00:00:30.000hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kisson and this is a show
00:00:37.840for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our brilliant and returning
00:00:43.220guest today is the deputy editor of spike tom slater welcome back to trigonometry thanks for
00:00:48.420having me yeah it's good to have you uh we were just sitting here before the interview started
00:00:52.280very relaxed talking and now we've all all three of us have gone really serious thanks so much for
00:00:56.920but it's good to have you back man it's been a while it's been a couple of years since we first
00:01:01.280had you on and as i was saying to you before we started we really didn't know very much about
00:01:05.760anything at the time and we were kind of using guests like you who'd thought about the stuff we
00:01:10.900were interested in in detail more carefully who had a history of writing about it and sort of
00:01:15.720debating stuff like that and you you know the first time we had you on we were talking about
00:01:19.580freedom of expression uh i think we talked about students banning sombreros and all that sort of
00:01:25.460silly stuff two years have passed i think things have gone a little bit more sinister haven't they
00:01:31.300particularly with stuff we've seen recently darren grimes obviously uh what do you make of the state
00:01:36.020of the our ability to discuss ideas and issues and societal issues uh freely now i think it's
00:01:42.800incredibly bleak because as you say a lot of the things that we're talking about previously a lot
00:01:46.180of it's very similar to what we've seen explode in recent months but it almost feels quaint by
00:01:49.680comparison the game we were talking about sombreros you know the biggest campus controversies were
00:01:53.820about inappropriate fancy dress and all these kinds of ridiculous things what i think we've seen
00:01:58.180recently it was already there but was this kind of attack on freedom of speech from all sides
00:02:03.600almost it feels like there's state censorship which i'm sure we'll get onto in relation to
00:02:07.420the darren grimes case again kind of ongoing issues with um locking up tweeters and offensive
00:02:13.380facebook posters and all the rest of it we see those stories proliferate all the time
00:02:16.480you've got the big tech censorship which again has exploded particularly in relation to the
00:02:20.500COVID stuff. I know you've had a taste of that yourselves with the shadow banning of your Peter
00:02:23.820Hitchens interview. And that's something which is becoming more and more alarming and being more and
00:02:28.060more supported by a lot of people, strangely, on the left increasingly. And then also you've got
00:02:32.880this cancel culture stuff, which is almost like the informal mob censorship, the way in which
00:02:37.960that people, without necessarily using the state or using the power of big corporations, just
00:02:42.020putting pressure on people's employers to, again, sack them if they've uttered a heretical thought.
00:02:47.840So you put all of that together and you're in a pretty bleak place, I think.
00:02:51.340And again, even though a lot of these issues have been going on for a long time,
00:02:54.020we at Spikes have been writing about them, talking about them for a long time.
00:02:56.580It's definitely accelerated in the last couple of months.
00:02:59.580And why is it you still think that, I mean, I tweeted it yesterday about how, you know,
00:03:05.680the BBC and their unwillingness to even discuss the Darren Grimes case.
00:03:11.960Why is it people still think that freedom of speech isn't an important issue in the UK and the West in general?
00:03:17.840I think they've just bought the consensus, which is basically that free speech isn't an unfettered right.
00:03:22.740It's legitimate to restrict it. And therefore, these things aren't necessarily issues.
00:03:27.260I mean, you see this refrain time and time again, whenever there's a big cancellation campaign, whenever there's one of these state censorship cases, where even in response to this, people still maintain this line.
00:03:35.760There's no free speech crisis. It's something that us three made up, you know, just to give ourselves something to talk about.
00:03:41.460I think a lot of that stems from the fact that they don't really support free speech.
00:03:45.020They don't really understand what it is. And that's where you get in a situation where you've got people like Keir Starman, leader of the Labour Party, saying we should have tolerance for free speech, tolerate it in the way you tolerate an irritating relative or something like that.
00:03:55.980But at the same time, there is a line. And in the case of the Darren Grimes interview, the line seems to be someone interviewing someone who says something that turns out to be quite offensive.
00:04:04.200So I think, again, the reason that you've got the downgrinds case
00:04:08.740not even being picked up by the BBC, etc.,
00:04:10.340they kind of don't see it as an issue,
00:04:11.960whereas people like us, I think, see it as one of the crucial issues of our time.
00:04:15.220Because if you can't even talk about some of the problems going on in society today,
00:04:18.780or if you treat a view that you dislike with an attempt to silence it
00:04:22.980rather than an attempt to challenge it,
00:04:23.920you can soar up a lot more problems for the future.
00:04:26.000But I think a lot of people just don't even recognise that as an issue.
00:04:28.260You see, I would maybe push back on that a little bit,
00:04:30.240because when I turned down that safe space contract two years ago
00:04:33.920or whatever it was, that was a major story on the BBC.
00:04:37.480That was the day that Theresa May had nearly been removed from power
00:05:07.680And all of the pushback we've received has literally been as sort of moronic as, well, the guy's an idiot.
00:05:15.920And it's like, well, you're entitled to that view.
00:05:18.780That does not mean he shouldn't be allowed to interview people.
00:05:21.860He should be investigated by the police.
00:05:24.100Like, people are allowed to have opinions that you don't like.
