TRIGGERnometry - ＂The Left Should Concentrate on What Matters To Ordinary People＂

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kissing and this is the

00:00:11.220 show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our guest today is the

00:00:18.080 author of a left for itself david swift welcome to trigonometry hi lads thanks for having me on

00:00:23.380 it's an absolute pleasure listen it's a fantastic book uh thank you so much for sending it to us

00:00:28.720 really enjoyed reading it before we get into it just tell everybody who are you how are you where

00:00:34.060 you are what has been the journey that brings you sitting uh here with a massive backdrop of books

00:00:39.680 behind you so giving you lots of authority there uh we've just got a blank canvas behind us which

00:00:45.140 is a accurate reflection of the state of our minds yeah so i'm um i suppose i did a phd a few years

00:00:53.100 ago in history my old background academically has been in history and yeah like a lot of people a

00:00:58.560 lot of young struggling academics uh I'm on the sort of job market and it's not looking great

00:01:03.460 exactly you know there's a real um surplus of people with PhDs and not enough jobs to go around

00:01:08.420 so my sort of second uh interest if you like was thinking could I be a sort of more popular writer

00:01:14.900 you know who wrote sort of scholarly books but with a more sort of popular focus or popular

00:01:20.740 audience anyway and yeah you know I'm from Liverpool originally um don't necessarily sound

00:01:26.060 like it that much nowadays actually but there we are and you know but it's something that struck

00:01:30.180 me a lot when i was growing up is this sort of the disconnect between say that the left-wing

00:01:36.460 politics of many people in liverpool many working class people in liverpool and say the left-wing

00:01:41.380 politics of say the contemporary labour party right so when i went to university for example

00:01:46.040 everyone was very left-wing there but usually in quite a different way from the sort of people that

00:01:50.880 i grew up around so that's the sort of thing really that sparked my interest in the um the

00:01:56.280 sort of the difference between the the modern left as it is in britain and america and western

00:02:01.760 democracies and the sort of people that the modern left is actually fighting for or at least it says

00:02:06.660 that it's fighting for and when you say the modern left let's just clarify that because when people

00:02:12.340 use the word left invariably it means a million different things just as when people use the term

00:02:17.480 the right yeah yeah well i'm using it in quite an open sense right so for me left is anyone really

00:02:24.120 sort of including tony blair right up into way past jeremy corbyn to sort of people who think

00:02:29.640 jeremy corbyn was a blairite sellout uh i'm saying people who exactly so i don't just mean liberals

00:02:34.800 by the way right you know in the sort of sense of being in our sort of um i don't know small

00:02:39.760 state personal freedom type person nick clegg david law's you know orange book liberal i don't

00:02:45.040 really mean liberals i mean sort of socialist left economic left and again i include or i assume that

00:02:51.000 when we're talking about socialist left i mean people who are also left-wing on say race and

00:02:55.680 gender and lgbt and all that stuff and what has been the chart the evolution for us david over

00:03:01.980 the you know the particularly in the second half of the 20th century in in britain and the united

00:03:08.020 states in terms of the transformation of the left because i would put it to you based on our

00:03:13.140 conversations with past guests, people like Paul Embry, William Cluston, others on the left,

00:03:19.280 or what you might call the left. I don't know if William Cluston is on the left. But anyway,

00:03:23.960 my point is the sort of people that used to vote for the Labour Party, actually France is probably

00:03:28.960 a good example of this as well, don't seem to be the sort of people that are driving those parties

00:03:35.240 that are choosing their candidates, that are forming the bulk of their support at the moment.

00:03:40.680 So the word has stayed the same, but the meaning seems to have changed quite dramatically.

00:03:46.220 So talk to us about the evolution, because there's a little interesting tidbit in your book about how actually women used to overwhelmingly vote conservative, something that now would be difficult to imagine.

00:03:59.340 Yeah, well, I suppose there's a few different things going on.

00:04:02.740 Right. So one of these processes, I mean, maybe I'm different to Paul Embry in this regard, but one of these processes actually thinks a good thing.

00:04:09.760 Right. So the left or the Labour Party, both in the UK and also actually in the US, since like the New Deal, Roosevelt era, has shifted from being about a certain kind of white working class man.

00:04:21.960 Right. And not just any working class person, but somebody who works in heavy industry, somebody who's in a trade union.

00:04:26.920 Right. That's what the left used to be 70 years ago. It didn't have much to say about women.

00:04:31.320 It didn't have much to say about black people in the US or immigrants in the UK, or in fact, actually different kinds of working class men who went in unions or did other kinds of jobs, like, I don't know, taxi drivers or being self-employed or whatever.

00:04:43.840 And so actually, I think that this evolution now where the left is genuinely paying attention to all of these other very important things, which I think are important, like race and gender and so on, is actually a good thing.

00:04:54.580 However, at the same time, there's been a sort of concomitant process whereby, firstly, these sort of people, as you say, who are behind, say, the people who get nominated to stand for elections, behind people who make decisions at the leadership of the left, the public face on politics and talk shows and so on.

00:05:15.960 that has changed very much and that has actually gone to people who are you know really unrepresentative

00:05:21.960 of of anyone of themselves right it's not necessarily that you know your average uh

00:05:26.500 black or american britain uh you know is on the talk shows or writing the leader columns or even

00:05:31.400 wielding power at the top of the labor party so it's actually given rise to a very specific

00:05:36.340 kind of people who really don't represent anyone and this is almost where the title of the book

00:05:41.200 comes from a left for itself like they're there for themselves and their own specific group of

00:05:45.380 people and i think the problem here is that the the sort of site of radicalization if you like

00:05:51.000 yeah which is it's no longer the the shop floor of a factory it's no longer um necessarily people

00:05:58.500 who have been overtly discriminated against themselves it's actually people who are acting

00:06:03.300 out of altruism and sympathy with other people right the site of radicalization now is the

00:06:07.900 university campus and in a way it's fine you know i've got nothing against altruism i've got nothing

00:06:13.000 against people uh selflessly trying to act to help uh people less fortunate than themselves that's

00:06:18.560 all right but the problem is when the sort of you know the majority of the left the majority of left

00:06:23.920 wing activists the majority of left twitter the hell holder is left twitter when the majority of

00:06:28.680 these people are not trans people or black people or white working class people when the majority

00:06:34.140 of them are you know fairly well-to-do middle-class white people then i think this is where the problem

00:06:39.780 comes in right because there's a real disconnect between the actual foot soldiers and activists

00:06:43.760 on the one hand and the sort of people they claim to be fighting for on the other and do you think

00:06:48.880 that actually and maybe this is me and my own prejudice coming to the fore but don't you feel

00:06:53.420 that when you know somebody who is comes from a very well-off privately educated background you

00:06:59.620 know tend to be white and upper middle class and they start to say that they speak for minorities

00:07:04.900 isn't this quite patronizing to be brutally honest oh yeah i mean 100 percent when someone

00:07:11.020 says that they speak for minorities etc and you know um it's almost like they're taking other

00:07:16.580 people's struggle to to make themselves seem more interesting or even to empower themselves really

00:07:21.520 you know to get to give themselves a i don't know media coverage to give themselves kudos or whatever

00:07:27.660 even to give themselves tweet you know retweets and likes and whatever when someone's doing it

00:07:31.440 in that sense, yeah, I think that's wrong in any sense. However, if somebody wants to, you know,

00:07:36.340 be an ally, as the phrase is, you know, be a foot soldier in a movement for other people,

00:07:41.080 I don't think that that's necessarily wrong, right? I mean, if you look at Black Lives Matter

00:07:45.000 in the US, irrespective of what you think of Black Lives Matter in the US, at least it's led

00:07:49.380 by black people, right? So I think if white people want to help Black Lives Matter in the US, then,

00:07:55.480 you know, all power to them, right? I mean, you might disagree with the objectives or whatever,

00:07:59.120 But I don't think that that is necessarily patronizing. I think it is patronizing if white people want to, yeah, as you say, sort of like speak for black people.

00:08:06.900 You know what I mean? And sort of like act as their sort of representatives and like the warriors for them rather than rather than taking a backseat and being foot soldiers, you know, to the great people.

00:08:17.360 David, and how has this happened? Because this process of transformation, which has led in your assessment to a group of people who only represent themselves being the public voice of the left, increasingly, so people like Owen Jones, Ash Sarkar, Aaron Bastani, etc, in this country, certainly, I mean, I think Owen Jones probably, arguably does represent a sentiment of people on the left.

00:08:42.340 But, you know, Dash Sarkas and Aaron Bastani, people like that in particular, if they represent no one, how have they come to the position that they're in?

00:08:52.200 I mean, it's not so much that they represent no one.

00:08:54.920 It's that they definitely represent a group of people.

00:08:58.260 I would say it's quite a specific group of people, though, and not the people that they perhaps think they're speaking on behalf of or they think that they're representing.

