TRIGGERnometry - Triggernometry- Ep. 3 Liam Halligan

00:00:00.040 Liam Halligan, nice to see you. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

00:00:10.720 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantin Kisson. And this is the

00:00:15.460 show for you if you are sick of people arguing on the internet about subjects they know nothing

00:00:19.980 about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be experts, we ask the experts. We're here at the

00:00:25.740 world-famous Angel Comedy Club, and our amazing expert guest this week is a journalist, economist,

00:00:31.760 broadcaster, and author of Clean Brexit, Liam Halligan.

00:00:35.040 Nice to see you.

00:00:35.520 Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:36.360 Thank you for having me.

00:00:36.760 Thank you.

00:00:45.560 Liam, so before we get started, one of the things we always like to ask our guests is

00:00:49.900 just tell us a little bit about your background.

00:00:51.560 How is it that you are who you are today?

00:00:54.100 Okay, so I was born into a working-class family in London.

00:00:58.200 I was the first person in my family to go to university.

00:01:01.200 I'm from an Irish background, which wasn't always easy growing up in the 70s.

00:01:09.840 I'm an economist by training.

00:01:12.580 I was an academic for a while, then I became a newspaper columnist.

00:01:15.960 So I've written a column in the Daily Telegraph for about almost 20 years now, a weekly column.

00:01:21.600 and I write columns elsewhere too.

00:01:24.280 I spent quite a lot of time in Russia,

00:01:26.000 both in the 90s as a journalist

00:01:27.900 and then more recently

00:01:30.600 I do a show three times a week on CNN

00:01:33.780 so I've got a portfolio career.

00:01:36.540 I'm not, I think a lot of people in British journalism

00:01:39.260 don't quite know where to define me

00:01:41.840 and where to categorize me.

00:01:43.460 I guess that's the way I like it.

00:01:45.200 And one of the things we'll be definitely talking a lot about today is Russia.

00:01:48.820 Tell us a little bit about your time

00:01:50.100 because we've talked about this before.

00:01:51.300 Tell us a little bit about your time in Russia.

00:01:53.120 So I first went to Russia in the early 90s as an academic,

00:01:58.460 and I ended up working alongside a lot of other much more senior economists

00:02:02.980 on the reform program that was going on.

00:02:07.640 It was obviously, for somebody like me, interested in economics and politics.

00:02:11.480 It was like history on speed.

00:02:14.760 Francis Fukuyama had just written in 1989, it's the end of history.

00:02:18.180 No Francis.

00:02:19.680 History sped up.

00:02:21.300 And to be in Russia during that period, it was a very difficult time for a lot of Russian people.

00:02:26.640 It was under Yegor Gaidar, who you remember, the prime minister at the time.

00:02:30.780 It was an era that some people call shock therapy when the Soviet Union had collapsed just a few years before.

00:02:38.020 Prices went through the roof.

00:02:39.880 The planned economy didn't work anymore.

00:02:41.740 You had a nascent private sector that was trying to emerge.

00:02:45.840 You had a lot of Russian people were very, very scared about what was going to happen.

00:02:50.700 They went from sort of superpower to basket case in just a few months.

00:02:54.620 But then again, you know, you had all that incredible ingenuity, skill and drive that the rest of the world knows that Russians have. 0.95

00:03:03.500 So for me as a young man, it was an incredibly interesting time.

00:03:07.340 It made me into a journalist.

00:03:08.780 I ended up as covering Russia for The Economist.

00:03:13.540 And then I came back to the UK in the late 90s when I joined the Financial Times.

00:03:18.300 More recently, from 2010 till 2013, I lived in Russia, but this time working in financial services.

00:03:27.980 I took a few years out of journalism, but I kept writing my columns from about 2008 till 2013,

00:03:36.280 working in an asset management company.

00:03:38.240 And that asset management company focused on the post-communist world,

00:03:43.260 So Russia, the broader CIS, Eastern Europe.

00:03:47.920 And that was a great opportunity for me to really re-engage with that part of the world,

00:03:52.300 which I guess was my first really serious adult research interest was the post-communist world.

00:03:58.700 And I'm mainly a sort of British commentator these days,

00:04:02.380 but I do try and keep a close eye on that region and travel there as often as I can.

00:04:07.580 How do you see Russia's role in the world at the moment?

00:04:10.960 Because you read some papers and they're sort of being portrayed almost as the enemy of the West.

00:04:16.300 Do you buy into that narrative?

00:04:17.900 Well, since the Cold War ended, we've gone through kind of peaks and troughs, haven't we?

00:04:24.160 I mean, you know, Vladimir Putin came in in the late 1990s.

00:04:29.360 Nobody knew who he was. Replace Yeltsin.

00:04:32.080 George Bush Jr. said, I look into his soul, I can see his eyes.

00:04:37.260 There was a sort of real love in.

00:04:38.920 after 9-11 in 2001 folklore has it the first call that George Bush got was from Putin saying

00:04:48.100 you guys want to use our bases in Kazakhstan you want to access Afghanistan from Russian 0.99

00:04:52.720 territory that's absolutely fine and yet since then we've had complete lows like

00:04:59.640 when Russia was seen to have invaded Georgia.

00:05:05.440 Okay, Shakishvili was the darling of the West. 0.98

00:05:10.420 Other people in Russia think Shakishvili

00:05:12.020 was just trying to bounce NATO into letting Georgia in.

00:05:16.520 Of course, Ukraine's been very, very controversial.

00:05:19.660 But again, there are two sides to that story,

00:05:22.660 as serious analysts of the region know.

00:05:25.700 So on the one hand,

00:05:27.280 I think people are completely intrigued by the Russians. Here in London, there are Russians all

00:05:33.580 over the place, and many of them have done great things and are doing great things, and are very,

00:05:37.600 very impressive people. Others seem to be quite, with all respects, sleazy, and where do they get

00:05:42.380 their money from, and so on. So I think Russia is sometimes the other, sometimes it's the enemy, 0.69

00:05:50.260 but on the other hand, people feel, but these are the guys, you know, if we hadn't have had the

00:05:56.060 Soviets in the second world war we would have lost so there's always been this ambivalence

00:06:01.580 there's always been this area air of mystique an intrigue I think as western people we see

00:06:10.480 Russians as Europeans so we judge them by higher standards than we may judge people from elsewhere

00:06:16.360 in the world but we also see them as different to us and I think at the moment it pains me to say

00:06:23.540 because, you know, I've spent a lot of my life in Russia

00:06:28.540 and think highly of that, particularly of the Russian people.

00:06:33.520 I think I wouldn't be truthful if I didn't say

00:06:35.980 that we are now at the post-Cold War low

00:06:38.460 in terms of relations between the Western world,

00:06:42.340 certainly the UK and America and Russia.

00:06:45.500 Maybe you feel the same way.

00:06:46.700 Cold War II, would you say? Are we there yet?

00:06:48.440 No, I don't think it's Cold War II

00:06:50.060 because, you know, in the Cold War,

00:06:52.020 well, you wouldn't be sitting here, right?

00:06:53.620 I couldn't get a visa and go to Moscow.

00:06:58.140 You wouldn't have hundreds of thousands of Western people 1.00

00:07:01.280 living in Moscow as you do.

00:07:04.220 Europe's biggest city, 18 odd million people.

00:07:06.820 You wouldn't have BP owning a fifth of Rosneft,

00:07:12.420 which of course is majority owned by the Russian state.

00:07:15.180 You wouldn't have Siemens, Liber, L'Oreal, Volkswagen,

00:07:20.860 all these thoroughbred Western companies having huge factory presences in Russia.

00:07:26.880 You wouldn't have tons and tons of Russian kids here at British public schools.

00:07:31.300 So culturally, we are completely enmeshed.

00:07:35.640 We always were, you know, so many leading intellectuals in the West,

00:07:40.840 particularly in Britain and America, are actually Russian emigres over the years.

00:07:45.120 We've always been fascinated with Russian culture.

00:07:48.360 No one could say that, you know, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky aren't at the pinnacle of European cultural achievement, because, of course, they are, to say nothing of the great poets and novelists.

00:07:59.280 Yet, of course, we are in a situation where the West and Russia are, in some senses, on the opposite sides of the war in the civil war in Syria.