00:05:27.580So it seems like, as you say, the people who are saying there's no crisis for free speech, they don't actually believe that we need free speech.
00:05:41.600I think on the one hand, the people who have the luxury of being able to say there's no free speech crisis, it's because they've either never uttered anything which could be remotely offensive.
00:05:49.100They never had a particularly interesting thought in their head.
00:05:51.460Or the other thing is that whether they realize it or not, they're part of the consensus.
00:05:55.780a lot of the kind of identitarian politics which seems to rule the roost these days tends to have
00:06:00.060a lot of sway at places like the bbc universities a lot of businesses increasingly that is the new
00:06:05.120kind of orthodoxy that's the new kind of cultural elite values as it were and so when you glean to
00:06:11.060those values when you're not really a threat to those values whatsoever it's very easy to think
00:06:15.300that everything's just fine on the other hand they don't really understand freedom of speech
00:06:19.400and they just play into what is the most basic kind of trap that you fall into which is that
00:06:23.840you support free speech, but only for yourself and other people who agree with you. That's the
00:06:27.680most basic, ridiculous kind of response to have to these things. It's me speech rather than free
00:06:32.080speech. And so whilst they kind of dress it up as, oh, Darren Grimes is just a grifter, or he's just
00:06:36.740an idiot, or he's just a whatever, again, that's just an evasion of the fact that they, the reason
00:06:41.480they dismiss these issues is because they don't really want to admit that you're not in favour of
00:06:44.700free speech. It's like admitting you're not in favour of democracy or, you know, apple pie. It's
00:06:49.020just one of those things where they can't bring themselves to say it. But I think the evasiveness
00:06:52.220proves the point that they just don't care about this stuff whatsoever, because they're not
00:06:55.340threatened by censorship at this point in time. And going back to the BBC issue, do you think
00:06:59.900their unwillingness to address it, to talk about it, shows a fundamental bias at the heart of the
00:07:06.440BBC? Or do you think it was just an editorial decision? I mean, we don't know. I mean, it could
00:07:10.380well just be, I mean, there's a lot going on in the world at the moment, of course. But if you
00:07:13.320think about how significant that case was, obviously, we have had hate speech legislation
00:07:18.080in this country for a very long time. These cases do flare up from time to time. This is involving
00:07:22.200one of our most prominent historian now very much in disgrace i've given his own comments
00:07:27.120you've got a young youtuber and commentator who again has been in the press a lot over recent years
00:07:31.940this is not a marginal story so even if it's not necessarily a case of them going out of their way
00:07:37.440to cover this up the fact that they don't think this is that big of an issue um at least if that's
00:07:41.780the case that seems to me to be quite worrying at least to indicate some sort of whether it's bias
00:07:46.580or whether it's groupthink or whether it's just you know not recognizing this thing is a big issue
00:07:50.200There's got to be something like that at play, surely.
00:07:52.460And in terms of civil liberties, which free speech would be only one of, you know, we seem to be in a position now where they're sort of disappearing quite quickly with majority consent, by the way.
00:08:04.180You know, people are very much in favour of what's going on.
00:08:07.040What's been your take about the impact of the coronavirus, the response to it on our basic freedoms?
00:08:14.120I think it's been appalling. And it's really sped up, as I'm sure we'll talk about a lot of these kind of liberal trends that existed previously, the willingness to just throw fundamental freedoms under the bus at the first sign of trouble. And we've seen that with the coronavirus crisis time and again, you know, first of all, in relation to the question of the lockdown.
00:08:32.380And in terms of the kind of suspension of civil liberties, it almost doesn't matter what you believe and what you think happens to be the truth about the efficacy of lockdown as a policy.
00:08:40.560The way in which it was done, the way in which our freedom to move around, who we associate with, how many can gather, our ability to protest, the way in which that was suspended, the way in which it was done, I think should really raise alarm bells.
00:08:53.800Because all of the lockdown restrictions that we've been suffering under for the past, what is it, seven months now, this was never passed with the approval of Parliament.
00:09:01.420It was passed using the Public Health Act in 1984, funnily enough, which delegates huge powers to ministers, has very few of the safeguards that you get in other pieces of legislation which could easily have been used.
00:09:12.180It's never really had explicit approval from Parliament.
00:09:15.540Only recently have they been able to, rebels in the Tory benches in particular, been able to get the government to concede some votes on some measures so far.
00:09:23.940And so you have this remarkable experiment in authoritarianism, which on the one hand hasn't really been openly debated.
00:10:45.220Which it is. I just wanted to put that in.
00:10:46.960No, no. I think that's definitely worth noting. And again, so what you see people do in practice is obviously a little bit different.
00:10:52.840And I think we all see that anecdotally in our lives anyway.
00:10:56.020You know, again, you see these surveys suggesting that if anything, people think the restrictions should always be stronger, but people are bending the rules here and there because these rules are very inhuman.
00:11:05.120The idea that you wouldn't necessarily go and see friends or family, particularly in the parts of the country which are already under stricter restrictions.
00:11:10.800These are things people in practice find very difficult to uphold, even if they still normally support them.
00:11:16.340I think we also live in the moment in a bubble of kind of consensus, which is quite stifling.
