TRIGGERnometry - The State of Britain with Matt Goodwin

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00:00:30.460 Hello and welcome to a very special live interview of Trigonometry.

00:00:35.680 I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:37.080 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:38.320 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:43.120 Our brilliant guest today returns for the hundredth time.

00:00:46.000 He's a political expert.

00:00:47.320 Matt Goodwin, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:49.160 Thanks for having me.

00:00:50.040 We're family now.

00:00:51.920 You're here, as I said, not for the first time, so you don't need much of an introduction.

00:00:56.020 You are our go-to man for political analysis, particularly here in the UK, about everything

00:01:00.740 that's going on.

00:01:01.280 Very kind.

00:01:01.700 And it has been rather an eventful couple of days, hasn't it, Matt?

00:01:05.240 What have you made of everything that's happened over the last weekend and in the last two days

00:01:08.940 as well?

00:01:10.080 We're witnessing the disintegration of the Conservative Party.

00:01:12.600 We're witnessing a party that no longer knows what it is, what it's about, how to connect

00:01:17.080 with the country.

00:01:17.780 The departure of Suala Braverman, her resignation letter, which you will have seen this afternoon

00:01:22.260 to Rishi Sunak, which didn't pull any punches.

00:01:24.780 She's just putting it mildly.

00:01:26.360 I mean, it was brutal.

00:01:27.380 What this says to me, look, is you've got a party that was handed a unique historic

00:01:33.060 opportunity in 2019, the big realignment.

00:01:35.820 We talked about it on this show the day after the election.

00:01:38.700 I remember that conversation very fondly.

00:01:40.280 And we said at the time, for the Conservative Party to hold this political realignment,

00:01:44.780 it's got to deliver for working class voters, for older voters, for cultural conservatives.

00:01:48.960 It's got to be what it says on the tin.

00:01:51.440 Now, fast forward, and here we are.

00:01:52.920 We have a Conservative Party that is basically retreating to the David Cameron liberal Cameroon

00:01:58.820 tradition, social liberalism, cultural liberalism, which doesn't really know what it is.

00:02:03.580 And I think Suala Braverman's departure and David Cameron's return to frontline politics

00:02:08.080 really symbolizes this existential crisis for the Conservative Party.

00:02:12.500 So what we're heading into now for the next 12 months, what we're heading into is an ideological,

00:02:16.880 philosophical civil war for the soul of conservatism.

00:02:20.980 And that is going to determine not just what kind of Conservative Party we have, but what

00:02:26.000 kind of country we have over the next 10, 20 years.

00:02:29.260 That's a great overview of the next 12 months.

00:02:32.240 And obviously, it's a pivotal moment, I think, in the history of this country.

00:02:35.100 I think there's no argument about that.

00:02:37.140 Can we take a moment, though, to go back over the last few days and just try and understand

00:02:41.720 how we've got here?

00:02:43.220 Because a lot of people, myself included, have said that Suala Braverman's positions represent

00:02:49.100 a kind of silent majority in this country.

00:02:52.060 And yet, we also have to reconcile that with the fact that, according to some polling, 73%

00:02:57.560 of the public supported her being sacked by the Prime Minister.

00:03:01.400 So maybe I'm wrong.

00:03:03.320 Maybe we're wrong to say that she represents a popular view in this country.

00:03:07.460 Can you tell us more about that?

00:03:09.040 Suala does represent a majority of people in this country in terms of the positions that

00:03:14.340 she holds and the things that she cares about.

00:03:16.840 She wants to reduce mass immigration.

00:03:20.300 She thinks multiculturalism as a policy is broken.

00:03:24.440 She wants to deport foreign nationals who glorify terrorism, as you discussed with Douglas Murray

00:03:29.920 on your recent show.

00:03:32.200 She says the institutions are ideologically biased.

00:03:35.140 They're skewed towards liberal progressive causes.

00:03:37.900 And she thinks that the government, our prevailing culture, is no longer prioritising the majority,

00:03:44.680 that it's become obsessed with an identity-woke politics.

00:03:47.600 Now, on all of those issues, and I've polled them, and I've written about it on Substack,

00:03:51.680 I've written about it on Twitter, those are majority positions.

00:03:55.980 Not 51%, they're 60% to 75%. 0.88

00:03:58.640 Why you're seeing those numbers in terms of Rishi Singh that was right to dump Suala?

00:04:03.080 Well, those are all voter numbers.

00:04:04.680 They're not Conservative Party voters.

00:04:06.860 They're not leavers.

00:04:07.760 If you look at the Conservative Party electorate, only a minority of them think Rishi Singh was

00:04:13.020 right to dump Suala Braverman.

00:04:14.520 And while we're here, only a very small minority of them think he was right to bring back David

00:04:19.560 Cameron.

00:04:20.040 I mean, you've got the change candidate bringing back the Conservative Party leader from 2005 to

00:04:26.240 2016.

00:04:26.920 So the strategy is all over the place.

00:04:28.340 But Suala speaks for a majority of this country who are looking at the Conservative Party, many

00:04:34.180 people watching this show, looking at the Labour Party too, and realising what we are now living

00:04:39.220 through is a restoration of an elite liberal consensus, which will tolerate no dissent, no

00:04:45.880 questioning of that consensus.

00:04:47.520 And what worries me more than anything about what we've witnessed in recent days, it's another

00:04:52.600 example of a radical alternative voice being purged from politics.

00:04:57.340 Think about what we've seen.

00:04:58.940 Boris Johnson, gone.

00:05:00.580 Liz Truss, gone.

00:05:02.200 Suala Braverman, gone.

00:05:03.880 To that, we might also say Jeremy Corbyn and the radical left, gone.

00:05:07.000 Radical dissenting voices, people who question the social and economic consensus in this country

00:05:14.320 are being purged from politics and the public square.

00:05:17.220 That makes me nervous.

00:05:18.520 That makes me very worried about where we're going as a society, because I don't think we

00:05:21.640 are even able to tolerate dissent anymore.

00:05:25.300 And that is why I'm almost hoping that this civil war within the Conservative Party actually

00:05:31.360 leads to much longer term structural change in British politics.

00:05:35.220 And we'll come back and talk about that.

00:05:36.420 Matt, do you think, and there are some people who will say this, my father in particular,

00:05:40.620 who's a Conservative voter, that she sowed the seeds of her own demise with some of the 1.00

00:05:45.520 language and the rhetoric that she used. 0.97

00:05:47.380 It was unnecessarily inflammatory, is what social Conservatives and my father's ilk would

00:05:52.740 say.

00:05:53.720 I think that's true.

00:05:54.740 And I think there's a criticism of Suala, which would say at times she wasn't necessarily

00:05:59.280 behaving in a way that was what you would expect for somebody in high office.

00:06:06.420 And Suala, in reply, would say that she was there with a specific brief, a specific mandate,

00:06:14.700 and that as her resignation letter makes clear, she made a deal with Rishi Sunak that involved

00:06:20.060 delivering on a number of things that were in the 2019 manifesto, lowering migration, strengthening

00:06:26.580 the country's borders, dealing with the illegal migrants and the small votes and so on, and

00:06:33.100 that the rest of the cabinet, including the Prime Minister, consistently failed to deliver

00:06:37.360 on those promises.

00:06:38.300 So Suala would say it was her duty to speak out in the way that she did.

00:06:43.440 And it was her duty to represent those voters who went with the Conservatives in 2019.

00:06:48.240 And you know what?

00:06:48.860 And I know I read your substack too on this, and we ended up writing similar things.

00:06:52.600 I think she's right, actually.

00:06:54.740 And I think Suala really understands where the average voter is on these issues.

00:07:01.600 And I think many people, as you will know on this show, are looking at the institutions,

00:07:04.920 the BBC, the universities, the creative industries, the cultural institutions, and they are now seeing

00:07:09.860 a consensus on the erosion of sex-based rights, support from mass migration, the imposition

00:07:17.700 of woke ideology in schools, in the cultural institutions, the galleries, and museums, a

00:07:23.100 cynicism of who we are, of our history, of our identity.

00:07:26.280 And they're just saying, you know what?

00:07:27.460 This is a consensus that speaks to no more than 20% of the country.

00:07:31.640 No more than 20% of Britain are strongly and significantly liberal.

00:07:36.500 That's it, 20%.

00:07:37.500 So 80% are out there saying, you know, what on earth is this?

