00:03:11.760Well, 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.
00:03:36.900I 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.
00:03:57.840I 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.
00:04:17.700I think he embraced neoliberalism too much, Thatcherite ideology too much. And in doing so,
00:04:24.280I think he combined that with a very sort of relaxed approach to immigration. You know,
00:04:30.620Labour at that time had embraced both economic liberalism and social liberalism. And that just
00:04:36.420began, I think, to alienate working class people. And, you know, I think particularly over the last
00:04:42.58015 or 20 years, that process has just intensified and Labour has hemorrhaged votes in working
00:04:50.300class communities, in places that were once its absolute bedrock in provincial Britain,
00:04:55.100small town Britain. And that ended up with Labour being annihilated, as we know, in December. So
00:05:01.880that was a process that began under Tony Blair, however successful he was electorally. I think
00:05:07.900he has to recognise that actually, you know, the ideology that he drove through alienated
00:05:13.220millions of working class people in this country.
00:05:15.520Don't you think part of the problem now that Labour faces with itself is the fact that
00:05:20.520the party, dare I say, is unsustainable? Can they really hold all these people together
00:05:27.400Well, this is the problem. They haven't done that. And they've alienated that heartless
00:05:32.860side of the equation in large numbers um and unless they can build that coalition again so
00:05:41.420so to to appeal again to those working class communities who they've alienated um which will
00:05:48.380mean that more kind of middle class um liberal element of the party will have to make sacrifices
00:05:54.880just as the working class element did when Blair was so obsessed with with bringing you know more
00:06:00.160middle class people on board. But unless it does that, then no, frankly, it's finished or it will
00:06:06.280just become a protest group. You know, it needs radical change. The ideology of the party needs
00:06:12.900to change, the language of the party needs to change. It needs to stop obsessing about what
00:06:18.320many people see as secondary issues in their lives, fringe issues. I'm not saying that those
00:06:22.660issues are not important, but they're not the issues that working class people are talking about.
00:06:26.660So, 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.
00:06:43.820and those things are important I'm not dismissing them but actually when you go on the doorstep
00:06:48.580when you go to working class communities what people are talking about are you know jobs and
00:06:53.660the threat of unemployment and low wages and housing but also you know what many labour people
00:06:59.440would dismiss as Tory issues you know law and order you know there's for example you know there's a
00:07:05.620drug dealer dealing on my estate outside the front door how can I deal with that as a working class
00:07:10.480person or issues around immigration you know people seeing pressure on public services and
00:07:17.260perhaps their wages suffering suffering downward pressure as a result of immigration into their
00:07:23.320communities or large-scale immigration these are the you know people talking about family and
00:07:29.060perhaps traditional values these are issues that labor activists will when they're raised on the
00:07:34.960doorstep or in conversation will look down at the ground and shuffle their feet in embarrassment
00:07:40.100because they're not comfortable about talking about those issues.
00:07:44.340And the problem is people out there are people who once upon a time were Labour,
00:08:09.200particularly London-centric, quite bourgeois in its outlook, more cosmopolitan, more liberal.
00:08:16.340It just doesn't want to talk about those issues anymore. It's no coincidence that working-class
00:08:19.860people have just gravitated away from the party as the party no longer reflects their everyday
00:08:24.360concerns. But Paul, I would go even deeper to say that there's a large swathe of the Labour Party
00:08:29.980who feel complete and absolute contempt for white working-class people in particular, dare I say it.
00:08:35.320They do. And I mean, the book is called Despised, Why the Modern Left Loads the Working Class.
00:08:41.300And there is undoubtedly an element who do go further than just kind of sneering at working class values,
00:08:50.480but actually hate, you know, the people who espouse those values and treat them as I've described it in the book,
00:08:58.300treat them like some sort of embarrassing elderly relative.
00:09:01.600you know they want their votes at election time so they know they've kind of got to try and keep
00:09:06.700them on board not alienate them too much but they don't want to be seen in public with them because
00:09:11.020you know these people are embarrassing they've got old-fashioned working class values um
00:09:15.420like you're your incredibly right-wing mum yeah exactly um and and you know there is there is a
00:09:22.120there is a contempt and you know when i when i was a guest on the show before i talked about things
00:09:27.160like the Gordon Brown incident with Gillian Duffy
00:09:30.180and I talked about Emily Thornberry with the St. George's flag.
