Liam Halligan is a journalist, economist, broadcaster, and author of Clean Brexit. In this episode, he tells us about his time in Russia, how he got into politics, and why he thinks Putin is the most powerful man in the world.
00:07:04.220Europe's biggest city, 18 odd million people.
00:07:06.820You wouldn't have BP owning a fifth of Rosneft,
00:07:12.420which of course is majority owned by the Russian state.
00:07:15.180You wouldn't have Siemens, Liber, L'Oreal, Volkswagen,
00:07:20.860all these thoroughbred Western companies having huge factory presences in Russia.
00:07:26.880You wouldn't have tons and tons of Russian kids here at British public schools.
00:07:31.300So culturally, we are completely enmeshed.
00:07:35.640We always were, you know, so many leading intellectuals in the West,
00:07:40.840particularly in Britain and America, are actually Russian emigres over the years.
00:07:45.120We've always been fascinated with Russian culture.
00:07:48.360No 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.
00:07:59.280Yet, 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.
00:08:10.460everyone knows who is a takes any interest at all that Syria is strategically incredibly
00:08:18.080important for the Russians because of the warm water ports not least at Tartus everybody knows
00:08:23.240that Putin thinks that we should keep Assad where he is where the West having previously thought
00:08:29.380that now thinks that we should remove Assad then again on the other hand the Western Russia are on
00:08:34.260the same side when it comes to ridding the region of ISIL and there has been cooperation when it
00:08:42.560comes to you know strikes to try and keep that Islamic threat on the back foot so and many you
00:08:51.120know it's not necessarily an easy thing to say but many serious analysts of the region and
00:08:56.420leading western think tanks and universities think well you know we can't really solve the
00:09:02.380The Middle East, or even stabilised the Middle East,
00:09:24.060that the West is prepared to continue talking to Russia,
00:09:27.300despite this perception that Russia is the other?
00:09:30.980is that the reason we're still talking to russia basically no i think i think even during the cold
00:09:36.000war we were talking to russia we obviously talk to russia a lot more now you know russia still
00:09:40.060supplying 40 percent of europe's western europe's gas you know there's a there's a hard pipeline now
00:09:45.980between um uh northern russia and germany and another one being built but much less true for
00:09:53.340britain isn't it britain gets a lot less of its gas and no it it does it does but you know gas
00:09:58.400is a fungible thing. If that Russian gas wasn't there, then what would happen to the gas that's
00:10:04.480in Norway that currently comes to the UK? There is obviously a Western European dependence on
00:10:11.380Russian energy. Even at the height of the Cold War, there was never any question or never really
00:10:17.260any credible threat for the Soviet Union to not pump that gas. The Soviet Union at the time needed
00:10:22.280the hard currency. It needs the hard currency less now, contrary to what we often read in the West,
00:10:27.380Russia fiscally is an incredibly strong state, has very, very low sovereign debt, and increasingly is able to export its gas east to China.
00:10:38.400Since sanctions came in, one of the big implications of sanctions, as you know, Konstantin, is that Russia and China have got much closer.
00:10:46.360You've got pipelines now existing, the ESPO pipeline, the East Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline from Russia to China.
00:18:45.140I mean, this reminds me, guys, of, again, history.
00:18:48.420I recently made a documentary about America in the late 19th century, the 1890s and the 1900s,
00:18:56.520When 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.
00:19:21.280And I wonder if we aren't going to face a sort of similar trust-busting moment of the tech giants in the US.
00:19:31.300And 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.
00:19:44.700and then the whole thing that were Facebook taking Russian money
00:19:48.620and have they been completely straight with the security services
00:19:52.660in the US and the UK, it's all feeding into this idea
00:19:56.620that, you know, that these guys aren't, you know,
00:20:01.240the kind of goofy, oh, you know, I made a few billion
00:20:03.740and I came into some inoculation program.
00:20:07.880Yeah, but you've also destroyed our system of government
00:35:59.500China does huge amounts of trade with the European Union,
00:36:01.960as does Japan, from outside the European Union.
00:36:04.520So 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.
00:36:19.000I 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.
