1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:17,320
Welcome to the Free Cities podcast. My name is Timothy Allen and this is the official podcast

2
00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:19,020
of the Free Cities Foundation.

3
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:35,320
Good morning, Prospera.

4
00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:42,920
Yes, hello and welcome to this episode number 176 of the Free Cities podcast.

5
00:00:43,160 --> 00:00:43,900
That's right, folks.

6
00:00:44,460 --> 00:00:45,980
I'm in the promised land.

7
00:00:46,200 --> 00:00:55,840
I'm hauled up in the Doona Tower in Prospera for a month, soaking up the vibes and mixing with the Free City elite.

8
00:00:55,840 --> 00:01:00,800
I have to say though, the inspiration here is truly palpable.

9
00:01:01,400 --> 00:01:04,340
And by that I mean the urge to be productive.

10
00:01:05,320 --> 00:01:11,240
You know what they say, you are the sum total of the five closest people around you.

11
00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:16,260
Well, here everyone's working on something in the space and it's really contagious.

12
00:01:16,640 --> 00:01:23,700
Heck, on Sunday I vibe-coded a whole new podcast website from 6am in the morning till 11pm at night.

13
00:01:23,700 --> 00:01:29,220
I'm not being funny I never work on a Sunday seriously I'm just so productive here and so

14
00:01:29,220 --> 00:01:35,780
is everyone else anyway the first few days spent here I was attending the Liberty Acceleration

15
00:01:35,780 --> 00:01:42,800
Summit put on by Infinita City a great event with phenomenal speakers I've got some great stories to

16
00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:49,640
pass on to you all and new projects to reveal in a space watch this space over the next weeks

17
00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:51,760
as the interviews start dropping.

18
00:01:51,960 --> 00:01:53,080
Talking of the conference,

19
00:01:53,580 --> 00:01:55,740
Patrick Hibbert from Veritas Villages

20
00:01:55,740 --> 00:01:57,220
was speaking on day two.

21
00:01:57,360 --> 00:01:58,320
And hey, guess what?

22
00:01:58,480 --> 00:02:00,960
Veritas Villages are our lead sponsor.

23
00:02:01,620 --> 00:02:03,580
That's right, they're building off-grid

24
00:02:03,580 --> 00:02:06,300
freedom-oriented communities in Latin America.

25
00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:10,740
Look out for their new 340-acre acquisition.

26
00:02:11,460 --> 00:02:13,960
The site that just got the go-ahead in Costa Rica

27
00:02:13,960 --> 00:02:16,780
with more than 400 residences planned.

28
00:02:16,940 --> 00:02:19,380
Click on the link in the show notes to inquire.

29
00:02:19,640 --> 00:02:23,160
about that or any of their other projects in Nicaragua and Panama,

30
00:02:24,120 --> 00:02:25,980
especially if you're a Bitcoiner like me,

31
00:02:26,060 --> 00:02:30,340
because as you may know, you can buy your property in a Veritas village with Bitcoin.

32
00:02:30,340 --> 00:02:33,520
You can spend Bitcoin at the communities,

33
00:02:33,980 --> 00:02:38,780
and they'll even help you to mine Bitcoin with your energy self-sufficient house.

34
00:02:39,520 --> 00:02:42,060
Always wondered what a Bitcoin citadel might look like?

35
00:02:42,480 --> 00:02:43,700
Well, maybe look no further.

36
00:02:44,080 --> 00:02:48,540
www.veritasvillages.com forward slash free cities.

37
00:02:48,540 --> 00:02:54,100
right today's show and it's from an interview i conducted literally the day before i flew out here

38
00:02:54,100 --> 00:03:00,420
to honduras it was at the freedom festival in the uk which was put on by the margaret thatcher

39
00:03:00,420 --> 00:03:08,860
center an awesome event full of uk freedom lovers talking shop it was a good mix of politicians and

40
00:03:08,860 --> 00:03:15,620
non-politicians i would say many thanks to gemma for letting me set up a studio on site i very much

41
00:03:15,620 --> 00:03:23,120
appreciate it today. My guest is a gentleman by the name of James Price. He's a British political

42
00:03:23,120 --> 00:03:29,680
commentator and former senior government advisor who's worked across five Whitehall departments

43
00:03:29,680 --> 00:03:35,420
including the Treasury, the Cabinet Office and the Department for Education. He's now a research

44
00:03:35,420 --> 00:03:41,700
fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and he publicly comments on politics, culture and

45
00:03:41,700 --> 00:03:48,800
immigration and the modern administrative state, something we talk about a lot. You may recognize

46
00:03:48,800 --> 00:03:55,240
him from The Critic, The Spectator or The Telegraph or possibly where he's featured a lot,