00:09:32.580Well, you've got the white van on the cover of the book,
00:09:35.340which I think I'm imagining is a reference to that very common
00:09:37.720because it's such a visceral thing, isn't it?
00:09:39.980Yeah, and, you know, the thing about Emily Thornberry is
00:09:42.920she obviously, I mean, she's part of that middle-class liberal
00:09:46.220Islintonian set who really don't understand,
00:09:50.560I don't think, people in communities where they do fly St. George's flags
00:09:53.240and drive white vans and, you know, saw what she saw
00:09:55.800and thought it was so noteworthy that it was worth it was worth tweeting about um but that
00:10:01.040you know there's no there's no question there there is a significant disconnect between large
00:10:06.720parts of the left and the working class because parts of the left do actively despise the the
00:10:11.900working class and those values and their own values are completely out of sync with the the
00:10:16.300working class and i've seen that develop um particularly as i said the last 15 or 20 years
00:10:21.720From 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.
00:10:40.560Paul, we've touched on the disconnect.
00:10:44.400We've touched on working class people being despised.
00:11:00.260the impact of which was starting to be felt by the time he'd already gone.
00:11:04.280But, you know, when we talk about people being despised for their views,
00:11:07.440I think there is no bigger issue than immigration on which the disconnect is as bad and as fierce.
00:11:13.980So what should a healthy left-wing position on immigration be in our society?
00:11:20.960Well, I believe that there's nothing incompatible on the left about believing in regulation of the labour supply.
00:11:26.500And in fact, until fairly recently, that was a mainstream position on the left.
00:11:29.880You know, you knew that the labour supply was a market dynamic,
00:11:32.780which, like all market dynamics, needed to be regulated so as to provide the best possible outcome for workers.
00:11:39.980That wasn't particularly a controversial position on the left.
00:11:43.040Now 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.
00:11:50.280And people will just hit you with, you know, old slogans about migrants are not to blame,
00:11:55.120as 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.
00:12:02.780So 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.
00:12:19.120I 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.
00:12:32.520And 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.
00:12:41.320You need to know the numbers of people that are coming into your country.
00:12:46.040And, you know, I argue in the book that you can look at a country like Japan, for example.
00:12:52.400And Japan has fairly tight immigration policy.
00:12:56.400I mean, it doesn't close its borders completely, but it does manage numbers and numbers are modest.
00:13:01.800um and it will say you know there's a culture in japan that says if you come to japan we're japan
00:13:08.340and we expect you to to assimilate um we like being japan we don't particularly want to to be
00:13:13.340anything different um japan no one could seriously argue that japan is anything other than a highly
00:13:20.580advanced civilized safe clean modern democracy um and the fact that it manages its its immigration
00:13:30.860levels doesn't mean that it's somehow uncivilized or uncultured or all its people are xenophobic
00:13:38.060and that's the sort of thing that I would like to see in in Britain I'm pro-immigration I've
00:13:42.720always been pro-immigration I think it's brought benefits to our country but like anything you can
00:13:47.500have too much of a good thing sometimes you know I like a glass of wine but I know too much wine
00:13:51.400can can sometimes cause problems you know I like exercising I know if you exercise to an extreme
00:13:56.460it can cause problems um so you know i think good things in in moderation is the is the approach
00:14:02.220that we should take and i think the really sad thing is actually i think that's the view probably
00:14:06.360of most people in this country most people i'm certain and i'll quote some statistics in the
00:14:10.280book i think most people see immigration as a good thing but they don't particularly want porous
00:14:14.280borders they don't want unrestricted immigration neither do they want to put the barriers up
00:14:18.560completely i think the problem is where the policy has been so relaxed and people in those working
00:14:24.160class communities which have to deal with the impacts more than any other communities of large
00:14:29.420scale immigration and I saw it in as I described in the book in the community where I grew up in
00:14:34.560Barking and Dagenham it poisoned the whole debate and what you had and what you've seen in this
00:14:40.400country now is is a country that was pretty tolerant towards immigration and by and large I
00:14:46.540think still is because their trust has been abused and because they've been dismissed as bigots and
00:14:52.800xenophobes for saying, actually, look, can we slow this down? Can we have a properly managed
00:14:56.640regulated system? That has toxified the whole debate and has caused in many respects a culture
00:15:04.540war over the whole issue. And frankly, until the left gets to grips with it, I guess Brexit allows
00:15:11.700us to do it to a certain degree, but until the left gets to grip with that issue and its impact
00:15:17.620on working-class communities and stops just simply sloganising
00:15:21.560and dismissing working-class concerns as being driven by bigotry and xenophobia,
00:15:26.800then they will never win back the people that they need to win back.