00:11:21.860You know, if we've talked in previous years about, you know, the shy Tory phenomenon in relation to polling or the shy Trump voter, and if you think the shy lockdown sceptic, the pressure heats on them to when a pollster calls up or when their Vox popped on the street by a television journalist to say, yes, the restrictions, if anything, should be harder is quite intense.
00:11:40.380All that being said, I think it's fair to say that even despite all of that, that wouldn't suggest that actually everyone's against it.
00:11:44.900of course, that would be absurd to say. But nevertheless, I think after that initial very
00:11:48.900fearful period, when a lot of us didn't know what this was, we didn't know where things are going,
00:11:52.760opinion is starting to shift. I think the proportion of people who are concerned about
00:11:56.560the economy over public health, that is increasing in relation to a lot of polls, because I think the
00:12:00.900reality of a lot of this is dawning. So I would question the strength of that kind of public
00:12:04.960support, because I think it is under pretty extreme circumstances, even where, you know,
00:12:09.220public life has been shut down. We're not discussing these things in the pub in a freely
00:12:12.540ways we would previously. But at the same time, I think that opinion is starting to shift. And I
00:12:18.020think especially as the economic consequences of lockdown are really going to start to be felt,
00:12:21.740you're going to see opinion shift more into that column than we have seen previously.
00:12:26.080And what do you think are going to be the implications of a second lockdown?
00:12:30.140Well, I think it's going to be disastrous. I mean, if you think about the impact it's going to have
00:12:33.960on so many different sections of the economy, if you think about hospitality, I mean, there's
00:12:37.900even something like pubs, which is not a trivial thing. First of all, because it employs a hell
00:12:41.680of a lot of people, but also really important for community life. A lot of pubs are barely hanging
00:12:46.160on even before coronavirus. In recent years, loads of them shutting down because of a combination of
00:12:50.940factors. And again, coronavirus accelerating a lot of that, that's going to be a huge impact.
00:12:55.920The impact on jobs is going to be huge. We are facing the biggest recession for 300 years. And
00:13:00.900all of this is only going to have more of a damaging impact on all that stuff. From a civil
00:13:04.600liberties point of view, what really concerns me is it's the, again, it's the prolongation of this
00:13:08.920period that we have anyway, which is the idea that civil liberties can be indefinitely
00:13:12.260suspended. And I think we really need to make the point quite strongly that things like
00:13:16.720freedom, as well as democracy, our ability to have some impact on these rules, make sure
00:13:21.040our representatives at least have an opportunity to scrutinise them. These values aren't just
00:13:25.400for the good times. They're not just for when everything is nice and rosy and there's not
00:13:29.040threats that are challenging us. If anything, if you're in a situation where the public are being
00:13:33.120asked to give up their lives, to give up their liberties in that sort of way, you need more
00:13:38.800open discussion, not less. And I think from a civil liberties perspective, the fact that lockdown is
00:13:44.280continuing on, even as it's been failing in some respects, particularly in relation to the local
00:13:48.100lockdowns, it's pretty much accepted that, if anything, case numbers have gone in the other
00:13:51.540direction where that's been imposed. From the perspective of freedom, it's just continuing that
00:13:55.240idea that basically these things can be suspended indefinitely for our own good. And if we say
00:13:59.620anything about it, then we're just a troublemaker. That, to me, is a particularly concerning impact.
00:14:03.480You mentioned our representatives, which I think is a big part of this whole picture.
00:14:08.200First of all, it's quite clear that when it comes to lockdown, we're living in a one-party state, right?
00:14:13.380There is no dissent from the opposition.
00:14:16.220The opposition who should be challenging, criticizing, taking a different view, exploring different ideas, not doing any of that.
00:14:23.300And so it almost doesn't – this is the thing that troubles me most about the lockdown versus even the culture war, which, you know, we care about a lot.
00:14:31.600With the culture war stuff, there's some hope that, you know, right of center parties, which at the moment seem to be the repository of liberal values to some extent, they've got majorities, they're in power, they'll fix this, right? They'll start doing things.
00:14:48.020On the lockdown, well, it doesn't matter what the three of us sit and talk about. The reality is the Conservative Party led by Boris Johnson with the Labour Party led by Keir Starmer are going to continue down this path as long as they want.
00:15:00.060and there's nothing we can do about it.
00:15:02.280That is what's really concerning about it.
00:15:03.600Because again, talking about some of the issues
00:15:05.140with Parliament and the lack of scrutiny there,
00:15:50.380But also you've got a Labour Party, led by a human rights lawyer, no less,
00:15:54.520who has said nothing about the suspension of our civil liberties,
00:15:57.200It said nothing about the suspension of parliamentary scrutiny and is, if anything, demanding that the government go further in a policy which already has and is very much likely to deepen further the inequalities in society that already exist.
00:16:11.360That's the thing about lockdown. It does disproportionately impact working class people. And the fact that we find ourselves in a situation where it's the Labour Party, if anything, are the more enthusiastic backers of this policy, I find very, very strange.