00:08:10.460 everyone knows who is a takes any interest at all that Syria is strategically incredibly

00:08:18.080 important for the Russians because of the warm water ports not least at Tartus everybody knows

00:08:23.240 that Putin thinks that we should keep Assad where he is where the West having previously thought

00:08:29.380 that now thinks that we should remove Assad then again on the other hand the Western Russia are on

00:08:34.260 the same side when it comes to ridding the region of ISIL and there has been cooperation when it

00:08:42.560 comes to you know strikes to try and keep that Islamic threat on the back foot so and many you 1.00

00:08:51.120 know it's not necessarily an easy thing to say but many serious analysts of the region and

00:08:56.420 leading western think tanks and universities think well you know we can't really solve the

00:09:02.380 The Middle East, or even stabilised the Middle East,

00:09:06.220 without talking to the Iranians, 0.99

00:09:07.940 an emerging regional power broker,

00:09:10.140 of course historically a huge presence in the region,

00:09:13.800 and the Syrians,

00:09:15.260 and the only external force who can do that is Moscow.

00:09:20.420 And is that, do you think, the only reason that,

00:09:22.300 given the antagonism that we now see,

00:09:24.060 that the West is prepared to continue talking to Russia,

00:09:27.300 despite this perception that Russia is the other?

00:09:30.980 is that the reason we're still talking to russia basically no i think i think even during the cold

00:09:36.000 war we were talking to russia we obviously talk to russia a lot more now you know russia still

00:09:40.060 supplying 40 percent of europe's western europe's gas you know there's a there's a hard pipeline now

00:09:45.980 between um uh northern russia and germany and another one being built but much less true for

00:09:53.340 britain isn't it britain gets a lot less of its gas and no it it does it does but you know gas

00:09:58.400 is a fungible thing. If that Russian gas wasn't there, then what would happen to the gas that's

00:10:04.480 in Norway that currently comes to the UK? There is obviously a Western European dependence on

00:10:11.380 Russian energy. Even at the height of the Cold War, there was never any question or never really

00:10:17.260 any credible threat for the Soviet Union to not pump that gas. The Soviet Union at the time needed

00:10:22.280 the hard currency. It needs the hard currency less now, contrary to what we often read in the West,

00:10:27.380 Russia fiscally is an incredibly strong state, has very, very low sovereign debt, and increasingly is able to export its gas east to China.

00:10:38.400 Since sanctions came in, one of the big implications of sanctions, as you know, Konstantin, is that Russia and China have got much closer.

00:10:46.360 You've got pipelines now existing, the ESPO pipeline, the East Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline from Russia to China.

00:10:54.980 Again, another one being built.

00:10:57.400 So Russia does have options, but I don't think, you know, when the Russians stay, even though fiscally it's completely solvent, 0.95

00:11:05.120 it's still getting about 40% to 45% of those state revenues from oil and gas, and a lot of that is from export.

00:11:14.580 So I don't think they're going to stop those energy exports any time soon.

00:11:18.380 Though what's interesting is that the Russians now, as and when they want to, they sort of sidle up to OPEC.

00:11:25.640 They're not members of OPEC, but there's been a kind of Saudi-Russian love-in in recent years

00:11:30.980 to try and keep oil prices relatively low in order to try and spank the U.S. shale producers.

00:11:40.640 Because below $50, the U.S. shale produces, it just doesn't work.

00:11:44.080 All their leverage falls to pieces.

00:11:46.820 Interesting now that the Saudis have got this IPO coming up.

00:11:49.820 They're selling off their huge oil company, Saudi Aramco.

00:11:52.620 They want a higher oil price.

00:11:54.740 And I think one of the implications of these airstrikes in Syria,

00:11:58.380 not a big oil provider, of course,

00:12:00.240 but stoking up concern about the Middle East

00:12:02.420 is that we could see oil prices going much higher now

00:12:04.860 with both the Russians and the Saudis quite happy to see that happen.

00:12:08.920 What's quite interesting is we've seen with the poisoning of the former Russian spy

00:12:13.860 And we've also seen Russian collusion or suspected Russian collusion in the American election.

00:12:19.860 Why do you think Russia is being so aggressive in those instances at the moment?

00:12:24.680 Is it part of a grand strategy or is it just a warning to the West that they're still very much a global superpower?

00:12:31.540 I remember sitting around in various bars in Moscow in the early 90s and I was offered for sale nuclear weapons, tanks, rifles.

00:12:40.400 Oh, you get that in Weberspoons in Croydon as well.

00:12:42.640 Nerve agents, you know, it's like going down Leather Lane in Hoban.

00:12:48.640 No, but seriously, the fact that there's been an attack on British soil

00:12:55.520 in the cathedral town of Salisbury is very, very shocking.

00:12:59.640 And I think Theresa May has played her cards pretty well, actually,

00:13:03.700 in terms of her response.

00:13:05.200 I think the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has slightly overplayed his hand.

00:13:08.540 He still thinks he's a newspaper columnist rather than a Foreign Secretary.

00:13:12.340 well he is yeah we all know we all know what happens to one's pros close to the deadline

00:13:18.060 clearly that was shocking and the british government has to do something and it's been

00:13:26.240 a mighty impressive um so far if the wheels don't come off it's been a mighty impressive

00:13:31.640 uh sort of rallying of diplomatic forces you know this country's still got some very very smart

00:13:38.100 diplomats um on the other hand uh while it was clearly a russian originated substance we still

00:13:46.800 don't really know who implemented the substance it may still be a stretch to say this came straight

00:13:53.340 from the kremlin so that bit i don't think anybody can credibly say that is slam dunk

00:13:59.940 definite is that not a case of reputation the limb because russia does have previous on this

00:14:04.360 with Litvinenko, that was investigated

00:14:06.400 and the conclusions were pretty strong.

00:14:08.620 And I'm not saying the Kremlin didn't do it.

00:14:10.660 All I'm saying is that there are people

00:14:14.960 who would want the Kremlin to look as if they'd done it.

00:14:18.940 We get into incredibly complex issues here.

00:14:23.500 Suffice to say for now that clearly

00:14:26.280 this hasn't done the West's relationship with Russia

00:14:29.260 any good at all.

00:14:31.400 and clearly ahead of the World Cup

00:14:34.820 it wasn't something that is going to endear people to going to Russia

00:14:42.700 which as a sort of citizen of the world is a bit of a shame

00:14:45.680 I was thinking that getting lots of people from Western Europe

00:14:50.960 and the rest of the world to sort of get through that iron curtain of the mind

00:14:55.700 and actually go to this country where, you know,

00:15:00.160 it's not like it's cracked up to be in many ways.

00:15:05.080 The countryside is very beautiful.

00:15:07.020 They're astonishing people.

00:15:09.180 The weather's actually really good in May and June and July.

00:15:12.040 I got my worst ever sunstroke in Moscow.

00:15:15.760 And I think that could have changed quite a lot of people's perceptions about Russia.

00:15:19.300 You know, they'd go to Russia and they'd sort of have a good time

00:15:21.800 because the Russians know how to throw a party 1.00

00:15:24.340 and they generally do a pretty good job of organising international events.

00:15:30.380 But this has clearly put all that back,

00:15:32.540 and it'll be very interesting to see in the weeks and months

00:15:35.240 after we record this podcast

00:15:36.660 the extent to which that diplomatic coalition can hold together

00:15:42.040 as and when more and more evidence emerges, as it always does,

00:15:46.120 about what actually happened.

00:15:48.160 What do you think about their infiltration,

00:15:51.340 infiltration as has been suspected on the American democratic process. Do you think that there was

00:15:56.820 really Russian collusion? And if so, to what degree? Well, anybody that cracks open a history

00:16:02.620 book, it's not a conspiracy theory to say that big countries try and influence each other's

00:16:08.160 elections. I mean, I mean, come on. It's completely clear that that happens. It's completely clear

00:16:14.800 that America tries to influence elections. Britain tries to influence elections. Russia tries to

00:16:19.540 influence elections anyone that doesn't understand that isn't isn't watching very closely uh it's

00:16:26.400 different to say that this was a particularly concerted attempt in order to try and get trump

00:16:32.840 elected uh at the expense of hillary clinton i mean i happen to think i'm no great trump supporter

00:16:39.320 but i think the reason hillary clinton didn't get elected was hillary clinton and if you read you

00:16:44.340 know her book what happened it's not an autobiography it's an alibiography she blames

00:16:48.460 everyone but herself. I don't think there's been credible evidence that there was any

00:16:55.360 particularly concerted attempt by the Russians to influence this election any more than they 0.96

00:17:02.840 tried to influence any election at any time. But of course, in the current climate, there's a very

00:17:08.180 willing audience for that view, particularly among people who detest Trump. And I understand why lots

00:17:14.860 of people to test trump you know he's um his rhetoric and the way he conducts himself is

00:17:20.060 sometimes um pretty shocking um we'll have to wait and see what happens what is clear

00:17:26.120 is that facebook is uh and the tech giants in general now you know we've gone from sort of

00:17:31.780 leaning in to piss off um that you know these t-shirted titans were seen as if they could do

00:17:40.260 no wrong you know do no evil i think was uh the google thing um you can see why they needed it

00:17:46.920 yeah but but now the you know people's the scales are falling from people's eyes um and it's not

00:17:53.160 just that you know my kids constantly on social media uh you know me as a journalist their mom

00:17:59.260 as a journalist we kind of know that our data gets pimped and you you you know you you mentioned

00:18:04.280 something on facebook and suddenly there's an advert to buy it appearing on your twitter feed

00:18:08.480 But the idea that your data is then chopped up and sold and sold and sold and sold again, I think it's starting to alarm people.