47
00:03:55,580 --> 00:04:03,480
GB News, the news channel in the UK. Right, in this conversation we zoom out from the daily circus

48
00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:10,200
of British politics and ask the bigger question, why does government across the West feel so bloated,

49
00:04:10,200 --> 00:04:18,480
so managerial, so strangely immune to elections and so hopeless at doing the basic things it claims

50
00:04:18,480 --> 00:04:25,160
to exist for. We get into the rise of the bureaucratic class, the fantasy that smart

51
00:04:25,160 --> 00:04:31,940
people in offices can arrange society like pieces on a chessboard and the way freedom gets quietly

52
00:04:31,940 --> 00:04:37,180
smothered by people who insist that it's all for your own good. We've heard that one before,

53
00:04:37,180 --> 00:04:44,560
haven't we? And why every attempt to fix this mess seems to produce a larger mess with a new

54
00:04:44,560 --> 00:04:51,960
logo on top of it. James has worked at the centre of British politics and gives a rare inside

55
00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:58,180
account of what government actually feels like from within. Ministers with titles but little

56
00:04:58,180 --> 00:05:04,940
power, civil servants who never leave, political promises that hit a wall of administrative sludge

57
00:05:04,940 --> 00:05:11,160
and a state so vast it can absorb elections without really changing course.

58
00:05:11,620 --> 00:05:17,340
We also get into immigration, democracy, centralisation, national identity, Thatcher, Hayek

59
00:05:17,340 --> 00:05:22,820
and the strange modern habit of confusing control with competence.

60
00:05:23,420 --> 00:05:26,320
Many thanks to James for sitting down with me.

61
00:05:26,400 --> 00:05:28,380
This was an excellent conversation.

62
00:05:28,580 --> 00:05:30,180
I know you're all going to love it, right?

63
00:05:30,180 --> 00:05:37,220
quick uh shout out to the last three weeks top supporters i know i normally do a top five

64
00:05:37,220 --> 00:05:42,880
i've got to do more i've got to do a one two three four five six i want to do a top nine

65
00:05:42,880 --> 00:05:53,020
guys many thanks justin bianchi set in stone aaron shadrach darcy christopher albanese a.n.t

66
00:05:53,020 --> 00:06:01,580
Matthias and Rosebids. You're all the OGs, the biggest donators of that time period. Thank you

67
00:06:01,580 --> 00:06:06,780
for your Bitcoin and some of you for your fiat money, but mainly for your Bitcoin.

68
00:06:07,280 --> 00:06:15,360
Straight into the reserve and many thanks to you all and to everyone else who streams and boosts us

69
00:06:15,360 --> 00:06:19,840
on the value for value platforms. I appreciate you all and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

70
00:06:19,840 --> 00:06:25,340
right I'm rushing because I'm I'm in the prosperous state of mind and I'm going to get on with work

71
00:06:25,340 --> 00:06:32,100
very quickly after this uh time for the alpha why don't you well why don't you recline on that

72
00:06:32,100 --> 00:06:38,200
lovely green leather bench over there obviously without falling asleep of course because you're

73
00:06:38,200 --> 00:06:44,240
about to sit back relax and enjoy my conversation with James Price

74
00:06:49,840 --> 00:07:01,180
What I thought, what I really wanted to talk about,

75
00:07:01,760 --> 00:07:07,780
because you have a lot of experience as an advisor to government,

76
00:07:08,780 --> 00:07:12,060
rather than sort of focusing on what's happening in the UK,

77
00:07:12,740 --> 00:07:15,200
because I think it's fair to say that what's happening in the UK

78
00:07:15,200 --> 00:07:18,820
is something that's happening in a lot of places, roughly speaking,

79
00:07:18,820 --> 00:07:23,920
a lot of places we care about anyway um i'd quite like to just kind of pull out a little bit

80
00:07:23,920 --> 00:07:30,360
and i was thinking just before you came in there it's quite quite a macro view of this or this

81
00:07:30,360 --> 00:07:34,500
whole thing but i'd i'd quite like to know what you think in three things what you think the

82
00:07:34,500 --> 00:07:43,780
problem is why is it and how do we fix it from your perspective um and then then you know we'll

83
00:07:43,780 --> 00:07:49,660
see where it goes from there and by problem we're talking we're talking the what everyone can feel

84
00:07:49,660 --> 00:07:54,720
right now i don't know whether that is just me i don't think it's just me i mean i was surprised

85
00:07:54,720 --> 00:08:01,220
you know listening to everyone in this morning the questions you know and the general sentiment

86
00:08:01,220 --> 00:08:04,960
was yeah there's a big problem and i don't necessarily mean just about conservatism

87
00:08:04,960 --> 00:08:11,240
i just mean about government yeah and governing governing and government and since you've been

88
00:08:11,240 --> 00:08:35,758
on the inside I love to know first of all what is the major problem What is it that why everyone feels so despondent at the moment Yeah okay So I think that the explosion since the Industrial Revolution of technological change means that you can experience all these wonders of lifestyle increases and all the rest of it

89
00:08:36,098 --> 00:08:39,558
Then you get the feeling that, oh, something must be done to help out other people.

