:37.500 We're becoming, let's say,

00:56:39.300 more darker as a society, right?

00:56:42.720 There are more people of color now in society.

00:56:46.140 Minority groups, women, et cetera,

00:56:48.280 are finding more and more their voice in politics.

00:56:50.520 And all we need to do is just sit for a little bit

00:56:53.320 and hold the line and wait

00:56:55.100 until there's enough people of foreign descent 1.00

00:56:57.840 and until we can build that great coalition

00:57:00.300 and then we will be in power forever.

00:57:03.180 And I would put it to you that the election just now in America has shown the futility of that strategy because huge numbers of new people actually voted for Donald Trump after four years of him being obnoxious, of him being called racist, of him being talked about as literally supporting white nationalism.

00:57:22.060 yet he doubled his, 35% of Muslims voted for Donald Trump.

00:57:25.640 I didn't know that, you know,

00:57:27.020 doubled his vote with gay and other sexual minorities,

00:57:31.260 black people, Latinos massively came out.

00:57:33.920 In fact, in some states,

00:57:35.340 the more mixed the demographics of the county,

00:57:39.560 the more likely it was to vote for Donald Trump.

00:57:42.100 So this idea that you can just hold on 0.97

00:57:43.720 and wait until all the sort of brown and black people 1.00

00:57:46.880 just turn up and vote, that doesn't seem to be working. 0.74

00:57:49.540 And it's completely patronising for people on the left to just assume that every black or brown person is going to be in favour of what they're arguing.

00:57:58.680 You know, and the people on the left do just automatically assume that and can't comprehend that anyone could disagree with them.

00:58:04.460 And yeah, we see it in this country.

00:58:07.120 The idea that, you know, for example, minority ethnic communities in this country, whether it's first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants, themselves, because they're immigrants, you know, people assume that they are in favour of open borders.

00:58:22.300 Well, actually, many of them are not.

00:58:23.400 Many of them, having settled down with their families, had children themselves, don't necessarily want a world of constant churn, don't necessarily themselves like the effects of globalisation.

00:58:34.740 And on Brexit, for example, large numbers of minority ethnic people voted for Brexit.

00:58:40.020 And some of the statistics I cite in the book where, you know, many immigrants in this country were not necessarily in favour of the free movement laws, for example.

00:58:48.740 So people, you know, from India and Pakistan and Africa, many of whom years ago had to fight hard to get here and really feel a sense of belonging in the country now,

00:59:01.940 I didn't necessarily think it was fair that mainly white people 0.98

00:59:05.580 from the European Union would get an automatic right just to come in

00:59:09.900 and people from the communities where they originally came from

00:59:12.620 had to still jump through hurdles.

00:59:15.940 So we shouldn't let people get away on the left

00:59:19.420 with just claiming to speak for minority ethnic people

00:59:23.180 because they often don't.

00:59:25.720 And, you know, in America, that was proved with the election result.

00:59:28.920 Another question I want to ask you is electoral.

00:59:30.620 You mentioned that the Labour Party has not won the popular vote in England since 2001.

00:59:36.320 That was a period of time when Labour had a firm hold of Scotland, which has now been lost.

00:59:43.240 So you put those two things together.

00:59:46.020 Let's say we hear trigonometry, wave the magic wand, you are leader of the opposition tomorrow.

00:59:52.560 How do you solve that problem?

00:59:54.960 I think Scotland's a massive problem.

00:59:56.380 I mean, Labour was dominant in Scotland once upon a time.

01:00:00.620 or certainly had a large presence in Scotland once upon a time.

01:00:03.700 A huge number of Labour MPs from Scotland, some of them led the party,

01:00:07.900 people like Gordon Brown, but also people like Donald Dewar and Robin Cook

01:00:12.740 and others who came from that Scottish tradition.

01:00:16.180 Labour has been wiped out in Scotland.

01:00:18.340 I don't sense that there's any quick way back for Labour.

01:00:22.780 The SNP seem to have things wrapped up.

01:00:25.380 And when you combine that, as you say, with Labour's lack of success in English working class stroke, small town, provincial, post-industrial communities, it's a perfect storm in many respects for Labour.

01:00:42.220 And I think the danger is that some people within the Labour Party think, well, OK, we're never going to win those people back.

01:00:48.620 We're not going to win Scotland back and we're not going to win post-industrial England back.

01:00:52.760 And in fact, I have heard some people in the Labour Party argue this, that what we need to do, therefore, is just pitch ourselves to that new constituency, if you like, the young students, graduates, the professional managerial middle classes, the metropolitan liberals, the people living in the university cities, the fashionable cities in the UK.

01:01:13.940 The frappuccino vote.

01:01:14.820 Yes, and just, you know, effectively just accept that we're never going to win the working class back in provincial Britain.

01:01:25.660 I think actually that's just completely wrongheaded.