00:15:29.780And part of the problem, isn't it, also as well,
00:15:32.140the people advocating open borders, freedom of movement, blah, blah, blah,
00:15:36.440their jobs aren't a threat, their wages aren't being impacted by them.
00:15:39.940So by them advocating that position, they've got no skin in the game really, have they?
00:15:44.920And 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.
00:15:55.100I 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.
00:16:02.820And 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.
00:16:16.400So 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.
00:16:25.560And I guess from the book's point of view, I describe this in quite graphic detail.
00:16:34.300And 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.
00:16:43.820Traditionally, Labour, very sort of blue collar, very working class.
00:16:47.860and at the turn of the century was was really caught in the eye of the storm in the debate
00:16:53.960over globalization and immigration i mean there were and i saw it myself large numbers of people
00:16:58.740coming in mainly very decent nice law-abiding people um but often competing for jobs with
00:17:05.920local people often not much in common culturally with local people there were language barriers
00:17:10.760etc. The whole area went through a process of very, very rapid change. And people were uneasy
00:17:19.040about it. And not because their sense of race had been violated, but because their sense of order
00:17:23.960had been violated. A very kind of settled and stable community was suddenly undergoing very
00:17:29.380rapid demographic and to a certain degree, economic change. And when they looked to politicians and
00:17:34.860said, look, actually, can you address this? Can you maybe slow things down? They were told that
00:17:39.740they were bigots and that they were xenophobes. And tragically, what that meant in Barking and
00:17:44.160Dagenham is in the council elections in 2006, the BNP won 12 seats on the local council. Their
00:17:49.740best ever performance in local government came out of nowhere. I mean, they had a foothold in
00:17:55.860other parts of East London prior to that. But all of a sudden, they're the official opposition on
00:18:00.560my local council. And, you know, it's then that I started to realise, actually, I think the left
00:18:07.440has got this debate completely and utterly wrong and simply going to people in communities like
00:18:12.780this as i was doing as somebody you know a young activist on the left at the time and preaching to
00:18:17.700them about you know well it's good for your gdp you'll probably be a few bit better off at the
00:18:23.080end of the month you know as that as if that's the only thing that mattered was actually a
00:18:26.820thatcherite argument you know it's all about the equality about the economy and not quality of life
00:18:31.160um or you know telling telling people like i remember having a conversation with my old man
00:18:36.700who'd lived there for about 60 years and she was now in her 80s and this place was her old street
00:18:41.900was changing around her and trying to convince her that you know the benefits of vibrant
00:18:46.900cosmopolitanism was really in her interests um you know you can look back on some of that stuff
00:18:51.920and cringe now but um but you know the truth is that's that's the sort of thing that people were
00:18:56.720told in communities like that and told by people on the left and told by labor politicians um and
00:19:02.680And so, you know, the challenge now, first of all, is to recognise that the left has got that debate completely wrong.
00:19:08.100And 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.
00:19:23.780But 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.
00:19:34.980We need to do much better at making sure that numbers are dispersed more fairly.
00:19:40.300And we need to regulate it so that there isn't the impact on people's wages.
00:19:44.360There isn't the impact on communities, the like of which I saw in Barking and Dagnum.
00:19:48.320And 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.
00:20:05.440Francis, did you know that investing is one of the best ways to preserve your wealth over the long term?