90
00:08:39,558 --> 00:08:45,038
and so all this stuff builds up into the kind of creation of a welfare state

91
00:08:45,038 --> 00:08:47,378
in around the same places at the same time

92
00:08:47,378 --> 00:08:55,038
alongside a kind of concomitant philosophical set of opinions

93
00:08:55,038 --> 00:09:01,998
that I guess kind of comes from people like Rousseau and Francis Bacon maybe

94
00:09:01,998 --> 00:09:05,618
and these sorts of early people who were not necessarily rationalists themselves

95
00:09:05,618 --> 00:09:07,078
but are precursors of that

96
00:09:07,078 --> 00:09:12,258
and Michael Oakeshott's got the great rationalism in politics essay that people should read to get

97
00:09:12,258 --> 00:09:18,058
the early strains of this which is the something that Smith later Adam Smith calls the man of

98
00:09:18,058 --> 00:09:23,218
system and someone who sort of thinks that he can order the world like the pieces of a chessboard

99
00:09:23,218 --> 00:09:27,818
without realizing that the pieces themselves have their own viewpoints so there's a sort of

100
00:09:27,818 --> 00:09:33,318
philosophical siding to this that you can try and order the world and understand it that goes along

101
00:09:33,318 --> 00:09:36,798
with that scientific revolution the enlightenment and then the industrial revolution with the

102
00:09:36,798 --> 00:09:41,518
material consequences. Marx came along, thought all these things were terrible, and bourgeois,

103
00:09:41,758 --> 00:09:46,098
and all the rest of it, and he could order because he thought he understood the currents

104
00:09:46,098 --> 00:09:49,558
and where all this stuff was going, yada, yada, yada. So you've got that kind of intellectual,

105
00:09:49,838 --> 00:09:54,318
interesting background where all this stuff kind of foments from. You then have everyone

106
00:09:54,318 --> 00:09:58,978
thinking, oh, we're jolly smart. And then the First World War happens. And I think European

107
00:09:58,978 --> 00:10:03,378
civilization in particular probably is not an original thing to say hasn't fully recovered.

108
00:10:03,378 --> 00:10:08,258
I think how we were also jolly smart and yet we got into this problem so desperate for this not

109
00:10:08,258 --> 00:10:12,458
to happen again that we fell into the second world war and at that point you've got all these

110
00:10:12,458 --> 00:10:17,478
interesting currents going around that is best described by James Burnham who wrote a book called

111
00:10:17,478 --> 00:10:21,918
the managerial revolution who again came along and said you go into the industrial revolution

112
00:10:21,918 --> 00:10:25,838
all these parts and the capitalists take over which is you know the sort of same prognosis as

113
00:10:25,838 --> 00:10:31,098
the kind of Marxist idea but maybe a bit more value neutral on it I obviously think the capitalists

114
00:10:31,098 --> 00:10:34,938
taking over is a great thing and led to all the sort of wonderful explosion in life expectancy

115
00:10:34,938 --> 00:10:39,158
and freedom and all the rest. And Burnham then said, well, what replaces that? Because the state

116
00:10:39,158 --> 00:10:43,698
grows more money, more complication. Is this the man of system or the rationalists or the

117
00:10:43,698 --> 00:10:52,618
managerial class? And Burnham wrote this in 1941, 42, 43. He was American and seeing what was going

118
00:10:52,618 --> 00:10:56,418
on the war at the time from a bit of distance, but it's shocking how prescient that is now.

119
00:10:56,418 --> 00:11:00,978
and it was happening at the same time that FDR over in the States

120
00:11:00,978 --> 00:11:03,778
was massively expanding the size of the state

121
00:11:03,778 --> 00:11:10,638
in line with a lot of these historical and intellectual and economic trends that were happening.

122
00:11:10,998 --> 00:11:14,418
You get this explosion of executive agencies and all the rest of it in DC.