00:16:22.700why the Conservatives have completely given up on freedom in the midst of this, I'm not entirely
00:16:26.760sure. I think there's a bit of a problem with the Johnson administration, full stop. It's never been
00:16:30.420entirely clear that he ever believed in anything. I mean, he was often kind of written up as this
00:16:33.920libertarian, but the evidence for that I've never seen. I mean, the first thing he didn't remember
00:16:38.400when he was mayor of London was ban people from drinking on the tube. You know, I feel like he
00:16:42.480likes to sense where the wind is blowing on a lot of these issues. There's not necessarily a lot of
00:16:45.940grip. Luckily, there are a few people, particularly in the Tory party, some elsewhere, who are pushing
00:16:50.020back against this stuff but as you say that consensus is incredibly stifling because there's
00:16:54.560just no real opposition to this political opposition to this that it feels like can
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00:18:22.280Were you hopeful when Magic Grandpa was eventually replaced with Keir Starmer?
00:18:28.700Did you think, I don't imagine you were,
00:18:30.700but did you think, well, at least it's not that bad?
00:18:33.260Or were you hopeful in any way for his leadership?
00:18:36.460Well, the thing is, I'm a left-way, but also I'm a Brexiteer.
00:18:38.480So the thing about Keir Starmer, I think, was that he is the man basically responsible, at least in large part, for that huge election loss in 2019 back in December.
00:18:47.440Because obviously the last election was lost on the grounds of Corbyn himself, his dodgy associations, the anti-Semitism he seemed to have an incredibly high tolerance for, as well as the kind of sense that he wasn't sticking up.
00:18:57.560He's an open-minded man. Come on. He's a very open-minded man, in particular, in relation to Islamism and anti-Semitism in the absence of anything else.
00:19:04.820But the other part of that was the Brexit issue, which Keir Starmer was the architect of that policy.
00:19:10.060And I think was, again, the other half of that question, the thing that really drove that wedge finally between particularly the northern working class and the Labour Party,
00:19:18.680was the fact that the party in Parliament was supposed to be the voice of working people was actively campaigning to overturn millions of their votes.
00:19:26.780And again, that was the thing which I think has been be interesting to see whether or not Keir Starmer can make up for that.
00:19:32.880I mean, coronavirus has scrambled everything in relation to the previous kind of political realities.
00:19:38.000But again, I don't think in many respects Keir Starmer was much better.
00:19:41.220And I think especially as we're seeing with his responses to some of the Darren Grimes stuff,
00:19:44.420as a liberal as well as anyone on the far left, it would seem,
00:19:48.080which is, again, a huge problem with the left these days,
00:19:50.700you know, that is something that they share across the board.
00:20:38.800It's fascinating that they went down that road.
00:20:41.000But in relation to the culture war stuff, I think it's quite interesting
00:20:43.300because he's really just trying to triangulate on the question of the culture war.
00:20:46.020It's kind of a very Blairite way of trying to put himself
00:20:48.220between what perceived to be the two extremes.
00:20:51.060He takes the knee one day, but then he gives a speech about patriotism in the other.
00:20:54.020He's just kind of trying to talk out of both sides of his mouth at this point.
00:20:57.460For me in particular, I've long given up on the Labour Party in various different kinds of its iterations.
00:21:02.060I think the extent to which it could claim to be a progressive, positive movement for working people has long since passed.
00:21:09.340I think, if anything, Corbyn was kind of just dancing on the grave.
00:21:13.320I mean, respects, he kind of was able to take control because its legitimacy was so worn away.
00:21:17.740But whilst I think a lot of people are talking about how canny Keir Starmer is being, a lot of it feels like PR, feels like triangulation.
00:21:24.540And all the while, I think, actually, the extent to which the Labour Party remains a kind of repository for a lot of these identitarian, divisive kinds of ideas that we're all concerned about, I think it's still going to go on despite that.
00:21:36.840And do you think it's got any long-term future?
00:21:39.020Well, again, the coronavirus has just scrambled everything.
00:21:42.300And I think what Keir Starmer has effectively been able to repose the argument as, quite effectively, at least in the media sphere, is the fact that it's on questions of competence, it's on questions of delivery.
00:21:52.820on that basis he could well have a decent next election who knows a lot of the um again the kind
00:21:59.180of things that went on in the past couple of years that really annoyed people in relation to
00:22:03.880brexit in relation to any of these other issues maybe that will start to fade a little bit but i
00:22:08.280just don't think it's a firm basis on which to on which to hold a political party we're back to that
00:22:12.220kind of dry technocratic kind of approach of the kind of blair years which again was can be effective
00:22:18.800for a time, especially when, as we saw in the 90s,
00:22:21.480the Conservative Party just collapses.
00:23:18.060it's about someone use the wrong turn of phrase it's about someone allegedly culturally appropriated
00:23:22.580jerk rice or whatever it is it's ridiculous things a lot of the time and so the the being
00:23:27.140faced with a genuine public health threat would not only clear away a lot of that rubbish but
00:23:30.840remind us that basically we are you know one group of people that we don't need to be splintered down
00:23:35.960these identitarian lines we're all there to look out for each other but then very quickly it was
00:23:40.440clear that that wasn't the case these ideas were very bedded in and then in the wake of obviously
00:23:44.320The killing of George Floyd, the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement, I think just proved that those ideas definitely weren't going away.
00:23:50.940And just, I think, proved that you can't kind of just hope these things will be defeated by events, that it really is a case of trying to take on these ideas in society, but more importantly in these institutions, which is where they're really hardwired in, it feels like, at this point.