00:09:05.880 I mean, I think what's happened here is there's all sorts of forces going on.

00:09:09.060 On the one hand, you've got the decline of, you know, traditional industries, the decline of trade unionism, particularly private sector trade unionism.

00:09:17.320 You know, that's one thing by itself.

00:09:19.420 At the other hand, you have this massive proliferation, excuse me, of university education.

00:09:24.780 And also, unfortunately, at the same time, a decline in the prestige of a university degree and also in the decline of university quality jobs.

00:09:34.960 right you have this surplus as i was saying before but you know there's so many phds not

00:09:39.060 enough academic uh not enough academic positions and at the same time you have so many people with

00:09:44.720 bas with mas who aren't able to get the sort of job commensurate with that kind of degree the sort

00:09:49.640 of job they thought they would get so they're a bit sort of stuck really and but they all have

00:09:54.580 internet access and they all have social media accounts and this is where you get this uh this

00:09:58.820 particular kind of left coming from i think and they they seem to me that they wield an almost

00:10:05.080 disproportionate power when you look at the you know the people who agree with them and who they

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00:10:44.440 Well, I mean, it's interesting, right?

00:10:46.860 So there's this quote I use in the book by this sociologist Manuel Castells.

00:10:50.640 So Manuel Castells said, when people can't control the world around them,

00:10:54.400 they shrink the world to the size of their world.

00:10:57.840 to something they can control.

00:10:59.400 Or Timon the meerkat from the Lion King put it more succinctly

00:11:02.700 when he said, when the world turns its back on you,

00:11:05.440 you turn your back on the world, right?

00:11:07.140 And this is what's happened with a certain section of the left

00:11:09.400 because they're actually completely shut out of power, aren't they?

00:11:11.960 I mean, even the mainstream sort of new Labour Party

00:11:15.620 hasn't won an election in this country in 10 years.

00:11:18.900 And obviously, many of the sort of people I'm talking about in the book

00:11:21.500 very much reject new Labour.

00:11:23.980 Again, in the US, if Bernie Sanders wins,

00:11:27.000 sorry ben excuse me if joe biden wins in november okay great for the democrats again this is very

00:11:31.660 sort of mainstream democrats and you know they're still shut out in many lower levels of power in

00:11:36.320 the senate in you know state governorships state congresses etc etc um in terms of the board in

00:11:42.100 you know in terms of actual real economic change right so you could say uh you know the woke

00:11:46.960 capitalism and the boardrooms of major companies uh evolving on certain issues but not real you

00:11:52.140 know it's stylistic aesthetic things that they're saying they're not going to give away all their

00:11:56.160 wealth you know to to the poor or anything like that right so in many ways it's uh it's because

00:12:02.860 i think on the one hand the left however you want to constitute it right the broad the left or

00:12:07.860 quite narrow because it has so little power in real life it has so little political power

00:12:12.200 has so little economic power that on the very in the very few spheres in which it does

00:12:17.300 have influence such as social media such as academia it then uh tries to you know exercise

00:12:23.820 complete power right because that's the one that's the one thing it can do you know I don't know if

00:12:28.180 you're a football fan but I remember years and years ago when Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho

00:12:32.160 were at Barcelona and Real Madrid respectively and Pep Guardiola going on a rant in a press

00:12:39.640 conference saying you know in this room he's the fucking chief you know this is his this is where

00:12:43.740 he's the master actually not in the football field but in the press room and I think it's a similar

00:12:47.760 thing happening with the left in a way you know it's because they don't have any real power that

00:12:51.960 They try to sort of monopolize power in these very specific spheres of social media and the media.

00:12:57.980 But I'll see a question as to how that happened.

00:13:00.380 I think a problem is that so many people are, they are really in fear of being outflanked to their left, right?

00:13:09.380 Because so many people, and in a country like the UK, where I think like almost 90% of the UK is white, right?

00:13:15.100 so likewise the left academia uh media and so on are overwhelmingly white people overwhelmingly

00:13:22.540 middle class people and so we're in you know we're not black we're not trans we're not palestinian

00:13:28.220 and we'll speak for yourself mate exactly yeah i mean if you listen to our fans francis has got

00:13:34.100 some potential lesbianism going on just by his appearance good stuff but

00:13:39.540 so diplomatic just skip over that that the problematic joke and and move on to something

00:13:48.040 else fantastic yeah um yeah so i mean you may need this in a certain way to entitle you to

00:13:55.100 speak on certain issues yeah i have to say listen i am a lesbian and soon enough you may be able to

00:14:00.060 self-define as a lesbian and unfortunately people might have to just exactly go along with it

00:14:05.060 so it's because of this right it's because so many of us we don't have the almost credibility

00:14:12.840 that actually being black or asian or trans or palestinian or being gay or being dead poor

00:14:18.120 would grant us so we're terrified or someone left or being outflanked to the left so we don't feel

00:14:24.060 as though we can stand up to these people we don't feel as though we can say to you know the

00:14:27.900 sarkars or bastanis or joneses you're talking shite actually you know you don't speak for anyone

00:14:32.500 because we don't necessarily feel that we have the sort of demographic credibility to say that.

00:14:38.080 Do you think there's a kind of morality gap there?

00:14:41.220 Because, you know, as I think many people have articulated in the past,

00:14:45.980 the right view of the left is that the left are stupid and naive.

00:14:49.960 And the left view of the right is that the right is evil.

00:14:53.180 And so there is this kind of accepted dogma, I suppose,

00:14:58.280 that if you want to become more moral, you move to the left.

00:15:01.940 if you want to become more pragmatic you move to the right and therefore to be outflanked to your

00:15:07.640 left is to to to kind of concede that you are a less moral person and we've all kind of bought

00:15:13.820 into this is that part of it i think there's something to that yeah i think definitely uh and

00:15:19.180 this is more true on some issue uh some issues than others for example like immigration which

00:15:24.300 i'm not sure it will come up later but um you know i would be much more comfortable i'd say

00:15:30.720 an academic conference saying that i wanted to abolish the nhs and basically abolish income tax

00:15:36.440 as well right because whilst virtually everyone in the audience or everyone there would disagree

00:15:40.380 with me they would at least think that was a legitimate political position for a right winger

00:15:44.860 to put across i mean i don't want to do these things by the way but there we are um but i

00:15:48.900 wouldn't feel comfortable saying i think we should like have no immigration right which again i

00:15:53.000 definitely don't think by the way that's not the way we're going to clip it i just want to make it

00:15:57.160 clear to you now that's going to be the headline of that's going to be the title mate david swift

00:16:03.080 no immigration no nhs no nhs no immigration no income tax a perfect world according to david

00:16:11.320 swift that's it so but this is it right so you know it's unlike say taxation or or health and

00:16:18.560 welfare spending um immigration restrictions is not even seen as a legitimate issue on for many

00:16:23.840 people on the left and so yeah i think there's a certain thing to that about about morality and

00:16:28.420 about how it may be perceived actually as being immoral to have certain opinions rather than just

00:16:33.680 political opinions that you can agree or disagree with and people are entitled to have them even if

00:16:37.880 you don't agree with them having said that at the same time you know it's so easy for the right to

00:16:44.300 just to ape these opinions without actually following it through by doing anything and get

00:16:50.080 away with it you know you look at the way uh mainstream Tory MPs now talk about all sorts

00:16:55.640 of issues from I don't know gay marriage to the environment to even Black Lives Matter to

00:17:00.440 immigration to crime and punishment it's very easy for them actually to to adopt uh such many of the

00:17:07.100 language of the left on these issues without doing a damn thing about it I mean you do have

00:17:11.060 certainly with Boris Johnson's cabinet because he has to sort of you know he doesn't have many

00:17:14.840 people to choose from so he has had to give birth to the likes of Priti Battelle and Jacob B. Smog

00:17:19.440 who do actually go against this and do actually say things that most uh career-minded Tory MPs

00:17:25.780 wouldn't say necessarily but I think this is a thing as well actually that the right can just

00:17:29.980 and this is a problem with the state of the left that it's just so easy for the right to adopt this

00:17:34.540 language and say the right thing and use the right buzzwords and not do a damn thing to actually help

00:17:39.340 anyone and so this is the problem when it becomes more about morality than actual change it's an

00:17:45.120 interesting point that you're making because if you look at you know priti patel considered to be

00:17:51.220 very hard line uh by people uh treated as almost like some kind of you know evil witch by many

00:17:58.500 and you know considered to have a very strong position in immigration but actually she you

00:18:04.160 talk about being outflanked to the left she's being outflanked to the right at this moment in

00:18:08.040 time because you have the illegal crossings uh people coming into this country and you know

00:18:13.760 Nigel Farage is going why is Priti Patel putting these people up in hotels and allowing this to

