William Clouston on the SDP, Community and Social Justice Mania
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Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per minute
181.95285
Harmful content
Misogyny
5
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Toxicity
8
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Hate speech
16
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Summary
William Fluson is the leader of the Social Democratic Party, a left-wing political party that has been around for almost a century. In this episode, he tells us about his political career, how he got into politics, and why the SDP is still around.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissing. And this is a
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show if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about.
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At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts. Our brilliant guest
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this week is the leader of the Social Democratic Party, William Fluson. Welcome to Trigonometry.
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Thanks for having me. Kind of you to ask me. Thanks for coming. Our first question always is
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what is the story of your life? How are you, where you are? What's been your journey through life
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that takes you here to this chair? Right. Well, I was born in the northeast of England.
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Mothers from Edinburgh, fathers from Liverpool. He's a red nose.
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My father was involved in politics a little bit in the Labour Party, in and out.
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When 1980 came along and the big split from the Labour Party, I mean, the Social Democratic Party
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is an offshoot of the Labour Party. My dad left the Labour Party and joined. And it was a very
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exciting time for us um as a family and and also to just to see the launch of a new uh thing it was
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also quite hostile i mean they had open meetings in the northeast and you know likes of david owen
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came up to speak and there'd be a lot of labor people in there heckling but you've seen the
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videos in the 70s uh politics 80s policies quite raucous but it was interesting and it uh captivated
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me i joined um and uh we went through the period of of seeing that that blossom into the alliance
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where we got, with the Liberals, 25.5% of the vote.
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And that's one of the reasons we're still here,
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So yeah, that was my initial background and involvement.
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Well, let's let's talk about something that we've discussed at length on the show with many guests in the past is we've talked about the fact that there seems to be a gap in the market, so to speak, for a party that is socially conservative, but left wing.
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So one of the arguments John Curtis made, for example, is that UKIP under Nigel Farage, it was a party that was trying to be socially conservative, but it was also right wing in terms of many of its policies.
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So there's potentially a gap in the market for a party that is socially conservative, that wants to control immigration, that wants to be, you know, expressing the socially conservative values while being left wing.
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And one of the reasons I think people ask us why after the I mean, because to finish off the sort of history lesson on the STP, you had the Owenite STP, which I was involved in.
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And that was when the liberals had a deal to put the two parties together.
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42% of us voted against that because we're social democrats.
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And the reason for that is that social democracy and liberalism is different philosophically.
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First order preference in liberalism to the individual.
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But we think that society and the community exists and is at least as important.
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and then you end up in pockets and that's where we were
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it created stability. Well, there's no stability.
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politics that you're talking about, yeah, there isn't
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because we're the only people that are doing it.
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think tanks and academics and even even movements like blue labor uh morris glassman's thing uh
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which i like a lot i mean i think there's very very little difference there are
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tiny little differences between us and and and them i guess um but as a project blue labor
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inside the labor party full of you know half a million momentum middle class trots it's not
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going to work. They're not going to get a blue Labour platform. So it's a small group. And then
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you had Philip Blonde's project, which is Red Tory, again, which we like aspects of it. There
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are differences, but there are relatively small differences. But again, Tories flirt with it.
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But the modern Tory is basically some sort of free market liberal.
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So if you were going to outline who you are to a potential voter,
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You know when you meet, and I'm going to do this slowly now,
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but many, many people don't fall into that category.
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You know when you meet someone, they'll say something,
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like if you're in the States, they'll say, you know,
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for gun control, and then you can derive all their other views.
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from it. And the same happens here. Well, actually, that's probably about half the country
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are satisfied with, I'm a red, or I'm a blue. But actually, about half the country isn't. And half
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of the country have views which cut across those things in different domains. And that's legitimate,
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but it's not something our political system can represent well. And it doesn't represent well,
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because we've got a red party and a blue party.
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I mean, nowadays, they're both types of liberals, actually,
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But so this idea, if I was going to explain it quickly,
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centre-right or small-c conservative on social and cultural issues,
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And so, I mean, we touched on what happened with UKIP.
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UKIP. How much of a danger is a Brexit party to your potential voter base?
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Well, that's an immediate question because this project is about convening people who
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agree with us. We had a look at the philosophy of the party last year and wrote this thing
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called the New Declaration, which is our sort of philosophical platform. And we've urged
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people to read it. If you like it, join us. And if you don't, don't join us. It's as much
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about, you know, saying don't, you know, because actually there's a lot of kippers who are,
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you know, a sort of free market liberals. No, thanks. It's not what we do. So, you know,
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we agree with them on Brexit, but that's it. So on the Brexit party thing, that's going to play out
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over the next three months, six months or whatever. But actually it's another single issue,
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Nigel Farage vehicle. And the problem with UKIP historically always was there was a ceiling.
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There was a ceiling on how far they could go because it was basically about, you know,
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Euroscepticism. And, you know, inside that group you had, I mean, there were centrist economic
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left even individuals like Patrick O'Flynn who came and joined our party who were in the tent
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But Nigel will always have the problem that it's a single issue.
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I mean, even the name, you know, it's a single issue thing.
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there's about four little paragraphs on nation and world and Euroscepticism,
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and the rest of it is about all sorts of other stuff.
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And I don't think, I think Nigel Farage will do very well in this election.
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I mean, they could win the Euro election if it happens.