00:24:02.800And with the Black Lives Matter movement, because Constance and I have this discussion about it,
00:24:07.220do you think that the George Floyd incident would have had the same resonance if it happened in another period of time?
00:24:14.820Or do you think that what had happened because of lockdown was there was just emotional tinder just waiting to be lit,
00:24:21.580and George Floyd was the perfect flame for it?
00:24:23.760I think there's definitely a big element of that.
00:24:25.620Because if you think about when the Black Lives Matter movement first kicked off,
00:24:27.740in relation to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson,
00:24:31.940various other shootings which went on over those couple of years.
00:24:34.560That was kind of the original kind of high watermark of it.
00:24:38.760It was a big discussion, particularly for America.
00:24:40.780But it didn't go global. It didn't explode.
00:24:43.180It didn't lead to people toppling statues in Bristol
00:24:45.760and Netflix pulling down the mighty bush.
00:24:47.640It's kind of an absurd cultural revolution that unfurled in its wake.
00:24:51.580And I guess it's a combination of, on the one hand, lockdown,
00:24:54.300people being locked in their homes for a very long period,
00:24:57.020Again, tempers starting to fray. I'm sure that played a bit of a role in it. I think the other factor, of course, is Donald Trump, because the last time the Black Lives Matter movement really erupted, when it really started, was under the Obama years, which I think reminds us that a lot of these issues were not created by Donald Trump.
00:25:11.220But at the same time, his presence, I think, unfortunately, has lent credence in some people's minds to the more extreme claims of this movement, the idea that this is that America and Western society in general is kind of irredeemably racist.
00:25:24.880Trump is held up as an example of why that's true, because this horrendous fascist, as they would put it, I don't think he is one, but still, is allowed to be in power.
00:25:32.080So I think, again, the combination of Trump, the combination of a horrendous killing, which there was no, you know, we all knew what that was when we saw it.
00:25:38.980And the coronavirus, I think, just led all of this to explode.
00:25:42.140But why it suddenly became a discussion about speech and statues and all the rest of it, I have no clue whatsoever why I so quickly went to that spot.
00:25:48.840But on that, actually, let me ask you this, because when you had me on the Spike podcast a couple of months back or whenever it was, we were talking about BLM.
00:25:55.760And I think you and I were about to get into a disagreement, which is always fun, about whether I was saying to what I'm seeing in this is there's a neo-Marxist agenda, which is a term that got bandied about quite a lot.
00:26:08.900I think Spike sort of pushed back against that.
00:26:11.040And I think you were keen to take issue with that, but you didn't have the space to do so then.
00:26:17.400Yes. So this is obviously, I've heard you make the argument, many people point out that if you look at, for instance, Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, if you go on their website, if you look at some of the policies they're advocating for, they do talk about, you know, they do talk about overturning capitalism.
00:26:31.740They also talk about kind of various things, which I wouldn't say are traditionally Marxist, but certainly some of that kind of nouveau Marxist identitarian tinged obsessions in relation to decolonisation or in relation to the nuclear family or in relation to all these types of things.
00:26:46.360So there's things like that where if you take them at their word, as it were, you could see that they're calling themselves Marxists, if nothing else.
00:26:53.240I think the two points of the same response to that is, first of all, there is a big difference between the movement such as it is and the organisation, if we can call it that.
00:27:01.280Because I don't think anyone would really be taking to the streets in the numbers that they have if they were paid up members of this organisation, if they were 100% signed up to the toppling of capital.
00:27:11.480There's just not the electrical support for this sort of thing.
00:27:13.620You don't think so? With the housing crisis, with the fact that young people increasingly feel like they can't participate in this capitalist utopia, they're squeezed out of the future, the coronavirus has come along, they're definitely, definitely, definitely going to have a worse time than their parents.
00:27:29.740You don't feel that there is a sort of feeling that, quote unquote, capitalism is not working?
00:27:33.560I think there is a strong feeling that capitalism is not working.
00:27:36.060And as you say, a lot of these issues kind of pre-exist the coronavirus even
00:27:38.620in terms of the failure of it to actually produce the kind of growth
00:27:43.040and the kind of better life for people that people actually wanted.
00:27:45.820But at the same time, I feel like the issue that really animated people
00:27:48.820was the question of racial injustice, full stop.
00:27:51.360I think all of the baggage that came with it was kind of an afterthought.
00:27:54.140I'm sure you had this experience either talking to friends
00:27:55.940or going and observing some of these demonstrations.
00:27:59.600People weren't really talking about that manifesto.
00:28:01.740There is a big group. And I actually think particularly in relation to the UK, where as far as I can tell, it's kind of old SWP stand up to racism types who have claimed the mantle of the Black Lives Matter organization here.
00:28:10.700They just kind of latched onto it. It's good for them. They get to go on the radio. They get to talk about the things they've always cared about.
00:28:15.460But in terms of the average person who is inspired by the movement, I don't think it's from this kind of red blooded, old fashioned Marxism.
00:28:21.960At the same time, I think it also gets into this question about what these people say when they say that they're Marxist.
00:28:26.680Because fundamentally, I think they're identitarians, which I think is, again, the antithesis of Marxism, again, putting the question very much on the issue of class and also not wanting to ossify society.