00:18:18.760 happen so it's almost like he's been he's calling the bluff that the conservatives have been

00:18:25.200 putting up by parroting some of what you might call more left-wing positions yeah well I think

00:18:32.580 there's you know the old Marxist idea of the base and the superstructure right that you have like a

00:18:36.960 sort of uh objective material base which has this uh political cultural superstructure attached to

00:18:44.320 it i think in in many in politics nowadays are similar things going on in that you have the

00:18:48.520 actual reality right you have real life uh you have people's you have public opinion on say the

00:18:54.640 death penalty or immigration and then at the same time you have uh sort of what is uh permissible

00:19:00.520 to say you know the mainstream of politics the mainstream of policy and the connection between

00:19:05.720 the two is very interesting and often very tenuous right so you know the death penalty was abolished

00:19:10.840 in the uk 1967 i think or 65 possibly and yet for the next sort of 50 plus years the vast majority

00:19:18.680 of public or at least the slender majority of public opinion wanted to have the death penalty

00:19:22.520 wants to have capital punishment but it didn't matter right because there was no connection

00:19:26.180 between that sort of material desire for capital punishment and what was going to actually going

00:19:30.640 happen in politics and again with immigration you know but for nearly all of the past 70 years i

00:19:36.660 mean as long as there's been records as far as i'm aware there's been a disconnect between public

00:19:40.760 opinion on immigration and what the politicians were willing to even consider um what you would

00:19:46.560 would even discuss in polite society so and i think the exact same thing's happening here right so

00:19:51.860 yes there are these uh illegal crossings going on people landing in britain illegally not going

00:19:57.560 through the you know legal immigration channels and yes nigel farage and many people you know much

00:20:02.540 worse than nigel farage are going to make hay out of this to a certain extent but who cares it's not

00:20:07.160 going to make any difference it's a that that's the sort of reality in the base but actually

00:20:11.200 there's this sort of political superstructure at the top which has decided that um it's just

00:20:16.200 it's not really a priority it's not enough of a priority to actually make the the you know the

00:20:21.200 mainstream politicians in the tory party change their opinion or do anything about it right and

00:20:26.160 And this is the thing, I think, I mean, people say this about, you know, before the Brexit referendum, and then actually when the Brexit referendum happened, it suddenly gave that opportunity, right, for this sort of frustration or movement on the base to actually affect the political superstructure.

00:20:38.740 But I'm not sure if anything like that's going to happen again, especially with first past the post.

00:20:43.660 You know, if we lived in a different system with PR, you can imagine Farage or a Tommy Robinson figure or whoever actually really feeding on this, like the AFD in German, really feeding on this and winning seats and stuff.

00:20:56.560 But with first past the post, they can't see that happening.

00:20:59.100 And Dave, we've been talking now about the left.

00:21:03.100 And is it especially that type of the left?

00:21:05.900 They're so interested in being moral.

00:21:08.580 they're so interested in being right that really they don't seem particularly interested in winning

00:21:13.320 elections is that fair yeah i think i mean they would say oh we are actually it's just you know

00:21:20.720 uh either we you know the way we want to win it you don't think it's what's going to win but

00:21:25.560 we will we will win if you follow this advice or yes we want to win but not at any cost right

00:21:31.220 and i think this is the problem because you know it's not a binary right you don't need

00:21:35.540 The phrase that I saw a lot in January and, you know, when after Corbyn was going away and Keir Starmer looked like he was storming to victory in the Labour leadership election, the phrase I often saw was throwing X under the bus, right?

00:21:47.720 Throwing Palestinians under the bus, throwing trans people under the bus, whatever, you know.

00:21:52.340 You don't have to do that.

00:21:53.860 Like, you don't have to actually compromise on your values to win elections.

00:21:58.560 You just need to be a bit savvy about it.

00:22:00.540 I mean, look at the Tories, you know, the Tories don't go, the Tories don't literally say, listen, you know, we don't really believe in the NHS and actually we're going to, you know, underfund it or whatever.

00:22:10.160 And in fact, you know, they might not. They say, oh, we love the NHS. Oh, you can trust us with the NHS.

00:22:15.360 You know, they don't go and make Jacob Rees-Mogg leader the way Labour made Jeremy Corbyn leader.

00:22:20.520 You know, they make sure during election time that Jacob Rees-Mogg was nowhere to be seen.

00:22:24.440 you know see this is the thing right you don't act and i'm not saying you need to deceive the

00:22:29.620 electorate although arguably that's what the tory party does but labor doesn't have to say we're

00:22:34.620 going to do all these radical things uh on say i don't know trans rights we're going to have a much

00:22:39.840 more critical position of israel you know you don't actually have to go out and and make your

00:22:44.380 whole campaign about that right you can actually campaign on issues that people care about on

00:22:50.060 issues where Labour's position is quite popular like on the NHS for example or on say taxation

00:22:55.660 policy or nationalisation. Well economics I mean Labour Labour's economic policies were incredibly

00:23:00.380 popular it's almost a tremendous achievement that they managed to lose the last election while

00:23:05.440 offering a manifesto that was incredibly popular with people. This I mean this is the difficulty

00:23:10.060 yeah and I think one of the I mean obviously there's Brexit and all that and this is having

00:23:14.700 Corbyn as your leader when somebody is so unpopular and you have this guy as the figurehead

00:23:19.740 uh so there's that but the problem is also the tories can just pick and choose bits that you

00:23:23.640 know the tories shifted to the left uh you know boris johnson said he's going to build all these

00:23:27.940 new hospitals he's going to spend so much money and then actually there's not enough difference

00:23:32.320 between them economically but the tories have much more popular cultural policies or at least

00:23:36.500 you know labor are shooting themselves in the foot with some of these policies which which

00:23:39.920 turn people off so i don't necessarily think there's this like binary or dichotomy between

00:23:44.720 on the one hand sticking true to your values and your moral positions and winning elections you

00:23:49.500 can actually do them both you just have to be savvy about it and the fact that so many of these

00:23:54.540 hobbyist left people as i call them are just unwilling to do that like they're not even

00:23:59.520 willing to just keep quiet for a few months win power and then change things shows you that for

00:24:05.620 them it does seem to be about like the the identity itself like that actually for them just keeping

00:24:10.440 quiet about trans rights and palestinian rights for six months to win elections and then do lots

00:24:15.060 of radical stuff on trans and palestinian rights they think oh no that would defy the whole point

00:24:18.960 the whole point is to identify ourselves with these issues so that does make me think that

00:24:23.300 they're not interested in um in winning elections yeah dave i think you'd have to confiscate their

00:24:28.140 smartphones if you were going to do that to be brutally honest with you yeah this is it it's

00:24:33.100 the whole point is you know in the same way that you know people who are really into drum and bass

00:24:38.040 or people who are really into classical music or you know whatever or people who are massive

00:24:42.380 liverpool fans or arsenal fans they're not gonna you know stop supporting their team or their

00:24:48.720 hobby just because it's it's impractical for them or just because the team's suddenly gone a bit

00:24:53.260 crap you know that's who they are that's the whole point right it's a massive part of their

00:24:58.020 carefully created existence right so indeed just because it might um seem a bit obnoxious it might

00:25:04.200 be counterproductive it might not be effective it doesn't mean they're going to stop doing it

00:25:07.980 because it's who that's it's a part of who they are rather than trying to win elections i've

00:25:13.700 noticed with these hobbyists left and please feel free to correct me if it's just me with my chip on

00:25:18.440 my shoulder but these people do seem to be contemptuous of white working class people

00:25:24.260 is that a fair assumption to make or am i being unnecessarily harsh come on mate that's unfair

00:25:29.380 we all are well so i think there's a couple of things there right i mean firstly there are plenty

00:25:35.040 of white working class people who are really left-wing right you know i mean but you know

00:25:39.860 they do exist right so plenty of white working class people are really radical on say i don't

00:25:44.260 know race gender sexuality whatever so firstly those people exist secondly i think absolutely

00:25:50.480 some of these people are yeah some of these people are openly contemptuous and hatred of

00:25:54.480 white working class people as we saw with the uh you know in bristol um with the thing that was put

00:25:59.340 up in um after the colson statue was taken down right this big fat guy in a vest in a bin clearly

00:26:06.020 reeks of sort of class hatred and a particular kind of class hatred as well so those people do

00:26:10.600 exist but also there are people who steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that um you know there is

00:26:18.120 a correlation between class and education and certain political views and in fact the broader

00:26:23.020 culture there are plenty of people who say how dare you imply that lots of white working class

00:26:28.020 men you know it's a skeptic about immigration actually you know i grew up in the ass it becomes

00:26:33.720 like that monty python like um free auction schedule for how many auction it was you know

00:26:38.280 I grew up in the arse end of nowhere, you know, and my dad told me about how much he loved immigrants and how much he hated capital punishment for paedophiles should be go to, you know, special education centres.