00:07:41.140 What is this consensus?

00:07:42.180 Who wants this consensus?

00:07:43.380 And of course, the answer is the elite want this consensus.

00:07:46.440 And Suala, I think, violated that.

00:07:48.080 And we can see what happens when you violate that.

00:07:50.860 And but also as well, there was, when she wrote that article, there were people who were

00:07:55.800 saying that that was a violation.

00:07:58.120 That was her stepping out of, that was her stepping out of line.

00:08:01.620 That was her directly challenging the authority of the Conservative Party. 1.00

00:08:07.180 Can you see why, if you put yourself in Rishi's shoes, she made her position untenable?

00:08:13.020 Yeah, sure.

00:08:13.400 She violated the assumption, the unwritten, well, the formal agreement that the police and

00:08:20.140 the government should be independent.

00:08:22.180 And she waded into that.

00:08:23.540 Look, that piece also made a number of good substantive points.

00:08:30.280 Why is it that COVID lockdown protesters were treated so badly relative to Black Lives Matter

00:08:36.880 demonstrators? 0.88

00:08:37.820 Why is it that visibly pro-Hamas supporters were given a free pass while far-right goons and thugs

00:08:47.940 were rounded up and treated the way they were?

00:08:50.880 There is an imbalance, or at least there is a widespread perception of an imbalance.

00:08:55.540 When police officers are taking the knee to express solidarity with BLM, or as we saw last weekend,

00:09:02.460 having photographs taken with children dressed up as terrorists, Islamist terrorists,

00:09:06.660 the police also have a duty to remain politically impartial, as to our schools, by the way.

00:09:14.320 And what I think many voters are sick of is looking at these institutions and seeing an

00:09:18.620 ideological bias at work.

00:09:20.020 And Suella called that out.

00:09:21.720 And, you know, I understand the criticism that, you know, she had a responsibility to

00:09:26.900 maintain the independence of the police and so on, but we should still be able to have

00:09:30.500 a national debate about the things we are actually seeing on the streets, on social media.

00:09:36.700 And that's what worries me, Matt, is that what we have now is taboo subjects.

00:09:43.460 When before, these subjects were in the mainstream of politics.

00:09:47.380 Immigration.

00:09:48.260 The fact that if you come out and say, we need to stop the boats, that is then equated with

00:09:53.540 a nascent Nazi party by one of our most prominent sports broadcasters is risable.

00:09:59.680 Well, I think the idea that the Conservative Party is a far right party is amusing.

00:10:04.560 When you consider that the Conservative Party is the most pro-immigration party we've ever

00:10:08.740 had in British politics, the Conservative Party has presided over the biggest increase

00:10:12.740 in both legal and illegal immigration that Britain has ever seen.

00:10:16.680 Full stop.

00:10:17.780 Right.

00:10:18.040 Net migration was 300,000 when David Cameron came in in 2010.

00:10:21.120 It's 604,000 as we talk in November 2023.

00:10:24.360 The new figures will come out in the next week and it will go even higher.

00:10:28.000 So the idea that the Conservative Party is far right is a joke.

00:10:31.260 But your point is a very important one.

00:10:33.100 What we are witnessing is the expansion of social norms.

00:10:36.160 So racism, transphobia, homophobia, hate.

00:10:41.420 You notice everyone had a problem with hate march but not hate crime.

00:10:44.940 So the social norms get expanded.

00:10:46.820 And now why does that happen?

00:10:47.740 And it happens because people want to silence and stigmatize views that undermine or challenge

00:10:54.020 the dominant status quo, that challenge the zeitgeist, that challenge the consensus among

00:11:00.460 a more socially, culturally liberal elite.

00:11:03.300 And as you made, you made this point, I think, this week, Constantine, that you look at the

00:11:07.480 reaction to trigonometry.

00:11:08.460 I think for the first time, really, in recent history, those institutions, the legacy institutions

00:11:13.640 are actually realizing that they cannot continue with that game because voters, citizens are

00:11:19.500 going to leave.

00:11:20.160 They're going to explore other forums.

00:11:22.640 They're going to explore other institutions, other avenues.

00:11:25.260 And you can see that happening.

00:11:27.000 Radio 4 Today, I have to listen to it every morning for work.

00:11:30.280 It drives me crazy.

00:11:31.940 Radio 4 Today has lost two, two and a half million listeners since Brexit.

00:11:36.120 Public trust in the BBC is collapsing.

00:11:39.340 Trust in BBC journalists telling the truth has declined sharply over the last 20 years.

00:11:44.920 And I think voters are just realizing that the way in which we have these conversations,

00:11:49.320 for example, the pro-Palestine protests getting sort of sidetracked into a debate about Tommy

00:11:54.460 Robinson.

00:11:55.280 Well, actually, the real debate there, what should have been on the front pages after Remembrance

00:12:00.640 Day, were people dressed up as Hamas terrorists.

00:12:03.240 That should have been on the front page of every national newspaper.

00:12:07.760 Tommy Robinson, relative to radical Islamism, I'm sorry, Tommy Robinson is nowhere near as

00:12:14.680 much of a threat as radical pro-Hamas Islamism in Western democracies.

00:12:21.660 That is a major, major threat.

00:12:23.900 The far right is a problem.

00:12:25.200 I used to work on the far right.

00:12:26.580 It's a problem.

00:12:27.260 But what we are talking about is a revolutionary existential challenge to our way of life.

00:12:33.320 Radical Islamists want to completely overthrow the institutions and our society, much like 1.00

00:12:38.240 the woke left.

00:12:39.120 So we're seeing the toxic combination of the two feeding off one another.

00:12:43.240 And somewhere along the way, we lost our perspective.

00:12:46.580 And we lost our sense of what's important and what should be prioritized.

00:12:50.980 And I think we saw that in recent weeks, actually.

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00:13:04.540 you love, including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:13:09.300 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A

00:13:15.160 Beautiful Noise, now through June 7, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:13:20.020 Get tickets at murbush.com.

00:13:23.660 We should probably clarify, Matt, that when you say that you used to work on the far right,

00:13:27.540 what you mean is when you were an academic, you were researching the far right.

00:13:30.900 I think we should just clarify that.

00:13:32.540 Yeah, I wasn't marching in the streets.

00:13:34.040 You were not marching in the streets, sadly.

00:13:35.420 But you do like a good tear up every now and again.

00:13:38.460 So one of the things you touched on there, I want to come back to the Civil War and the

00:13:42.180 Conservative Party and the future of the country in a second.

00:13:44.860 But one of the things you touched on there is the media.

00:13:47.220 And I have to be honest, and this may sound radical, but over the last few days, that

00:13:52.560 meme that I keep seeing online, which is no matter how much you hate the media, you don't

00:13:56.360 hate them enough, that has really come to the fore.

00:13:59.460 Because my view is, you know, what is the definition of far right?

00:14:05.160 To me, the definition of far right is people who are sexist and intolerant of other ethnic

00:14:09.720 and religious groups, homophobic, think women are second class citizens and should be kept 0.94

00:14:14.500 in the home, et cetera, and people who incite and use violence in the streets.

00:14:18.440 And from that definition, we've had the far right on the streets of Britain for five weeks,

00:14:23.800 every weekend, and the police have done absolutely nothing about it.

00:14:27.840 And the moment, as you say, that a few football hooligans come out and they throw some bottles,

00:14:33.080 that is wrong.

00:14:33.940 They shouldn't be doing that.

00:14:35.020 And anyone who breaks the law should be condemned for it and the police should deal with them.

00:14:38.400 But you can see, A, the double standards in the way that they're policed, and much more,

00:14:43.140 much more than that, the double standards in the way that it's covered in the media,

00:14:47.100 where they say nothing about people saying death to all the Jews, Hitler knew what to 0.92

00:14:52.120 do with the Jews. 0.89

00:14:53.060 All of these incidents, which are as marginal as the Tommy Robinson thing is to the entire

00:14:59.020 feeling in the country about it, but they don't get the attention at all.

00:15:02.880 What happens instead is they just focus on that one incident because it feeds into the

00:15:06.500 narrative that they want to push.

00:15:08.280 And I think the country's had enough of it.

00:15:10.980 I think that's right.

00:15:12.420 I wrote last week about the interplay between the rise of a very aggressive radical Islamism 1.00

00:15:19.920 and the rise of the woke left and why the interaction of the two is so important.