00:36:31.440but the European Union is basically a protectionist club big companies like it that's why they pour
00:36:37.480so much money into publicity to support it small companies where the real growth and energy is in
00:36:44.400this country tend not to like the European Union and then the British people in their wisdom even
00:36:49.780though they were called thick and stupid and racist and xenophobic they voted the way they
00:36:55.480voted and i happen to think um that was an astonishing outcome it is difficult to um go
00:37:04.100through the process of brexit all the complaints now are about the process of brexit the eu
00:37:09.420or brussels in particular a bunch of unelected um you know not particularly clever people
00:37:15.380um very unimpressive a lot of these um sort of life civil servants in brussels they're making
00:37:21.960it as difficult as they possibly can a lot of the media in the UK doesn't want it to happen so it's
00:37:27.540making it sound as difficult as it possibly can and yet still despite sort of ultra remainers
00:37:33.600trying to reverse the biggest act of democracy in British history the polls show that you know
00:37:39.200a majority of people still want to leave I think it'll be absolutely fine I think it will be
00:37:44.580absolutely fine and I think there will be other my hope is not that the European Union suffers in
00:37:51.120any way my hope is that a very big economy like the uk leaving and making a success of of being
00:37:58.760outside the european union while still trading with the european union doesn't lead to the
00:38:03.460european union getting weaker but it convinces people that the european union should be looser
00:38:09.100and more democratic and less kind of dirigist and always pushing for the sort of super state status
00:38:17.500now that's interesting that you're talking about
00:38:20.900scare stories because I've been reading
00:41:06.240And we will still pay every year during the transition period.
00:41:09.320I 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.
00:41:22.680So in order to make the negotiation work, let's keep paying to 2020 and call it a transition period to keep everybody calm.
00:41:32.180We 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.
00:41:48.600Well, this is an interesting point for me as an immigrant in this country.
00:41:51.860One 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.
00:42:04.240How much of the conversation has become what you just picked up on, which is sloganized?
00:42:09.040Essentially, it's a fact free conversation.
00:42:11.520And we're just talking about you're racist or you're stupid.
00:42:14.280indeed there was there have been sort of fact-free elements on both sides and i think maybe there's
00:42:19.720been some financial impropriety on both sides i i wasn't involved in the i mean i could have been
00:42:25.080involved with the leave side if i wanted to but i didn't i wanted to be an independent person just
00:42:30.800saying uh what i thought um um i think it did become quite fact-free there was sloganizing but
00:42:40.880some of us in the media in our columns and our broadcasts were trying to be a bit more high
00:42:45.120fiber and i've often found myself during the referendum people literally stopping me in the
00:42:50.680street and emailing me hundreds of emails from people oh oh can you just explain that to me i've
00:42:56.600been doing my research and you know ordinary punters did a huge amount of work to try and
00:43:02.340understand what was going on and i think a lot of the british media did lapse into just punch and
00:43:07.860duty debates um but i think there were some people on both sides and people on neither side who were
00:43:14.840trying to to give the facts i was disappointed though in the in the british government in
00:43:21.200cameron's government um you know it has to be recorded because it's true and it's outrageous
00:43:27.200that the british government two days before we have this thing called purda where the government
00:43:32.260isn't allowed to spend any more government money on a referendum or an election.
00:43:39.140And 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.
00:43:50.620And that £9 million didn't then count the state money which the Remain side got,
00:43:55.760which was meant to be even with the leaf side.