123
00:11:14,958 --> 00:11:18,018
At the same time in Europe and specifically in Britain

124
00:11:18,018 --> 00:11:21,018
you've got this happening in response to the Second World War

125
00:11:21,018 --> 00:11:25,038
that leads someone like Friedrich Hayek to write The Road to Serfdom

126
00:11:25,038 --> 00:11:30,178
where he says, if you continue doing all this total war, complete command economy,

127
00:11:30,558 --> 00:11:34,918
stuff that you need to do to build enough Spitfires and to fight the war and to beat the Nazis,

128
00:11:35,338 --> 00:11:38,958
if you keep doing this in peacetime afterwards, because you think, oh, we're going to have all

129
00:11:38,958 --> 00:11:42,298
the control and all the rest of it, you will snuff out freedom, you will snuff out economic

130
00:11:42,298 --> 00:11:47,638
freedom and enterprise and all the rest of it, and you will be on the road to serfdom,

131
00:11:47,698 --> 00:11:52,078
as the title of the book says. And that came out about the same time, and that was also incredibly

132
00:11:52,078 --> 00:11:56,998
prophetic. So you had all that that led, certainly in Britain, to the kind of post-war consensus

133
00:11:56,998 --> 00:12:02,978
that we'd gone from being one of the most industrial and enterprising and free societies

134
00:12:02,978 --> 00:12:08,418
to one that was completely command and control. The Attlee government nationalised everything.

135
00:12:08,558 --> 00:12:12,478
They kept, as we've heard at this conference today, they kept rationing going for longer than

136
00:12:12,478 --> 00:12:17,938
they needed to. And great swathes of industry were nationalised in a parliament in a bit.

137
00:12:17,938 --> 00:12:20,038
and the Tories never went back on this

138
00:12:20,038 --> 00:12:21,998
and we wondered why by the 1970s everything

139
00:12:21,998 --> 00:12:23,978
had fallen apart and it took the Thatcher Revolution

140
00:12:23,978 --> 00:12:26,018
this is my kind of hagiography of all this

141
00:12:26,018 --> 00:12:27,858
to understand the

142
00:12:27,858 --> 00:12:30,238
need for that classical liberalism

143
00:12:30,238 --> 00:12:31,998
to come back, the freedom

144
00:12:31,998 --> 00:12:33,558
of

145
00:12:33,558 --> 00:12:35,998
economic activity and of choice

146
00:12:35,998 --> 00:12:37,898
and all that stuff along with the

147
00:12:37,898 --> 00:12:39,738
other bit of that that I think is necessary

148
00:12:39,738 --> 00:12:42,218
which is behaving responsibly

149
00:12:42,218 --> 00:12:43,898
that's the other part of a kind of

150
00:12:43,898 --> 00:12:45,598
I would say conservatism

151
00:12:45,598 --> 00:12:48,478
that needs to go alongside that.

152
00:12:48,678 --> 00:12:51,378
And we could probably go back all the way to the French Revolution stuff,

153
00:12:51,438 --> 00:12:52,858
but let's not bog down any of that.

154
00:12:54,678 --> 00:12:56,298
So Thatcher manages to do that with the economy,

155
00:12:56,398 --> 00:12:58,398
but never really wrestles with the other bit of it,

156
00:12:58,458 --> 00:13:00,278
which is the sort of large bureaucracy.

157
00:13:00,438 --> 00:13:02,038
The man of system is still in place.

158
00:13:02,658 --> 00:13:04,838
It's obviously the case in Europe as well,

159
00:13:05,198 --> 00:13:08,638
where the European project was always designed

160
00:13:08,638 --> 00:13:10,658
to prevent future wars happening,

161
00:13:10,658 --> 00:13:13,218
which meant more control out of the hands of the people and so on.

162
00:13:13,218 --> 00:13:16,358
And the European Union eventually comes out of all of that as well.

163
00:13:16,358 --> 00:13:22,718
And in America, likewise, the massive executive authority of these agencies and all the rest of it that's grown.

164
00:13:22,798 --> 00:13:31,578
So you see the same thing happening from largely intellectual, similarly intellectual and economic and political and militaristic reasonings

165
00:13:31,578 --> 00:13:40,238
to a point where the unelected bureaucracy, the deep state, the management class, the man of system, the rationalists,

166
00:13:40,318 --> 00:13:42,718
whatever you want to call them, have got all this power.

167
00:13:42,718 --> 00:13:51,198
and that invalidates and breaks what I think we have learned works from political philosophy more broadly.

168
00:13:51,498 --> 00:13:53,478
So I'll use a British example and then I'll shut up.

169
00:13:54,338 --> 00:13:59,678
The glorious revolution that comes along in 1688 that gives Britain this amazing constitutional settlement

170
00:13:59,678 --> 00:14:06,278
that makes us top nation in short order afterwards ought to make some of the great English political theorists very happy.

171
00:14:07,198 --> 00:14:12,178
Parliamentary sovereignty means that you've got enough power to actually do things.