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um but as soon remember as soon as there's a deal if there's a deal it's over i mean that's
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as a political entity what we can do then you have to change the name anyway yeah um so so i
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don't know i mean we've sort of left and also tactically we it was very unfair for the government
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to spring an election um the euro elections on a small party i mean all small parties are going
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to suffer this and we we looked at it and our national committee looked at it and came to
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decision a i mean instinctively i i wasn't happy with the uh you know electing euro you know mps
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to the europa we voted out what we're doing so i was against that anyway um and then to spring an
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election on uh us we could have we could we had the resources to to have candidates all over the
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country but we'd get a couple of percent and what's the point so we just said no we're going
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to sit this one out and i think a lot of our voters will probably vote brexit party actually
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But I haven't, I mean, I'm not directing them to do that. They can do that if they like. Many will.
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So that's the voice that you represent. This is, as you said, small c conservatives. So
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let's look at some of the principles that you talk about liberalism being the dominant strain
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of thought in parliament and maybe in society in general. What is your issue with liberalism?
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To go back to what I said before, I think the basic problem is philosophically,
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I mean, we are liberal, but we're not liberals.
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I mean, a lot of SDP positions are quite nuanced,
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grand liberalization project that we've had since the 60s,
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where me me me i come first so the economic liberalism it's all about getting as much money
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as i can and getting ahead as far ahead as other people as i can and the social liberalism is about
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individual emancipation what are my rights you know how am i going to prosecute those rights
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against the whole of the rest of society and demand i want this i want that now all of those
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things up to a point it's i mean i think david goodhart's right about this i think in looking
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about liberalism looking at liberalism in terms of overreach have we got to a stage where there
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is simply too much me me me and not enough us and i think we're there honestly i think we're there
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i think the the appeal of communitarian parties now not not in the elites you see the the and
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there is a there's a very big gap between what academics you know but basically what what the
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Academy, business, the media think is basically full-on liberalism.
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As much as possible, you know, with both barrels.
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And David, again, David Goodhart's a great thinker on this idea of double-dose liberalism.
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So society's had, you know, 30 years of socialism, liberalism, bang, bang, bang.
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So anyone that speaks up as a family is, you can't do that, we're not really comfortable with that.
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uh it's individualism all the time and then and then at the same time you've got the uh free
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market liberals of the right who hammer basically public services have to be contracted out so
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everything becomes marketized ever literally everywhere and at the same time that the the
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state has lost confidence to actually just directly provide services and retain what what
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what should be its its its domain i mean a key an absolutely key i'd say the cornerstone
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social and economic idea in the sdp is the social market economy which is something that we
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introduced in british politics in the 80s uh and we're still there absolutely that is the
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the cornerstone idea and that's the idea that the uh the state uh and the market are not opponents
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Do you think we've reached this point now where you sort of alluded to it where the pendulum is swinging back against liberalism?
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Yeah. Yeah, no, I think it is. I think it is. And I think, well, you can certainly see that.
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I mean, if you take immigration, you know, we're pro-immigration, but I don't think we're pro-mass immigration.
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But what does that mean? A lot of people will not even make the distinction between the two.
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Well, magnitude matters. So an academic called Paul Morland came out of the book about migration very recently.
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And he made a point that at the peak of the new Labour immigration expansion, more people came to settle in the UK than had ever arrived between 1066 and 1950.
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You know, it could be a million, million people.
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Now, again, if you look at what the general public think, the general public, and even Leave voters, by the way, 85% of them are quite pro-immigration.
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So they're happy with it as long as it's basically of the right scale.
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Now, again, in the southeast, we're sitting here in Islington, to have that much immigration
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and fail to do the other side of the tennis net, which is to build enough council houses,
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and yes, council houses, not to be sold off, the state actually doing something to help
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young people pair up and start thinking about raising a family.
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Again, the economic liberals, oh, we don't do that.
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Well, actually, they're just misaligned with the public.
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And any millennial in the southeast is completely in favor of the state doing this.
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So a lot of these things interlock, don't they?
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So you can have – what I'm saying is you can have massive – you can have very, very high rates of immigration.
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And you might get away with it if the state picks the other side of it up and assists it.
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But the thing, I just want to clarify this thing of how someone can be,
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because I think I understand what you mean, but I'm not sure that everybody will.
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I mean, we live in an open and tolerant society.
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And all the data across Europe is one of the most tolerant societies, thank goodness.
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They do, because it is a nice place to live, and people are cool, and we get on.
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No, on the magnitude, you've just got to get your immigration rate right.
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The other side on immigration, which I think probably liberals have slightly overstepped,
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is that so they've been i think liberalism has been too enthusiastic for very high levels of
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immigration and i think it's been too indifferent to integration again i think that is a that is a
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mainstream view we i'd like to talk about centrism later what is centrism so i we we what we're
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representing and very very mainstream views on the data you know so most people most british people
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are comfortable with a degree of multiculturalism,
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but they're like separatist multiculturalism very much.
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And they do think people, we ought to have common values
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And if we don't, actually, as a society, we simply won't succeed.
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I mean, what you're saying to me sounds eminently reasonable.
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I agree with it, and I think, yep, okay, we're making a lot of sense here.
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However, there is the other side to it, sort of the David Lammy left
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who says that talking about immigration in this way
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is akin to Nazism or whatever else and all this stuff.
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I'm not sure what's going on with that at the moment.
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I mean, remember what a broad coalition this was, 52% of the public.
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You run out of racists really quickly on the data.
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There are about 4% of the society's racist and bigoted on the figures,
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four or five, depending on what question you ask.
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But you can't say that half of the public that voted on democracy
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I don't know, and I don't think it's helpful either
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because I think it's another thing in the SDP that we're against.