00:26:49.100 So you have this almost like Dutch auction of, you know, I came from nowhere, I'm dead working class me and yet my whole family loving it.

00:26:59.180 So you also have that section as well. And I think they're the real problem, actually.

00:27:03.180 They are the real problem because they can't seem to admit that just because some people who have impeccable working class credentials are indeed very radical on all these issues, as I say, and just because their family may have been like that doesn't mean that that's what most people are like.

00:27:20.660 And despite, you know, several, you know, not just opinion polls and, you know, the best-selling newspapers and all the rest of it, but constant election results seeming to tell them, no, this is not how it is, actually.

00:27:33.960 They can't seem to just accept or concede, okay, sure, you know, some people with impeccable working-class roots are very politically radical.

00:27:43.020 Most aren't on these issues, fine.

00:27:44.880 We'll find a way around that to win elections anyway and implement our stuff anyway.

00:27:48.720 They just refuse to concede it.

00:27:50.660 uh david and i wanted to ask before we move on to maybe talking about what a positive vision of

00:27:56.540 the left might look like uh just in terms of where are you coming at it from where are you politically

00:28:01.280 yeah i mean i'm you know uh probably unlike most of the people you have on the show i'm pretty

00:28:05.920 consistently left-wing on all sorts of issues actually yeah i'm not happy with the smear at

00:28:10.140 all mate we get lots of left-wingers on the show uh just not woke people and the only reason for

00:28:16.020 that is is that they won't come on the show because they don't like debating their ideas

00:28:19.240 um but yeah anyway carry on yeah that's fair enough that's fair enough i mean depends what

00:28:23.240 you mean by woke right but for me i would say woke is this like hobbyist idea right it's where

00:28:27.520 the identity itself rather than actual policies that you believe so yeah i'm pretty left-wing

00:28:32.800 across the board obviously on economics but also on you know i don't know race immigration gender

00:28:37.080 lgbt all this stuff but i recognize that this is because of my privilege to use a word that you

00:28:43.260 might not like you know i recognize that this is you know look at look at all the fucking books

00:28:46.840 behind you know i recognize this is because i went to a certain university and i have a phd

00:28:50.860 and i have this fancy pants life in london and all the rest of it okay sure i haven't got a full-time

00:28:55.560 job but you know i'm doing pretty well for myself and i'm never going to be you know uh so many of

00:29:02.020 these issues um which might cause people to be more skeptical on these issues for example you

00:29:07.320 know many feminists who genuinely uh are worried about um you know not trans women but men basically

00:29:14.440 men pretending to be trans women to get access to their changing rooms or something like that

00:29:19.040 you know plenty of these women have these beliefs uh you know completely genuinely and they're not

00:29:24.020 bigots they're not transphobes they honestly have these beliefs right now that's not something

00:29:28.740 that's ever going to affect me right it will literally never affect me as a man likewise i

00:29:33.720 don't you know what happens with israel and palestine literally i mean my wife's israeli

00:29:38.240 actually so it doesn't away but you know me personally you know it has no effect on me right

00:29:42.600 again you know i probably could live and work anywhere in the world frankly so i don't care

00:29:47.440 about immigration you know i'm going to be the immigrant right so this is the thing even though

00:29:51.540 i'm very left-wing on all these issues i at least have the sort of self-awareness to recognize

00:29:56.280 why i'm so consistent left-wing on all these issues it's because i don't have to worry about

00:30:00.980 them it's because i've got a really good education it's because i have a you know fairly fancy pants

00:30:05.680 lifestyle in london and i think this this is the thing so many people who are like me politically

00:30:10.160 don't seem to have this sort of self-awareness to realize you know this is why i have these

00:30:15.360 opinions because it's perfectly safe for me to have them i have no skin in the game as it were

00:30:19.860 that's a really curious thing though because i'm just interested in terms of your own psychology

00:30:24.640 just on to get my head around it so you say you recognize that your opinions are based on having

00:30:31.100 the privilege of not having to essentially to deal with the consequences right is that fair

00:30:37.760 or is that unfair see it's not so much to deal with the consequences because i don't know what

00:30:41.740 the consequences would be right so well i mean you say you're left wing on that let's just take

00:30:46.000 the trans issue for example right so you you're you are on the kind of new left of that issue is

00:30:54.020 that yeah it's it's difficult right i mean definitely i'm um you know i think you know

00:30:59.220 fair play trans women are women trans men are men etc where i stand on self id is a bit difficult

00:31:05.080 because that's that's a you know if someone can literally say without having had you know any

00:31:11.420 hormone treatment any operations without having had you know anything from a from a doctor or

00:31:16.420 anything to say yes i am a man or i am a woman that's very difficult for me to endorse that but

00:31:21.040 again as a man as a cis man it's never going to affect me you know what i mean it's so it's almost

00:31:26.800 like i don't i don't have a dog in that fight i don't have skin in the game so on the one hand

00:31:32.260 it's difficult for me to have a concrete opinion on it um because all right i i don't want to delve

00:31:38.020 into the specifics of that issue i'm not trying to pin you to the wall or anything i'm just trying

00:31:41.420 to understand so let's take the immigration issue for example because of who you are and how you

00:31:46.060 live uh the impact of immigration is likely to be positive on your life or have no effect at all

00:31:50.900 right that i think that would be fair to say but but equally you recognize that there are lots of

00:31:55.560 people for whom that isn't true yeah right so does that not affect your position on immigration

00:32:01.360 because i suppose the truth is that it's also true for me like i more immigration into britain

00:32:08.220 doesn't make my life particularly worse and maybe in some ways it benefits my life right but but i

00:32:14.800 am quite firm on immigration personally because i recognize the impact and has on the country as a

00:32:21.240 whole and i recognize that there are some people whose lives are very very badly affected by

00:32:26.220 uncontrolled mass immigration uh communities are destroyed there's a lot of displacement

00:32:31.320 uh people feel like uh society changes faster than they can cope with uh it's something that

00:32:37.380 they feel they've had no input in etc right so while my position is that i personally am not

00:32:43.060 affected or i'm affected positively i can see that the consequences and which is why i take

00:32:48.420 the overall view that we need to control immigration quite carefully um so so what's

00:32:54.680 the difference between you and i i'm just genuinely curious trying to understand well see the thing is

00:32:59.060 that in terms of the immigration question uh you know the the numbers are behind the more

00:33:04.640 immigration skeptical right i mean you know obviously you saw with the brexit referendum

00:33:08.460 um okay certain disingenuous brexiteers like daniel hannon or whatever said oh you know

00:33:14.360 we're not anti-immigration we're just going to replace europeans or like indians and people like

00:33:18.640 that and think yeah let's see what happens with so many brexit voters if that happens right

00:33:22.620 you know the numbers are there with with the immigration i mean we've had you know 10 years

00:33:27.000 conservative governments uh almost you know six years so far the last four of those years have

00:33:32.060 been someone who's become prime minister because they're riding this sort of you know brexity

00:33:35.940 anti-immigration wave so that's an issue where i don't think people need my help or my defense

00:33:41.820 right you know the numbers are there with the sort of anti-immigration camp so yeah there are

00:33:46.880 absolutely plenty of people who feel uh either through economic reasons or cultural reasons or

00:33:51.900 whatever that immigration is uh is difficult for the life and has consequences for their life

00:33:56.360 and fortunately for them they've got you know a conservative government that is you know willing

00:34:00.580 to listen to them uh to a certain degree anyway right they have numerical clout right they have

00:34:06.080 democratic clout um the people who don't have any democratic clout are the people who saying like

00:34:10.380 let's abolish borders let's just have no borders the problem is these are souls who say let's have

00:34:15.800 no borders whilst they have so little clout and don't really represent anyone they they do sort

00:34:21.900 of have a lot of clout specifically on the left right you know and they do create this image on

00:34:27.400 the left for the ordinary person oh that's what the left's about right so you know i think on so

00:34:32.480 many issues sort of small c conservative issues that's where the vast majority of the population

00:34:37.040 are not least by the way plenty of you know black and asian britains uh who are very you know small

00:34:42.520 see conservative on so many issues so i don't really think that those people need my help if

00:34:48.600 you like you know i think there's a perfectly good conservative party for that and you know

00:34:51.820 there's also like the possibility of a new brexit party style um startup so i don't think they need

00:34:57.460 my help so just to go back to your early question i think there's there's two different things which

00:35:01.320 might explain maybe like the slight disconnect between you know how i actually feel and what i

00:35:06.780 might advocate right so on the one hand it is consequences yeah it is because because i don't

00:35:11.000 have skin in the game on on certain issues i can afford to have a more abstract theoretical you

00:35:17.120 know university seminar review on these things but it's not just that i think it's also because