172
00:14:12,178 --> 00:14:16,898
So Hobbes ought to be happy to some extent with the kind of idea of Leviathan, the sovereign that can protect people.

173
00:14:17,518 --> 00:14:22,218
Locke ought to be happy with his second treatise because you've got the consent of the governed

174
00:14:22,218 --> 00:14:26,058
and you've got the feedback mechanism that comes in of the people with regular elections.

175
00:14:26,558 --> 00:14:32,918
Edmund Burke should be broadly happy because in our system you're still thinking about the wisdom of the ages and tradition and all that sort of stuff.

176
00:14:33,338 --> 00:14:37,218
And actually, if you wanted to say you've got the crown in parliament, it's the technical thing that sovereign is.

177
00:14:37,258 --> 00:14:41,318
So there's a sort of religious dimension that should appease and appeal to people there as well.

178
00:14:41,318 --> 00:14:46,838
that in that sort of settlement you should have a great system for getting things done for avoiding

179
00:14:46,838 --> 00:14:51,298
civil wars which is obviously what Hobbes wanted in the first place in Britain all of those things

180
00:14:51,298 --> 00:14:57,558
have been eroded if not all most completely destroyed by the first set of processes that

181
00:14:57,558 --> 00:15:02,398
I talked about so you no longer have power to act as a sovereign parliament the way that Hobbes would

182
00:15:02,398 --> 00:15:07,458
want in order to address problems that come along because you have this sort of blob this

183
00:15:07,458 --> 00:15:11,018
administrative state deep state whatever you want to call it people that have all these power in the

184
00:15:11,018 --> 00:15:15,638
quangos and the civil service and all the rest of it, you don't really have Locke's kind of consent

185
00:15:15,638 --> 00:15:20,138
of the governed anymore, because elections don't matter very much anymore, right? When Starmer

186
00:15:20,138 --> 00:15:26,758
came in in England in 2024, how many people across the entire British state changed jobs?

187
00:15:27,678 --> 00:15:33,478
200. 100 ministers, most of whom are MPs as well. So they're working four days a week at most.

188
00:15:34,398 --> 00:15:37,318
You know, Friday, they go off to their constituencies. And 100 special advisors,

189
00:15:37,318 --> 00:15:41,478
of which I was one, who constitutionally aren't allowed to tell civil servants what to do and have

190
00:15:41,478 --> 00:15:45,198
no power, and are limited to saying, boss, please don't sign that, because I've read it, and they're

191
00:15:45,198 --> 00:15:49,078
lying to you, and I'll only have to say I told you so when it all goes wrong, right, which I got bored

192
00:15:49,078 --> 00:15:54,078
of saying. And that's it. And everybody else in that deep state stayed exactly the same. So the

193
00:15:54,078 --> 00:15:59,678
consent mechanism's gone. And the rationalist worldview is very year zero, kind of blank slate

194
00:15:59,678 --> 00:16:05,238
liberal, in the sense that it thinks the man of the wisdom of the ages, or the wisdom of the

195
00:16:05,238 --> 00:16:09,598
unlettered men and all these things that Burke talked about and tradition or when Oakeshott talks

196
00:16:09,598 --> 00:16:14,518
about traditional knowledge and Scruton talks about this sort of accretive sense of knowledge

197
00:16:14,518 --> 00:16:19,438
that isn't necessarily need to be written down that all gets ignored as well so the great

198
00:16:19,438 --> 00:16:24,378
strengths of the British constitution are gone and they've gone because of these big processes

199
00:16:24,378 --> 00:16:28,218
that we've got in place now and until you get politicians that realize that and of course the

200
00:16:28,218 --> 00:16:33,358
Europe has the same thing with the EU America would be a bit different but there are still

201
00:16:33,358 --> 00:16:45,276
the very powerful forces in their central bureaucracy and all the rest of it there So I think that a very rough canter through quite a lot of big ideas of why we got to the point that we in now

202
00:16:45,636 --> 00:16:48,796
where in Britain, certainly, and I think in Europe, you've got this kind of stasis because

203
00:16:48,796 --> 00:16:54,796
that allows for entrenched interests to take over and to ruin the sort of sense of legitimacy

204
00:16:54,796 --> 00:16:59,296
that is supposed to be garnered from some of those big ideas of the Hobbes and the Locke and

205
00:16:59,296 --> 00:17:04,076
all the rest of it. And we can see the material results of that now, when nothing works anymore,

206
00:17:04,076 --> 00:17:07,316
and we're in masses of debt and nobody's happy and all the rest of it.

207
00:17:08,616 --> 00:17:14,116
Loosely speaking, then, it's derived from people believing they know what's best for other people.