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The sort of identity politics, intersectional stuff
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or even the Corbyn left, actually, which isn't really far left,
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constantly hammering differences. I'm different. That is going to lead to division. And I think
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instead, politicians ought to think about what unites people. Most people, no matter what your
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background or your religion is, want the same things. It's interesting that you say that,
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this division, because I've just been away for a couple of weeks to form a part of the Soviet
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Union. And it's amazing to me just coming back and starting to, because I tried to switch off
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from the media and stuff like that, coming back and just going, wait, someone's just being called
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white or someone's being called a man or someone's been like as if that's a
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legitimate argument and I think that's where we've kind of come to it's crazy
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I yeah and it's I think it I think it is actually a type of what we're
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witnessing is a type of mania literally among some commentators and some social
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justice warriors I think it's a type of mania people are going crazy and they
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need the people need a little bit of perspective most people get on you know
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out there in the real world we get on and it's not to try and constantly see everything as a sort
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of rights violation it's an odd very old frame of mind it's not it's certainly not healthy it's but
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it's not accurate either that's the odd thing about it it's funny in philosophy you get these
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waves waves of movements uh in thought and you know communism or you know what but in philosophy
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there was a movement logical positivism in the in the 30s aj wrote a book and and a vienna circle
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And it was all about scientific rationalism, being able to sort of put the ground floor to justify any view had to be grounded, you know.
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And in field departments around, particularly in the Anglo world in America and here, undergraduates would be running around.
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Anyone that said anything, you know, an undergraduate pinning someone against the wall saying, well, how are you going to verify that?
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yeah um and and this is this of course the movement just went through and actually
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they discovered i mean popper demonstrates you can't verify anything anyways the whole thing
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was clapped out and it's quite discredited i mean it did have i quite liked parts of it
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but it's just one of these movements that just sort of started and then it became very intense
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and then just faded away and i think probably uh again there's been there's been liberally
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overreach. But there's been sort of parity mania, social justice overreach and craziness. And I
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think we just have to go to ride it out, I guess, because you can't, we can't, like any movement of
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that kind, it'll have its time and it'll fade away, hopefully. One of the things you talk about
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is community. Yeah. And I think it's undeniable that we have lost a sense of community in this
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country this is probably happening all around the world yeah families are becoming smaller more
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atomized we're living more separately from each other we feel less connected to each other you
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know we don't talk to our neighbors all over the rest of it and anyone can diagnose that but but
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if you may have reasons not to talk to our neighbors this is actually a point i made in an
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article once the reason we don't talk to our neighbors is not because we hate them it's just
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we're british that's that's what we do yeah but if we take all of that and we kind of diagnose
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and we say, this is a problem. And we know it's a problem. It is a problem. In terms of our mental
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health, for all sorts of reasons, this is a big, big problem. How do we fix that? I think by
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switching culturally from me, me, me, to us and to the community. And I think this is where
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political leadership does matter. How we think about what we do and what we do. So community
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is massively important people i mean a lot of liberal left politicians just just forget about
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it they're just completely not interested not all of them but many do and so the the basic building
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blocks family which is the first place that you do something for other people you learn that in
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the home i'm going to help you know your mother will help your father will help you and and you
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that's the first place that we learn it and then going on from that our neighborhood knowing
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people getting involved running sports clubs and things sounds i mean this is actually um
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a sort of civic society stuff that philip blonde talked about you know i mentioned the red tory
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combination and philip's idea was that the civic society does have the greatest role
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uh in in sort of cultural renewal that's right uh the problem is where it's needed most
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civic society is weakest and actually where it's maybe not needed so much it's it's at its
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strongest you know so you go to sort of a very strong relatively affluent village and you know
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people will be involved in the curriculum they all know each other and it's very very strong
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civic societies and some other areas in urban areas where you've got a perhaps a a less stable
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population more people coming and going and things it's not as strong but it's i mean we've either
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way we've got to think about communitarian impulses and think about doing you know working
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together you make that point i mean labor at its at its core is is communitarian was was
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but was it was it was all about unions it was about representing the people and you look at
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the modern life i mean it's just demented but number one and number two it's like you said
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is it all about divisions yeah i am this this and this you are this is so destructive it's
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actually poisonous. I mean, looking at society like that is poisonous. A philosopher I like
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a lot, John Gray, you know, people consider him a little bit bleak, and he can be bleak
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at times, but he's also a great viewer and commentator on liberalism. And, you know,
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he's great on this. You know, how far do you go with individualism before the whole of
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society just unravels. And on that, how far do you go in identity politics before you end up with
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what he describes as a sort of low-intensity civil war? And people want that. And I think
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you can talk in slogans, but the SDP idea is a social future. And it must be. It's either that
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or gated communities. What do you want? But how are we going to get there? Because as I sit here
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during this interview i'm enjoying it i i'm in my head russian he enjoys nothing yeah i enjoy
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very few things that's great but as i'm sitting here destruction of the ukraine yeah uh my wife's
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ukraine she's very independent anyway i i i sit here and i'm thinking i i really like this guy
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he's a nice guy he has interesting ideas right uh he he's persuasive he says interesting things but
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would i vote for him is there is there a thing that i kind of go oh that that gets me
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yeah i think it i mean all all any any any program is a is a balanced program is a you know if you
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read the new declaration not everyone is going to agree with absolutely everything but the important
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thing about the sdp is that were there any people doing this so again i mean i you know red tory
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blue labor they're intellectual movements really but this is this is a proper political party
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grassroots up we've got several thousand members now uh and it's happening and it's happening for
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the right reasons and you can you can you know stay at home or whatever or you could get involved
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or you don't have to but um it's actually happening and it's a real entity in that
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it will be it's contesting real elections and we're trying to beat the labor party and the
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conservatives and you given the others and contest for seats to get proper representation and i but
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it will take time people when you when you were involved in a sort of upsurge like this everyone
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thinks, you know, why aren't you on question time yet?
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Why aren't you on, you know, and it does take time.
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You know, if you look at UKIPs, I mean, the top-down SDP was just like that.