00:28:38.400Because that's the thing about identity politics is it wants to put us into all these individual boxes, whereas the point of Marxism and its focus on class was that it could be transcended, that you could abolish the working class.
00:28:47.880Whereas these people in their obsession of identity, not only are they increasingly uninterested in the class question, you bring it up and they actually think it's like a kind of racist dog whistle and you only want to talk about the white working class or whatever.
00:28:59.100But also they fundamentally want to keep those distinctions intact.
00:29:02.480They genuinely buy into the idea that society can be broken up along these lines, that we can't really overcome them, that all we can do is come to terms with them in that kind of sense.
00:29:10.640So whilst it's certainly true that a lot of these people think of themselves as terribly radical, left-wing Marxist even,
00:29:16.600I think that at best it's wearing that label but actually means something very different.
00:29:21.280And what was really interesting as well with that Black Lives Matter movement is they were talking about race
00:29:25.400and when they were going on their marches, it was the third anniversary of Grenfell Tower and no one seemed to mention that.
00:29:32.220Yeah, I mean it was interesting because there were some attempts, you saw it some marches,
00:29:35.800I guess an attempt to kind of bring things like Grenfell in as well as attempts to kind of bring issues like that in.
00:29:40.360But it's interesting that it just became kind of just more ethereal very quickly.
00:29:45.320It wasn't because of the fact that this is something that went on in America.
00:29:47.980People had to almost go grasping around for things to make it relevant,
00:29:51.200which is why I think we got into this bizarre situation
00:29:53.320that it quickly became about inanimate objects.
00:29:57.120It became about statues. It became about history,
00:30:00.300this desire to reckon with history in some sort of weird, abstract,
00:30:05.760But I think a lot of the time, as you say, it's a general feeling
00:30:08.560And it's often decoupled from more concrete things that we should be talking about,
00:30:12.340often in the British context, because those things were a lot better, actually,
00:30:15.360in relation to race relations in particular than a lot of these people would like to make it.
00:30:19.400And why do you think it seems that we have imported wholesale American politics,
00:30:24.740especially American identity politics, to these shores,
00:30:27.880when in the case of things like Black Lives Matter,
00:30:30.720of course, George Floyd's death was awful,
00:30:33.820but it doesn't seem to be particularly relevant at all to this country.
00:30:38.560I mean, it's fascinating. In many ways, Black Lives Matter is like America's great export of recent years.
00:30:43.520It's gone completely international. You know, you're seeing marches in every nation across Europe, all across the world.
00:30:48.380And yet this is a movement not only started in America, but it's addressing a very specific issue in relation to police killings, particularly of unarmed black people.
00:30:55.820There's a lot of discussion in the US to the extent of that, but it's still a very distinct issue, which a lot of people have been concerned about for a long time.
00:31:02.560To try and apply that to the UK context makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
00:31:06.140we have our issues with inequality as any other nation does but it's not at all the same and I
00:31:11.940think it kind of in a way if we're being slightly uncharitable about it I think with so much kind
00:31:17.480of identitarian politics it's about claiming the oppression first and waking working out the kind
00:31:21.780of justification for it later and I think that's why again we saw the conversation shift so quickly
00:31:26.280onto cultural grounds because all of that you can just speculate about you don't have to prove
00:31:29.460anything you don't have to show any data you can just claim that this is a this particular sitcom
00:31:33.940is a resonance of some sort of horrendous oppression
00:37:38.120But I do wonder, given all that's happened,
00:37:39.920And whether or not in many people's eyes, particularly in the Red Wall, who also hold a lot of these socially conservative views or also very concerned about a lot of this woke politics stuff, whether or not they're going to feel like the Tory party has actually gone away from them on those kinds of issues.
00:37:52.100So the question about whether or not there's a socially conservative, more left wing, kind of blue Labour type movement, which could emerge, which could actually put pressure on Labour.
00:38:02.120On the one hand, as I say, that territory has kind of already been occupied a little bit.
00:38:05.580But also, I just don't think Labour can change in relation to that kind of thing.
00:38:09.140And it doesn't necessarily come down to a question of being socially conservative necessarily.
00:38:13.860They've basically vacated actually representing the working class people who tend to be quite socially conservative on those issues.
00:38:20.040They are the party of the metropolitan middle class. That was confirmed by the last two elections.
00:38:24.680Those are their values. Those are the people that they really speak to.
00:38:27.780Those are the people who staff their party and who are their representatives.
00:38:31.100The idea that you can kind of shift the dial on that, I'm very, very sceptical about because it just feels like now they recognise that is their constituency.
00:38:39.140And those are the values that they have to uphold.
00:39:09.140It's a bleak picture. I don't think any of us can say that. I mean, even, for instance, at the last election, I didn't vote for the Conservatives. I've been very sceptical of Boris Johnson. I'm also just not a Conservative on a lot of these issues. So therefore, I didn't back them. But at the same time, I was kind of cheered by what it felt like they represented when they won that election, not only because it felt like it drove a wedge between the working class and the Labour Party, which I think had to happen because they'd taken for granted for too long. They didn't really deserve their support. They'd been ignoring them.