00:15:24.240 And we have lost sight of the scale of that threat.

00:15:28.020 I mean, what is it that the woke left and radical Islamists have in common?

00:15:32.460 Both are illiberal.

00:15:33.460 They have no interest in individual rights and individual liberty.

00:15:37.740 Both are revolutionary.

00:15:39.740 They seek a complete overthrow of the existing system and institutions.

00:15:44.440 Both are cynical, if not hostile, towards Western ways of life.

00:15:48.800 They view us fundamentally as racist, as prejudice towards minorities.

00:15:54.980 Both cling to a very crude, binary view of who we are.

00:15:59.320 There are believers or there are non-believers.

00:16:01.480 There are the oppressed, there are the oppressors.

00:16:04.120 There is no room for nuance.

00:16:05.460 There is no room for pluralism.

00:16:07.200 There is no room for complexity in society.

00:16:10.860 Both are very organized around rituals.

00:16:14.780 In radical Islamists, it is prayer.

00:16:17.480 It is al-awakbar. 0.53

00:16:18.680 It is shouting all of these slogans for the woke.

00:16:20.780 It is taking the knee.

00:16:21.720 It is saying, you know, no justice, no peace, et cetera, et cetera.

00:16:24.980 And so what you're seeing, I think, is as the cultural left is taking control of institutions,

00:16:31.640 is kind of pushing in this identitarian view of the world where there are oppressors and

00:16:35.580 the oppressed, it's basically opening the door for radical Islamism.

00:16:39.080 It's allowing radical Islamism to thrive in this model of multiculturalism, which is broken. 0.94

00:16:45.120 And that's what Sowella said.

00:16:46.740 Sowella said, look, the issue is not multicultural societies, right?

00:16:50.800 I mean, I was amazed that serious national columnists didn't understand this.

00:16:55.880 Really?

00:16:56.460 Well, she was saying there is no problem with multicultural societies per se,

00:17:01.000 but there is a problem with multiculturalism, which prioritizes group difference over commonality.

00:17:07.060 And that is what's enabled radical Islamists and terrorist sympathizers to flourish in communities

00:17:16.060 up and down Britain, in highly segregated communities.

00:17:18.600 And Sowella was absolutely right in saying, if you want to respond seriously to the challenges

00:17:25.160 that we face as a country, we are going to have to dramatically reduce immigration, legal 0.93

00:17:30.380 immigration.

00:17:31.120 We're going to have to leave any institution or judicial convention that doesn't allow us

00:17:37.580 to control our own national borders.

00:17:39.660 We're going to have to have a new policy of integration, which ensures that no child, 0.98

00:17:44.700 a family can grow up in a highly segregated community with no interaction with wider British

00:17:50.580 society.

00:17:51.260 And we're going to have to get a hell of a lot tougher when it comes to the rule of law

00:17:55.180 and deporting foreign nationals who glorify terrorism.

00:17:58.540 And I know you've talked about this already.

00:18:00.460 I polled that.

00:18:01.300 76% of voters said, yeah, if you're on the streets of Britain and you're a foreign national

00:18:05.600 and you're glorifying Hamas or you're glorifying IS, you should leave Britain.

00:18:10.420 We don't want you here.

00:18:11.360 You should get out of the national community.

00:18:13.280 And so the era of us being tolerant of people who do not tolerate our way of life is over.

00:18:20.280 And I think it should come to an end as quickly as possible.

00:18:23.340 And Sowella represents that, I think. 0.98

00:18:25.320 You say it's over, Matt.

00:18:26.620 And I certainly know that for a lot of people, the last few weeks have been eye-opening,

00:18:31.140 to be sure.

00:18:32.200 And I think I myself am.

00:18:33.820 Look, I've always, every day I'm fielding accusations, inverted commas, of being conservative.

00:18:40.180 And I'm still not conservative.

00:18:41.960 But if this is the choice, I know which side I'm going to play on, irrespective of what

00:18:48.460 my overall beliefs about liberalisation of drugs and whatever is.

00:18:52.240 You see what I'm saying?

00:18:53.160 So for a lot of people, it's an eye-opening moment.

00:18:55.460 However, you say that moment that world is over, the next election is going to be a Labour

00:19:00.480 landslide, isn't it?

00:19:01.700 It will be a Labour landslide.

00:19:02.880 But what I mean is, in terms of the wider zeitgeist, in terms of the public mood, you

00:19:07.500 cannot come out of the last few weeks thinking immigration and multiculturalism has been good 1.00

00:19:14.160 for Britain, has been an unalloyed success story.

00:19:16.920 It is now visible to everybody.

00:19:19.080 We have a major problem within our communities in Britain.

00:19:22.480 We have people homegrown who are out on the streets calling for the murder and the rape 0.99

00:19:27.080 of Jews. 0.98

00:19:27.660 Now, of course, you might say, well, we saw that after 9-11.

00:19:29.820 We saw it after 7-7.

00:19:31.520 I think it has become a much bigger problem now.

00:19:34.320 It's on a different scale than what it was 20 years ago.

00:19:37.920 And the other thing I would just say is, there is a widespread sense out there in the country,

00:19:42.300 many viewers watching this, I think, will agree, 70% of people now say, neither left nor

00:19:47.160 right represent me.

00:19:48.520 The space for a new radical challenger to this broken consensus is enormous.

00:19:55.240 It will take money, it will take organisation, and it will take a charismatic leader.

00:20:00.340 But the space is bigger than it was in 2013, 2014, because voters out there are utterly

00:20:07.440 fed up of this broken status quo between left and right.

00:20:12.440 You can feel it.

00:20:13.460 I was in a focus group last week in Stoke-on-Trent.

00:20:15.660 Voters are crying in a focus group.

00:20:17.820 They're saying no one's got the answers to cost of living.

00:20:19.980 No one's got the answers to productivity, the lack of productivity.

00:20:23.140 Nobody's seriously levelling up.

00:20:24.840 Nobody's bringing down immigration.

00:20:26.540 Nobody's dealing with the small boats.

00:20:28.220 They can't do anything anymore.

00:20:30.380 It's almost as if our rulers are incapable of actually bringing about the changes that

00:20:34.720 voters want to see.

00:20:36.040 But, OK, so I take on board what you're saying.

00:20:40.060 But doesn't that also mean we need to get rid of first-past-the-post then? 1.00

00:20:44.180 I personally would support electoral reform.

00:20:46.300 I would support the shift of proportional representation because I think the majoritarian

00:20:51.120 system no longer works for the myriad of concerns and groups that we have in British society.

00:20:57.580 I would personally support that.

00:20:59.120 And I think so would many people who are disgruntled with left and right.

00:21:02.360 It's very difficult to upend a big party in a majoritarian system.

00:21:05.980 It's not impossible.

00:21:07.060 It's happened in Canada in the early 90s.

00:21:08.920 The Labour Party, of course, replaced the Liberals.

00:21:10.740 Because it is possible it's very, very difficult.

00:21:14.160 But there's another issue here which you guys directly tap into, which is there's fixing

00:21:18.360 the politics of this and then there's fixing the culture of this.

00:21:21.240 And I think the culture, the ecosystem that is emerging to give expression to people who no longer

00:21:28.860 want to abide by this elite consensus is now much bigger than it was five years ago

00:21:33.840 and is enormous compared to what it was ten years ago.

00:21:36.780 The sub-stacks, the YouTube shows, the new media, GB News, Talk TV, whatever.

00:21:42.420 The landscape is fundamentally different.

00:21:44.480 So the culture is changing.

00:21:46.060 And I think what makes the new elite the kind of dominant class so nervous is they can now sense that.

00:21:51.240 They can sense they're not in control anymore.

00:21:53.460 They can sense things are beginning to shift.

00:21:56.380 So I...

00:21:57.100 Well, yeah, that's why Private Eye are writing hit pieces about us and all of that stuff.

00:22:01.960 But let's come back to this idea that the next election will be a Labour landslide.

00:22:07.180 Because we all know it will be, especially after the last couple of days.

00:22:10.500 I mean, there's no way of rescuing this, right?

00:22:12.780 For the Conservatives.

00:22:13.720 No.

00:22:14.200 You're shaking your head.

00:22:15.100 No, I would give Rishi Sunak a 1% chance, 2% chance.

00:22:19.580 2% chance.

00:22:20.220 Okay.