00:18:21.780 And these tech giants, they don't pay much tax.

00:18:25.460 They're completely opaque when they pretend to be transparent.

00:18:29.620 They have absolutely enormous market power.

00:18:32.460 I think Amazon now sells 70% of all books sold in America and 50% of all retail in America.

00:18:41.700 Google's 80% of search traffic.

00:18:45.140 I mean, this reminds me, guys, of, again, history.

00:18:48.420 I recently made a documentary about America in the late 19th century, the 1890s and the 1900s,

00:18:56.520 When eventually Franklin Delaney Roosevelt, a Republican unlike FDR in the 30s, he was forced by journalists, actually, to smash up the trust, to smash up the big oil companies, the big sugar trusts, the copper trusts, and actually inject some competition because consumers were getting absolutely shafted.

00:19:21.280 And I wonder if we aren't going to face a sort of similar trust-busting moment of the tech giants in the US.

00:19:30.100 That's very interesting.

00:19:31.300 And this whole sense that, you know, Facebook, whoever's got the most money can pay Facebook to micro-target particular voters in particular constituencies to win elections.

00:19:44.700 and then the whole thing that were Facebook taking Russian money

00:19:48.620 and have they been completely straight with the security services

00:19:52.660 in the US and the UK, it's all feeding into this idea

00:19:56.620 that, you know, that these guys aren't, you know,

00:20:01.240 the kind of goofy, oh, you know, I made a few billion

00:20:03.740 and I came into some inoculation program.

00:20:07.880 Yeah, but you've also destroyed our system of government

00:20:10.600 and you don't pay any tax.

00:20:12.800 Can you not lean in?

00:20:13.880 can you just pay some tax please

00:20:15.680 so I think people are losing

00:20:17.940 their patience and the whole Russia

00:20:20.140 narrative

00:20:21.080 that maybe they've been facilitating

00:20:24.380 enhanced

00:20:26.500 sort of Russian involvement

00:20:28.100 in western elections particularly when those

00:20:30.300 elections are leading

00:20:32.280 to people taking office that the sort of liberal

00:20:34.340 intelligentsia don't like

00:20:36.180 that's really gaining momentum now

00:20:43.880 can i just say you're the first russian i've ever met who can't actually make tea

00:20:49.000 we should put this on camera this is actually that is disgusting what's known in the trade right 0.70

00:20:54.300 as nat's piss anyone who's going to come on this podcast make sure you get the tea sorted out this 0.58

00:21:01.820 is the best bit of the podcast forever now thanks mate we're a vodcast don't we we're a vodcast

00:21:06.820 that's what you're really complaining about where's my t-shirt

00:21:11.840 that we haven't got that in for you.

00:21:15.080 You forgot what you were going to say.

00:21:16.220 No, I remember very well what I was going to say.

00:21:18.460 He's just getting over the criticism of the tea making.

00:21:21.340 I'll be honest with you,

00:21:22.400 that's the only reason we've got you here,

00:21:23.800 Steve Constantine.

00:21:24.780 It's polonium tea, man.

00:21:27.440 No, that's not true.

00:21:29.260 Polonium would taste better.

00:21:30.260 Right, come on. 0.95

00:21:32.720 So, but you mentioned the liberal elite,

00:21:35.320 you mentioned the tech giants, right?

00:21:36.880 One of the interesting things for me

00:21:38.020 is that one of the big criticisms

00:21:39.680 that is now being made of YouTube

00:21:41.220 and Facebook is that there is a liberal bias on all these platforms.

00:21:46.300 So, for example, there are people who have run channels on YouTube

00:21:49.940 like Dave Rubin, we talked about him before.

00:21:52.160 He's finding increasingly that when he interviews conservatives

00:21:54.960 or libertarians even, those videos are being demonetized by YouTube

00:21:59.800 and they're not being pushed and he's losing –

00:22:02.040 people are being randomly unsubscribed from his channel

00:22:04.380 and things like that are happening.

00:22:05.920 So a lot of the conservative voices in these supposedly public squares,

00:22:10.300 which are actually controlled by the t-shirt wearing titans titans that you mentioned they're

00:22:15.620 now saying that actually it's not a public square and is being heavily restricted what do you make

00:22:20.520 of the implications of the of these t-shirt wearing giants for freedom of speech and for

00:22:26.200 the ability to continue have to have genuine conversations about politics like these ones

00:22:30.120 well i've knocked around in the british media most of my adult life and you know it's clear

00:22:37.800 the kind of people who become journalists tend to be more liberal i want to change the world kind

00:22:43.040 of people uh and and you know the people they didn't like at university tend to go off and

00:22:48.040 work for goldman sachs or become lawyers so there's a kind of natural artistic lefty bias to

00:22:54.020 journalism and i'm a sort of amalgam of things i'm fiscally conservative but socially i guess

00:23:01.080 specifically social liberal um so i do i do i do recognize i do recognize a lot of that um

00:23:08.820 but if if the sort of t-shirted titans the t-shirted toe rags i think we should rechristen

00:23:13.820 them if they think they can use their enormous power to you know piss off the gop piss off the 1.00

00:23:21.340 british conservative party they need to i think it's as a democrat as in a small d democrat somebody

00:23:28.300 who believes in democracy, not a member of the Democrat Party in the US, as somebody

00:23:34.220 who believes in democracy, I think actually it's quite important, even though I like small

00:23:38.560 government, that the governments in these big, powerful countries now assert themselves

00:23:43.240 and tell these guys, yeah, you're very clever and you've done very well and you give lots

00:23:49.160 of money to charity, but you're not the government, we're the government and we are elected and

00:23:55.480 that is our mandate and so we're actually going to now and not for the sake of it but because you

00:24:00.120 do need to be reined in we're going to rein you in so they understand that in a democracy where

00:24:05.040 there's ebb and flow between left and right you really don't want to upset unduly go out of your

00:24:11.420 way to upset um a political one side of the political spectrum because in a fair fight

00:24:19.240 they're going to win you know quite a lot of the time i'm not saying that you pander to the right

00:24:24.260 in any way but you know conservatives are quite often in office in the us and the uk

00:24:30.420 and across western europe increasingly so actually uh and i think it would then just be make smart

00:24:36.540 business sense to not just be even not just see to be even-handed if you're if you're controlling

00:24:42.740 the kind of you know the valves and the diodes of of our thought processes because basically you've

00:24:48.760 got a big switch that controls the internet um you would then actually have to be even-handed

00:24:53.480 because it would not make business sense to not be even-handed.

00:24:57.820 I mean, for instance, look, we've got the BBC here in the UK

00:25:00.740 and I'm not the greatest fan of the BBC, but I massively admire it

00:25:04.700 and make a lot of British people feel that way, right?

00:25:08.300 Because it does make incredible programmes,

00:25:11.520 nature programmes and documentaries,

00:25:13.900 really astonishing, world-class, sets the standard for the world.

00:25:19.080 But I think the news is really stodgy.

00:25:21.100 I think there are far too many 0.58

00:25:23.240 sort of posh white people

00:25:24.600 on the news

00:25:26.360 there aren't enough

00:25:27.200 working class people

00:25:28.920 involved with the news

00:25:30.060 there's not enough diversity

00:25:31.180 of any kind

00:25:31.940 gender, race and class

00:25:33.880 but having said that

00:25:36.140 even the BBC

00:25:36.960 which is institutionally

00:25:38.420 kind of left

00:25:39.380 liberal guardian reading

00:25:41.240 and I say that

00:25:42.400 you know

00:25:43.260 I'm talking about

00:25:43.920 many of my closest friends

00:25:44.840 this is confusing to me

00:25:45.880 even the BBC

00:25:47.160 you know

00:25:48.380 it won't take the piss

00:25:50.180 right

00:25:50.620 Most people at the BBC don't like the Tories,

00:25:53.460 but when it comes to an election, they won't take the piss.

00:25:56.260 They'll be even-handed.

00:25:57.380 When it came to the Brexit referendum,

00:25:59.400 and I speak as a Brexiteer,

00:26:01.400 they were, not impeccably, but for the most part,

00:26:04.700 they did really well during the referendum.