00:39:37.100And also because obviously it meant that Brexit in one form or another would be implemented.
00:39:41.380The toxin of that vote not being implemented would be removed from our politics.
00:39:46.180We could talk about again what kind of society we'd like after all of that.
00:39:49.800And my concern is that the society we've ended up with, particularly in the midst of lockdown, it just feels increasingly bleak.
00:39:56.340So where this new movement comes from, what new kind of political alignments pop up, all of that, again, has been scrambled by the crazy last seven months.
00:40:04.180But I'm sure something eventually will happen.
00:40:05.980And it just feels like we're in a particularly strange period at the moment, I guess.
00:40:09.540And don't you think a major issue is, and we've talked about it with other people,
00:40:13.080we've talked about it with George Galloway, we've talked about it with Peter Hitchens,
00:40:15.840isn't it due to the fact as well that we've got just an absolute dearth of talent
00:44:39.680But I was going to say that as someone who's voted for everyone from all the way from the Lib Dems to even voting respect at one time, Labour a couple of times, eventually voting Tory for the first time in my life, very reluctantly at the last election.
00:44:55.060The one thing I think a lot of people feel now is you sort of you're getting a cat in a sack, whoever you vote for, because you vote for Boris Johnson.
00:48:17.040100%. I mean, you can't overstate it, can you?
00:48:19.620On every single front, we do have an ongoing public health crisis.
00:48:23.160We have this huge economic crisis looming, which is going to have a huge impact, not just in this country, by the way, but in terms of the lockdown pursued as a kind of global policy, it's going to have a horrendous impact, particularly on the developing world.
00:48:34.340This is something that isn't talked about at all in this discussion. We're quite kind of parochial when we talk about these policies, understandably.
00:48:40.600But, you know, Oxfam had a report out in July, I think it was, talking about 120 million people could be pushed into really extreme poverty because of all of this stuff.
00:48:48.100and then you ladle on top of that all this identitarian bollocks which we know is really
00:48:52.580toxic we know is really divisive and yet over the past few months as a consequence partly of
00:48:57.840lockdown but also the explosion of this black lives matter movement has completely cemented
00:49:02.740itself within all of our institutions it feels like to the extent they weren't cemented already
00:49:06.820so it's hard not to be bleak at this point because things are just really quite shit on many
00:49:12.820different factors but at the same time i feel like it's just all the more reason to you know
00:49:16.980redouble efforts to push back against this stuff because these things aren't just going to magically
00:49:20.720go away as a result of coronavirus or anything else as we've seen you you mentioned the identitarian
00:49:25.860bollocks quote it does seem to have gone to a different level now i mean when covid hit off
00:49:33.280it was sort of like no one really talked about it but we kept being told like the
00:49:37.440black and other minority people are more affected by code which is fair enough of course they would
00:49:42.840be but but that was almost presented as like a racism issue yeah like the coronavirus is racist
00:49:49.380what i don't even understand that and and now people are going into work and being told that
00:49:55.180you know they need to do training which tells them how racist they are and everybody's racist and
00:50:00.540and like it seems to have gone to a different level and as someone who as we talked about at
00:50:05.260the very beginning naively hoped that that we might actually dial some of that back as a result
00:50:10.500of having some kind of external threat to unite us all.
00:50:30.700And I think, as you say, it is difficult to see
00:50:32.900how you can push back against this at this point
00:50:34.840because it has become so much more powerful.
00:50:36.860You know, every institution it feels like.
00:50:38.180And again, in response to the George Floyd killing, and in the weeks after that, the fact that you even saw huge corporations really getting in line to pledge their allegiance, basically, to not the Black Lives Matter movement, or the goals of trying to tackle police brutality, but this broader kind of identitarian idea, the idea that Western societies are white supremacists.
00:50:58.040Not that they have problems with racial inequality and racism, but they are fundamentally hardwired, historically almost, to be these horrendous places.
00:51:06.160This is a very extreme and bonkers and ahistorical view of the world.
00:51:10.680And yet it's become something which is just the kind of orthodoxy,
00:52:20.260oh, they're just people with a platform or powerful people
00:52:22.760who are just complaining about being criticised.
00:52:25.860But the people who are most badly hit by this stuff
00:52:28.080are the people without those platforms,
00:52:29.340People like Brian Leach, the guy who worked in Asda, who lost his job because he shared a Billy Connolly routine and took the mick out of it.
00:52:36.600Exactly, which is insane when you think about it.
00:52:38.700Or it's people like, again, J.K. Rowling became this big focus for a lot of the campaigns, saying it's absurd for her to talk about council culture.
00:52:44.480She's got 40 million Twitter followers and more money than all of us combined.
00:52:47.740But then you see a couple of weeks later, Gillian Phillips, who's a Scottish author, just said she supported J.K. Rowling on Twitter and she got dumped by a publisher.
00:52:54.420It's people further down the pecking order.
00:52:55.760Yeah. So on the one hand, that reminds us that it's easy for us to say, be brave, as it were.
00:53:00.340But it's also, I think, demonstrates this stuff is reaching into ordinary people's lives now.
00:53:04.540This isn't an academic discussion about what trends are going on in intellectual thought on universities and how nuts it is and how XYZ newspaper columnist wasn't allowed to speak at some Oxford college.