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00:21:29.160Greggs? Sold. When you invest, your capital is at risk. The value of your investments can go up
00:21:35.380as well as down, and you may receive back less than you originally invested. He knew that bit
00:21:40.260off by heart. Paul, do you think we've been sold an even bigger lie than the one that you've just
00:21:48.940described yourself as trying to sell to your granny, which is that Margaret Thatcher tried
00:21:55.300to convince us there's no such thing as society, but the people who came after us, I feel it's
00:22:00.080almost like they've tried to convince us there's no such thing as community, or if there is, it's
00:22:04.400not important. It doesn't matter if you know the people who live left and right and up and down of
00:22:09.600you it doesn't matter if you know them it doesn't matter if you have anything in common it doesn't
00:22:13.780matter if you have the same values living in one country all that doesn't matter because we're just
00:22:18.800all you know free-flowing individuals and and you know as long as we've got latte macchiatos
00:22:24.220down the road then that's fine right there's a sort of bigger lie when really human beings
00:22:30.340don't live like that and and i know this for myself you know i live just outside of london
00:22:34.940and the fact that i get to speak to my neighbors and i know the people around me and we've you
00:22:39.280know solve problems together whatever else it might be that's a thing that adds to my life
00:22:43.980and living as an atomized individual in a big city really doesn't feel right to me i think that's
00:22:50.760absolutely right and you know the truth is that we are as humans we are social and parochial beings
00:22:57.520with an attachment to place and an attachment to a particular culture of the particular community
00:23:03.680um and i mean one speech i cite from tony blair in the book i think a speech he gave i think at
00:23:10.320the late party conference in 2005 where he was extolling the virtues of globalization
00:23:16.320and you know essentially saying look globalization is no respecter of tradition and history
00:23:24.380basically get on board with it you know shape up or or ship out and it was it was another way
00:23:31.620essentially of saying look there's no such thing as community there's just money and there's just
00:23:37.140trade and this is how the world is now um and somebody somebody i i spoke on a panel with
00:23:44.200once made i think very insightful point she said that you know that that layer of politician the
00:23:51.660the blair riots you know the more middle class middle class people um people who embrace
00:23:57.120cosmopolitan liberalism are more inclined to see the nation as a shop you know which is there you
00:24:04.320know it's just a they just have a functional relationship with it it's there for transactions
00:24:09.040it's about trade etc whereas working class people who are often more rooted and with a greater sense
00:24:17.320of community are more inclined to see it as a home so you know you have the transactional versus the
00:24:25.180relational. And I think, you know, the Blairites of this world would see it as a transactional
00:24:29.880thing, whereas working class people, exactly in the way that you've just expressed, see
00:24:33.940it as a relational thing. And until we understand that working class people do see things in
00:24:42.220that way, then I think, you know, the Labour Party and the people who lead it are really
00:24:46.840not going to get back in touch with them. And they'd do well to read the book by David
00:24:51.060good heart the road to the road to somewhere which i think actually describes it very well that that
00:24:56.040you know there's a split if you like between the somewheres and the anywheres um and the anywheres
00:25:01.500who tend to earn more money tend to be part of the professional classes probably graduates have
00:25:06.300broader horizons in terms of work opportunities and travel much more mobile and because of that
00:25:12.200they don't necessarily have not necessarily their fault on one level it's just you know it's just
00:25:17.340how they've lived their life, don't necessarily have that sense of community, that sense of being
00:25:23.020rooted, that sense of belonging, don't particularly yearn for it. Whereas people who are paid much
00:25:29.840less and whose horizons are much more narrow and don't have those opportunities to travel and
00:25:36.320go and do a gap year in Italy or something, the whole sense of community and belonging
00:25:42.440takes on so much more meaning to them um and you know somewheres as david goodhart describes it
00:25:49.120make up about 50 of the population the anywheres make up about 25 with the other 25 what he calls
00:25:55.000in between us but the problem as he describes it is that actually the anywheres pretty much
00:25:59.400dominate the culture of the country and the politics of the country and that means that
00:26:02.980they often you know make decisions which they think are in the national interest whereas actually
00:26:08.280They're just in the anywhere interest.