00:26:07.080 Well, it's interesting to me because you...

00:26:09.120 And that makes sense.

00:26:09.940 But you say that the BBC is inherently lefty.

00:26:12.840 I know lots of lefties who say it's incredibly right-wing.

00:26:15.720 No, but that's because you know lots of sort of Corbyn Easter nutters. 0.53

00:26:19.160 I know lots of comedians

00:26:22.040 you've got to realise that the people

00:26:24.140 the reason people are ultra left wing

00:26:25.880 is because they don't earn enough to pay tax

00:26:27.640 or because they've got

00:26:30.220 an old man with a trust fund

00:26:31.900 in Liechtenstein and they can pretend that

00:26:33.860 they don't care about money 0.95

00:26:34.960 that is absolutely infuriating

00:26:38.300 to me

00:26:38.800 but what I find interesting is

00:26:40.880 that is so true

00:26:43.100 shall we name names?

00:26:44.880 yeah let's name them, name and shame

00:26:47.380 Name and shame they go to their posh shops

00:26:49.180 where they pay money in order to look like

00:26:51.160 they don't have money.

00:26:52.620 Have you noticed that as well?

00:26:53.880 You know, these ripped jeans, they're expensive.

00:26:55.780 Yeah, yeah, 200 quid for a pair of...

00:26:57.800 Anyway, we're sounding old now.

00:26:59.800 Okay, but...

00:27:00.520 It's because we are old now, that's why.

00:27:02.180 Yeah, that is true.

00:27:03.100 The time is rapidly.

00:27:04.320 But just to go back to the tech giants,

00:27:06.080 I think there is a unification between left and right

00:27:08.300 where we're all getting a little bit pissed off

00:27:10.840 that these people aren't paying tax.

00:27:12.880 Oh, big, big time, big time.

00:27:14.320 and it's not just that they're not paying tax

00:27:17.380 so that is a big part of it

00:27:18.720 it's also that their monopoly power

00:27:21.040 is just taking out a lot of retail variation

00:27:24.620 and smaller businesses

00:27:26.960 and also, you know, so I'm an author

00:27:29.180 I write books, yeah 1.00

00:27:30.600 it is not fair that these bastards 0.99

00:27:34.500 just basically scan my book 0.99

00:27:37.340 and put it on the internet

00:27:38.400 and don't take it down

00:27:39.300 you don't sell many books these days

00:27:41.780 unless it's a really sort of salacious current affairs book

00:27:45.400 because everybody knows within three weeks

00:27:47.780 they can download a PDF.

00:27:49.860 So if you read, there's a wonderful book

00:27:52.280 that I'd recommend to you guys and to all viewers.

00:27:55.780 It's called Move Fast and Break Things by Jonathan Taplin.

00:27:59.060 I wrote a review about it recently on a website called Unheard,

00:28:02.420 U-N-H-E-R-D, as in not part of the herd.

00:28:05.780 Unheard.com where I write a sort of alternative weekly column,

00:28:09.520 not my Telegraph column,

00:28:10.380 more of a kind of sort of a laying back column

00:28:14.120 rather than a sitting at my desk column.

00:28:16.340 And I wrote a review of this book,

00:28:18.140 and it really is an amazing book.

00:28:19.320 So Jonathan Taplin was a music producer.

00:28:21.360 He worked with some of the greats, including Bob Dylan.

00:28:23.680 And he wrote a book, and it was over a year ago now,

00:28:25.600 a long time before all this tech giant stuff,

00:28:27.940 this discontent blew up, predicting the lot

00:28:30.880 because these guys have just taken away the living

00:28:34.800 of so many artists and musicians and authors

00:28:39.300 and it cannot be right that you can spend a huge amount of time producing content you know we're

00:28:46.400 all content providers we're writers we're comedians whatever we are all we have is our

00:28:50.900 creativity and it's pathetic i know but this is what we do it's not fair if somebody can just

00:28:57.420 reproduce it and distribute it and get advertising around the distribution of your creative output

00:29:03.220 and not pay you and that's basically what's happening and this is another way that society

00:29:10.200 is going to get really upset with these guys because when the creative people start getting

00:29:14.440 upset and they're starting to get upset now that um and jonathan taplin really puts his finger on

00:29:20.420 that move fast and break things was uh zuckerberg's phrase in the early days of facebook if we're not

00:29:26.000 moving fast and breaking things we're not moving fast enough you know a really laudable

00:29:30.780 idea you know be disruptive um innovate create fantastic but now they really are breaking things

00:29:39.640 they're breaking the ability of of artistic people to make money from their music and from their

00:29:46.040 from their writing and so we end up with you know there's so much less choice in music the internet

00:29:53.280 hasn't given us choice than when i was a kid it's so hard to be an alternative artist now an

00:29:58.320 alternative musician because there's just a few little songs that get picked by somebody in a

00:30:03.860 room somewhere and they're the ones that get hammered on Facebook and Google and go everywhere

00:30:08.360 and go viral and nothing else gets a look in and nothing else can make a living because

00:30:12.440 because it's just reproduced on the internet and and the tech giants don't do anything to

00:30:18.320 take down stuff when copyright's clearly being broken left right and center

00:30:28.320 well let's talk about your book uh clean brexit uh tell us a little bit about what made you write

00:30:34.860 it and what was the message you wanted to send to the world with it it's you know quite a lot

00:30:39.640 of the columns i write as people often call them sort of fire breathing and and very polemical and

00:30:45.380 all the rest of it uh but i have got the inside me there's a sort of inner nerd um and this was

00:30:51.820 my inner nerd coming to the fore um so i was um i was very much against the uk joining the single

00:30:59.480 currency uh there was a big debate about that in the late 90s in the early 2000s uh and i wrote a

00:31:05.380 lot of the time i think the single currency will eventually collapse i don't think it'll work

00:31:08.900 and of course a lot of my very liberal right on friends said oh you horrible person why don't you

00:31:14.940 want to join the single currency you must be a nazi or something yeah we've heard that counter

00:31:19.840 argument many times back then already yeah yeah absolutely absolutely no no i would comply i know

00:31:25.560 i would retort i've just read a lot about the history of currency unions um and the fact that

00:31:31.080 they always split up unless there's sort of lots and lots of political union which was never going

00:31:35.000 to happen in europe so i was always a sort of emu skeptic person not that i didn't like birds with

00:31:41.740 feathers emu's european monetary union i was always skeptical of the project of european

00:31:47.060 monetary union and i always felt and i wrote this back in the late 90s uh many times that it would

00:31:53.120 lead to you know the the european union which i broadly supported the idea of free trade with

00:31:59.140 more broadly free trade and doing stuff together i thought single currency would make it incoherent

00:32:05.180 but i was always a supporter of britain on balance staying within the eu but then you had the treaty

00:32:11.300 of lisbon you had the treaty of nice these incredibly centralizing treaties and you had

00:32:17.260 countries um voting against them and basically being ignored by brussels and told to vote again

00:32:23.640 and people the the eu i think in the last 10 years started to become anti-democratic not just

00:32:30.100 undemocratic but anti-democratic uh and i started to get increasingly upset that britain was trying

00:32:36.980 to negotiate a new model of doing things, looser, more democratic, collaborating and

00:32:43.880 cooperating without trying to subsume more and more power away from local politicians

00:32:49.280 here in the UK.

00:32:50.760 And the tipping point for me was when David Cameron tried to renegotiate with the European 0.86

00:32:55.400 Union, you'll remember it, back in early 2016, and they just basically said, you know, piss

00:33:00.460 off.

00:33:01.240 We're not going to change it in any way.

00:33:04.380 and Cameron knew I think then that he had a fight on his hands if he was going to win

00:33:09.400 this referendum so it was at that point that I decided I would actually argue for Britain to

00:33:16.320 leave the European Union and I did a huge amount of work researching it researching the trade deals

00:33:23.320 that the European Union had done the trade deals that it hadn't done the trade deals that Britain

00:33:27.940 was likely to be able to do outside of the European Union and I decided in the end as the

00:33:35.640 referendum approached there was so much nonsense being spoken on the mainstream media I don't think

00:33:41.160 people well most people weren't deliberately lying but lots of things were being said that were just

00:33:45.880 factually wrong about our relationship with the rest of the world about our relationship with

00:33:51.740 Europe that I got together with another economist and we wrote a sort of fast-paced and accessible

00:33:59.200 but really quite detailed book with lots of footnotes about the history of the European

00:34:03.640 Union and about the best way as we saw it to negotiate our exit. So you think Brexit will

00:34:11.220 broadly be a positive thing for this country? I think it will be broadly a positive. I'm afraid

00:34:15.000 I do strike strike me down I do I think it I think the single our membership of what we call 1.00

00:34:21.580 the single market is the benefits are massively overstated there's no single market in services

00:34:27.320 and we're of course a service superpower I think the benefits of being inside the customs union

00:34:33.240 are massively overstated being in the customs union means that our consumers pay far far more

00:34:40.860 for all imports from outside the European Union.