00:43:57.760so that was really really uh at best it was it was sly um it was it was deeply unfair
00:44:06.740but did you have people calling you racist or xenophobic time what was that like
00:44:11.280oh it's it's obviously very very very distressing i'm i am you know i'm somebody who grew up with
00:44:19.680a name like liam halligan when britain and ireland were basically at war and you know
00:44:25.040and back then the uk was a lot less tolerant than it is now you know my my my family are
00:44:31.720you know my father's still around um grew up in the west of ireland speaking gaelic you know he
00:44:39.160he in his heart he's very grateful to the uk he was able to come here and make a living that he
00:44:43.860couldn't have made in rural ireland back in the day so i'm not complaining um but it isn't nice
00:44:49.920when you are absolutely of immigrant stock yourself and you've tried to you know make
00:44:54.400your way in a society and bring other people up behind you um and grew up in an incredibly
00:45:01.680multicultural community as i did uh in in in northwest london it's horrible i mean it's just
00:45:09.200a character assassination isn't it it's just a smear and from people who don't know you personally
00:45:13.280they've never seen you and the people who tend to accuse other people of race racism in this country
00:45:17.800tend to be people who grew up in a sort of all-white environment and didn't meet a sort of
00:45:22.700black person until they went to Oxford you know I mean it's really it's outrageous to call someone
00:45:28.200like me that with the background that I have um but you know that's that's the way it is when
00:45:33.920people have sensed that you know more than they do and you've done your research they'll try and
00:45:39.460character assassinate you to discredit you I think part of the problem with the Brexit movement for
00:45:45.080instance my father who is he married an immigrant my mother's Latin American and he's very much pro
00:45:50.300brexit and he will sit down with people and explain why i think what didn't help with brexit
00:45:54.560is the fact you have people like katie hopkins coming out in support of it and immediately you
00:45:59.200have a person like that or you know farage coming out and fronting it and immediately that tarnishes
00:46:04.300what is potentially i agree i agree and um you know without ukip winning 13 of the vote as they
00:46:12.860did um in the 2015 election without ukip having won the european elections in 2014 there wouldn't
00:46:21.740have been a referendum cameron gave a referendum because he knew that ukip were going to just wipe
00:46:26.620out a lot of a lot of um but they're going to remake the electoral map i mean ukip they didn't
00:46:32.380but they got one seat in the 2015 uh general election but they came second in about 160 seats
00:46:39.280No, no, they've got something like 3 million votes.
00:47:07.040my stomach turned that was a complete mistake i think a lot of what leave eu did as opposed to
00:47:13.440vote leave so vote leave was the official campaign leave eu was the sort of farage guys who were a
00:47:20.020lot more hard line i think leave eu you know did they subtract votes i think farage being around
00:47:26.900a lot subtracted votes i think if farage had gone on holiday three months before the referendum
00:47:32.400then you'd have got a bigger um majority in favor of brexit because farage didn't convince anybody
00:47:40.320who was in two minds um no moderate is going to look at farage and think oh i agree with you
00:47:45.560and yet and yet farage was always the guy put up in the debates or nearly always as the kind of
00:47:51.720pro-brexit voice which i thought was wrong there are many many moderate people who are pro-brexit
00:47:57.520You 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.
00:48:17.860and she was Brexit because she thought
00:52:51.380But actually, and I'm similar with Russia
00:52:54.280Because 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.
00:53:07.740And, 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.
00:53:21.580I mean, you could wimp out and not say it.
00:53:24.280And 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.
00:53:36.020That was what I really specialized in.
00:53:38.240And 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.
00:55:58.840is regional policy outside the European Union.
00:56:02.500And I certainly hope that we do really rebalance this country.
00:56:06.120We have a tremendous opportunity to build, well, not just sort of try and empower alternative growth centres apart from London and the South East.
00:56:21.140Let's link up those northern cities, those great cities known around the world for creativity, ingenuity.