208
00:17:15,216 --> 00:17:18,136
And I think, actually, what you mentioned there,

209
00:17:18,236 --> 00:17:22,636
I think that's one of the things that the average person on the street has no idea,

210
00:17:22,696 --> 00:17:27,416
that when a government changes, a lot of the civil service, it remains exactly the same.

211
00:17:27,556 --> 00:17:28,176
It's wild, isn't it?

212
00:17:28,496 --> 00:17:32,036
Well, I mean, I only really discovered it in the last few years

213
00:17:32,036 --> 00:17:35,036
because I've been sort of forced to think about things like this.

214
00:17:35,956 --> 00:17:39,516
But, and I know, correct me if I'm wrong here,

215
00:17:39,556 --> 00:17:43,176
but you're supposed to be apolitical as a civil servant.

216
00:17:43,496 --> 00:17:45,676
But I, you know, I used to work at the BBC.

217
00:17:45,936 --> 00:17:48,136
It's like the BBC is supposed to be apolitical,

218
00:17:48,316 --> 00:17:49,896
but it's not apolitical at all.

219
00:17:50,236 --> 00:17:52,416
All of my friends thought a certain way.

220
00:17:52,416 --> 00:17:55,476
And whether they sort of outwardly express it or not,

221
00:17:55,576 --> 00:17:57,336
it seeps into the culture, obviously.

222
00:17:57,556 --> 00:18:01,196
And I think civil servants tend to not be conservatives.

223
00:18:01,196 --> 00:18:02,176
is that fair to say?

224
00:18:05,096 --> 00:18:06,076
Short answer yes

225
00:18:06,076 --> 00:18:07,356
slightly longer answer

226
00:18:07,356 --> 00:18:08,296
and I won't take as much time

227
00:18:08,296 --> 00:18:08,696
as I said to him

228
00:18:08,696 --> 00:18:09,516
of my previous one

229
00:18:09,516 --> 00:18:10,536
I love it when you speak

230
00:18:10,536 --> 00:18:11,396
please carry on

231
00:18:11,396 --> 00:18:12,096
very eloquent

232
00:18:12,096 --> 00:18:13,156
the

233
00:18:13,156 --> 00:18:14,556
was it Conquest

234
00:18:14,556 --> 00:18:15,356
who had these

235
00:18:15,356 --> 00:18:16,636
three laws of politics

236
00:18:16,636 --> 00:18:17,436
and one of them

237
00:18:17,436 --> 00:18:17,976
is that everybody

238
00:18:17,976 --> 00:18:18,736
is conservative

239
00:18:18,736 --> 00:18:20,056
about that which he knows

240
00:18:20,056 --> 00:18:21,416
even the person

241
00:18:21,416 --> 00:18:21,796
that thinks

242
00:18:21,796 --> 00:18:22,936
brutalist architecture

243
00:18:22,936 --> 00:18:23,676
is great

244
00:18:23,676 --> 00:18:24,156
and it's great

245
00:18:24,156 --> 00:18:25,336
to knock down castles

246
00:18:25,336 --> 00:18:26,136
to put up horrible

247
00:18:26,136 --> 00:18:27,156
concrete carbuncles

248
00:18:27,156 --> 00:18:28,236
will then become

249
00:18:28,236 --> 00:18:29,416
very defensive about them

250
00:18:29,416 --> 00:18:30,436
if you wanted to pull them down

251
00:18:30,436 --> 00:18:31,936
to put something else up, for example.

252
00:18:32,396 --> 00:18:33,956
And so in their ways,

253
00:18:34,076 --> 00:18:35,236
I think a lot of the civil servants

254
00:18:35,236 --> 00:18:37,056
get small c conservative

255
00:18:37,056 --> 00:18:38,616
because they think they know best

256
00:18:38,616 --> 00:18:40,436
and they don't like change coming along

257
00:18:40,436 --> 00:18:41,596
because they're suspicious of it.

258
00:18:41,636 --> 00:18:43,196
So small c principles there.

259
00:18:43,696 --> 00:18:45,896
But by and large, I think that they think

260
00:18:45,896 --> 00:18:47,196
that they are the legitimate,

261
00:18:47,836 --> 00:18:50,176
real power in the country,

262
00:18:50,416 --> 00:18:52,136
whose job it is to keep things going

263
00:18:52,136 --> 00:18:53,596
the way they were taught that it was,

264
00:18:53,996 --> 00:18:56,236
and that the elected ministers and the spads,

265
00:18:56,316 --> 00:18:57,576
of whom, again, a very small number,

266
00:18:57,576 --> 00:19:02,976
are broadly viruses in a system to which they are the antibodies.