00:34:44.240 It means we can't cut trade deals with the rest of the world 0.99

00:34:47.560 outside the European Union.

00:34:49.420 I mean, I remember when we joined what was called

00:34:51.380 the European Economic Community, I was about five years old.

00:34:55.160 Back then, it was 40% of the world, yeah,

00:34:58.520 even though it only had, you know, nine countries when we joined.

00:35:02.500 Now it's, when we leave, it will be 15% of the world economy,

00:35:06.440 even though it will have 27 countries.

00:35:08.000 So the growth is beyond Europe now.

00:35:13.160 The world population is beyond Europe. 0.91

00:35:15.680 The UK is a European country, obviously,

00:35:19.160 but it really has a lot of very, very interesting cultural and practical

00:35:24.020 and logistical connections with the rest of the world.

00:35:26.980 And I think it's going to be much better for our kids and our grandkids

00:35:30.380 if we spend a lot more of our time, effort, diplomatic and commercial energy

00:35:35.500 connecting to and trading with the rest of the world

00:35:40.840 rather than the European Union.

00:35:42.680 We will always trade with the European Union,

00:35:45.020 but the sense has been created that if we're not in the European Union,

00:35:49.640 we won't trade with the European Union.

00:35:52.040 Really?

00:35:53.100 America does over $300 billion of trade a year with the European Union

00:35:57.560 from outside the European Union.

00:35:59.500 China does huge amounts of trade with the European Union,

00:36:01.960 as does Japan, from outside the European Union.

00:36:04.520 So I felt there were real scare tactics going on. Some of the stuff coming out of the British Treasury and the Bank of England and other sort of international organisations like the OECD, a sort of posh Western think tank in France.

00:36:19.000 I mean, I knew as an economist what they were saying was utter, utter nonsense and deliberately designed to try and frighten the British people into voting to stay inside the European Union.

00:36:31.440 but the European Union is basically a protectionist club big companies like it that's why they pour

00:36:37.480 so much money into publicity to support it small companies where the real growth and energy is in

00:36:44.400 this country tend not to like the European Union and then the British people in their wisdom even 0.99

00:36:49.780 though they were called thick and stupid and racist and xenophobic they voted the way they 0.97

00:36:55.480 voted and i happen to think um that was an astonishing outcome it is difficult to um go 0.99

00:37:04.100 through the process of brexit all the complaints now are about the process of brexit the eu

00:37:09.420 or brussels in particular a bunch of unelected um you know not particularly clever people

00:37:15.380 um very unimpressive a lot of these um sort of life civil servants in brussels they're making

00:37:21.960 it as difficult as they possibly can a lot of the media in the UK doesn't want it to happen so it's

00:37:27.540 making it sound as difficult as it possibly can and yet still despite sort of ultra remainers 1.00

00:37:33.600 trying to reverse the biggest act of democracy in British history the polls show that you know

00:37:39.200 a majority of people still want to leave I think it'll be absolutely fine I think it will be 0.90

00:37:44.580 absolutely fine and I think there will be other my hope is not that the European Union suffers in

00:37:51.120 any way my hope is that a very big economy like the uk leaving and making a success of of being

00:37:58.760 outside the european union while still trading with the european union doesn't lead to the

00:38:03.460 european union getting weaker but it convinces people that the european union should be looser

00:38:09.100 and more democratic and less kind of dirigist and always pushing for the sort of super state status

00:38:17.500 now that's interesting that you're talking about

00:38:20.900 scare stories because I've been reading

00:38:22.440 I read the papers a lot and

00:38:24.520 you always hear in the papers

00:38:26.440 whether it's from the Times, the Telegraph

00:38:28.840 or from the Guardian that these banks

00:38:30.840 are going to be leaving, we are famously

00:38:32.880 that's where we generate a lot of our tax income

00:38:34.900 from, can you see these big banks

00:38:36.980 leaving the city of London? No, it's complete nonsense

00:38:38.940 Lloyd Blankfein

00:38:40.140 the CEO of Goldman Sachs, he's sort of

00:38:42.700 texting, tweeting

00:38:44.440 oh I'll be spending less time in London 0.99

00:38:46.840 Well, why the fuck are you building your European headquarters in Farringdon, mate? 0.97

00:38:51.820 And he's come out in the last couple of days. 0.99

00:38:54.580 It's got almost no publicity saying, oh, yeah, well, maybe we'll stay in London.

00:38:57.880 Yeah, of course you'll bloody stay in London because it's the financial capital of the world.

00:39:02.440 Certainly, it's one of the top two financial capital of the world, completely irrefutably.

00:39:06.600 London isn't competing with Frankfurt or Paris.

00:39:09.840 Frankfurt's barely in the top 20 financial cities in the world.

00:39:12.720 Paris is barely in the top 30.

00:39:14.320 London's competing with Singapore and New York, yeah?

00:39:20.460 And the idea that the world's major banks

00:39:23.960 won't want to be in London is just complete nonsense.

00:39:26.760 London is even the banking capital of the Eurozone, right?

00:39:30.180 And if you listen to people like Wolfgang Schauble,

00:39:33.940 who's the former German finance minister,

00:39:36.420 incredibly financially literate bloke,

00:39:38.140 a finance minister who actually knows about finance,

00:39:40.480 a rare thing.

00:39:42.820 yeah he was saying at the time barely reported look we really don't want to cut off from London

00:39:48.600 because most German companies big German companies when they want to raise money and sell bonds they

00:39:53.700 do it in London so it was always nonsense and I'm afraid that was what kind of pissed me off

00:39:59.460 enough to write the book because I kept listening to the television I kept hearing on the radio stuff

00:40:04.400 that was being spurted out from all the big corporate bodies in the UK the CBI and and so on

00:40:11.320 saying that all this woe was going to happen.

00:40:13.840 And I just knew the common sense was that it was nonsense.

00:40:17.620 I was going to say, so what do you think about the Brexit campaign?

00:40:20.560 Because now there was a, I don't know if you saw it,

00:40:22.340 there was an article in the Observer yesterday

00:40:24.220 that some of the funds weren't being used

00:40:27.060 or there was slight misappropriation of funds and all the rest of it.

00:40:31.480 There was a $350 million for the NHS,

00:40:34.020 which turns out somewhat of a lie.

00:40:36.700 Really? We haven't left yet?

00:40:38.940 Well, OK, fair enough.

00:40:40.980 But this is my point, right?

00:40:42.620 Oh, it's a lie.

00:40:43.360 No, it isn't.

00:40:44.480 When we leave, it is a fact that we won't pay £10 billion a year to the EU.

00:40:50.920 And, OK, so what do you want to do with that £10 billion?

00:40:53.680 In fact, it would have been more now because the bill's going up.

00:40:57.440 So we can spend that money on the NHS if we want to.

00:41:01.240 It's not a lie.

00:41:02.440 We haven't left.

00:41:04.200 We are still paying every year.

00:41:06.240 And we will still pay every year during the transition period.

00:41:09.320 I was the guy who, back in 2016, wrote the pamphlet that said we need a transition period because the EU funding framework is a seven-year thing that goes all the way to 2020.

00:41:22.680 So in order to make the negotiation work, let's keep paying to 2020 and call it a transition period to keep everybody calm.

00:41:30.100 That's ultimately what happened.

00:41:32.180 We were always going to keep paying until the transition period, and when we stop paying, then we'll have money that we're not paying to Europe because we've been the second biggest net contributor to the EU since we entered, and then we can spend that money on other things.

00:41:48.600 Well, this is an interesting point for me as an immigrant in this country.

00:41:51.860 One of the things that we've discussed with several guests already is this idea that during the campaign, the allegation was made and you referred to that anyone who votes for Brexit or most people who vote for Brexit do so because they're racist or xenophobic.

00:42:04.240 How much of the conversation has become what you just picked up on, which is sloganized?