00:35:22.120 you know i also feel this way in many ways on things where there are no consequences one way

00:35:26.360 or the other like patriotism for example right now you know you remember years ago uh emily

00:35:31.760 fonbury and she tweeted that picture from from rochester i mean horrific things and also such

00:35:36.680 a stupid thing for any politician to do right does he not think there might be consequences to this

00:35:41.520 and then poor old ed milliband got asked you know what do you think when you see the england flag

00:35:46.380 and you have to go pride you know just come on you would you would never be seen dead draping

00:35:52.640 an england flag from your house or your van you know it does not make you feel pride and that's

00:35:57.080 fine do you reckon ed milliband has got a van exactly i don't think he's ever been near a van

00:36:01.980 I'd love to see him just driving

00:36:04.260 around with his copy of The Sun

00:36:06.320 as bacon. He can't eat a bacon sandwich

00:36:08.280 mate, let alone drive a van. Exactly

00:36:10.280 yeah, exactly. So this is it, you know what I mean

00:36:12.100 so there's no way Ed Miliband would have been seen dead

00:36:14.060 with an England flag from his house

00:36:15.680 and you know, fair play, right, that's completely

00:36:18.180 fine, he doesn't have to really

00:36:19.980 he's the Labour leader. So, but on

00:36:22.100 that issue again, you know me

00:36:24.060 I mean, I'm from Liverpool and lots of people from Liverpool

00:36:26.120 have real difficulties with English

00:36:27.980 nationalism and English patriotism as well

00:36:29.880 and that's the sort of thing that doesn't really necessarily have any consequences but i only

00:36:34.000 realize that i have these opinions the way i would never have an england flag from my house

00:36:39.200 is because well firstly i'm from liverpool and that's a thing as well but also yeah because of

00:36:43.980 my education and because of my you know my sort of position and stuff like that right so it's not

00:36:48.860 necessarily just on issues where there might be consequences for other people and not for me

00:36:53.160 but you know it's also things where i am maybe demographically different from your average

00:36:58.420 britain and therefore i recognize that i will have views that are different from your average britain

00:37:03.380 but i appreciate that and i can come to terms with it and i think a huge problem is that so

00:37:07.540 many people on the left like me with my sort of uh you know background in terms of education and

00:37:12.820 position right now just refuse to admit this like refuse refuse to consider that they are not

00:37:17.540 representative of the average person and doesn't the 2019 election give them any kind of message

00:37:25.740 you'd think that wouldn't yet you would really think that you know but this is it there's no

00:37:30.860 if you look back at just history right because even things that went on the very very i mean

00:37:35.780 labor before tony blair had only ever won two working majorities right 1945 and 1966 it won

00:37:43.020 a few other elections in addition to them but with very slender majorities of like under 10 or around

00:37:48.480 12 something like that so if you look at history labor hardly ever ever ever ever wins when labor

00:37:54.900 has won like in 45 and 66 in tony blair's time it's done it's been very careful it's worked

00:38:02.740 really hard to deal with these negative images that people have of left-wing politics it's been

00:38:07.760 very sophisticated in its messaging it's rode you know the second world war like in 1945 and

00:38:12.980 it's used that to its advantage and none of that has ever made certain people on the left think

00:38:17.780 maybe our ideas aren't popular so i was really thinking that one good thing that might have come

00:38:23.980 out of the 2019 election is that maybe for some people on the left they would wake up to the fact

00:38:30.380 that okay sure some of our economic ideas are popular great but all the other stuff really

00:38:34.880 isn't and actually if we want to implement some of this other stuff we just need to be a bit quiet

00:38:38.940 about it and be a bit less obnoxious but not you know not a bit of it right they didn't even draw

00:38:45.380 breath no sooner had the so-called red wall fallen instead of actually this leading certain

00:38:52.200 people on the left to think you know what maybe the northern working class aren't the sort of you

00:38:56.920 know hipsters in hackney that we imagine them to be no sooner had that happened you have the likes

00:39:01.540 of nabarra saying these people aren't the real working class you know the real working class

00:39:06.340 are ma students in uh in brighton and hackney and you know so this is the problem right you know

00:39:10.980 they didn't even miss a beat i think i mean i didn't watch it but i believe after the exit

00:39:17.180 poll came out on election night, the likes of Ashraf Kaur and Alan Bastani were having this,

00:39:22.280 you know, podcast or whatever, or something like that, where they were, you know, talking about

00:39:27.000 what's going on next. And again, they didn't have this sort of period of shit, you know, maybe

00:39:30.980 everyone can believe his bollocks, you know, they didn't have this period of, you know,

00:39:34.780 quiet contemplation. They were straight on the air talking nonsense. And again, you know, the,

00:39:40.200 the, the argument has been that actually, these people who, you know, voted Tory aren't really

00:39:47.100 working class you know the real working class are the people who already vote later so i don't think

00:39:51.660 there will ever be a sort of empirical uh way of of causing these people to to ever think oh no

00:39:59.500 maybe we should just try another attack and don't i mean let's cut to the chase here right we've been

00:40:04.960 talking about you know this this faction of the left the fact that labor haven't won for 10 years

00:40:10.780 even though you look at the tree the government under theresa may who were pretty much useless

00:40:15.960 one of the most hated prime ministers there's ever been is the Labour Party fit for purpose

00:40:20.800 because I don't think it is anymore if I'm being brutally honest I mean it's it's really difficult

00:40:25.420 to say isn't it um I think definitely no matter who and this is what so many people have been

00:40:30.360 saying you know anti-Starmer people on the Labour Party oh why isn't Starmer why isn't Labour doing

00:40:34.840 better than the polls it's it's always been really difficult for Labour to to win elections in this

00:40:39.380 country and get into power always like for the 120 years of its history um it's it's much more

00:40:45.560 difficult now given what's happened in scotland etc given what's happened in england actually over

00:40:50.840 the past sort of 15 years with the labour vote um it depends what you mean to be fit for purpose

00:40:55.920 right so if we consider its first purpose to be clause one of the labour constitution which is

00:41:00.620 to get into power right to acquire political power in parliament

00:41:03.780 it's trying to be under starma you know they are trying now to go back down that route and actually

00:41:11.000 given a damn about where most people are and what actually might win elections

00:41:14.440 whereas yeah clearly for the previous um sort of four years it didn't seem to give much of a damn

00:41:19.700 about that well yeah it's gonna really struggle and but just because it's gonna really struggle

00:41:25.340 this doesn't necessarily mean that it's not fit for purpose i completely take the point that many

00:41:31.020 of i mean when we consider what the labour party was founded to do and what it was meant to

00:41:35.000 represent in many ways it doesn't necessarily represent that but of course you know demographics

00:41:40.360 have changed people have changed right so i read a brilliant book recently by claire ainsley called

00:41:44.960 the new working class i believe claire ainsley is a i think average uh kia starman's chief of staff

00:41:50.000 or someone pretty high up in his operation and she makes the point that you know the working class

00:41:54.620 very much still exists uh it looks slightly different to what it was 70 years ago but

00:42:00.760 interest and you might hear some like you know corbynistas going yeah you tell them claire but

00:42:04.680 actually the point is they care about the same things that the traditional working class cared

00:42:08.980 about. You know, they care about family. They care about their community. They care about

00:42:13.540 patriotism and their country, right? Whether they be white, brown, black, whatever. They care about

00:42:18.840 these issues. So yeah, the Labour Party can still have a role to play. And I think definitely under

00:42:25.560 Keir Starmer, it's coming back to that role. Whether it can win elections or whatever, yeah,

00:42:30.220 that's definitely a difficult thing to say. I've got no idea that can, because right now it doesn't

00:42:34.440 look as though that's going to happen anytime soon. But isn't that fundamentally dangerous

00:42:38.880 for democracy than we effectively have a one-party state

00:42:43.180 where it's the Conservatives winning time and time and time again.

00:42:47.980 And it doesn't matter how crap and useless they are.

00:42:50.480 Like Boris Johnson, we can all accept now, is crap.

00:42:53.640 He doesn't have the ideas.

00:42:55.200 He's absolutely bungled the last few months.

00:42:57.800 But it doesn't matter because Starmer isn't going to win.

00:43:01.220 So what's the point?

00:43:02.420 Sorry, I'm getting angry.

00:43:03.620 No, it's fair enough.