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It literally, you know, foreign secretary, you know, film-style looks.
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David Downey was a dominant politician, wonderful politician,
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Roy Jenkins, home secretary, and these were big figures.
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And instantly they got sort of instant, you know,
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I mean, at one point in 82, we were at 50% in the polls.
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And, you know, you do the political compass thing
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and the whole of the southwest or the bottom corner is where we are.
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But my challenge to you isn't that you're too slow in getting there.
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My challenge is that I don't hear anything concrete.
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I don't hear policies that are going to grab my attention or things that...
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Well, build council housing to house a million people.
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I think that the next policy round will increase that.
00:27:20.180
And those council houses won't be for sale.
0.97
00:27:28.800
is that I'm willing to deal with the housing crisis,
00:27:45.960
And, you know, I think they're less judgmental in the pub and things, you know, get so much in your ear.
00:27:51.640
But the problem with the modern conservative, it's not conservative.
00:27:55.320
I mean, they say, you know, theoretically, if they've got the guts to back the family as an idea now, which they don't really do now.
00:28:01.540
But if they do have the guts to say that, they haven't connected.
00:28:04.920
You can't have the state just literally depart from the field and say, we're not going to do it.
00:28:12.740
And that's what the conservatives have done on housing.
00:28:15.620
And if you do that, it means that people can't, when they meet,
00:28:19.020
they can't get a flat, they can't possibly get a house,
00:28:23.840
And the conservatives, theoretically a conservative,
00:28:25.880
is meant to support couples that want to do that.
00:28:31.380
What you've become is free market liberal maniacs.
00:28:35.340
That's what you are, because you want to marketize everything,
00:28:39.160
literally everything, even the stuff that the state should do.
00:28:42.540
so another policy railway uh nationalization yeah it's gonna happen anyway do you think
00:28:48.780
yeah because the because you get fewer and fewer i mean it's a it was a crazy you know confected
00:28:55.120
uh privatization anyway i mean no it's correct i mean the state does the heavy lifting anyway
00:28:59.740
with the infrastructure about four billion goes into that a year and then they let that and then
00:29:04.460
they let a few different colored trains run up and down it's just it's not really private you can't
00:29:14.740
I mean, it's a public service, really, to get people around.
00:29:19.460
And when you think about it that way, the whole project, I think Major did it because he'd run out of sort of Thatcherite credibility.
00:29:27.360
Honestly, I think that's, you know, if you read about it, I think that's what happened.
00:29:30.440
And what's happened is that the franchisees can't make money out of it, so there are fewer bidding for it.
00:29:36.320
And then they screw it up like the, I'll be going back to Northumberland tonight, well, this afternoon, on a nationalized LNER train.
00:29:48.720
When the market fails, the state comes in and picks it up.
00:29:57.400
Can I ask one question, which I think is very important?
00:30:04.220
but this is and I think this is very very important and it's a crisis that we have now
00:30:09.260
in London and all our major cities which is knife crime yeah and for me because I'm hoping I'm
1.00
00:30:15.140
going to get married within the next couple of years we want to have kids all the rest of it
0.99
00:30:17.840
I can't see myself living in a city because I don't want my children to be around that
00:30:22.440
how would you appeal to you know the young people and people about to have families that they're
00:30:27.600
going to be able to bring up their children in safety it seems like every day I open the paper
00:30:32.180
and there's another kid getting stabbed and murdered.
00:30:36.500
I think what we've got to do is actually be a little bit more honest about
00:30:40.980
when politicians are interviewed about knife crime,
00:30:48.100
You know, you've got the map used to be at 33,000, we're at 28 now,
00:30:56.360
And I would say, how about the crisis in the family?
00:31:01.580
that it you can't and actually it's a bit like the the the housing thing uh the sad thing on
00:31:07.200
housing is that you can't i can't say to any millennial vote for me because i'll solve it
00:31:10.900
because it would take 20 years to solve you understand this yeah i mean there just isn't
00:31:14.940
you can't you can't get the house the public housing stock up in in five years ten years
00:31:19.920
or even 15 it's a whole generation but knife crime and all these other things uh you have to
00:31:25.260
go back to to sort of parenting and community unfortunately that is the reality and i think
00:31:30.900
if people have strong role models and the societies with them, back to the communitarian
00:31:35.640
thing, then in the long run, then knife crime would reduce. It would. But that's not something
00:31:43.280
that a politician can say, I can solve now by shoving this amount of money on it or doing that.
00:31:48.300
I mean, the left, particularly one of the criticisms which the SDP has of the current
00:31:52.960
Labour Party, is that it views cultural issues, cultural problems, just through the lens of money.
00:32:01.440
You listen to them interviewed, and they just say, cuts, cuts, cuts.
00:32:04.560
Well, not all our problems are caused by, you know, Tory cuts.
00:32:09.800
I mean, the SDP is in favor of a strong and active state.
00:32:13.140
You need, you know, state spending about 41% of GDP,
00:32:18.760
and that's much higher than the Tories would want it,
00:32:20.680
but it's not as high as what Corbyn would want.
00:32:22.300
But you can't, they have a tendency to blame cultural problems on money.
00:32:28.620
And actually, a lot of the solutions are not to do with money either.
00:32:32.720
One of my favorite things, this is another policy, is the Daily Mile.
00:32:39.080
So there's a school in Stirling in Scotland, and the health metrics for the kids was not brilliant.
00:32:48.880
And the headteacher there said, right, we're going to do a communitarian thing.