00:42:09.040 Essentially, it's a fact free conversation. 1.00

00:42:11.520 And we're just talking about you're racist or you're stupid. 0.99

00:42:14.280 indeed there was there have been sort of fact-free elements on both sides and i think maybe there's 1.00

00:42:19.720 been some financial impropriety on both sides i i wasn't involved in the i mean i could have been

00:42:25.080 involved with the leave side if i wanted to but i didn't i wanted to be an independent person just

00:42:30.800 saying uh what i thought um um i think it did become quite fact-free there was sloganizing but

00:42:40.880 some of us in the media in our columns and our broadcasts were trying to be a bit more high

00:42:45.120 fiber and i've often found myself during the referendum people literally stopping me in the

00:42:50.680 street and emailing me hundreds of emails from people oh oh can you just explain that to me i've

00:42:56.600 been doing my research and you know ordinary punters did a huge amount of work to try and

00:43:02.340 understand what was going on and i think a lot of the british media did lapse into just punch and

00:43:07.860 duty debates um but i think there were some people on both sides and people on neither side who were

00:43:14.840 trying to to give the facts i was disappointed though in the in the british government in

00:43:21.200 cameron's government um you know it has to be recorded because it's true and it's outrageous

00:43:27.200 that the british government two days before we have this thing called purda where the government

00:43:32.260 isn't allowed to spend any more government money on a referendum or an election.

00:43:39.140 And two days before that, the British government used taxpayers' money,

00:43:42.420 £9 million, to distribute a completely, overwhelmingly pro-Remain information leaflet.

00:43:50.620 And that £9 million didn't then count the state money which the Remain side got,

00:43:55.760 which was meant to be even with the leaf side.

00:43:57.760 so that was really really uh at best it was it was sly um it was it was deeply unfair

00:44:06.740 but did you have people calling you racist or xenophobic time what was that like

00:44:11.280 oh it's it's obviously very very very distressing i'm i am you know i'm somebody who grew up with

00:44:19.680 a name like liam halligan when britain and ireland were basically at war and you know

00:44:25.040 and back then the uk was a lot less tolerant than it is now you know my my my family are

00:44:31.720 you know my father's still around um grew up in the west of ireland speaking gaelic you know he

00:44:39.160 he in his heart he's very grateful to the uk he was able to come here and make a living that he

00:44:43.860 couldn't have made in rural ireland back in the day so i'm not complaining um but it isn't nice

00:44:49.920 when you are absolutely of immigrant stock yourself and you've tried to you know make

00:44:54.400 your way in a society and bring other people up behind you um and grew up in an incredibly

00:45:01.680 multicultural community as i did uh in in in northwest london it's horrible i mean it's just 1.00

00:45:09.200 a character assassination isn't it it's just a smear and from people who don't know you personally

00:45:13.280 they've never seen you and the people who tend to accuse other people of race racism in this country

00:45:17.800 tend to be people who grew up in a sort of all-white environment and didn't meet a sort of

00:45:22.700 black person until they went to Oxford you know I mean it's really it's outrageous to call someone

00:45:28.200 like me that with the background that I have um but you know that's that's the way it is when

00:45:33.920 people have sensed that you know more than they do and you've done your research they'll try and

00:45:39.460 character assassinate you to discredit you I think part of the problem with the Brexit movement for

00:45:45.080 instance my father who is he married an immigrant my mother's Latin American and he's very much pro

00:45:50.300 brexit and he will sit down with people and explain why i think what didn't help with brexit

00:45:54.560 is the fact you have people like katie hopkins coming out in support of it and immediately you

00:45:59.200 have a person like that or you know farage coming out and fronting it and immediately that tarnishes

00:46:04.300 what is potentially i agree i agree and um you know without ukip winning 13 of the vote as they

00:46:12.860 did um in the 2015 election without ukip having won the european elections in 2014 there wouldn't

00:46:21.740 have been a referendum cameron gave a referendum because he knew that ukip were going to just wipe

00:46:26.620 out a lot of a lot of um but they're going to remake the electoral map i mean ukip they didn't

00:46:32.380 but they got one seat in the 2015 uh general election but they came second in about 160 seats

00:46:39.280 No, no, they've got something like 3 million votes.

00:46:41.900 Absolutely, absolutely astonishing.

00:46:43.960 They got 13% of the vote in the 2015 general election.

00:46:48.380 So Farage rightly has his footnote in history, rightly.

00:46:53.880 And you've got to give the guy credit for that.

00:46:56.140 On the other hand, some of the things he says I really don't approve of,

00:47:00.980 standing in front of a poster full of people with dark complexions,

00:47:06.100 sort of breaking point.

00:47:07.040 my stomach turned that was a complete mistake i think a lot of what leave eu did as opposed to

00:47:13.440 vote leave so vote leave was the official campaign leave eu was the sort of farage guys who were a

00:47:20.020 lot more hard line i think leave eu you know did they subtract votes i think farage being around

00:47:26.900 a lot subtracted votes i think if farage had gone on holiday three months before the referendum

00:47:32.400 then you'd have got a bigger um majority in favor of brexit because farage didn't convince anybody

00:47:40.320 who was in two minds um no moderate is going to look at farage and think oh i agree with you

00:47:45.560 and yet and yet farage was always the guy put up in the debates or nearly always as the kind of

00:47:51.720 pro-brexit voice which i thought was wrong there are many many moderate people who are pro-brexit

00:47:57.520 You know, and I think Gisela Stewart, who viewers may not know, she really came to the fore. So this is a German woman, right, of the Labour Party with a massive record on human rights, who negotiated the UK's side during the EU constitution, a totally signed up Europhile.

00:48:17.860 and she was Brexit because she thought

00:48:19.820 the EU had become overbearing

00:48:21.260 and when she was on the public debates

00:48:23.960 and on the television representing the Brexit side

00:48:26.580 the polls went wild

00:48:28.280 because you had a lot of middle aged people

00:48:30.080 moderate people, particularly moderate women

00:48:32.340 saying she's amazing

00:48:34.300 whereas if it's always Farage's Brexit

00:48:37.600 people are thinking well

00:48:38.460 I can see all these reasons for Brexit

00:48:40.280 and I've done my reading and all that

00:48:42.360 but I just think Farage is turning me off

00:48:45.260 so I'm going to stick with Remain

00:48:47.280 So I actually think Farage was a net subtraction.

00:48:49.460 I completely, I know the guy.

00:48:51.200 You know, I congratulate him for getting the referendum.

00:48:54.580 Absolutely.

00:48:55.280 And I congratulate him for saying what he believes and campaigning.

00:48:58.840 He's not a racist.

00:49:00.200 You know, these guys aren't the BNP.

00:49:01.920 They don't want to deport people.

00:49:04.000 You know, there are many sort of reasonable people in UKIP,

00:49:08.200 people I know quite well.

00:49:09.280 I'm not a UKIP supporter because I think they go a little bit too far

00:49:12.640 in many areas.

00:49:14.980 and I don't think they're kind of

00:49:16.940 global enough in their outlook

00:49:18.440 but I think during the referendum if Farage had gone

00:49:20.860 on holiday then the

00:49:22.360 majority in favour of Brexit would have

00:49:24.920 been more like 60-40. No I completely

00:49:27.120 agree with you because

00:49:28.060 because

00:49:30.140 I thought you were going to say you're completely

00:49:33.060 wrong. But

00:49:34.720 no this is it. I really hate

00:49:37.140 this sort of

00:49:38.720 mantra that Brexit equals

00:49:41.160 racism. It's stupid and it's 1.00

00:49:43.020 wrong and it's pure and it's pathetic and if it actually been more people like yourself coming 1.00

00:49:48.460 out and going look this is why i vote brexit a b c d e and f i'd be like okay i'll go away and i'll 0.95

00:49:53.620 have a think about it the fact you just get someone like katie hopkins wheeled out and the

00:49:57.940 moment she could argue that white is you know is you know white is white and i'd still be like i'm

00:50:04.220 not sure if why he really is white katie considering we need a final solution on muslims do you see 0.91

00:50:09.960 what i mean but mad well in interest of full disclosure both francis and i voted to remain

00:50:15.040 uh but actually for both well certainly for me i don't want to speak for france it was quite a

00:50:18.740 wake-up moment actually yeah both brexit and trump this realization that maybe the liberal bubble

00:50:23.760 that i'd been living in didn't have everything right uh but actually i mean it doesn't mean

00:50:29.280 though that all people who voted brexit support trump which is another no i didn't mean which is

00:50:33.980 another you know little segue that is i mean look since we've had this referendum there has been

00:50:40.080 a constant drumbeat of negativity there are people in this country who are determined to

00:50:46.440 reverse this referendum a lot of them are sitting at taxpayers expense unelected in that ermine

00:50:53.300 clad chamber of of remain which is the house of lords and and nothing could be more damaging for

00:51:03.280 british democracy you had an astonishing um almost sort of democratic uprising from regions of the

00:51:12.840 uk um um where unexpectedly they voted for brexit and if if we try and sort of lawyer our way out of

00:51:24.160 that and and and stitch up the results so people don't get to leave the european union and that

00:51:32.500 means leaving the single market and that means leaving the customs union these are the two main

00:51:36.780 legal structures of the european union then i'm not going to sit here and i wouldn't go on

00:51:42.540 television or write in my newspaper columns that there's going to be civil unrest um you wouldn't

00:51:47.380 be surprised would you i'm not i'm not going to say i'm not going to predict that um but what i

00:51:51.260 am going to say is that you will get millions of british people who will never vote again

00:51:57.840 and will always be upset that their vote has been erased.