00:43:05.000 This is an infuriating situation,

00:43:07.060 especially given all the stuff you've just been talking about right the tories recording government

00:43:10.720 over the past 10 years they're they're handing or bundling bungling sorry bungling rather than

00:43:16.760 of this pandemic yeah it's infuriating both in terms of what they've done what they've been

00:43:22.220 able to get away with and the way it looks as though there's no end in sight and absolutely

00:43:26.140 i think that is a problem for democracy but it's not necessarily a problem of the labor party's

00:43:31.120 uh creation at least not the current labor party right so it's other things it's things like the

00:43:35.940 fixed-term parliament act right which says there's not going to be an election for you know another

00:43:39.360 four years it's things like first past the post which mean that actually which means sorry that

00:43:44.900 you know it's not really even about uh the numbers that you get necessarily it's about where the

00:43:50.260 voters are right um it's about things like uh the media again you know the fact that so much of the

00:43:55.740 of the print media is ridiculously hostile to any labor leader even if they're quite anodyne one

00:44:00.980 like Tony Blair or even poor old Ed Miliband you know so yeah I think there's there's a huge problem

00:44:06.300 here again and if you look at so much of the media and I include Sky News and to a certain extent the

00:44:11.780 BBC as well when you look at their coverage of Boris Johnson and his handling of the pandemic

00:44:17.700 I think there you can say they need to get the tongue out of his arse really they need to be

00:44:22.560 more critical especially as you say when the Tories have been in power for 10 years and it

00:44:26.560 doesn't look as though there's any serious threat of the opposition taking over maybe the media could

00:44:30.440 do better to um you know to criticize the tories so yeah i completely take the point about uh labor

00:44:36.200 weakness being a problem for democracy in this country but there's many other problems right

00:44:40.320 such as voting system uh you know and the media and so on well it's interesting the media thing

00:44:46.640 always comes up whenever i talk to people on the left and they always have the perception i think

00:44:52.660 that um you know the institutions of the media are in hock with the conservative establishment

00:45:00.160 whereas i think a lot of people on the right feel the hashtag defund the bbc it's gone super woke

00:45:06.980 uh you know it's been so diversity obsessed everyone from minority backgrounds now actually

00:45:13.100 overrepresented there you know i appear on the bbc quite regularly my experience of it is that

00:45:17.760 it's super woke right um so and i'm not even on the right and it's interesting you know that's

00:45:24.720 not what everybody says mate well and actually that was the point that i was just going to make

00:45:29.080 because I'm really enjoying this conversation with you, David, because you made the suggestion

00:45:34.460 that a lot of our guests are right of center. And I would argue that you are precisely the sort of

00:45:41.080 person that is actually quite common on our show. I mean, you know, you're probably to the left of

00:45:45.920 people like Andrew Doyle in the sense of your position on trans or whatever, but you're exactly

00:45:51.040 the sort of person that says the left needs to do better. And then the far left goes, well,

00:45:58.440 this guy is on the right he's got an Israeli wife case closed he's a Nazi right so so this is I think

00:46:06.220 one of the problems is that uh our definition of what's on the left is changed a lot you know

00:46:15.460 Andrew's a socialist for example I don't know if you're familiar with Andrew Doyle right but he

00:46:19.900 people say that he's on the right people say that Francis is on the right people say that I'm on the

00:46:24.680 Right. So there is a lot of there's a lot of kind of I think both sides are tempted to say the media is on the other team's side.

00:46:33.840 You know, anyone who's not with us is against us.

00:46:37.480 Do you find that as you make the critique of the left that you've made that a lot of people want to just dismiss you because of your wife's background or whatever else it might be?

00:46:46.980 I mean, yeah, it's more that I'm critiquing the left and, you know, I'm critiquing from there.

00:46:51.700 Well, why don't you talk about the rights? Well, there's plenty of people doing that, right? You know, there's no shortage of talking heads and journalists and activists and academics who are going to lay into Boris Johnson and Trump. And great, you know, I hate Trump. I hate Johnson. But who cares? I mean, I don't want to. It amazes me the way so many people simply want to read opinions which they already have or see opinions that they already have given straight back to them, right? You know, I already think that Johnson and Trump are tossing. The question is, what can we do about it? Like, can we actually do anything about it?

00:47:20.680 why do people vote for them you know how can we get rid of them these are the questions that i'm

00:47:25.080 interested in and this is what you know what i'm about but it seems that so many people on the left

00:47:29.480 think that if you're asking those questions rather than just saying for the hundredth time

00:47:33.780 trump and johnson johnson are scum that yeah you're some you're some kind of traitor really

00:47:37.960 you know and that's a problem but when it comes to the media i suppose it depends right so

00:47:42.000 obviously the bbc through the nature of the sort of people who work at the bbc right you know from

00:47:47.700 the top down being you know overwhelmingly university graduates and fairly elite university

00:47:52.760 graduates at that being overwhelmingly white being overwhelming middle class obviously they're going

00:47:57.240 to have certain opinions which on cultural issues are going to skew left absolutely but on other

00:48:02.740 issues like i don't know the economy for example or uh you know what should a prime minister what

00:48:07.500 is prime ministerial you know what is competence then actually on those issues they might be either

00:48:12.120 pretty centrist or pretty right-wing right and again yeah definitely social media um what depends

00:48:18.040 where you look on social media but certain elements of social media are completely dominated

00:48:22.340 by the left but so what who cares you know it's completely powerless it doesn't do anything

00:48:25.920 so is this and this is a big problem for left actually in that it seems that in certain areas

00:48:31.800 the left or wokeness if you like is dominant but really these areas aren't powerful and it doesn't

00:48:37.520 have much of an effect it's an interesting point you make about the bbc because i suppose

00:48:42.140 given the nature of our show what we have focused on at the moment is primarily what you might call

00:48:48.480 the culture war so if you look at the bbc through the prism of the culture war you go well on the

00:48:54.540 cultural issues the bbc is massively left-wing whereas as you point out maybe on economics that

00:48:59.920 isn't quite as true so yeah i see i see what you're saying but look we've got about 10-15

00:49:05.000 minutes left and I've really really genuinely enjoyed our conversation I have to say and

00:49:09.240 Francis is nodding as well it's really a pleasure to talk to someone who's um you know you are

00:49:13.880 certainly more to the left than many of our guests I would say at least it seems that way which is

00:49:18.560 great it's fantastic we we love to have to have these conversations so let's use the last 10-15

00:49:24.840 minutes to talk about a positive vision of what the left might be because I'll give you this example

00:49:31.560 we were sitting around having dinner the other day uh with for me francis anton our producer

00:49:36.460 and a few of our of our friends and we were talking about paul embri who we mentioned who

00:49:41.980 is a socialist trade union member but pro brexit who we've had on the show a couple of times and

00:49:47.300 we were all saying that if he was the the labor leader the chances are that all seven of us around

00:49:53.600 that table would vote for Labour right uh so how does Labour get back to a position and the left

00:50:02.040 more broadly perhaps get back to a position where it can attract the votes of amazing people like us

00:50:08.640 yeah well this is the thing I mean I've got nothing necessarily against Paul Embry but I

00:50:13.200 know that lots of people uh not that many people in the great scheme of things of course but

00:50:17.440 certain people would be would not vote Labour if Paul Embry was in charge sure I mean these people

00:50:22.500 numerically very small actually every single one of them's got a twitter account every single one

00:50:26.920 uses it with a vengeance but you know nationwide the small people but they do exist um so i mean

00:50:32.460 an example i always like to use is the harold wilson administration of the 1960s right so

00:50:37.840 from 1964 to 1970 won two elections and in that period with roy roy jenkins as the home secretary

00:50:45.300 they abolished the death penalty they legalized abortion they relaxed the divorce rules they

00:50:50.060 stopped flogging in prisons which used to be a thing until the 60s uh you've lost you've lost

00:50:55.940 me mate that's where all went wrong bring back the birch exactly you know they they uh they

00:51:02.960 decriminalized homosexuality they did all of these they also passed race relations legislation as

00:51:07.820 well they did all of these great liberal you know culturally left-wing non-economic things

00:51:13.140 uh but of course none of this was in the manifesto apart from the race relations thing

00:51:17.660 once you know they didn't they didn't you know they weren't idiots right they didn't actually

00:51:22.300 say knowing full well what their voters were like as well they didn't say oh we're going to say in

00:51:27.600 our 64 or 66 manifesto yeah we're going to legalize being gay we're going to legalize abortion we're

00:51:33.680 going to abolish the death penalty they didn't say that at all it wasn't even official government

00:51:37.460 policy right they just gave time for most of it anyway they gave time to private members bills

00:51:42.220 they allowed backbenchers to sponsor this legislation the government gave it time

00:51:46.080 and they got it through and i think that's a fine example of the sort of savviness if you like of

00:51:52.980 what the left needs to do the left needs to realize that you know aside from the the state of the

00:51:59.320 people who've been in power for the past 10 years aside from all sorts of existential challenges in

00:52:04.640 terms of the economy in terms of climate change stuff like that aside from all of the great stuff

00:52:09.520 that the left wants to do on on various kinds of issues economic and non-economic if it wants to

00:52:14.760 actually do that and put this stuff into practice it's really tough right it's really tough to win

00:52:19.820 elections it's really tough to get into power so it needs to just have no uh sort of false