00:32:52.340
every kid and all the staff all the teachers were going to run a mile every day all of us together
00:33:01.220
no excuses no opt-outs we're all going to do it but different speeds but but you know they're
00:33:07.260
going to do it and and they did that they started off doing it was a cost it cost nothing to be
00:33:11.400
fair they had you know and there are issues with with with where could you do it but they did it
00:33:15.760
and all literally the education outcomes increased the health outcomes increased all the data and
00:33:21.340
you know it's fantastic and that didn't cost anything and that's a cultural solution uh to
00:33:28.180
to a health and education issue so it's a voluntary thing um we were a bit and i can't remember what
00:33:34.960
the pickup is something like 40 40 percent of primary schools do this now and it's a sort of
00:33:39.540
team building and community building thing um we were a little bit scared of saying right you know
00:33:44.840
the social democrats will mandate this when you mandate stuff it all goes wrong but but it's an
00:33:49.380
example of something where honestly culture is i mean we're all aware of the fact that
00:33:55.220
politics has taken a cultural turn in the last 10 years 20 years uh you know and the left and
00:34:03.060
right thing about economics which is just about who gets what and what the state should do i think
00:34:07.220
that's still important actually i really do i think that's very important but um culture is
00:34:12.920
is number one now that's it and i think so cultural cultural solutions to cultural problems
00:34:21.840
Because one of the things I hear as I listen to you,
00:34:26.160
and then I compare that with a lot of the things
00:34:49.460
It's the same as the undergraduate full student
00:35:01.260
And I think the people are ready for that, aren't they?
00:35:10.720
well, look, I'm not going to solve this in four years,
00:35:14.900
I'm going to vote for whoever it is over here saying that you can solve it in two.
00:35:20.060
But on the other hand, the public is much more switched on than politicians imagine.
00:35:25.440
And actually, the whole Brexit vote and the coining of phrases, hard Brexit, soft Brexit,
00:35:31.100
crash it, the public are aware of what's going on.
00:35:41.020
So, yeah, and I think people will be ready for a longer term thing.
00:35:44.180
But I think that the short-termism of British politics is partly to do with another thing, which you've talked about to other participants, which is for the duopoly and the first-past-the-post voting system, which is, it's finished.
00:35:59.940
It needs, I mean, I think one of the consequences, we are living through a political crisis now, no doubt.
00:36:10.080
You know, full employment, you know, it's odd, this.
00:36:12.260
I mean, you know, in the world outside, things continue and the country's doing reasonably well.
00:36:19.100
And I think, what are going to be the consequences of that?
00:36:23.760
And I think I would put money on the consequence being the duopoly of first pass the post.
00:36:30.880
Because I don't think people are going to put up with the status quo politics as usual.
00:36:35.640
And that's what you're going to get if the voting system doesn't change.
00:36:43.940
I think within 10 years we'll have a new voting system.
00:36:48.240
And that's being optimistic, but I think it would happen.
00:36:53.060
By the way, I don't think there's going to be an election anytime soon.
00:36:55.560
I think you're going to go the three years from now.
00:37:06.020
A government won't call an election it'll lose,
00:37:10.400
So I just think we're just going to go to the bitter end.
00:37:14.260
But I don't know if it's that election or the election after, but what you need to have
00:37:17.900
to break it is actually a grand alliance of every single party that wants PR for one election.
00:37:23.640
Greens, you know, Communist Party of Britain, Marxist-Leninist, you know, literally the
00:37:37.620
You need a one election, we've had enough thing, because I think people have had enough.
00:37:42.640
You look at the future, more of the same, really.
00:37:46.500
I mean, the thing about First Past the Post was they used to say it delivered strong government and stability and also firm decisions.
00:38:01.720
I mean, it doesn't literally, it is clapped out.
00:38:04.560
I mean, the whole constitutional thing leads to looking at it.
00:38:08.860
And I think the number of people that are pulling away from the main parties and their allegiances are pulling away.
00:38:15.460
I mean, you know, working class voters with the modern Labour Party.
00:38:21.760
And people started voting UKIP and they'll vote.
00:38:25.180
I mean, very interesting, actually, the last election, 2017, was the first time that the Tories had as many working class votes as the Labour Party.
00:38:35.840
so they used to be class but very class but based voting if you go back to the to the 50s very very
00:38:41.760
you know working class block you know and and you always got some work i love the way you point
00:38:45.940
that's good so they used to vote some great big middle class i'll take it i'm russian we have no
00:38:59.420
classes so you had that and then and then there's been a a sort of gradual uh realignment from that
00:39:06.880
but it's it's quickened and actually the next election i would predict i think the stories
00:39:11.760
probably do terribly but they they'll have quite a strong working class vote uh and it's one of
00:39:16.320
these realignments where you know like if you look at american politics now uh and uh you know
00:39:24.260
the southern states are republican and you say to your kids well you know they used to be democrat
00:39:31.600
I mean, they were quite racist Democrats, actually,
00:39:33.900
which is one of the reasons, but there was a problem.
00:39:35.700
But a proper realignment happened in the 60s under Lyndon Johnson.
00:39:42.640
And people can't say, well, what, there's Southern States
00:39:47.240
And when you're going through it, you sort of don't notice it,
00:39:50.360
And so I think it's very odd, the Conservatives,
00:39:55.400
they the conservative party they say is the most successful political party in the world
00:40:01.440
and it it it is because it changes you know it used to be protectionist then it's free trading
00:40:08.120
and it's free you know throughout the years it just changes and morphs um became the business
00:40:12.600
party used to be the aristos party and so on and they had a they have a massive opportunity
00:40:47.200
It's up to them what they do, but they've missed a massive opportunity for a full-on realignment
00:40:52.540
because they'd have taken the Leave working-class vote.
00:40:57.640
How dangerous is it, do you think, that essentially the Conservatives and Labour have turned their
00:41:05.840
And essentially what you have now is a large swathes of those people who are unrepresented.