00:22:20.440 So that means the next five years, we've got a year or so until the next election.

00:22:27.980 Could be even January 2025, but probably not.

00:22:32.180 Then you've got four years of a Labour government.

00:22:35.480 And my understanding is part of Suella's move was that that defeat next year for the Conservative Party

00:22:45.480 is her opportunity to be the knight in shining armour.

00:22:48.400 She's like, well, look, I tried.

00:22:50.400 You didn't listen to me.

00:22:51.260 Look what happened.

00:22:52.500 Now I'm here.

00:22:53.760 Let's do the...

00:22:54.520 Yeah.

00:22:54.700 Let's be real Conservative now.

00:22:56.220 The Conservative Party will never allow that to happen.

00:23:00.000 The Conservative Parliamentary Party and the donor class will never allow the Tory party to be reshaped.

00:23:05.080 I'm increasingly of the view that Peter Hitchens was right all along.

00:23:07.840 We love Peter.

00:23:10.180 If you want to save Britain, we need to basically destroy the Conservative Party.

00:23:14.220 Now, the reason I say that is because look at Suella.

00:23:20.060 The fact that she has attracted so much heat from her own colleagues tells you all you need to know about the state of conservatism.

00:23:27.220 Here's what we need to do.

00:23:28.400 We need to basically...

00:23:30.540 If you care about the country, I would argue we need to rebuild a new national conservatism,

00:23:36.720 which is very different from what we've got with the British Tories.

00:23:40.660 A national conservatism would prioritise a number of things which today's Conservative Party simply do not do.

00:23:47.900 It would prioritise dramatic reductions in legal immigration,

00:23:51.520 potentially a five-year freeze so we can absorb the migration of the last 20 years.

00:23:57.720 It would prioritise a robust and radical policy for integration.

00:24:01.920 No more segregation.

00:24:03.560 No more multiculturalism which allows communities to remain distinct from the wider British community.

00:24:09.800 It would focus on cultivating a story about who we are.

00:24:13.260 The economy should work for the national community, not globalised offshore interests.

00:24:18.520 It should be fundamentally about promoting and preserving the national interest.

00:24:24.220 A tough approach on law and order, including the deportation of foreign nationals who glorify terrorism or who commit crime.

00:24:33.980 Revitalising the country's manufacturing base.

00:24:37.020 Redistributing power, not just government departments, but power outside of London and university towns to other parts of the country.

00:24:44.540 Having a robust pro-family policy, which is not just about giving people tax breaks, but encouraging people to have children.

00:24:53.140 I could go on.

00:24:53.800 There are about 10, 12 principles that should define national conservatism.

00:24:59.000 A national conservatism which also reaches into sections of the Labour Party, which Francis you know very well.

00:25:05.520 And also reaches into the conservatives, but also reaches into the apathetic masses.

00:25:10.240 The none of the above.

00:25:11.500 You say, none of these parties actually represent me anymore.

00:25:13.720 Now, the Republicans are beginning to understand the difference between national conservatism and what we might call Chinos, conservatives in name only. 0.97

00:25:22.840 They're understanding that.

00:25:24.220 They're understanding the potency of that.

00:25:26.020 They're also understanding the need for that.

00:25:27.740 If you want to stand up to China, you want to stand up to Russia, you want to stand up to woke ideas and whatever.

00:25:33.740 You need a strong nation state with strong families and a robust economy that works for the national interest.

00:25:42.400 And you want power concentrated in the principle of popular sovereignty, in the people.

00:25:48.380 You do not want power diluted and transferred to institutions outside of the nation state or to institutions which are not directly accountable to the people, which is what Rwanda is about.

00:25:58.760 The only people making that decision should be people directly elected by ordinary citizens.

00:26:03.860 So what I would argue is we need a reassertion of popular sovereignty in British politics.

00:26:09.280 We need a movement for the people which transcends left and right.

00:26:13.280 And whoever gets there first, whoever presses that button, whoever speaks for the masses on those issues, will find themselves being catapulted to the very forefront of British politics.

00:26:22.800 And you mentioned the need for a charismatic leader.

00:26:25.180 I put it to you that the one person that I think could unite that coalition because he's done it before.

00:26:31.160 He's currently eating kangaroo balls in Australia or whatever it is Nigel Farage is up to.

00:26:35.760 Is that who you think is the man or do you think it's time for someone fresh?

00:26:41.260 I think Nigel would definitely need to be part of that movement because Nigel has consistently been the most impactful but also underestimated politician of our time.

00:26:53.460 There is something interesting happening.

00:26:55.560 Here's one scenario.

00:26:56.780 Let's say Nigel Farage goes in the jungle and it isn't a disaster.

00:27:00.300 Let's say his brand actually comes out a bit stronger.

00:27:02.960 A new generation understand what he's about.

00:27:05.340 Let's say a load of 2019 Conservative MPs from the Red Wall lose their seats and they're milling around.

00:27:10.020 They're not sure what to do.

00:27:11.240 I care about the country, but I've lost my seat.

00:27:13.480 I understand these Red Wallers, but why is David Cameron now back in the Cabinet? 1.00

00:27:16.900 Let's add to that the ranks of reform, the Reform Party, maybe the Social Democratic Party, the SDP, influential commentators and columnists from the new media,

00:27:33.420 from the YouTube channels and the Substacks and the Twittersphere and the new magazines and the online platforms.

00:27:40.640 Everybody who is basically united in understanding what's gone wrong and where we need to go.

00:27:46.280 That is the basis for something serious.

00:27:50.700 That is the basis for something that will attract funding, people, energy, and will have an impact.

00:27:58.440 And if you look at all Western democracies over the last 20 years, one of the key stories is that now is the time for renegades and radical challengers and insurgents who are willing to take on the dinosaur parties.

00:28:12.160 Emmanuel Macron, Georgia Maloney, Donald Trump, Sweden Democrats could go on and on and on.

00:28:18.940 Now is the time for new people to stand up and say, we're not going to do this anymore.

00:28:23.440 We're not going to give another four, five-year term to a party that is exactly the same as the other party.

00:28:30.900 If Labour win the next election, Constantine, you know this, the consensus doesn't change.

00:28:35.000 High tax, big state, mass immigration, low growth, high debt.

00:28:39.520 Nothing fundamentally changes.

00:28:41.220 There is no radical shaking up of the status quo.

00:28:44.440 Yeah, but trans people are going to have more rights, mate. 1.00

00:28:46.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:28:47.740 And we'll be giving government contracts out on the basis of race and ethnicity with the Racial Equality Act.

00:28:52.700 So what we have is a more divided, woke-ified society along the lines of America.

00:28:57.360 And the things that make us unique as British, having a unifying story, we're proud of our history, we're proud of our identity, we're proud of our values, you know, we're proud of free enterprise.

00:29:09.540 All of those things gradually get weakened and undermined.

00:29:13.540 Matt, one of the things that I'm worried about, and I don't think people are talking about this enough, is that if Labour get in with a significant majority, which I'm not sure they will, if they're honest, because every left-wing person I've ever spoken to is dubious about Starmer, to put it mildly.

00:29:30.780 No one seems particularly enthused by him.

00:29:33.300 Yeah, I'm sure they'll all vote for Sunak, mate.

00:29:34.940 But my point, my worry is this, it's blasphemy laws. 0.94

00:29:42.260 I can see a Labour government bringing in blasphemy laws. 0.98

00:29:44.860 I really can.

00:29:45.640 And I find that incredibly worrying.

00:29:47.060 It's already happened.

00:29:47.820 We've already had non-violent hate crimes.

00:29:51.140 We've had, you know, you go on the London Tube, you're lectured by billboard posters about, you know, hate speech and hate language.

00:29:57.840 And that's, by the way, another similarity between the woke left and radical Islamists.

00:30:01.760 They're both very supportive of blasphemy. 1.00

00:30:03.600 And they're both very supportive of limiting free speech and free expression in the name of their ideological mission.

00:30:10.360 This is why I've always had a problem with the cultural left, because the first thing to go in their project is free speech and free expression.

00:30:17.540 They will sacrifice free speech on the altar of social justice every time.

00:30:22.700 They will cancel, they will silence, they will purge every time.

00:30:25.960 And that's why this movement is illiberal.

00:30:29.140 And it's, you know, when we first started talking about the woke, you remember everyone would say, this thing doesn't exist. 0.99

00:30:34.260 This thing is ridiculous. 0.82

00:30:35.540 Now look at the books recently, right? 0.92

00:30:37.160 Francis Fukuyama, Identity.