01:01:29.840 A, I don't think they would win it anyway.

01:01:31.840 I don't think they would get the numbers to get over the line just with that constituency.

01:01:35.980 And B, I think you would have to ask what on earth is the Labour Party for

01:01:39.520 if it doesn't go out to try to win the votes and the support and the affection of ordinary

01:01:46.480 working class people, people on low wages, people living in the grittier parts of the UK, 1.00

01:01:51.260 people living in substandard housing or people struggling to get their foot on the housing

01:01:55.860 ladder, people who have very little in the way of wealth other than perhaps their own 0.99

01:02:02.000 modest property, people who've got no savings, people who constantly go into work and are

01:02:06.000 told what to do by their boss because they've got no authority themselves in in the workplace

01:02:10.460 if labour isn't first and foremost about attracting those people and saying you're the people we were

01:02:16.060 created to represent and we're going to move heaven and earth to win you back then frankly

01:02:20.700 it's not a labour party worth having as far as i'm concerned and paul isn't the problem as well i

01:02:25.180 mean we've been we've talked about it a lot but i look at that labour cabinet how many of them are

01:02:30.940 working class how are they going to represent the working class if they've they're not working class 0.98

01:02:35.320 and they've got no idea who these people are what they're like and they've never spoken to one

01:02:39.440 it's a real problem it's something that um gloria de piero the labor mp who's stood down at the most 0.58

01:02:45.500 recent election um has written about quite powerfully just the absence of any real working

01:02:50.820 class representation on the labor benches in the parliamentary labor party um i mean you can go

01:02:56.400 back i i talk in the book about you know how you can go back 20 30 years and you know the labor

01:03:04.140 party, the green benches in the commons on the labour side would be filled with people

01:03:08.840 on the labour side who actually had had proper jobs.

01:03:12.840 You know, some of them had come up through the trade union movement, they'd worked in

01:03:16.160 mines, in steelworks and docks and stuff.

01:03:20.120 Now, obviously, part of the reason those people are not around anymore is to do with

01:03:24.500 de-industrialisation.

01:03:25.940 We don't necessarily have that sort of heavy industry anymore.

01:03:29.100 But we do have call centres, you know, which are like the modern day equivalents, if you

01:03:33.180 like of the the cotton mills and the the sort of warehouses and the gig economy um but you don't

01:03:39.340 see many of those people actually coming through the the the ranks in the labor movement partly

01:03:43.640 because the trade union movement doesn't organize anywhere near as well as it ought to do in in some

01:03:48.280 of those in some of those sorts of industries um and it's a it's a problem if you're a working

01:03:52.720 class voter and you see the main politicians of what you think should be your political party

01:03:57.680 looking and sounding nothing like you you know most of them have come through university i'm not

01:04:03.360 saying that's a bad thing i think it's a good thing if people can go to university but actually

01:04:07.380 you do if you're if you're a party of labor you do need a good number of people who have worked

01:04:13.800 in in proper jobs in blue collar industries for example um but those people those people have

01:04:19.500 become less and less apparent in the labor party as the labor party has gone on this road to

01:04:24.160 becoming itself more and more kind of middle class and cosmopolitan over recent years

01:04:28.920 paul thanks for coming back we thoroughly recommend despise to everybody and uh the last question we

01:04:36.580 always ask is what's the one thing we're not talking about that really should be well it's

01:04:41.040 something that france has touched on actually it's the issue around grenfell and um you know

01:04:45.920 the public inquiry is still ongoing and it's actually you know if you if people did trouble

01:04:51.480 to look at at the moment there's some really interesting and disturbing stuff coming out of

01:04:56.380 it um you know the the people who who were responsible for installing the the cladding

01:05:02.040 the companies involved the individuals involved the people at the local council who signed it off

01:05:06.200 um some of the things that have gone on uh are shocking um and you know the kind of revolving

01:05:13.900 door relationship as well between some of these different sections and people hopping from from

01:05:18.940 one to the other um is is pretty chilling so i would urge people not necessarily to get dominated

01:05:25.360 i mean one of the stories today that i ran on the way here was the fact that the the director

01:05:29.720 of communications at number 10 has resigned now the whole of the media is talking about that

01:05:35.320 most people out there couldn't give a stuff about whether the director of communications has resigned

01:05:39.380 so we need to look beyond that sort of stuff and look at stories like grenfell where 70 odd people

01:05:43.960 lost their lives and they shouldn't have done um so i would urge people to dig into some of that

01:05:48.380 stuff coming out of the inquiry fantastic paul thanks for coming back and thank you for watching

01:05:53.240 we will see you 7 p.m almost every day of the week except monday with a live stream or an interview

01:05:58.540 take care and have a good day see you soon guys bye

TRIGGERnometry - November 25, 2020

＂The Left Must Stop Despising Working People＂ - Paul Embery

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