00:26:10.660And until we, as I said, until we start to get what it is that drives working class people,
00:26:16.080what their values are, what their everyday concerns are, what their motivations are,
00:26:19.760what they want, then these divisions are just going to continue.
00:26:23.480So we were talking about community, but one thing we haven't touched on is the nation state.
00:26:28.360Now, before this idea of the nation state not being important,
00:26:31.860you know, was supported by Conservative and by Labour.
00:26:35.040but now it seems that we're kind of addressing the fact that actually a lot of people are proud
00:26:40.240to come from this country they feel a sense of connection with this country do you think that's
00:26:44.620what Labour needs to do in order to actually win hearts and minds yes and I think Labour you know
00:26:50.300shouldn't be ashamed to start talking about patriotism and then it needs to understand you
00:26:54.860know national self-identity as people see it they have a sense of awareness and that that doesn't
00:27:02.780necessarily have to be hostile to other countries just because you know you fill an affinity with
00:27:07.120your own country it doesn't mean that you're xenophobic towards other other countries and
00:27:11.260actually it's ultimate level it's just an extension really of of the affinity that people
00:27:16.940fill with other things other institutions other you know their street for example their town
00:27:22.560their school their county their football team the nation-state in many respects is just an
00:27:29.600extension of that. And also, you know, I think the Labour Party needs to understand the importance
00:27:36.340of the nation state in terms of if there's going to be some sort of challenge to the dominance of
00:27:42.540international capital, globalisation, then the nation state has got to play a role in that. And
00:27:47.200the people, as I identify in the book, there's two groups of people really who would like the
00:27:52.240nation state to wither away. First of all are, you know, what you would call the financial
00:27:57.100globalizers the people who don't like the idea of nation states and elected national governments
00:28:03.180being able to to intervene and stop the free movement of of labor or the free movement of
00:28:08.720capital want access all areas want as little regulation and barriers in the way as possible
00:28:14.220particularly the multinationals so that they can outsource you know and then they can open up new
00:28:19.720new plants factories offices etc around the world and see the the national uh see the nation state
00:28:25.700and national governments as an obstacle to that.
00:28:29.440And, of course, it should be, frankly, automatic for people on the left
00:28:34.900to say we want to challenge that, actually.
00:28:37.840We don't like the idea that we can just have multinational companies
00:28:41.560dictate what national governments should do, which, of course, they do.
00:28:45.960It's a form of blackmail, essentially, where huge companies can say,
00:28:51.100look, unless you, as a national government, give us what we want
00:28:54.380in terms of, you know, low taxation and low regulation
00:28:57.960and whatever other demands that we make,
00:29:00.040then we'll just sort of divest from your country
00:31:03.820Drawing from 40,000 media outlets around the world and over 30,000 news stories per day,
00:31:10.320they empower you to arrive at the truth yourself. Don't do that. Just watch Trigonometry.
00:31:15.880Everyone here at Trigonometry loves ground news because they've got so many brilliant features.
00:31:20.620But there's one feature in particular that we all find incredibly useful. It's the blind spot
00:31:25.320feature. It is the news blind spot. And what this allows you to see is what your particular media
00:31:30.860that you're consuming, whether you're right or left, is not covering. There are certain issues
00:31:35.540that the right wing media will never cover. And therefore, if you only watch the right wing,
00:31:39.180you won't know. Equally, on the left, it's the same thing. And what the news blind spot allows
00:31:43.840you to do is to get the information that the people who you're getting your media from are
00:31:48.500not telling you. And they've also got an amazing website, which is ground.news. For those of us
00:31:54.200who live in the 21st century, unlike Francis, and have phones, just download the app from wherever
00:31:59.220you get your arms. It's a very interesting point you make, Paul, because you can be proud of being
00:32:07.000a man you fan you can be proud of being from scotland you can be proud of being from i don't
00:32:13.380know brighton whatever you can be proud of being from a city you can be proud of being from south
00:32:19.100london but the moment for some reason you get to the nation state level suddenly that's like
00:32:23.620verboten right and and i don't know how we recover that necessarily because there just is this meme
00:32:31.680now out there in the culture that to be you know you say to an ordinary person what are british
00:32:37.160values they'll think you're trying to stitch them up to get them to say something racist
00:32:41.280and yeah that is that's certainly true um and i think also not just not just from the not just
00:32:48.240from the kind of cultural or social side of that argument but also in terms of democracy as well
00:32:52.500i mean the the truth is as i argue in the book the nation state has proved to be the best form
00:32:58.880of government at its upper level wherever people have tried to corral citizens and nation states
00:33:07.800into something above that into supranational institutions um you find much lower levels
00:33:14.320of support for it and the european union is is i guess a good example of that um the you know the
00:33:20.860The nation state is the unit within which people are prepared to give, to be more generous, if you like.