00:30:39.320 Yasha Munk, The Identity Trap.

00:30:41.240 Susan Neiman, Woke Is Not Left.

00:30:43.240 There is now an acceptance on the centre-left that they have a major problem.

00:30:46.800 It took them 10 years to get there, right?

00:30:48.460 Many of us were there a lot earlier.

00:30:49.820 But even the left now understand, actually, this thing that we've allowed to kind of get out the bottle is now destroying wider society.

00:30:59.980 It just took them too late.

00:31:01.200 And I have to say, I'm with the National Conservatives on this.

00:31:04.680 Because the only thing that is capable of standing up and meeting these threats from wokeism, from radical Islamism, will ultimately be national conservatism. 0.81

00:31:15.340 It's the only thing that is strong enough.

00:31:17.040 Liberalism, liberal parties, centrist dads are not strong enough to deal with this threat.

00:31:23.120 They don't have the unifying story.

00:31:25.400 They don't have the appeals to group belonging.

00:31:27.240 They don't have the kind of anchor in our history, in our identity.

00:31:33.420 They're too fluid.

00:31:36.300 They're not robust.

00:31:37.460 They're not rigorous.

00:31:38.360 And I think that's why, if the Conservatives are smart, they will reinvent around national conservative principles.

00:31:44.040 If they're not smart, they will rally behind somebody like Penny Morden and they will say the future is David Cameron 2.0.

00:31:51.440 And that will be a big problem.

00:31:52.460 Well, we've got David Cameron 1.0 at the moment.

00:31:55.500 I mean, this is the other thing, right?

00:31:56.720 Rishi Sunak presents himself as the change candidate and then brings back David Cameron.

00:32:00.720 No one thinks he's the change candidate.

00:32:01.900 I just don't understand the politics behind it at all.

00:32:05.080 I don't think he understands the politics behind it.

00:32:07.580 I don't think there is anybody left, centre or on the right, apart from Ian Dale, who thought this was a good idea.

00:32:15.520 Bless him.

00:32:15.920 And when Ian Dale says something's good, you know it's not.

00:32:19.340 And we love Ian, he's a friend.

00:32:20.720 But on this one, yeah, we don't agree.

00:32:22.380 But why is it that when I was in Manchester for the Conservative Party conference,

00:32:26.040 and Rishi Sunak's speech, the top three things voters want to talk about today?

00:32:31.220 Cost of living crisis, state of the NHS, immigration. 1.00

00:32:35.440 Those are the three priorities.

00:32:37.220 Rishi Sunak talked about banning smoking, reforming A-levels, and stopping a high-speed train line.

00:32:43.320 I mean, they're completely different conversations, utterly different.

00:32:47.700 And I think sometimes when you get people, as you know, in SW1 and politics, they're very clever people and they're bright.

00:32:54.980 But sometimes they're too clever and they overthink things to such an extent that they leave everybody else wondering what on earth this project is really all about.

00:33:03.840 And I think, you know, I know the people around Rishi Sunak.

00:33:05.760 I've got a lot of respect for them.

00:33:07.000 But I think privately, they've now concluded that they've got a year and they're just going to do what they're personally interested in doing.

00:33:16.720 So they're going to do the smoking ban.

00:33:18.560 They're going to do the A-level stuff.

00:33:20.960 And they're not really that bothered about winning the next election.

00:33:24.100 I think they're just now focusing on pet projects.

00:33:26.900 Really?

00:33:27.340 I think so.

00:33:28.000 And I think, you know, David Cameron's appointment, jobs for the boys, put him in the House of Lords, you rub my back, I'll rub yours.

00:33:34.740 I don't think this is a party, as Tim Stanley said, a journalist who I respect a lot.

00:33:39.480 Former guest of the show.

00:33:40.340 He said, this party is philosophically non-existent.

00:33:46.020 I mean, it has no coherent ideology anymore.

00:33:48.760 It is simply about jobs for the boys, patrician liberalism, let's just keep the establishment happy and basically F everybody else.

00:33:58.540 And I think that's unfortunately what we can see from a prime minister who we should remember doesn't have a democratic mandate.

00:34:05.960 I mean, Rishi Sunak does not have a mandate from voters, right?

00:34:10.000 And that's why I think the defeat will be particularly bruising.

00:34:13.460 But you say that, and look, I agree with you on the majority of it.

00:34:18.940 But if you think about a bruising defeat, think about Labour in 2019.

00:34:23.140 They came up against Johnson.

00:34:24.480 Now, we can have all the criticisms in the world about Johnson, but he was a fantastic campaigner.

00:34:29.400 He was charismatic.

00:34:30.560 He was funny.

00:34:31.280 He had a message.

00:34:32.380 When we look at the destruction of the Conservative Party, I think it was in 92, not in 92, with Blair.

00:34:40.820 Blair was one of the best politicians.

00:34:43.000 Formidable.

00:34:44.100 Of whatever generation, of generations.

00:34:48.020 Starmer?

00:34:49.340 No.

00:34:50.640 Terrible.

00:34:51.400 But he's doing what he needs to do to win the election.

00:34:54.740 Opposition parties don't win elections.

00:34:56.660 Governments lose elections.

00:34:57.920 That's the key principle.

00:34:59.440 Boris Johnson, while we're at it, was good.

00:35:01.760 But he was not a Conservative.

00:35:03.540 Boris Johnson was a bohemian liberal.

00:35:05.940 He was not a Conservative.

00:35:07.960 We've not really had a serious Conservative leader for a long time.

00:35:12.640 Um, Keir Starmer, his net ratings are okay.

00:35:16.240 He's on plus 10.

00:35:17.800 Rishi Sunak's minus 15.

00:35:20.520 Prince Andrew's minus 60.

00:35:22.140 That gives you a kind of, gives you a relative, a benchmark.

00:35:25.460 Um, Starmer's doing what he needs to do.

00:35:27.980 Now the question is, what happens when he wins?

00:35:30.240 Here's, here's a few, here are a few predictions.

00:35:31.900 Number one, Labour break their manifesto pledges.

00:35:34.420 They have to.

00:35:35.140 Taxes are going to go up.

00:35:36.260 They can't afford public services.

00:35:38.380 They can't afford all the things we need to pay for without raising taxes.

00:35:42.780 Here's one stat to keep in mind.

00:35:44.740 No one talks about this in frontline politics.

00:35:47.860 Guess how much we are spending every month servicing our national debt on our country's credit card.

00:35:54.880 Not, not paying off the debt, just paying the interest.

00:35:57.640 Guess how much we're paying every month?

00:36:00.180 I have no idea.

00:36:01.440 13 billion pounds.

00:36:03.440 Wow.

00:36:03.600 Every month on national debt, okay?

00:36:05.740 Now, what could you do with 13 billion?

00:36:07.760 You could do a lot, right?

00:36:09.140 So Labour's pledged to scrap non-DOM benefits.

00:36:12.160 Great.

00:36:12.540 That raises 3 billion.

00:36:13.820 We're paying 13 billion a month on our national debt.

00:36:17.560 So no one's talking about how to reduce national debt.

00:36:20.440 So when Labour come in, they're going to have no real room for manoeuvre on fiscal policy, on the economy.

00:36:26.560 They're going to have still the worst living standards for 50 years.

00:36:30.380 They're going to have immigration probably at somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000.

00:36:33.880 We're going to have a housing crisis which is going to escalate dramatically.

00:36:38.500 We built 180,000 homes last year.

00:36:40.960 We need to build 600,000 every year just to keep up with migration, okay?

00:36:47.220 We built 180,000.

00:36:48.480 We're going to need to build 600,000 every year just to keep up with migration.

00:36:52.780 Not to mention then we've got no serious growth strategy.

00:36:56.400 We've got no serious strategy for boosting productivity.

00:36:59.680 We're not talking about integration and cohesion.

00:37:02.200 We're going to see dramatic population shifts.

00:37:05.260 And much of the migration, by the way, is low-skill migration from sub-Saharan Africa,

00:37:09.360 which is a net cost to the economy.

00:37:12.080 It is not adding to our economy.

00:37:14.880 It is taking away from our economy.

00:37:17.180 Before we get into private rental rates going up, before we get into school places, before we get into the NHS.