00:52:03.140 You know, people who shop at Lidl, yeah,

00:52:05.420 their vote is just as important as people who shop at Waitrose.

00:52:09.200 People who are plumbers and roofers, yeah,

00:52:12.600 are just as important as people, you know,

00:52:15.240 who got a nice degree from a sort of mid-ranking university

00:52:18.880 and work at a law firm.

00:52:21.560 It's one person, one vote.

00:52:23.320 It's called democracy.

00:52:24.160 If you don't like it, go to North Korea.

00:52:26.820 I was going to insult you by saying go to Russia.

00:52:30.720 Or Venezuela, where my mum's from.

00:52:33.260 Liam and I have a long-running thing about Russia.

00:52:35.980 But I feel about Britain, actually, much like you feel about Russia.

00:52:39.080 It's a country that I've been privileged to live in.

00:52:42.140 I feel very grateful for the experience.

00:52:43.660 Yeah, and I'm sure you go back to Russia 0.99

00:52:46.740 and you hear a lot of negativity about Britain

00:52:49.740 and you say, well, okay, that's true.

00:52:51.380 But actually, and I'm similar with Russia

00:52:54.280 Because I know Russia, you know, personally a lot more than most British people do, just as you clearly know Britain incredibly well now, having lived there for so long and being sort of so culturally immersed than most people living in Russia.

00:53:07.740 And, you know, you probably, you know, when you go home, you know, if you mix in certain circles, what you say about the UK could be quite unpopular.

00:53:18.200 But you know it's true, right?

00:53:20.040 And so you have to say it.

00:53:21.580 I mean, you could wimp out and not say it.

00:53:24.280 And to a much lesser degree, but there's some similarity with me when I hear things like, you know, I spent a lot of my life sort of over the years studying the Russian economy.

00:53:36.020 That was what I really specialized in.

00:53:38.240 And when I hear things like, oh, it's all oil and gas, I just have to say, well, it isn't actually 18 percent of GDP is oil and gas.

00:53:48.660 Yeah.

00:53:48.760 The service sector is twice as big as the oil and gas sector.

00:53:52.160 Because if you don't say that, then, I mean, what's the point?

00:53:56.040 Well, Liam, just to finish up on Brexit, what I wanted to say, first of all, as an immigrant here,

00:54:00.960 one of the things that really pissed me off about the Brexit campaign was this idea that British people are raised as xenophobes.

00:54:06.940 And even though I voted remain, there was nothing that annoyed me more than that,

00:54:11.640 because I've lived in this country for a very long time, and Britain is one of the most tolerant countries.

00:54:15.840 Well, you're a Russian, he's Venezuelan, and I'm a plastic paddy, 1.00

00:54:19.580 and we're sitting here doing our stuff and saying what we want.

00:54:23.420 We've made a decent living, our families have made decent livings,

00:54:26.500 and we love Britain, right?

00:54:27.660 Yeah, absolutely.

00:54:28.960 So here's the question.

00:54:30.780 Britain doesn't always love us.

00:54:34.080 But you've made a very solid case for why, economically, Brexit is a good thing.

00:54:39.200 But is not the legacy of Brexit the social lack of cohesion

00:54:42.820 and the social conflict that we now find ourselves in,

00:54:46.260 where people are, after the referendum,

00:54:48.160 going, if you voted for Brexit, unfriend me,

00:54:50.580 or I'm never speaking to you again,

00:54:52.600 literally families being torn apart by the vote,

00:54:55.760 things like that.

00:54:56.320 Is that not also part of it?

00:54:57.440 It depends. It's all in our hands, Constantine.

00:54:58.900 It depends how we handle it.

00:55:00.240 I mean, do we grow up and realise that people can,

00:55:03.800 you know, it's completely reasonable to have,

00:55:07.140 in a close election, to come down on different sides?

00:55:10.520 Will we use the newfound freedoms that we have,

00:55:14.400 things we can't really do effectively inside the European Union,

00:55:17.720 like set our taxation the way we want to,

00:55:21.380 like do regional policy the way we want to,

00:55:23.980 have policy towards our farms, our fishing communities, our energy markets?

00:55:29.100 There's lots of ways that the EU has constrained this country's domestic policymaking.

00:55:35.020 If we respond to these new freedoms in a way that's inclusive,

00:55:38.960 in a way that rebalances the UK economy

00:55:43.680 away from just London and the South East

00:55:46.480 towards the regions more.

00:55:48.140 I mean, a lot of my book with Gerard Lyons, Clean Brexit,

00:55:51.460 is about what we can do once we've left.

00:55:54.880 The whole of the back half of it, actually,

00:55:57.100 and a big thing that we emphasize,

00:55:58.840 is regional policy outside the European Union.

00:56:02.500 And I certainly hope that we do really rebalance this country.

00:56:06.120 We have a tremendous opportunity to build, well, not just sort of try and empower alternative growth centres apart from London and the South East.

00:56:21.140 Let's link up those northern cities, those great cities known around the world for creativity, ingenuity.

00:56:28.040 you know liverpool cultural capital of popular music manchester you know one of the main sources

00:56:35.920 of the industrial revolution these are incredible places and people want to invest there people want

00:56:41.920 to be associated with them they've got fantastic universities they've got a lot of human capital

00:56:47.140 they've been on their uppers kind of in the last generation or two but you know let's let's

00:56:52.960 build international airports there let's bring in investment from around the world let's project

00:56:58.540 those cities around the world and let's try and encourage more of our young people to live in

00:57:04.120 those cities rather than thinking that you have to come to london to make a success of yourself

00:57:08.240 no you don't germany's not like that it's not like you have to go to berlin to make a success

00:57:13.460 for yourself well there's frankfurt there's munich there are regional powerhouses the uk needs to

00:57:19.220 become a much more regional country not all about london the southeast isn't it fantastic to have

00:57:24.460 london you know one of the world cities in our country isn't it great but i think it's too much

00:57:30.840 we've overemphasized london at the expense of these other countries at these other parts of

00:57:34.980 the country and outside the european union i think we've got a major chance to put that right

00:57:40.020 liam but you're talking at a very cerebral level you're obviously a very knowledgeable

00:57:43.500 very intelligent guy and we're very grateful to have you here but that's a buck coming

00:57:46.860 yeah there is there is a bug coming well the only but actually is nothing to do with you is that

00:57:53.020 these conversations are not being had at that cerebral level they're being had on a kind of 0.54

00:57:57.900 facebook you're racist you're xenophobe you're this you're that don't ever speak to me again 0.97

00:58:02.160 kind of level and that is because that is because a lot of people are still hoping that this thing 0.95

00:58:09.180 can be reversed and you know if you cause people racist enough we can we can have another referendum

00:58:14.960 If we discredit this process enough, then people are going to want to reverse it.

00:58:19.820 If we can spread enough scare stories about how the economy is going to collapse

00:58:24.060 and there's this cliff edge and Goldman Sachs are going to leave

00:58:27.340 and Deutsche Bank are going to leave, then maybe people will be scared

00:58:30.740 and we can have another referendum.

00:58:32.940 Vince Cable wants another referendum because he didn't agree with the first one.

00:58:36.460 This is a guy who told his own party conference in September 2016 after the referendum

00:58:43.500 that I really don't think we can insult the electorate

00:58:46.200 by having another referendum.

00:58:47.680 And that was on the record.

00:58:49.140 It was recorded.

00:58:50.380 And yet suddenly he changes his mind and thinks,

00:58:53.040 oh, of course we need another referendum

00:58:54.320 because he's trying to remake his party.

00:58:57.880 And the Lib Dems, since they've said that,

00:58:59.540 they've gone nowhere in the polls.

00:59:01.080 I mean, this is a great party.

00:59:02.420 I've got a real soft spot for the Lib Dems.

00:59:04.440 We need the Lib Dems in British politics. 0.99

00:59:06.940 But they went to the electorate in 2017 with this,

00:59:10.260 we're going to reverse Brexit. 0.95

00:59:11.420 And they got the lowest result in their history.