00:33:29.780An 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,
00:33:45.520you're more likely to be prepared to pay through your taxes in order to help regeneration in that
00:33:52.180town than somebody in Bratislava for example and that's not because the person in Hampshire sees
00:33:57.980the person in Bratislava as anything less than a human being but they just believe that we're not
00:34:02.720part of the same political economic unit and actually you know my first priority is here and
00:34:08.000I think the problem you see it now in the you know with the rails that broke out between Germany and
00:34:13.580Greece over the Euro, where when Greece needed its bailout, there was a lot of hostility amongst
00:34:20.460people in Germany, who was Greece's main creditor at the time, of bailing out the Greeks, who many
00:34:28.760people kind of saw as feckless and they're not part of the same community as us, and why should
00:34:32.500we bail them out effectively? And that's always the danger. If you try to force communities and
00:34:39.580countries and citizens of countries into an arrangement that they're not comfortable with
00:34:44.880at a political and economic level, then you do risk igniting or reigniting, in some cases,
00:34:52.160old conflicts. And Paul, it seems to me, and it'll probably seem to you, that government after
00:34:58.500government have failed the working class. They haven't represented them. For a long time,
00:35:03.820they took their votes, did nothing with them. The Conservative government came in last year,
00:45:55.780You know, the left doesn't really talk about the issue of class anymore.
00:45:58.480It 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.
00:46:08.640And he's much more comfortable about talking about identitarian issues.
00:46:14.460And I think the problem is it's a viper's nest.
00:46:16.860And, 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.
00:46:30.780um and you know where where people are suffering discrimination that needs to be challenged but
00:46:36.000i think what we're doing now on the left is just dividing people into discrete groups and
00:46:43.080emphasizing their separateness and treating their individual kind of biological or other
00:46:49.220characteristics almost as if they're virtuous in themselves uh and all that does i think is is
00:46:55.080divide people and i think you know there's a whole fragmentation now of the working class and the
00:46:59.920left has been a big part of bringing that about and it's also made i dare i say it labor unelectable
00:47:04.920because once you push forward a narrative that if you are white doesn't matter if you're working
00:47:09.540class doesn't matter if you grew up in poverty doesn't matter what your circumstances are
00:47:12.760whatever they may be you have got privilege immediately people aren't going to want to
00:47:18.000listen to that and it's just it's completely unhelpful um because i mean at a base level i
00:47:25.480guess there's some logic to say look if you take if you take two people whose circumstances literally
00:47:31.280are exactly the same I mean you know the chance of two people's circumstances being literally the
00:47:36.240same probably quite slim but if you did then the chances are that the white person probably had
00:47:41.320some degree of privilege over the black person in terms of getting a job or whatever but it's
00:47:48.280unhelpful because you know the truth is life is much more complicated than that and people's
00:47:52.680Circumstances are much more complex than that.
00:47:55.000And actually, there are people from the black and minority ethnic community who do far better than many people living in white working class communities.
00:48:03.480You 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.