267
00:19:03,356 --> 00:19:05,976
And because there's so many of them, because they can stay as long as they want,

268
00:19:06,016 --> 00:19:07,856
there's no parliamentary term limits for them,

269
00:19:08,236 --> 00:19:10,516
they're always going to outlast you and they're always going to outnumber you.

270
00:19:10,916 --> 00:19:12,176
And so that's the mindset as well.

271
00:19:12,176 --> 00:19:14,816
And then you have got, I think, kind of left-wing people,

272
00:19:14,896 --> 00:19:18,436
because by and large it's a sort of left-wing idea to think that the state can do good,

273
00:19:18,836 --> 00:19:22,436
whereas on the right you're more sceptical without the price mechanism

274
00:19:22,436 --> 00:19:24,396
or the profit motive in there of getting stuff done.

275
00:19:24,396 --> 00:19:28,556
with a few small exceptions in the sort of I think secret squirrel bits where they're all

276
00:19:28,556 --> 00:19:31,956
probably quite sound the guys that work in immigration in the home office are all quite

277
00:19:31,956 --> 00:19:35,876
sound because they spend all day dealing with pedophiles and rapists and terrorists and criminals

278
00:19:35,876 --> 00:19:40,176
and all the rest of it and I think that probably has quite a dampening effect on your sympathy for

279
00:19:40,176 --> 00:19:47,556
wrong-uns. I wondered whether as well the idea of working as a civil servant was maybe a sort of

280
00:19:47,556 --> 00:19:54,336
it appealed more to people who didn't like taking risks basically and it's a long-term

281
00:19:54,336 --> 00:19:57,296
probably a pretty secure job, I would imagine.

282
00:19:57,376 --> 00:19:58,016
I don't really know.

283
00:19:58,156 --> 00:19:58,756
Massively, yeah.

284
00:19:58,896 --> 00:20:00,096
It's almost impossible to get fired.

285
00:20:00,236 --> 00:20:02,536
I think a study came out a few weeks ago in England

286
00:20:02,536 --> 00:20:04,536
that said that you're more likely to die in the job

287
00:20:04,536 --> 00:20:06,256
than to be fired in the civil service.

288
00:20:06,816 --> 00:20:08,836
And the pension is obviously phenomenally good.

289
00:20:09,236 --> 00:20:11,036
So you're incentivized to stick around.

290
00:20:11,296 --> 00:20:13,676
It's hard to get in to the civil service,

291
00:20:13,836 --> 00:20:16,616
mid-rank and almost impossible at higher ranks

292
00:20:16,616 --> 00:20:19,156
because they basically entirely promote internally,

293
00:20:19,696 --> 00:20:20,876
which, unlike the American system,

294
00:20:21,236 --> 00:20:22,936
where you do four years or whatever,

295
00:20:22,936 --> 00:20:24,736
and then you probably, your party loses,

296
00:20:25,176 --> 00:20:26,456
you've got to go and do something else,

297
00:20:26,596 --> 00:20:27,916
learn how the world has changed,

298
00:20:28,036 --> 00:20:28,676
have some more skills.

299
00:20:28,736 --> 00:20:29,996
So you can go in at a higher level

300
00:20:29,996 --> 00:20:31,496
four years, eight years later,

301
00:20:32,036 --> 00:20:33,516
you just stay where you are in the civil service.

302
00:20:33,656 --> 00:20:36,196
And so the extraordinary advances

303
00:20:36,196 --> 00:20:38,056
bypass them completely entirely.

304
00:20:38,516 --> 00:20:40,336
Something like COVID, just quickly,

305
00:20:40,436 --> 00:20:42,096
my old boss, a guy called Nadiem Zahawi,

306
00:20:42,196 --> 00:20:43,696
who did the vaccine rollout,

307
00:20:44,036 --> 00:20:44,836
which I think in the States

308
00:20:44,836 --> 00:20:46,336
was called Operation Warp Speed,

309
00:20:46,616 --> 00:20:47,916
the equivalent in Britain for that.

310
00:20:48,476 --> 00:20:50,336
And he was a guy who founded a business

311
00:20:50,336 --> 00:20:52,056
that's got a market cap of billions now

312
00:20:52,056 --> 00:20:56,716
called YouGov and very successful businessman and was so shocked with some of the stories when he

313
00:20:56,716 --> 00:21:00,396
would tell civil servants something and they say um all right we're gonna the plan is obviously to

314
00:21:00,396 --> 00:21:04,276
get these vaccines uh delivered to the country okay well you're going to deliver the vaccines

315
00:21:04,276 --> 00:21:10,196
at a sub-zero temperature what experience has the civil service got all the um the you know the

316
00:21:10,196 --> 00:21:16,036
medical uh approval board or the human the health whatever uh bits what experience have you guys got

317
00:21:16,036 --> 00:21:20,076
of moving vaccines at scale at sub-zero temperatures?