00:52:24.940 assumptions it needs to have no illusions about what the electorate is like uh and what they need

00:52:29.540 to do to get into power but david hold on i'm sorry to interrupt but if i just put my like if

00:52:34.520 i pretend to be on the right for for the purposes of this question right then what i'm hearing and

00:52:40.680 this is i appreciate putting an uncharitable spin on what you've said but but this is what people

00:52:45.020 will hear no doubt is we need to lie to the electorate and trick them into accepting policies

00:52:50.480 that they don't like so i would say not at all right so it's not as though you need to lie in

00:52:56.580 that you literally say in the manifesto we're going to do x y and z and then do the opposite or

00:53:01.000 okay put in the manifesto we're going to do x y and z and then do it right although obviously

00:53:06.420 politicians could be accused of doing stuff like that quite often it's more a case of don't focus

00:53:12.560 on unpopular shit right so for example israel palestine is not an issue that most people care

00:53:18.480 about one way or the other but if you obsess over israel palestine then you will attract loads of

00:53:23.920 anti-semites to your cause of course and you know you will look as though maybe you're not an anti

00:53:29.380 semi but maybe as though you are unduly concerned with this very very very small part of the world

00:53:33.940 that doesn't appear to have much to do with the uk likewise considering how how few trans people

00:53:39.360 are in the population if you're always banging on about trans rights people don't really care

00:53:43.900 one way or the other right so you could move i mean you know the tories nearly introduced self

00:53:48.740 id i think in in theresa may's government and stuff like that so it's the sort of thing whereby

00:53:53.720 these are issues these aren't necessarily issues that elicit passions really necessarily amongst

00:54:00.200 to the general population.

00:54:01.320 They have a very small group of people on both sides.

00:54:04.600 But it's not really the sort of thing that people care about.

00:54:07.580 If you had a Labour government which was doing important things

00:54:10.680 on the economy, on the NHS, on education, on housing, for God's sake,

00:54:15.140 if you had a Labour government which was achieving results

00:54:18.980 in all of these spheres, very, very, very few people would give a damn

00:54:23.480 if you also try to advance some of the more niche concerns

00:54:28.080 of, you know, eccentrics on university campuses

00:54:30.300 and on Twitter.

00:54:31.400 And it wouldn't really be about lying to the electorate.

00:54:34.900 It's the same way that the Wilson governments

00:54:36.520 didn't lie to the electorate.

00:54:37.920 You know, they had cross-party consensus

00:54:39.440 for what they were doing.

00:54:40.820 And I'm slightly contradicting what I said earlier

00:54:42.980 about, you know, how for 50 or 60 years

00:54:45.660 after the death penalty was abolished,

00:54:47.480 there was actually majoritarian support

00:54:49.240 in favour of the death penalty.

00:54:50.640 But clearly, not enough people actually cared about this, right?

00:54:55.040 Yeah.

00:54:55.240 Not enough people actually cared about this issue

00:54:57.680 to to make the tories for example shift to the right yeah like if you ask them they'll say they're

00:55:03.020 in favor of the death penalty but they're not going to go on a march to to execute people yeah

00:55:06.960 yeah that makes sense that makes sense so basically what you're saying is if the left focused on big

00:55:12.740 issues that most people care about if they if they had economic policies that were front and

00:55:18.380 center of their agenda and they were not sidelined by marginal issues which seem crazy to most people

00:55:24.860 you know if so if they delivered on that they could afford then to slip in a few little things

00:55:29.520 like you know being tough on jews and tough on the causes of jews or whatever else it might be

00:55:33.960 they could afford on say to re-evaluate britain's foreign policy priorities right so in terms of

00:55:40.560 you know our relationship with america which has not been very good for britain or for you know

00:55:44.980 iraq or afghanistan and stuff like this and things like that for example right things that lots of

00:55:50.900 people will support I mean sorry to you know go off on a little tangent here but one of the things

00:55:54.780 about Corbyn which you know makes me think this is he's emblematic of this hobbyist left tendency

00:55:59.800 is you know how hard would it have been for him to sing along gustily at the cenotaph you know

00:56:05.440 and how hard would it have been for him in the aftermath of the Skripal poisonings to say yeah

00:56:10.860 Russia the scumbag you know to just go through with this almost performative yet you know being

00:56:16.740 a politician going along with a goinger and then actually if you got into power then you could

00:56:22.620 defund the monarchy say or whatever you know or you could try to sort of um have anti-monarchical

00:56:27.820 policies that you could get away with then you could actually if you wanted to uh you know

00:56:32.420 reorientate britain's foreign policy uh you know away from maybe a sort of instinctively sort of

00:56:37.320 anti-russian pro-american stance but this is it he just couldn't even he wouldn't even do that you

00:56:42.620 know he wouldn't even go through the motions of singing god save the queen uh you know and just

00:56:47.700 being sort of oh yeah the russians are behind this poisoning so this is the thing i'm not saying

00:56:52.440 that this would actually win labor elections but at least we'd have a fighting chance if we you

00:56:57.440 know we could do these things and definitely i think you know this country needs a labor government

00:57:02.620 i would say so uh but you know even francis would say whether it needs a labor government or not

00:57:06.960 it definitely needs opposition right it definitely needs to be a credible uh you know uh opposition

00:57:11.900 and but and dave you say all these things and you're talking i mean look we've been talking

00:57:17.080 about the left for what 55 minutes the first time we've even mentioned the housing crisis

00:57:21.980 to me that is absolutely absolutely yeah this is it's ridiculous and this is the thing that you

00:57:28.180 know compared to say sort of political debates programs of like 40 50 years ago right and you

00:57:32.920 look on youtube of debates in the 70s it's all about like trade union rights it's all about

00:57:38.140 taxation it's all about these sorts of issues and okay yeah sure they talk about foreign policy and

00:57:42.820 sort of cultural stuff as well but it's about the great economic issues of the day and this is the

00:57:47.780 thing you know it's almost as though on the one hand there's there's obviously far more consensus

00:57:53.700 now on economic issues uh than there used to be decades ago and this included when corbyn was

00:57:59.200 labor leader by the way there was still more um consensus on economic issues than there have been

00:58:03.220 in the past uh but also it's because of the sort of people who are on the left now you know the

00:58:07.320 sort of people who are really at the sharp end of the housing crisis say and i don't mean people

00:58:13.340 like me who have to pay through the nose for flats that they can't really afford i mean people on the

00:58:18.500 streets i mean families who are forced to stay in bmb's right i mean those sorts of people they're

00:58:23.920 not on the left you know they're not uh going to clp meetings they're not going on marches they're

00:58:28.720 not you know on social media making assholes of themselves so this is the thing right it's not

00:58:33.440 only that there seems to be economic issues seem to have faded to abeyance to a certain extent that

00:58:37.860 there's much more of a consensus than there used to be but there's also that the sort of people on

00:58:42.000 the left has completely shifted it's not the people who really need economic change now who

00:58:47.460 are the loudest voices and the most prominent people on the left it's people who are actually

00:58:50.820 doing pretty all right actually i mean you you talk about these things and like i said we talk

00:58:57.800 about housing first time we've talked about it in an hour's interview which again is ridiculous

00:59:02.520 and you talk about this need for the left to embrace these ideas take on these challenges

00:59:09.320 fundamentally changed its outlook and i'm sitting here and i'm going you know what that sounds great

00:59:15.120 but it ain't gonna fucking happen why is that well this is it like it's because you're a cynical

00:59:21.720 bastard that's why believe believe anything is possible for answers if you looked at what as

00:59:28.380 you said before like you know the the December 2019 general election you'd think that for certain

00:59:33.280 people this will be a wake-up call but not a bit of it right but I think under Keir Starmer and not

00:59:39.380 just I mean you know not just him but some of the people behind him as well like Claire Ainsley who

00:59:43.600 I mentioned earlier a lot of these people are very sensible by sensible I mean people like they they

00:59:51.200 care about winning elections and they're concerned with that they're concerned with what is possible

00:59:55.240 with what they can what they should present to the public so i honestly do think that the starmer

01:00:00.540 regime whilst it uh quite sensibly makes all kinds of gestures one way or the other so for example

01:00:06.380 starmer and angela rayner both took a knee for black lives matter and again horrific photo op i

01:00:11.460 thought really pathetic but again this is the sort of um left-wing performativity that can be good

01:00:17.840 actually right because starmer doing that then gives him breathing space to say i didn't approve

01:00:23.240 of whilst the Colson statue should have come down I didn't approve of the manner in which it happened

01:00:27.520 which of course is where most people are by the way so this is it I think Starmer has shown really

01:00:31.860 good promise in that he knows what to do in terms of symbolism and in terms of performativity to

01:00:38.400 keep certain groups happy but he's also got his eyes firmly on the prize and hopefully knows what