00:41:12.040
It's not a good thing for not only a social class, but a viewpoint, actually, to be persistently ignored, to be persistently ignored, you're storing up problems.
00:41:29.580
And actually, Peter Shaw, who's probably my favorite, my political hero, wrote very well on this.
00:41:35.020
If you ignore, if you don't allow participation and democracy to deal with these things, you'll get a disobedience in the end.
00:41:45.400
Well, there is no issue that has divided, I think, the country more on that basis where
00:41:51.880
people haven't been represented and their views haven't been taken into account than
00:41:56.460
I don't think there's a single issue than that.
00:42:08.720
So Theresa May's immigration policy has never worked.
1.00
00:42:14.400
They just haven't basically gone hard enough at it.
00:42:22.040
The gross figure is the figure they don't want to go near
00:42:24.540
because the whole of business and the cultural media is lined up to be pro.
00:42:30.800
And so if you put any limits on it, you've got massive kickback.
00:42:39.020
Right well that is just out to do as a racist to everybody watching this because that's the way this yeah
00:42:44.220
Well fine. Yeah, I know that that make as an immigrant that makes no sense to me
1.00
00:42:48.460
But somehow talking about what you just said, which is we have to reduce immigration. Yeah bang race is done
0.75
00:42:53.580
You've got to detoxify some of these things. I think you can't I mean Eric Kauffman's very good on this
00:43:04.640
transport policy or something. It's a legitimate
00:43:20.640
worried about that. I think that's not helpful.
00:43:31.780
so here we go so so can you hear the gift yeah no so what what what is what is what is centrism
00:43:39.640
it's representing a mainstream view which is all we're doing by the way now if if the things that
00:43:44.740
we talk about on the family community immigration or the european union are mainstream opinions i
00:43:52.560
would say they're centrist opinions and i would say that if uh you know cultural elites think
00:43:58.780
differently well that's not a centrist opinion i mean that's okay you can have that opinion
00:44:02.040
but it ain't centrist it's not you can't and actually you know chuckers group and you know
00:44:07.320
the change uk people are going around and obviously the bbc love them and everything
00:44:11.500
they're going around saying they're centrist i don't know i'm not sure you know what you're
00:44:15.800
saying you're saying you want to dishonor the biggest democratic vote in british history is
00:44:20.620
that centrist it's weird i mean that's like to me that's that's a mask slipping and it's like
00:44:32.600
This is why people say, you know, the STP is a centrist party.
00:44:37.560
But I'm not wanting Macron or Tony Blair or, you know, Chukka to join our party.
1.00
00:44:49.460
Not necessarily personally anything wrong with liberals, but they are hyper-liberals.
00:44:55.040
I mean, the counter-argument, and it's something I've been thinking about recently,
00:44:58.020
The counterargument to the idea that we must always do what the people want would be, you know, hanging or, you know, getting rid of nuclear power stations because people are afraid of them blowing up, stuff like that.
00:45:07.680
So what do you say to someone who goes, look, the people know broadly what they want, but it is the job of experts to come in and, you know, take care of things and make decisions.
0.97
00:45:15.700
The expertise thing is a really interesting thing because, obviously, Gove made that point and he was slammed, you know, and it became a sort of Brexit, Romain, Romain, because obviously all Leave voters are stupid, you know, we don't listen to experts and so on.
0.84
00:45:32.200
But there are some really interesting, fine-grained, philosophical ideas to be had on that.
00:45:40.560
There's a difference between macro expertise and micro.
00:45:42.940
so on micro you know an engineer or someone flying a plane or a cook or something that's
00:45:49.880
micro expertise and it exists it really you can but and the reason it's expertise you can rely on
00:45:54.420
it you can rely on it macro no i don't think so macroeconomics is in crisis literally they're all
00:46:02.800
over the place i mean it's a wonderful discipline you know two of my kids you know one did an
00:46:07.720
agreement one's doing one now and but it's in crisis it is not you can't say that you have
00:46:14.100
macro expertise that could that could say where we are with predictive um accuracy you know six
00:46:22.900
months they're quite good at three months actually but quite good a week as long as no crisis happens
00:46:27.020
but they're very poor they're very poor they're really really poor on on predicting anything
00:46:32.840
further out and actually gove bless him was it was just making that point because he's talking
00:46:38.040
about the imfs and uh you know um ocd predictions which was a legitimate thing to say so you know
00:46:45.620
critic you know does it mean you're ignoring expert of no not generally taleb nasim taleb
00:46:52.140
makes great uh great points on this and um he's you know he's an odd figure culturally but he's
00:47:00.200
i'd like him don't go on his twitter no i stay away from that yeah no i occasionally look at it
00:47:04.860
i have followed him but i occasionally look at it but his but his his contribution to intellectual
00:47:08.780
life is it's great about two months ago i was walking down uh victorian embankment and i i
00:47:13.500
saw him walking down i stopped him and said hello and said i was a big fan and um he was there with
00:47:18.740
his agent spoke for a for a few minutes and i didn't get a selfie and i walked up why why didn't
00:47:41.040
in a position in a cool, calm, and collected place
00:47:44.620
where cool, calm, and collected people come together.
00:47:50.700
The people who are wise heads sitting in Parliament
00:47:55.100
and deliberating on these great matters come together
00:48:02.820
Because hanging is an issue where the majority of the British
00:48:06.800
probably perfectly support that, right, or have done for a while.
00:48:10.340
I think it's below 50% now. It used to be higher.
00:48:12.340
But let's say it's around 50% or a small majority.
00:48:16.080
Maybe it's not hanging. Maybe it's just the death penalty.
00:48:18.580
Maybe if you phrase it like that, most people would support it, right?