00:37:24.080 And as we know, Robert Putnam and others have shown this, highly diverse societies have lower levels of trust and lower levels of support for welfare.

00:37:34.580 So if you look at where Britain is going over the next 20, 30, 40 years, with parties that seem incapable of even discussing these issues,

00:37:42.920 I'm very, very sceptical of where we're going.

00:37:45.420 I'm actually quite nervous about where we're going as a society because you cannot sustain this pace of change and churn without a serious political response that is going to manage it.

00:37:58.280 And it doesn't seem to be any attempt to manage this on any serious level.

00:38:02.440 Well, Matt, while we're on that black pill moment, you mentioned Peter Hitchens.

00:38:08.220 And Peter Hitchens, when asked on Question Time, I think, 15 or 20 years ago, he was pressed by the host at the time, David Dimbleby, I think,

00:38:17.120 on what people should do about this.

00:38:20.660 And his advice was emigrate, leave.

00:38:23.640 And you laugh, and I have to say, I'm not laughing at that at all because I speak to my Jewish friends in London.

00:38:32.340 Everyone who has the ability to leave is thinking of leaving.

00:38:36.700 And frankly, I don't blame them.

00:38:39.920 I also don't blame people who are aspirational, driven, talented, who are business people, who are creative, who see a bright future for themselves.

00:38:51.420 I don't blame them looking around at what you are projecting, which is no offence to you.

00:38:56.800 You're very talented at what you do.

00:38:58.260 But it's a statement of the bleeding obvious at this point that the country is not going in the right direction.

00:39:03.680 And why should people stay?

00:39:06.500 Why should people stay?

00:39:07.460 Well, my daughter's two.

00:39:11.600 For the first time in my life, I'm thinking of leaving the country.

00:39:18.100 I don't think Britain, in many respects, is a serious country anymore.

00:39:23.180 I think our national conversation has sharply deteriorated the quality of our national conversation over the last 20 years.

00:39:30.600 There's the ruling class, the inability to discuss the serious issues, the short-termism in the media, the refusal to entertain any challenge to the prevailing ideas or the orthodoxy, the stifling of free speech, the imposition of political correctness, the politicization of our institutions, the blatant bias that we can see in schools, universities, policing.

00:39:57.240 And also, I think what worries me most is the general disinterest in preserving and passing on who we are.

00:40:06.960 That's the thing that gets me the most.

00:40:09.220 It's almost like Roger Scruton used to talk about the politics of repudiation, the culture of repudiation.

00:40:15.480 We're more interested now in repudiating than respecting our shared history, our shared identity, and our culture.

00:40:24.820 There are very few glimmers of hope.

00:40:27.420 You know, there are some.

00:40:28.760 The campaign to defend women's sex-based rights, I think, is scoring real victories.

00:40:33.680 You can see that in Labour's backtracking and Keir Starmer's changes.

00:40:37.280 Scotland was interesting, the gender recognition reform bill being overturned, but the victories are few and far between.

00:40:46.440 Amid all of that, between all of that, is the relentless onslaught of this cultural revolution, which is what we're living in.

00:40:53.860 It is a cultural revolution being imposed by the institutions on everybody else.

00:41:00.600 So I am thinking of, for the first time in my life, leaving the country.

00:41:05.940 And as I said to you earlier on, sometimes you realise that Peter Hitchens was right all along.

00:41:12.480 Well, this is an argument that will make Peter obviously very happy.

00:41:16.200 Well, we talked about it.

00:41:16.780 I don't think there's anything that would make Peter happy.

00:41:18.840 No, that would.

00:41:19.740 I think that would.

00:41:21.260 But I think the interesting thing perhaps to explore is we interviewed Neil Ferguson, the historian.

00:41:27.060 And that episode has gone out this Sunday, I think, from memory.

00:41:31.840 And we put all of this to him.

00:41:33.260 And he said, well, look, the one thing that we maybe could look at for inspiration is the 1970s,

00:41:39.100 when Israel had just been attacked in the Yom Kippur War.

00:41:43.280 The state of the economy and the state of the country in the UK was probably even worse than it is now.

00:41:48.920 Can we look to that for inspiration, Matt, or were the circumstances different?

00:41:52.260 I'm not convinced by that for a couple of reasons.

00:41:54.300 The one is, how did the 70s end with the arrival of radical leaders willing to take on the consensus?

00:42:03.280 We are no longer capable of tolerating leaders who challenge the consensus.

00:42:07.860 Who is the next Margaret Thatcher? 1.00

00:42:09.640 Well, they'll be silenced and shut down in five minutes.

00:42:13.020 It'll be very difficult.

00:42:14.040 As Liz Truss and Boris Johnson showed, whatever you think of them, as their experiment showed,

00:42:19.220 we cannot tolerate dissent or a change of course.

00:42:24.100 Even Brexit was a sort of national trauma, a kind of a breakdown in our collective cycle.

00:42:30.260 And the other thing about the 70s, just briefly, just before you do,

00:42:32.440 the other thing about the 70s is the dominant issues in the 70s were economic.

00:42:37.540 And today, culture matters as much as the economy.

00:42:41.120 And so the dividing lines in our society are much more complex in many regards than they were in the 70s.

00:42:48.320 And that's what makes it so difficult to actually find a way through.

00:42:51.120 As someone put it, we're not one people anymore.

00:42:54.220 No, and we don't have a unifying story anymore.

00:42:56.780 There is no sense of, there's not even a willingness.

00:43:01.120 You know, if you go back and you read, say, Who Are We? by Samuel Huntington,

00:43:05.600 which is a good book on American national identity.

00:43:08.260 You know, and he argues that essentially the national unifying story in America

00:43:14.480 was undermined by large-scale migration and by the rise of an elite class

00:43:18.860 that no longer believed and invested in the nation.

00:43:22.560 And in many respects, we are now seeing that play out here,

00:43:27.520 a sort of tendency to look down on who we are

00:43:33.380 and to expose the national community to such change at such a pace

00:43:39.400 that everybody is left feeling bewildered, not really sure who they are, what they think.

00:43:44.640 The counter-argument I was going to put to you was the possibility of

00:43:48.120 you get a Labour landslide or certainly a Labour win, at least,

00:43:51.560 as you made a good point that it might not be a landslide.

00:43:55.700 Things don't get better, things get worse, which they certainly will.

00:43:58.840 They will.

00:43:59.860 And then at that point, the public have just had enough

00:44:02.540 and there is actually the room for a Thatcher-like figure to come out 1.00

00:44:07.860 and not be rejected by the public, at least.

00:44:11.260 But that's premised on the notion that our political parties would allow that to happen.

00:44:15.660 And the problem we have is both left and right were products of the Industrial Revolution.

00:44:19.360 They were built 100 years ago.

00:44:21.460 So the two main political parties that we have were built for another era.

00:44:25.500 What I think we need is the creation of new vessels, of new vehicles,

00:44:29.800 and surrounding that, a new culture, you know, a new prevailing culture,

00:44:33.960 which is much more in tune with ordinary people.

00:44:37.300 And I think that that is one of the things we need to do.

00:44:41.060 We need to reform the institutions.

00:44:42.920 We need to make them more representative of a wide array of voices.

00:44:45.440 The BBC, as I say, the cultural institutions.

00:44:49.260 The other thing, by the way, a national conservatism movement would do

00:44:51.860 is take on institutions which are taxpayer-funded

00:44:54.260 but do not represent the interests of the nation.

00:44:57.500 Universities would be one example.

00:44:58.900 BBC would be another.

00:45:00.440 You know, we have to start drawing lines in the sand.

00:45:03.080 We have to start saying, these are the things that made us who we are,

00:45:06.060 and this is what we're going to defend, and this is what we're going to promote.

00:45:09.240 I mean, faith schools would be another example.

00:45:10.940 I don't think, personally, we should have faith schools now.

00:45:14.260 I think we need to...

00:45:15.700 Even Catholic schools and Christian schools.

00:45:17.980 Well, I think some faith schools I think we should be open to,

00:45:22.180 but I think we need to start really assertively going,

00:45:27.380 drawing some lines in the sand about what our civilisation is,

00:45:30.660 what our values are, and how we're going to defend those values.

00:45:33.500 And Conservatives have completely given up on that argument.