00:48:16.580go to a go to a working class place like Wigan and say to a white young white person who's
00:48:25.940struggling to get on the housing ladder and can't get a decent job that actually they they benefit
00:48:31.520from some form of privilege I mean how on earth does that actually advance the cause of the
00:48:36.240working class as a whole that sort of stuff that divisive stuff just needs to be needs to be
00:48:40.860challenged head on well that stuff comes from America and I want to talk to you briefly about
00:48:45.140america uh before we wrap up because at the time of recording it seems uh we don't know
00:48:51.280the legal challenges haven't happened but it looks like joe biden has won uh so i mean some
00:48:58.360people on the left are triumphant you know the left has succeeded defeated the right the trumpism
00:49:04.140is done and i i find it very strange because certainly in my mind if there's no covid trump
00:49:39.460No, and the danger is that the left interprets that as some sort of, you know, victory whereby it can now just return to normal.
00:49:48.660And 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.
00:50:02.800Actually, it was that normalcy that gave rise to Trump in the first place.
00:50:08.400It 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.
00:50:22.800Yeah, 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.
00:50:37.680sort of thing that really resonated with those communities those those issues and those
00:50:42.520sentiments haven't disappeared you know those those sentiments are still there um so you know
00:50:49.840if the democrats interpret it as as and some of them are doing as you know we're out of the dark
00:50:56.360age now as they describe it you know we're back onto the road to the sunlit uplands of
00:51:01.020cosmopolitan liberalism then i think they're in for a nasty shock and i think you're probably
00:51:05.780right that if it hadn't been for COVID, I think Trump certainly would have stood a much better
00:51:10.820chance of winning. So no, America's problems, I think, are far from resolved. I mean, I'll shed
00:51:15.860no tears for Trump. I mean, I'm on the left. I would have voted Democrat if I was in America.
00:51:22.340Not that I've got much faith, particularly in Biden. I think in many respects, Trump
00:51:27.320was the worst possible advocate for millions of decent people who actually deserved a decent
00:51:32.760advocate and had genuine and legitimate grievances uh i mean as a human being i think he left a lot
00:51:38.260to be desired in terms of you know obviously quite an obnoxious individual in the way that
00:51:43.140he treated people and the way he referred to women etc um but you know in the debate to be had there
00:51:49.520paul would be whether a less obnoxious person could have got through given the the stick that's
00:51:58.040thrown at anyone who tries to address that agenda but i share your view broadly i'm just saying
00:52:02.680that particular issue is always one I think about, whether somebody, for example, the reason I asked
00:52:08.100you about America is I'm thinking, what do the left learn in this country from that, right? And
00:52:12.940I think what you see, and you know this better than anyone, is anyone who tries to address
00:52:17.220some of these issues, immigration, community, etc., is immediately attacked on personal grounds. And
00:52:24.360whether you can be a Paul Embry and get through, or do you have to be someone like Donald Trump to
00:52:31.180to make it in the current climate that's it i don't know some million dollar questions well i
00:52:35.280think i think trump i mean he obviously presented himself didn't he as as an outsider you know i
00:52:41.180mean in some respects he's as much part of the establishment as anyone else i mean he's a he's
00:52:44.840a multi-billionaire for christ's sake and he allegedly yeah um you know so so he wasn't he
00:52:51.540wasn't uh he didn't sort of come from a working class community you know i'm going to take on the
00:52:57.640establishment he was part of the establishment but what he did do is he pushed the buttons of
00:53:01.540working class people and and kind of said look when they're attacking me they're really attacking
00:53:05.440you when they say they don't like me what they're saying is they don't like you they think you're
00:53:09.540white trash you know they they think you're you're kind of backward and and um they don't like your
00:53:14.640values they think your values are bigoted um and yes if the if the left in britain which i suspect
00:53:21.080some of them will conclude that all we have to do is do what the Democrats did. We don't really
00:53:29.460have to change very much. And next time, we'll get over the line when the Tories prove themselves
00:53:35.120to have not delivered to be unpopular in certain parts of the country. We'll get across the line.
00:53:41.100I think that's dangerous because, A, I don't think they will. I don't think Labour can win
00:53:45.940without its working class base um i'm not suggesting for a second that we should seek
00:53:50.660to alienate middle class more liberal people i think those that group of people have always
00:53:56.860been involved in the labor party and the labor party has been the better for that since its
00:54:00.840existence um but as i touched on the pendulum has swung too far towards that group of people
00:54:05.900it's gone too much hamstead and not enough harlepool so if they conclude from america that
00:54:10.000yeah you know we can we can stay focused on hamster we don't really have to worry about
00:54:13.860at Harlepool, we'll just get over the line. I think they're in for a nasty shot.