00:59:13.500 the SNP went to the electorate in Scotland with we're going to reverse Brexit and they and they

00:59:19.720 lost a third of their seats you know I mean come on it's these cloying elites thinking that they

00:59:26.260 can reverse Brexit because it kind of undermines their sensibilities they've got to understand

00:59:31.460 that people they don't who voted against them are just as important as they are when it comes to

00:59:37.220 the ballot box that's what democracy is about and we they have to get on with it and we have to make

00:59:41.680 the best of it people who voted leave and have a vision of how good it could be and people who

00:59:47.320 voted remain uh and who are perhaps a little bit more um um you know need to be a bit a little bit

00:59:55.860 less enthusiastic but the real key to this whole thing is that there is a big chunk of people who

01:00:02.740 voted remain yeah in good faith many of whom i love uh you know literally members of my closest

01:00:10.120 family and they realize okay um it's not didn't go the way i wanted to go but what would it be

01:00:17.600 like if every time we have some sort of democratic situation we contest the result to for years and

01:00:24.040 years in the future well this is it what we have is chaos which is essentially what is happening

01:00:28.640 now i mean if you think about it i'm i've never voted conservative i vote labor but i would never

01:00:34.480 dream once teresa may got in of demanding a recount i just wouldn't because frankly not

01:00:39.500 unless there was absolute transgression yeah we have had electoral fraud in this country i mean

01:00:44.540 there was a famous case in in blackburn uh a few years ago if there's electoral fraud of course

01:00:49.760 it's got to be rooted out um but of but of course an election is different to a referendum in that

01:00:56.520 an election is part of a natural cycle um and alistair campbell often says oh you know when

01:01:02.920 you lose the election you don't stop campaigning no alistair because that's an election yeah and

01:01:07.880 this is a referendum and parliament voted by six to one for the bill to hold a referendum in early

01:01:15.360 2016 to give this vote to the british people and to now try and reverse that and the point about

01:01:22.680 brexit is that then once we've brexited parliament becomes a lot more powerful because all these laws

01:01:28.020 come back to parliament so you have people in parliament saying well you said you know we wanted

01:01:31.880 you wanted parliament to be powerful yeah i do after brexit parliament will have a lot more power

01:01:37.080 You are now trying to exert Parliament's right to do something to reverse Brexit that makes it less powerful.

01:01:43.220 Well, Liam, there's only one counter argument that's not answered by that, which is would Leave not be doing the same thing right now if you'd lost?

01:01:50.340 No, why would they?

01:01:52.380 Well, no, you'd have to you'd have to build up.

01:01:56.080 I mean, Leave waited like 40 years.

01:01:59.420 We joined we joined the EU.

01:02:01.560 You probably don't know this.

01:02:02.820 We joined the European community without a referendum.

01:02:05.260 we went in in 73 by diktat that was uh ted heath um but you don't think nigel farage will be out

01:02:13.380 now campaigning to reverse it was only it was only two years after it was only two years after

01:02:18.060 that we actually had a referendum in 1975 but my point is you don't think nigel farage would be out 0.79

01:02:23.620 on the streets now campaigning for a second referendum if he'd lost i don't think i don't

01:02:27.820 think the body politic would have given him a second referendum i mean look at look what's

01:02:31.800 happening in a lot of the

01:02:33.800 remainers, the ultra-remainers

01:02:35.800 who want a second referendum. They're not calling for a second

01:02:37.840 referendum on Scottish

01:02:38.960 independence, are they?

01:02:41.680 Because broadly they're people who want to keep

01:02:43.580 the UK together.

01:02:46.020 You have to be grown up about this.

01:02:47.600 You're going to get into some kind of banana republic 0.99

01:02:49.860 type situation where it just becomes

01:02:51.620 tribal, or a

01:02:53.800 Quebec-style situation where there's

01:02:55.800 a never-end them. Look,

01:02:57.640 Britain trades on its legal 0.92

01:02:59.440 stability, right? Our comparative advantage

01:03:01.700 in the world is if you come to our courts right it doesn't matter who you are you're going to get

01:03:06.580 a fair hearing right the british government isn't going to be able to rig the courts yeah that is

01:03:11.380 what we have we've built that up over centuries of not always doing the right but you know there

01:03:18.320 is a sense now and it's not a hundred percent guaranteed but you're going to get a fair hearing

01:03:23.620 we sell our debt to the rest of the world we need a stable currency if britain becomes so unstable

01:03:31.400 that we voted to leave the European Union

01:03:34.980 and then before we leave the European Union,

01:03:37.420 we vote to stay in the European Union.

01:03:39.420 And then what are the EU going to do?

01:03:40.940 Are they going to let us come back in but not be in the euro?

01:03:44.020 Are they going to let us have the rebate

01:03:45.260 that we negotiated all those years ago?

01:03:47.300 It's going to be absolute carnage.

01:03:49.460 And you know what?

01:03:50.800 Our exports, our trade with the European Union

01:03:53.800 is about 10% of GDP, right?

01:03:56.700 About 10% of GDP.

01:03:58.220 Let's say worst case scenario, worst case scenario that our trade with the EU collapses by 10%.

01:04:07.240 That's like 1% over GDP over many years.

01:04:11.460 This is rounding error stuff.

01:04:14.120 Now, of course, whether in the EU or not is important to our identity.

01:04:17.740 But I would say, actually, while British people tend to love continental Europe,

01:04:24.240 We also, almost uniquely in Europe, have astonishing connections with the rest of the world.

01:04:31.040 You think about something very close to my heart, because a lot of the families I grew up with were Indian families, right?

01:04:37.780 And families had come over from the Caribbean, my best friends in the world, those people I grew up with.

01:04:43.820 Yet the connections we have with the Indian subcontinent, the connections we have with Australasia, the incredible connection we have with the United States, no one else has these connections.

01:04:57.060 The English language, the fact that there are all these mad Brits working all over the world, running companies and building companies. 1.00

01:05:05.880 We aren't a normal European country.

01:05:08.480 we have I wouldn't say bigger broader horizons we have more global horizons than a lot of those

01:05:14.100 countries and I think a lot of British people whether they were highly educated or not often

01:05:21.340 even when they weren't sense that sense that the growth is outside of Europe now Europe's been the

01:05:27.200 slowest growing continent in the world apart from Antarctica for most of the last 20 and it's close

01:05:33.880 for most of the last

01:05:35.700 20 years

01:05:36.460 and

01:05:37.240 I think a lot of people

01:05:38.760 sense is that

01:05:39.580 it's

01:05:40.400 yes we'll keep trading

01:05:41.600 with Europe

01:05:42.040 but not at the expense

01:05:43.320 of trading more

01:05:43.940 with the rest of the world

01:05:44.780 listen we're running

01:05:46.040 out of time

01:05:46.640 I think that's a perfect

01:05:47.620 place to end it

01:05:48.920 well thank you for having me

01:05:50.240 it's been an absolute

01:05:51.020 pleasure Liam

01:05:51.540 tell us your

01:05:52.580 Twitter

01:05:53.240 at

01:05:54.560 Liam Halligan

01:05:56.180 not that complicated

01:05:57.820 and also as well

01:05:59.620 your book is called

01:06:00.420 Clean Brexit 0.72

01:06:00.920 my book is called

01:06:01.400 Clean Brexit 0.72

01:06:01.840 my podcast is called

01:06:03.220 lend me your ear and what kind of stuff do you talk about in the podcast i tend to i tend to

01:06:07.560 talk to i tend to have a sort of detailed policy discussions so recent people i've recently spoke

01:06:14.040 to um i spoke to um uh david davis the brexit secretary uh i spoke to an incredible economist

01:06:22.740 nobel winning economist called amartya sen i spoke to richard thala who's um the guy that

01:06:28.980 invented behavioral economics.

01:06:31.240 He's the current Nobel laureate.

01:06:33.700 I just spoke to this incredible guy

01:06:35.160 on my podcast called Peter Platzer

01:06:37.140 who has created,

01:06:40.060 he's got a huge network of satellites in space

01:06:43.840 and he sells the data that they collect

01:06:46.800 on things like the weather and ship movements

01:06:50.380 to commercial companies.

01:06:52.460 Really incredible guy.

01:06:53.780 Amazing.

01:06:54.420 So lend me your ear.

01:06:55.960 Lend me your ear.

01:06:56.620 Liam Halligan at Liam Halligan.

01:06:57.880 I'm Konstantin Kishin at Konstantin Kishin

01:07:00.020 and I'm Francis Foster at Failing Human

01:07:02.060 and if you

01:07:03.760 by the way if you've enjoyed this great

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01:07:27.880 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - May 06, 2018

Triggernometry- Ep. 3 Liam Halligan

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