00:45:36.440 At ARC recently, one of the refreshing things at the ARC conference,

00:45:39.520 which I think Constantine mentioned in his speech, you know,

00:45:42.200 these cultural issues which are so important to people,

00:45:44.820 women's sex-based rights, the rights of children,

00:45:47.020 our identity, our history, our culture, our values, all those things.

00:45:50.980 What the left does now, and I would say also many people on the right,

00:45:54.280 what they do now is they package all of that up and they say,

00:45:56.380 well, this is culture wars.

00:45:57.940 It's toxic, socially unacceptable.

00:46:00.320 Don't talk about that. It's low status.

00:46:02.800 And so Conservatives have allowed the foundations of our civilisation

00:46:06.300 to be completely discredited, taken off the table of political debate.

00:46:10.700 So if you say, I think kids should be taught what Britain got right,

00:46:14.280 not what Britain got wrong,

00:46:15.920 or women's sex-based rights should be protected and enshrined in law 1.00

00:46:20.100 and defended at every turn,

00:46:22.500 or, you know, we should have a radically different approach to migration

00:46:26.120 because over time, mass migration, uncontrolled migration dilutes who we are.

00:46:30.100 All of those things should be on the table, up for discussion.

00:46:35.060 And in a very short space of time, they've been taken off the table.

00:46:38.940 And that, I think, is why so many voters feel very anxious.

00:46:42.500 For a group of MPs recently who will remain nameless,

00:46:45.240 but they are very influential within the Conservative Party,

00:46:47.460 they asked me to do some polling.

00:46:48.980 They said, what are the issues that voters feel most concerned about,

00:46:52.320 but not represented on?

00:46:53.880 The top three.

00:46:55.140 Immigration is out of control. 1.00

00:46:56.900 I don't like political correctness.

00:46:58.320 I want to be able to preserve and promote Britain's distinctive identity

00:47:02.320 from globalisation, from universal liberalism.

00:47:05.360 Those three things, right?

00:47:06.960 Very simple things.

00:47:08.460 We could do all of those things.

00:47:09.580 We could do them tomorrow.

00:47:10.600 We could have policies with a movement that delivered on all those things.

00:47:15.520 Why isn't the Conservative Party doing that?

00:47:17.460 I put it to you, Matt, that the problem actually is the politicians,

00:47:21.820 and it's because a lot of them are career politicians.

00:47:24.600 They've never had a proper job.

00:47:25.860 They've just gone straight, a lot of them have gone straight from university

00:47:29.040 to become political advisors, assistants to MPs, blah, blah, blah.

00:47:32.940 They are people of Westminster.

00:47:36.820 They've never had a real job.

00:47:38.440 They've never had to graft.

00:47:40.540 They've never experienced a lot of the struggles of what ordinary people do.

00:47:44.640 And these are the people on the left as well, not just on the right.

00:47:47.400 So what we've got is an entire strata of people who don't understand the people they're ruling

00:47:53.780 or the people they've been, essentially, they've been asked to govern

00:47:57.780 because they've never been one of them.

00:48:00.360 I agree.

00:48:01.840 That the biggest single tribe in Westminster are careerists,

00:48:05.460 people who have only ever spent their lives in politics.

00:48:08.280 There have never been more university graduates in the House of Commons as there are today.

00:48:12.200 The Labour Party has more university graduates than the Conservative Party on the green benches.

00:48:17.640 So everything has become ideologically uniform.

00:48:21.640 Everything has become homogenous.

00:48:23.820 Some friends of mine in academia, they did a survey of MPs on the right and the left,

00:48:27.720 and they found that both Conservative and Labour MPs lean much further to the cultural left

00:48:32.380 than the average voter.

00:48:33.540 So when voters are looking at Westminster saying,

00:48:37.160 you know, why don't they just do the Rwanda scheme? 0.52

00:48:39.340 Why don't they just stop the boats? 0.88

00:48:40.600 Why don't they stop the woke?

00:48:42.100 Why don't they do X, Y, Z?

00:48:43.620 Because our MPs don't really have any interest in doing that.

00:48:46.340 They are no longer representative of the country that surrounds them.

00:48:49.820 So what do you need to do?

00:48:51.540 You need to build a movement that is representative of the country,

00:48:55.860 that is actually speaking on behalf of a forgotten majority.

00:48:59.620 And I think that is the next step.

00:49:01.320 Look, we can change the culture.

00:49:02.920 We can build an ecosystem.

00:49:04.020 But there comes a point where you have to also translate culture into action.

00:49:10.680 You have to translate culture into political action.

00:49:13.580 Otherwise, it is ultimately meaningless.

00:49:15.900 If you don't have your hands on the levers of power,

00:49:18.360 if you cannot influence the decisions that are affecting our daily lives,

00:49:21.680 right, you're not in the end going to change anything.

00:49:24.720 And I think that is the next phase of this.

00:49:27.360 Build an ecosystem.

00:49:28.760 Convert it into political action.

00:49:30.160 There are people, I'm sure, who are big fans of the SDP.

00:49:33.540 I always vote for the SDP because they have the best policies

00:49:37.280 and the ones that I believe in.

00:49:39.040 People who have reformed who will be going,

00:49:41.140 well, what about us, Matt?

00:49:42.440 We've been doing this.

00:49:43.720 We've been at the forefront of this.

00:49:45.280 Why can't people come to us?

00:49:46.920 Well, if you look at, there's a literature on how to build a party

00:49:49.160 and break through, and it suggests certain things are very important.

00:49:51.860 One is money.

00:49:52.860 You need a lot of money.

00:49:54.380 Secondly, you need a charismatic leader who can genuinely cut through,

00:49:58.000 really connect.

00:49:58.680 Third, you need a laser-like focus on a single issue

00:50:02.260 which really matters to a large majority of people.

00:50:06.260 I mean, I've had these conversations with reform people and SDP people.

00:50:10.120 I think they're all good people, by the way.

00:50:11.680 I think they care about the country.

00:50:13.800 And I've got a lot of time for all of them.

00:50:16.480 But I think probably, given the scale of the problems facing Britain,

00:50:20.340 we are, I think, rapidly approaching a point

00:50:22.980 where everybody is going to have to start to work together

00:50:26.280 and going to have to start to prioritise the issues that they really care about.

00:50:30.980 To be blunt, net zero, tax, those sorts of issues.

00:50:34.840 Yes, they're important.

00:50:35.800 But the real pressing issues for people are not those issues.

00:50:39.340 The real pressing issues for people now is about

00:50:41.460 how the fabric of our country is changing

00:50:44.280 and how to slow that down and change it.

00:50:47.100 And that is going to mean shifting the Overton window,

00:50:51.200 dragging the Overton window into a very different place,

00:50:53.860 you know, expanding it,

00:50:55.260 and beginning to put policies on the table

00:50:57.520 which are completely different from the policies

00:51:00.660 that are being offered by left and right.

00:51:02.300 And Matt, is there a potential,

00:51:03.920 I mean, we've obviously talked about the difficulties

00:51:06.160 with creating some sort of new movement

00:51:08.740 within a two-party system like the one that we have.

00:51:12.160 We have seen, while Brexit, I don't think,

00:51:15.080 has delivered many of the things that people hoped it would,

00:51:18.380 it nonetheless gave voice to the hidden concerns

00:51:22.860 of many, many people in the country.

00:51:25.060 Is there room for some sort of, I don't know,

00:51:27.660 referendum on illegal immigration

00:51:29.300 or something along those lines where, like you said,

00:51:33.820 it's a single issue that many people feel very strongly about

00:51:36.720 that can galvanise people into that?

00:51:41.720 Is there a mechanism to do that?

00:51:43.240 Is that something that would be advisable even?

00:51:45.380 Well, if you look at Nigel Farage

00:51:46.560 and the UK Independence Party,

00:51:47.820 they started the Brexit journey

00:51:49.160 by offering a referendum on EU membership

00:51:51.140 or calling for a referendum.

00:51:53.900 That's done.

00:51:54.680 And by the way, I'm not as apologetic about Brexit

00:51:56.820 as you are and many people in the debate are.

00:52:00.800 I actually think, on balance, I still think Brexit now,

00:52:04.360 I didn't campaign for Brexit,

00:52:05.420 but I think now that it's happened, it's a good thing

00:52:07.240 because we can exert much greater control

00:52:10.380 over a wide array of issues.

00:52:12.160 What's happened is the political class

00:52:13.760 have chosen not to use that power

00:52:16.920 in a way that was consistent with Brexit voters.