00:48:21.520
And maybe that's an issue on which we just need someone to go,
00:48:24.960
no, no, come on, guys, we don't need to go that far, right?
00:48:28.060
So my point is, do we always have to do what the people want in everything?
00:48:33.240
No, I don't think, I'd concede on that point, actually.
00:48:37.420
I think some people, when we're sort of re-putting the philosophical base of the SDP together,
00:48:46.100
some people are quite keen on direct democracy.
00:48:50.060
i think if you if you have if your if votes match seats which they don't if votes match seat you
00:48:58.160
don't need that and particularly if you have seats that are connected to a physical you know a
00:49:02.700
geography to keep the link between voters and so you know so am i in favor of having you know votes
00:49:07.900
on the death penalty no and uh i i couldn't i mean i'm totally and utterly against the idea of the
00:49:15.240
death penalty. So I would have to say, even if, and I'll be honest, even if 55% of people wanted
00:49:20.700
it, I wouldn't be voting for it. Right. And so that's Brexit, isn't it? Some people would make
00:49:26.640
that point that- Yeah, they could do, they could do, but the difference is that on a tiny micro,
00:49:34.260
but lethal question for an individual, is that equivalent to asking how your state is governed?
00:49:43.200
I mean, Brexit is the biggest question of our political lives now
00:49:53.980
the nation state as an idea is diminished, very, very diminished.
00:49:57.500
If you speak to a new graduate at a modern university in Britain,
00:50:06.820
What they're not seeing is the positive side of convening national solidarity
00:50:12.020
to do stuff together, you know, so we're in it together, and they also don't see the phony side
00:50:18.720
of the EU not having that. Now, let's, so I love it that we've got 50 minutes, and it's only really
00:50:26.680
now that we've touched on Brexit. I was keeping an eye to see how long it would take. What we are
00:50:32.540
now is, I think, is in a position, like we said, political crisis. Yeah. If you were the Prime
00:50:37.480
Minister, how would you deal with Brexit? It's an awful question because you wouldn't have wanted
00:50:44.880
to get here. But that aside, I would say leave without a deal. I think that's the only thing
00:50:51.040
that respects it. I think personally, her actual deal, the deal that she has, the Barnier May deal
00:50:57.500
is worse than staying in. I'm here a sceptic. I want to leave, but I would sooner stay in than
00:51:04.180
vote for that deal. That is a dreadful, dreadful deal. You can't, there are some advantages to
00:51:10.060
staying in, but you can't give those advantages up without having the advantages of leaving.
00:51:17.320
And so her deal has none of the advantages of leaving. You don't get your own trade policy.
0.96
00:51:21.980
You don't know how you'll ever get out of the customs union if you can. Dreadful. So the only
00:51:27.280
option actually where we are, we wouldn't have wanted to get here, but the only option is
00:51:31.900
actually leave me without a deal. But by the way, I don't think that's going to happen.
00:51:34.880
I really, I think, I think the establishment of putting Brexit into a sort of killing zone now.
00:51:39.260
And I think this is why I objected to the European election so much, because it's a slow,
00:51:45.680
wear the public down, get the sort of, you know, the, the soft Brexit, hard Brexit narrative,
00:51:52.240
wear them down, don't honor it, put it into a, you know, negotiate a terrible deal that,
00:51:59.760
which the commons, everyone knows, couldn't because the various on the mass couldn't support,
00:52:06.480
then, you know, to get to the next stage by having European parlour elections,
00:52:11.460
then get the EU to give you a longer delay, which they'll do.
00:52:16.240
They'll give you the only delay you want now, as long as you stay in and, you know,
00:52:21.260
They'll just give us as much time because every single vote the European Union has had on the treaties previously,
00:52:28.600
You know, Greece, well, actually that was about austerity, but Holland, France, Denmark twice, Ireland twice.
00:52:35.140
The standard way of doing it is to say, sorry, wrong result, vote again.
00:52:42.620
I thought, and that's been the real tragedy, the real realization is that we thought we were different to any, we're not.
00:52:52.200
The elite here are doing it to us exactly the same.
00:53:01.260
And the only question is, are they going to have to do that,
00:53:04.320
or do you get some sort of false Brexit that gets through?
00:53:09.120
I don't think the public is going to be convinced.
00:53:11.720
But if you get the worst referendum they could have is May's deal or stay in.
0.98
00:53:17.660
So it's like stay in, crap, or stay in, proper.
0.97
00:53:21.800
That would be even worse, according to what you're saying.
0.99
00:53:27.420
it's it's a running joke on the show uh we we have people saying when are you going to start
00:53:32.240
selling t-shirts with that slogan we don't actually think that way in fact both of us
00:53:36.140
have a lot of reservations about what's happened since brexit uh and i particularly feel like
00:53:40.940
if if we got to a point where we had a second referendum and it was either leave with no deal
00:53:47.380
or remain i would vote to leave with no deal yeah my only concern with that is how damaging is that
00:53:55.440
going to be. Because I'll be honest with you, I think democracy is much more important than
00:53:59.060
economics. Yeah, I do as well. So if we were to leave and suffer some economic disruption in the
00:54:04.960
short term, I'm comfortable with that. But I'm not so comfortable with the idea that we leave
00:54:09.340
and destroy our economy for 20 years. That would be it. Yeah, I don't think that's, I mean, I just
00:54:13.320
don't genuinely don't believe that's in the offing. I mean, a modern economy that wants things with
00:54:17.180
its own currency will end up getting them. I mean, you will end up getting suppliers. I mean,
00:54:20.840
there might not be that supplier, but they will be a supplier and the world will supply you stuff.
00:54:25.440
I think there will be a transition, and there will be some turbulence, no doubt about it.