01:00:43.920 it takes to win elections well he's certainly better better than his predecessor you can

01:00:48.220 definitely say that and look the thing the thing that i get from our conversation is that actually

01:00:54.400 there's so many issues i mean francis brings up the housing crisis him and i talk about every time

01:00:59.960 we meet in london we look around us and we go there's something seriously wrong with this

01:01:05.320 country because the streets are full of people we went we were in trafalgar square a couple of

01:01:12.260 weeks ago. And there are queues of hundreds of people just standing there to get food

01:01:18.720 in Trafalgar Square, in the center of our capital, one of the biggest and most wealthy cities in the

01:01:25.300 world. There are people in, they're basically tents springing up all over the streets of

01:01:32.120 London for homeless people. There's a problem. And I don't believe that the majority of the

01:01:37.660 people of this country are content with that i think that there's that there's an overwhelming

01:01:42.500 majority of people in this country who don't want that to be the case and who would want those people

01:01:47.340 to be helped and who would want them to be looked after whether it's mental health support whether

01:01:51.780 it's housing whatever it might be i think there is a consensus for all those things but the problem

01:01:56.740 is that you know the left has to get a shit together which is one of the reasons that you've

01:02:02.980 been criticizing them i imagine and this is one of the reasons that we've been talking to people

01:02:07.300 who are critical because we want them to do better that's not to say that i'm this i'm in

01:02:12.380 the center i'm kind of i voted for pretty much every party within the mainstream uh throughout

01:02:17.400 my life i used to vote lib dem for god's sake right um you're pulling a face at me you vote

01:02:23.940 labor mate but no i actually i voted for corbyn at some point you know so my point is i suspect

01:02:32.960 most of the country is about where i am which is bang in the center and if people in the labor

01:02:38.220 party were to get their shit together they might find that they're even with the loss of scotland

01:02:42.480 which is a problem of course they could win the country back over if they just stop focusing on

01:02:47.580 all this stupid stuff that's very divisive and and frankly where the country is absolutely not

01:02:53.500 with them yeah fair enough i mean this is this is absolutely the message of my book and you know

01:02:58.460 someone said to me once oh why don't you write a book about the rights i think well the rights

01:03:02.140 doing pretty well for itself frankly you know i mean the right doesn't need any uh you know uh

01:03:06.440 critique or or criticism or help now it's been doing pretty well for the past 10 years at least

01:03:10.940 so yeah i completely agree with that you know the the thing the i mean i you know i remember that

01:03:17.020 those of us who were alive you know 15 20 years ago we can literally remember having seen with

01:03:23.380 our own eyes the streets did not look like that the way we do now in runden and liverpool and

01:03:27.780 manchester and any big cities the proliferation of homeless people that this the existence of

01:03:32.280 food banks you know didn't weren't didn't really exist at all 10 years ago as far as i'm aware

01:03:35.980 you know people can see the evidence of this with their own eyes um and and this is again a problem

01:03:40.940 i think in that you know the left used to be about common sense right the left used to be saying it

01:03:46.760 is not right that some people are extremely rich and other people go hungry and have no home it is

01:03:52.480 not right that you know white people have to these things but some people don't because of the color

01:03:56.520 of their skin that was really simple and and sort of feeded off people's common sense now lots of

01:04:02.560 people on the on the left say ah well common sense is a social construct you know haven't you read

01:04:06.880 gramsci and yeah common sense is a social construct but what what relevance does that

01:04:12.900 have to politics where it doesn't you know that that is an academic seminar room observation to

01:04:18.260 say that common sense is a social construct you know we need to okay say fine we can agree with

01:04:23.620 that but what how is that going to affect our election strategy right so this is it absolutely

01:04:29.320 people are fed up and angry and and i think also this whole a-level fiasco is another nail maybe

01:04:36.160 not in the tory's coffin but definitely in the johnson uh government's coffin i mean this is

01:04:40.480 going to be a big problem for them further down the line i think in the same way that the the

01:04:44.260 coronavirus death toll and possible uh depression might be so there's definitely an appetite for

01:04:50.680 change absolutely 100 and i honestly think that whilst you know labor has all sorts of

01:04:56.800 disadvantages at election time if the last labor um you know election campaign was led by somebody

01:05:05.040 who didn't have all of corbyn's baggage and didn't have all of this sort of you know voter repellent

01:05:10.360 ideology on so many issues you know the poll done immediately afterwards for people who didn't vote

01:05:16.240 labor why didn't you vote labor right number one by country now corbyn the leader number two brexit

01:05:21.900 and then only number three was i don't know policies on a manifesto or something like that

01:05:26.320 right so i think people are desperate for change uh but so many of the people who are most desperate

01:05:32.600 for change up and down the country as we saw in these red wall seats it's not as though these

01:05:36.680 red wall seats voted tory because they've had this sparge of affluence uh over the past 10

01:05:41.900 now they're becoming all middle class not at all right if anything it's quite the opposite

01:05:45.640 so people are desperate for change and people would vote for a party which seems to be offering

01:05:52.240 this kind of change if it could just package it in a voter friendly package that's a really really

01:05:59.620 really uh salient and brilliant point and unfortunately it's not going to fucking happen

01:06:03.880 but there we go anyway uh you've been absolutely brilliant Dave thank you so much for coming on the

01:06:10.440 show and thank you for being uh coming on and talking about the left and being a left-wing

01:06:15.080 guest and uh trying to uh cleanse our reputation for being alt-right nazis and all the rest of it

01:06:20.660 so thank you very much for that well it's not gonna happen he's just gonna become one of us

01:06:24.540 now that's all absolutely mate so yeah uh yeah well you're already halfway there you're marrying

01:06:30.180 an israeli lady so yeah you've got one foot in the door uh but dave we always end our shows with

01:06:35.920 uh the same question which is uh what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society

01:06:40.500 that we really should be yeah oh as a society so oh yeah so as a society that's interesting because

01:06:48.000 i don't know about as a society i think something in politics really is that a lot of people say

01:06:54.300 black people asian people gay people women uh are often really right-wing right and i think this is

01:06:59.920 going to be the issue in politics over the next hundred years the way the last election almost

01:07:04.260 completed the uh tories making massive inroads into into the traditional working class that i

01:07:10.540 think the big political thing of the next century will be the tories winning over loads of asian

01:07:15.620 votes loads of black votes they're already doing it with british indians i think they're going to

01:07:20.500 be doing it with them you know i mean so many uh say british people from an african background

01:07:25.720 are like norman tebert or margaret thatcher's ideal people like they are proper you know pull

01:07:30.480 yourself up by your bootstraps uh you know it's all about hard graft and personal responsibility

01:07:35.300 these people are really right-wing in many ways and if the Tory party can just shake its well-deserved

01:07:40.620 reputation for racism a lot of these people are going to be going over to the Tories in the next

01:07:44.520 few decades so not really a social thing necessarily more of a political thing but I think this is one

01:07:50.040 thing that nobody's talking about you know the left always goes on about you know um these groups

01:07:54.800 of like women gays disabled people god knows why do you think disabled people are so left-wing you

01:07:59.360 by the way you know but whatever so i think this is the thing that we're going to see over the next

01:08:02.720 few decades lots of people from these these groups that the left is trying to put into this rainbow

01:08:07.700 coalition are going to become more and more right-wing fascinating stuff david listen i have

01:08:12.620 to say we genuinely really really enjoyed the conversation we'd love to get you back at some

01:08:18.180 point as well to chat more about this sort of stuff uh thank you so much for coming on the book

01:08:22.640 is absolutely fantastic i recommend that everybody gets it a left for itself uh and uh where should

01:08:28.500 people follow your ramblings online if if there's such an opportunity i'm on twitter at david swift

01:08:34.720 87 perfect thank you so much nice one although i've got to be honest with you whenever i talk

01:08:40.760 about the left i get get just really angry anyway it's fine mate you just haven't eaten for about

01:08:46.420 45 minutes that's all that's happened we'll get a burger yeah yeah anyway my

01:08:52.880 i can't i can't talk they just get me so angry anyway i'm gonna shut up we're gonna let's end

01:09:01.140 the episode so i can go and kick something all right fantastic stuff guys thank you so much for

01:09:05.840 watching make sure you get the book it's absolutely brilliant a left for itself and we'll see you very

01:09:11.560 soon with another live stream or another interview 7 p.m uk time every day except mondays we've got

01:09:17.700 something for everybody see you very soon take care guys see you soon

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01:09:45.300 story of a kid from brooklyn destined for something more featuring all the songs you love

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01:09:56.440 musical mega hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise april 28th through june 7th

01:10:02.980 2026 the princess of wales theater get tickets at mirvish.com

TRIGGERnometry - August 26, 2020

＂The Left Should Concentrate on What Matters To Ordinary People＂ - David Swift

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