00:53:15.320This is in people's lives now. And I think on the one hand, that makes it more serious and more pressing that we do something about it.
00:53:20.820but I think hopefully will also engineer some kind of response to it
00:53:24.680because it's not an academic discussion.
00:53:26.580Well, I had a hilarious example of this when I did BBC Sunday Morning Live.
00:53:30.660It was me and three other panelists, and they asked me, you know,
00:53:34.360why I'm concerned about cancel culture.
00:53:36.100And I went to give examples, and I made this very point
00:53:39.440that it's not about necessarily J.K. Rowling,
00:53:41.960although that's obviously a good example.
00:53:43.620There are people like, and I started to go into examples of ordinary people
00:53:46.560like Nick Buckley, who we had on the show,
00:53:48.220and i got immediately interrupted by the presenter who said we don't have time for examples
00:53:52.400uh so i sort of made the best of it and then the very next speaker went well cancel culture only
00:53:59.620affects the rich and famous i was like i just tried to give you examples and i'm not allowed
00:54:04.440to and then the next person is unchallenged either in in arguing this point now we get emails all the
00:54:09.980time from people talking about this very thing and you know there are people who send us money
00:54:16.180by post with anonymous letters saying i'm so terrified of even in any way leaving any digital
00:54:26.820footprint of supporting your show a show that is very much middle of the road in my opinion we
00:54:31.660talk to people from all over the spectrum about these issues and they are so terrified they won't
00:54:37.120even give us their name or they won't even risk having their name in a letter in an envelope
00:54:41.800uh that they sent to us because that's how terrified many people feel about uh about what's
00:54:47.880going on the idea that this is some kind of elite obsession yeah uh is a joke and it's maintained
00:54:54.460as i say by people like the bbc who don't actually allow people to make the point you've just met
00:54:59.160which is it's about ordinary people not being able to speak their mind which is why i think
00:55:03.340every time something like this happens it creates a big social stir not necessarily one in the elite
00:55:08.640institutions, but it affects a lot of people because they go, I see myself in that story of
00:55:14.400JK Rowling. I see myself in that story of this guy or that guy who's getting cancelled. And I
00:55:20.420think it's a really important point that you've made there. No, definitely. And I think that's
00:55:23.560one of the things which is, again, not to just use any opportunity to put the boot in the left,
00:55:27.640but I think it's so fascinating that they've just hitched their wagon to cancel culture.
00:55:30.940What cancel culture effectively is, is believing in the rights of bosses to sack people for their
00:55:35.080opinions is bosses rights they used to go on about workers rights and they go on about bosses right
00:55:39.220and it fascinates me that they've been so willing to not only just claim that cancer culture isn't
00:55:44.280a thing but actually let's say to be active participants in it all the way through so yeah
00:55:48.340the shamefulness of that is pretty striking and tom thank you so much for coming on the show it's
00:55:53.420been an absolutely brilliant interview uh we always finish with the same question every time
00:55:57.960which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society but we really should be i think
00:56:03.820I would say the kind of social impacts of lockdown which we do talk about a bit but I think just
00:56:08.380needs underlying a little bit more because we talked a lot about the economic effects of lockdown
00:56:12.540we talked a lot about civil liberties effects of lockdown we talk a lot about the mental health
00:56:16.200impacts again which I think is serious but just the kind of broader way in which society could
00:56:20.380fray during this period I think is really quite important I mean there was a ONS Office for
00:56:24.680National Statistics bulletin put out in February I think so a month before this crisis here
00:56:28.600pointing out the issue with kind of again kind of social atomization people were spending far
00:56:33.580much more time online but much less likely to know their neighbours I think a line in it was
00:56:37.300they feel safer walking around their neighbourhoods but they feel less likely to feel like they belong
00:56:41.560to their own neighbourhoods a lot of these kind of long-standing issues with again communities
00:56:45.720feeling like they were fraying a little bit people living more kind of atomised and separate lives
00:56:49.300and I think in a situation where we'll spend what looks like the best part of a year if not more
00:56:53.420being encouraged to be apart from one another being encouraged to be more suspicious of one
00:56:57.920another being encouraged even to snitch on one another really concerned me so obviously I think
00:57:02.820as I was saying earlier, I think the economic impact of all of this has got to be everyone's
00:57:06.260mind front and centre. But I do worry, as we were talking about lockdown and coronavirus
00:57:10.400accelerating various trends, again, that kind of coming apart of civil society and coming apart
00:57:15.260of communities, I think could definitely be a quite awful long term consequence of this period
00:57:20.500if we're not careful. Great stuff. Very positive show today. Thank you for watching, Tom. Where
00:57:25.480can people follow you? So I'm on Twitter at Tom underscore Slater underscore and Spikes publishes
00:57:31.680every day i've also got a bunch of podcasts spike podcasts every week um which i do my colleagues
00:57:35.960fraser meyers and ella wheeler as well as well as a bunch of us both former guests of the show
00:57:40.480both great and the podcast is brilliant uh tom thanks for coming back thank you for watching
00:57:44.760we will see you at 7 p.m uh with a live stream or an interview the very next day after today
00:57:50.200unless it's monday when we have a day off take care and see you soon guys