00:52:19.820 So they chose to liberalise migration,

00:52:21.640 not change it, et cetera, et cetera.

00:52:23.160 They chose to deregulate financial services,

00:52:25.720 not revitalise manufacturing and heavy industry,

00:52:28.580 and we can go on and on about those things.

00:52:30.160 I still think Brexit was the right call. 0.99

00:52:32.040 But in terms of moving forward

00:52:36.280 and trying to get to a place

00:52:37.580 where we can build something different,

00:52:41.640 fundamentally, we have to build a political economy

00:52:45.500 that is no longer dependent upon importing

00:52:47.680 cheap migrant workers from abroad,

00:52:50.120 where the salary thresholds are as low as £20,000, £23,000.

00:52:53.660 And we have to get away from this addiction

00:52:57.800 to looking outside of Britain

00:52:59.660 for the answers to our problems.

00:53:03.280 And our political class, I think,

00:53:06.220 is increasingly incapable of doing that.

00:53:08.940 All of the interesting political ideas

00:53:10.480 in the world right now

00:53:11.520 are in America or Europe.

00:53:14.100 I can't think of a single interesting idea

00:53:15.900 that's coming out of British politics at the moment.

00:53:18.040 I genuinely cannot.

00:53:19.080 I mean, if you think about Blair,

00:53:20.440 whatever you think about Blair,

00:53:21.080 he actually had some interesting ideas

00:53:22.640 about public service reform

00:53:24.160 and all these sorts of things.

00:53:25.540 But at the moment,

00:53:26.660 I can't think of a single interesting idea

00:53:29.040 that's coming out of British politics

00:53:30.280 from this political class.

00:53:33.000 And that, again, worries me.

00:53:35.640 Is there a worry,

00:53:36.860 and we're going to go a little bit black pill again,

00:53:39.320 you look at this and you think,

00:53:41.320 well, this is fertile breeding ground

00:53:43.680 for the far right, surely?

00:53:45.040 But we don't, we're not,

00:53:47.160 we are not a country

00:53:48.460 that would support a far right political party.

00:53:51.740 And the way in which that is used

00:53:53.620 to constrain debate

00:53:56.400 is increasingly,

00:53:58.100 it's very problematic.

00:53:59.680 You know, the idea that the Conservative Party

00:54:01.160 is a far right party. 1.00

00:54:02.280 Oh, that's moronic. 1.00

00:54:03.220 It's ridiculous. 1.00

00:54:04.400 And the idea that we have generations of kids 0.98

00:54:06.280 being brought up to think

00:54:07.440 that Suella Braverman

00:54:08.400 is somehow comparable to Joseph Goebbels

00:54:11.640 or like, you know, Adolf Hitler, 0.99

00:54:13.460 it's ridiculous. 0.98

00:54:14.580 And it's a reflection 0.94

00:54:15.540 both of the quality of education

00:54:17.860 and the quality of our cultural class, right?

00:54:21.360 The people who dominate the debate

00:54:22.940 like Gary Lineker and Alastair Campbell.

00:54:24.660 I mean, most of those people 1.00

00:54:26.380 I would describe, to be frank, as morons. 1.00

00:54:28.620 I don't think they really understand 1.00

00:54:31.100 what they're talking about.

00:54:32.400 Or if they do,

00:54:33.420 they're just doing it through a sense of,

00:54:34.900 you know, virtue signaling

00:54:36.100 and moral righteousness.

00:54:37.920 But that's not my point.

00:54:38.840 So the far right,

00:54:39.880 for the far right to prosper,

00:54:41.220 what do you need?

00:54:41.960 Yeah.

00:54:42.120 There's a suspicion of democracy

00:54:43.760 or at least appetite

00:54:45.460 for an anti-democratic alternative.

00:54:48.480 You need to have public support

00:54:50.280 for a revolutionary movement,

00:54:52.000 something that would tear down institutions,

00:54:53.940 tear down the system,

00:54:55.400 something that's openly racist,

00:54:56.980 that says, you know,

00:54:57.520 actually, if you're black British,

00:54:59.120 black Chinese, black Indian, 0.97

00:55:00.340 you're not really British. 0.99

00:55:01.840 You've got to be white to be British. 1.00

00:55:04.960 Something that is anti-Semitic,

00:55:08.080 something that probably offers

00:55:09.960 a conspiratorial view of the world.

00:55:12.380 And these are utterly fringe views

00:55:15.800 in British society.

00:55:16.760 95% of Brits in the Ipsos-Mori data say,

00:55:20.020 you do not have to be white to be British.

00:55:22.560 Support for democracy is still very strong,

00:55:24.880 even if voters would prefer

00:55:26.440 a more direct conception of democracy, right?

00:55:29.480 Give more voice to the people,

00:55:31.580 a little bit less to the elites in Westminster.

00:55:34.900 There is very little appetite

00:55:36.520 for revolutionary change in Britain.

00:55:38.400 We have a civic culture, right?

00:55:40.160 We respect moderation.

00:55:41.880 We respect difference.

00:55:43.280 We respect pluralism.

00:55:45.080 But that's why Brits are so nervous

00:55:46.460 because they can feel the woke left

00:55:48.020 and the radicalism is closing that down,

00:55:50.160 the civic culture.

00:55:51.460 So the British defence of this

00:55:53.360 is actually utterly different from the far right.

00:55:56.120 That's why the far right is nowhere.

00:55:57.380 I mean, Tommy Robinson is a fringe figure.

00:56:00.380 80 people on Whitehall

00:56:01.540 is not a serious national movement.

00:56:06.520 It is fringe, which is good.

00:56:08.340 We should celebrate that.

00:56:10.080 But that is not to say

00:56:11.880 we do not need a new political movement

00:56:15.060 which campaigns on some issues

00:56:16.900 like migration, like political correctness,

00:56:20.760 like the collapse of our,

00:56:22.180 the quality of our representative democracy.

00:56:24.940 They're different things.

00:56:25.880 I don't personally fear the far right in Britain.

00:56:30.700 But I do fear what is going to happen

00:56:33.180 if we don't actually start to change our politics.

00:56:36.640 Matt, you're a busy guy.

00:56:37.940 So we're not going to have time

00:56:39.280 for questions from our audience.

00:56:40.480 However, you guys should know

00:56:42.200 that we took all the locals' questions.

00:56:43.880 Those of you who support us on Locals,

00:56:45.220 thank you so much.

00:56:45.840 We took the questions you put in there

00:56:47.320 and we used them to guide the interview.

00:56:50.040 Matt, before we let you go

00:56:51.240 to fulfil your busy schedule,

00:56:53.080 as ever, what's the one thing

00:56:54.600 that we forgot to mention

00:56:55.560 or haven't been talking about

00:56:56.720 in the course of this conversation?

00:56:57.960 What are people not saying?

00:57:00.140 I would say there's a silver lining,

00:57:02.220 which is the union is safe.

00:57:04.520 The United Kingdom is, I think, generally safe.

00:57:07.660 I think the reassertion of Labour in Scotland,

00:57:10.000 the collapse of the Conservative Party,

00:57:11.780 in the aftermath of the next election,

00:57:13.220 we will not be talking about

00:57:14.540 the breakup of the United Kingdom.

00:57:16.960 And I think that is one good thing

00:57:20.400 that we can focus on.

00:57:22.840 Well, there you go.

00:57:23.760 The UK is going to be terrible,

00:57:25.100 but it's going to stay together.

00:57:26.420 Yeah, like a marriage.

00:57:28.620 All right, guys,

00:57:29.600 thank you so much for watching.

00:57:30.960 Thank you for supporting the show.

00:57:32.080 Make sure you head on over

00:57:33.160 and subscribe to Matt's sub-stack,

00:57:36.020 which is very good.

00:57:36.840 I read it all the time.

00:57:38.200 I quoted him in my sub-stack today,

00:57:39.820 so make sure you go and check that out.

00:57:41.480 Matt, thank you for being on the show.

00:57:42.720 Thank you for having me, guys.

00:57:43.700 And we will see you very soon, guys.

00:57:45.400 Take care.

00:57:46.200 Have yourselves a good evening,

00:57:47.380 afternoon, or morning, wherever it is.

00:58:15.400 The Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:58:17.300 Get tickets at mirvish.com.

TRIGGERnometry - November 15, 2023

The State of Britain with Matt Goodwin

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