00:54:29.920
You wouldn't want to have got to a situation where you've had to do no deal.
00:54:33.580
But we're here, and if it happens, I think the country would have probably 12 months of readjustment.
00:54:43.260
I mean, I think certain manufacturing industries, long supply lines, there's going to be turbulence there.
00:54:51.320
and as opposed on the other side of the balance sheet,
00:54:57.460
destroying people's faith in democracy for a generation.
00:55:01.180
Is that worth it for theoretically a quarter percent of GDP for a few years?
00:55:12.200
I think the case, I mean, it's the point we make in the new deck,
00:55:16.940
the case for rejecting the European Union as it's structured on democratic grounds is incredibly
00:55:23.400
strong. I mean, it's really, really strong. If you're a fully integrated Eurozone state,
00:55:32.280
like Portugal or Holland, there are five major important policy areas which your voters can't
00:55:39.900
touch. So, you know, if you say, if I can remember the monetary policy, fiscal policy,
00:55:44.060
trade policy immigration and industrial policy that's pretty major areas right there no that's
00:55:50.720
not little those are big things okay you're a normal portuguese you can't elect a politician
00:55:58.180
that can touch that you can't and that's a desperate situation now the usual trade-off is
00:56:04.700
that if things are going so well economically and we're you know bellies are so full we'll put up
00:56:11.280
with that. It's a bit like in China, people talk about, you know, why isn't there more pressure
00:56:15.180
for democracy in China? Well, the theory is that if China grows at 8%, people don't mind,
00:56:21.960
you know, and that's the sort of deal. Trouble with the Eurozone, it doesn't. I mean, you've
00:56:26.160
got mass unemployment. You've got mass unemployment in the South. Eurozone isn't growing. A lot of
00:56:32.400
large economies like Italy have gone into decline. So it isn't working economically. And yet voters
00:56:39.180
don't have a purchase can't get a handle on any of these things and in pub discussions i'll try
00:56:44.100
and because i drink with a couple of remainers every friday they're nice remainers they're
00:56:48.200
democrats like you democratic remainers who i think if there were a push come to shove would
00:56:52.280
probably honor a future referendum but a point the best point i could ever make to them is
00:56:57.640
is just line up beer glasses or cups and call them monetary policy and just try and touch them
00:57:02.460
try and get them if you're a normal voter in the year you can't touch it and what that means is
00:57:07.940
it means that those really really massive things have been decided pre-politically
00:57:15.080
as devastating that's that means that it's all been wrapped up you know it's all been wrapped
00:57:24.460
up before you even get anywhere near it and that can't happen by accident it's a deliberate
00:57:29.240
thing i mean it's structured like that and it's very sad that it's like that but it is like that
00:57:35.380
and I don't, you know, I don't want the Eurozone to crash in flames and things,
00:57:46.980
You know, when the people with the little trains, you know,
00:57:49.560
running up and down getting in trouble, the state has to pick up the pieces.
00:57:57.520
which is a utopian 1950s project, when it falls down,
00:58:01.700
the nation states will be there as the only entities that can pick up and reconvene stuff
00:58:07.620
and do stuff. That will happen. All right. Well, we've got time for one last question.
00:58:11.860
And the question that we always ask is, what is the one thing that we're not talking about
00:58:15.840
as a society that we really should be? I'm going to say civilized tolerance or civilized
00:58:23.620
toleration of differences. I refuse to hear this. Well, here we go. So we'll hear it first.
00:58:31.700
So there's a sort of, I talked about the sort of social justice mania that we're going through.
00:58:36.740
And part of that, you have sort of parity maniacs.
00:58:41.040
We'll look at any domain, whether it's sandwich shops in Soho, or I'm joking, but, you know, footsie boards, any category, they go crazy if there's not equal absolute proportionality between every group you can think of, you know, men, women, or different ethnic minorities or whatever.
00:59:01.700
or different classes, and they just go crazy, you know.
00:59:05.060
So as if the end game of the project they're doing will be
00:59:10.280
that we will get absolute 50-50 parity across all domains.
00:59:15.340
And I would say a social democratic ethic would be
00:59:20.980
in an open and tolerant society, there will be some differences, you know.
00:59:27.100
There will be, and we're going to have to live with them
00:59:29.640
and we're going to have to be live with them instead of civilized toleration you won't get
00:59:34.460
total you want equality and some of the you know social justice is an important value but the idea
00:59:40.360
that you're going to get total parity is is juvenile and i don't think it's actually even
00:59:44.720
um desirable in that people make different choices in life and that's fine and i think if we
00:59:50.380
if we have this civilized toleration we will be better better off for it fantastic well uh if
00:59:57.700
If anyone wants to follow you on Twitter, you're at William Cluston.
01:00:08.300
And how can, if people really enjoyed this conversation and thought this is the party
01:00:16.240
And I think the biggest thing I would urge people to do is to read the new declaration
01:00:22.460
And if you like it, think about joining and get part of it.
01:00:31.340
As always, follow us at TriggerPod on all the social media.
01:00:36.260
You can listen to this as a podcast, as many of you will know.
01:00:39.220
And the thing that Francis has been pointing out, and we've been hearing a lot of, is on YouTube, we've had people being unsubscribed, including repeatedly from our channel.
01:00:49.140
Could it be that we have honest conversations with interesting people?
01:00:52.740
anyway if that's you if you've been unsubscribed let us know and we'll keep hammering youtube and
01:00:57.160
they will do nothing about it yet again and it's also if you like it but uh you don't feel
01:01:02.800
comfortable tweeting about it or retweeting just tell a friend spread the word spread the hate guys
01:01:07.980
and uh we will see you next week see you in a week