00:54:18.720And what do you say to those people who say, and there's quite a few of them, particularly
00:54:21.920in the Labour Party, that the reason Corbyn wasn't elected is because the media were against
00:54:27.500him, you know, everybody was trying to smear him, blah, blah, blah, all the rest of it?
00:54:32.720I mean, it's just nonsense. People have tried to find on the left all sorts of reasons for
00:54:41.480for why we weren't elected from you know and some of them are genuine i mean brexit obviously was a
00:54:47.180big thing corbyn's unpopularity had an effect on the doorstep there's there's no doubt about that
00:54:53.540um i mean the media was hostile and probably had an effect on on um on some voters at least but
00:54:59.080the idea that any single one of those explanations can just be pulled out the bag and cited as the
00:55:05.220real reason we lost you know so you know brexit for example well that's gone now so we don't
00:55:09.500really have to change. Brexit's over. We'll just carry on down the same road. No, that's
00:55:14.320completely wrong. And as I argue in the book, Labour's problems and the disconnect from the
00:55:20.480working class predates Jeremy Corbyn by several years. Anyone who thinks Labour only became
00:55:27.020unpopular with working class communities when Jeremy Corbyn took over, I think he's completely
00:55:32.260misread the situation. I mean, as I say in the book, Labour hasn't won the popular vote in England
00:55:36.360since 2001. At the turn of the century, as the impacts of globalisation, relaxed immigration
00:55:44.100policy, de-industrialisation started to be felt much more acutely in working-class communities,
00:55:51.100that really kind of coincides with Labour starting to lose working-class votes and thousands,
00:55:59.080perhaps millions of working-class people deciding to abstain in elections or flock towards UKIP
00:56:04.160and others. So these problems actually are very, very deep-seated and, as I say, predate Jeremy
00:56:11.520Corbyn. Since Labour has become much more of a metropolitan, liberal, city-based, student-y type
00:56:19.920party, so it has lost millions of working-class votes, that didn't begin with Jeremy Corbyn.
00:56:25.020Paul, as we wrap up, I want to ask you two quick questions. The first of which,
00:56:28.480just coming back to America briefly, is there was this calculation on some sections of the left
00:56:33.920that demography is on our side, right?
00:57:03.180And 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.
00:57:22.060yet he doubled his, 35% of Muslims voted for Donald Trump.
00:57:35.340the more mixed the demographics of the county,
00:57:39.560the more likely it was to vote for Donald Trump.
00:57:42.100So this idea that you can just hold on
00:57:43.720and wait until all the sort of brown and black people
00:57:46.880just turn up and vote, that doesn't seem to be working.
00:57:49.540And 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.
00:57:58.680You know, and the people on the left do just automatically assume that and can't comprehend that anyone could disagree with them.
00:58:07.120The 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.
00:58:23.400Many 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.
00:58:34.740And on Brexit, for example, large numbers of minority ethnic people voted for Brexit.
00:58:40.020And 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.
00:58:48.740So 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,
00:59:01.940I didn't necessarily think it was fair that mainly white people
00:59:05.580from the European Union would get an automatic right just to come in
00:59:09.900and people from the communities where they originally came from
00:59:56.380I mean, Labour was dominant in Scotland once upon a time.
01:00:00.620or certainly had a large presence in Scotland once upon a time.
01:00:03.700A huge number of Labour MPs from Scotland, some of them led the party,
01:00:07.900people like Gordon Brown, but also people like Donald Dewar and Robin Cook
01:00:12.740and others who came from that Scottish tradition.
01:00:16.180Labour has been wiped out in Scotland.
01:00:18.340I don't sense that there's any quick way back for Labour.
01:00:22.780The SNP seem to have things wrapped up.
01:00:25.380And 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.
01:00:42.220And I think the danger is that some people within the Labour Party think, well, OK, we're never going to win those people back.
01:00:48.620We're not going to win Scotland back and we're not going to win post-industrial England back.
01:00:52.760And 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.