00:56:28.040you know liverpool cultural capital of popular music manchester you know one of the main sources
00:56:35.920of the industrial revolution these are incredible places and people want to invest there people want
00:56:41.920to be associated with them they've got fantastic universities they've got a lot of human capital
00:56:47.140they've been on their uppers kind of in the last generation or two but you know let's let's
00:56:52.960build international airports there let's bring in investment from around the world let's project
00:56:58.540those cities around the world and let's try and encourage more of our young people to live in
00:57:04.120those cities rather than thinking that you have to come to london to make a success of yourself
00:57:08.240no you don't germany's not like that it's not like you have to go to berlin to make a success
00:57:13.460for yourself well there's frankfurt there's munich there are regional powerhouses the uk needs to
00:57:19.220become a much more regional country not all about london the southeast isn't it fantastic to have
00:57:24.460london you know one of the world cities in our country isn't it great but i think it's too much
00:57:30.840we've overemphasized london at the expense of these other countries at these other parts of
00:57:34.980the country and outside the european union i think we've got a major chance to put that right
00:57:40.020liam but you're talking at a very cerebral level you're obviously a very knowledgeable
00:57:43.500very intelligent guy and we're very grateful to have you here but that's a buck coming
00:57:46.860yeah there is there is a bug coming well the only but actually is nothing to do with you is that
00:57:53.020these conversations are not being had at that cerebral level they're being had on a kind of
00:57:57.900facebook you're racist you're xenophobe you're this you're that don't ever speak to me again
00:58:02.160kind of level and that is because that is because a lot of people are still hoping that this thing
00:58:09.180can be reversed and you know if you cause people racist enough we can we can have another referendum
00:58:14.960If we discredit this process enough, then people are going to want to reverse it.
00:58:19.820If we can spread enough scare stories about how the economy is going to collapse
00:58:24.060and there's this cliff edge and Goldman Sachs are going to leave
00:58:27.340and Deutsche Bank are going to leave, then maybe people will be scared
00:59:11.420And they got the lowest result in their history.
00:59:13.500the SNP went to the electorate in Scotland with we're going to reverse Brexit and they and they
00:59:19.720lost a third of their seats you know I mean come on it's these cloying elites thinking that they
00:59:26.260can reverse Brexit because it kind of undermines their sensibilities they've got to understand
00:59:31.460that people they don't who voted against them are just as important as they are when it comes to
00:59:37.220the ballot box that's what democracy is about and we they have to get on with it and we have to make
00:59:41.680the best of it people who voted leave and have a vision of how good it could be and people who
00:59:47.320voted remain uh and who are perhaps a little bit more um um you know need to be a bit a little bit
00:59:55.860less enthusiastic but the real key to this whole thing is that there is a big chunk of people who
01:00:02.740voted remain yeah in good faith many of whom i love uh you know literally members of my closest
01:00:10.120family and they realize okay um it's not didn't go the way i wanted to go but what would it be
01:00:17.600like if every time we have some sort of democratic situation we contest the result to for years and
01:00:24.040years in the future well this is it what we have is chaos which is essentially what is happening
01:00:28.640now i mean if you think about it i'm i've never voted conservative i vote labor but i would never
01:00:34.480dream once teresa may got in of demanding a recount i just wouldn't because frankly not
01:00:39.500unless there was absolute transgression yeah we have had electoral fraud in this country i mean
01:00:44.540there was a famous case in in blackburn uh a few years ago if there's electoral fraud of course
01:00:49.760it's got to be rooted out um but of but of course an election is different to a referendum in that
01:00:56.520an election is part of a natural cycle um and alistair campbell often says oh you know when
01:01:02.920you lose the election you don't stop campaigning no alistair because that's an election yeah and
01:01:07.880this is a referendum and parliament voted by six to one for the bill to hold a referendum in early
01:01:15.3602016 to give this vote to the british people and to now try and reverse that and the point about
01:01:22.680brexit is that then once we've brexited parliament becomes a lot more powerful because all these laws
01:01:28.020come back to parliament so you have people in parliament saying well you said you know we wanted
01:01:31.880you wanted parliament to be powerful yeah i do after brexit parliament will have a lot more power
01:01:37.080You are now trying to exert Parliament's right to do something to reverse Brexit that makes it less powerful.
01:01:43.220Well, 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?
01:04:14.120Now, of course, whether in the EU or not is important to our identity.
01:04:17.740But I would say, actually, while British people tend to love continental Europe,
01:04:24.240We also, almost uniquely in Europe, have astonishing connections with the rest of the world.
01:04:31.040You think about something very close to my heart, because a lot of the families I grew up with were Indian families, right?
01:04:37.780And families had come over from the Caribbean, my best friends in the world, those people I grew up with.
01:04:43.820Yet 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.
01:04:57.060The English language, the fact that there are all these mad Brits working all over the world, running companies and building companies.