318
00:21:21,036 --> 00:21:22,076
Well, none, Minister, but.

319
00:21:22,156 --> 00:21:22,396
He's okay.

320
00:21:22,776 --> 00:21:26,096
What experience have you got of moving vaccines at all

321
00:21:26,096 --> 00:21:27,136
at sub-zero temperatures?

322
00:21:27,336 --> 00:21:27,696
Well, none.

323
00:21:28,296 --> 00:21:30,376
What experience have you got of moving anything anywhere?

324
00:21:30,756 --> 00:21:31,716
Well, none, but we're going to,

325
00:21:31,796 --> 00:21:34,696
he's like, okay, can you just Google the logistics industry?

326
00:21:35,116 --> 00:21:37,156
And you go, oh yeah, look at that, that's really useful.

327
00:21:37,216 --> 00:21:38,996
It turns out you can move like ice cream or whatever.

328
00:21:38,996 --> 00:21:40,956
And so, you know, you can retcon it from that.

329
00:21:41,176 --> 00:21:42,476
And the civil servants hadn't thought about that

330
00:21:42,476 --> 00:21:45,296
because I think the world of risk-taking, as you say,

331
00:21:45,296 --> 00:21:50,016
the business world, it's not just alien to them, it's something that they are suspicious about.

332
00:21:50,436 --> 00:21:57,096
Because of the fear of corruption, there's all sorts of stuff put in place, at least in the

333
00:21:57,096 --> 00:22:01,696
British system and I think in others as well, to be seen to be avoiding any kind of whiff of

334
00:22:01,696 --> 00:22:05,776
corruption and therefore that turns into a suspicion that any business interacting with

335
00:22:05,776 --> 00:22:10,896
the state just wants to get something off you, wants to get advantage, wants to weaken protections

336
00:22:10,896 --> 00:22:15,556
for the little guy because they're rapacious profit mongers and that is a very widespread

337
00:22:15,556 --> 00:22:22,196
feeling in the civil service going back to the very macro view of this which is people

338
00:22:22,196 --> 00:22:28,676
thinking they know what's best for everyone is that cyclical is that is that a glitch in the

339
00:22:28,676 --> 00:22:35,656
human psyche or do we do we do we sort of have a renaissance out of that type of because most i

340
00:22:35,656 --> 00:22:44,236
mean obviously in my world the world of the free market makes so much sense to to negate any thoughts

341
00:22:44,236 --> 00:22:49,576
I might have apart from with my children of course but the average person I meet of course I have

342
00:22:49,576 --> 00:22:55,696
absolutely no idea what's good for them necessarily and I want I want them to decide anyway I like I

343
00:22:55,696 --> 00:23:01,536
want to see the results of all this input of different people and it does seem a little bit

344
00:23:01,536 --> 00:23:06,956
less evolved to think that you know what's better for other people i don't know it's a bit it's a bit

345
00:23:06,956 --> 00:23:13,856
like patronizing so i mean do we do we evolve out of it or does this does this cyclical thing keep

346
00:23:13,856 --> 00:23:21,836
happening and obviously what we see now is probably a very deep in the cycle of telling people what to

347
00:23:21,836 --> 00:23:28,316
do government's massive bureaucracy is huge um there's no business people in the government as

348
00:23:28,316 --> 00:23:32,196
as far as I can tell, you know, we've gone right to that end.

349
00:23:32,736 --> 00:23:35,196
So, I mean, does this ever change?

350
00:23:35,736 --> 00:23:38,376
I like your idea of things feeling cyclical.

351
00:23:38,516 --> 00:23:40,136
I think that's a good way to think about it.

352
00:23:40,136 --> 00:23:41,356
I don't think you can evolve out of it.

353
00:23:41,436 --> 00:23:44,956
The Bible talks about that we'll want to recognise the moat

354
00:23:44,956 --> 00:23:47,716
or the splinter in our neighbour's eye,

355
00:23:47,836 --> 00:23:49,796
but not the log in our own eye, right?

356
00:23:50,136 --> 00:23:52,236
Or the classic kind of judge, not let's you be judged.

357
00:23:52,236 --> 00:23:54,456
So I think that tendency is always there.

358
00:23:54,456 --> 00:23:59,776
and Hayek is good on this where in the kind of the fatal conceit I think was his last book

359
00:23:59,776 --> 00:24:04,656
it talks about this idea and Hayek is really charitable about the the man of system or the

360
00:24:04,656 --> 00:24:09,516
lefties or whatever you want to call them because he thinks well actually they're quite smart people

361
00:24:09,516 --> 00:24:14,036
and they're compassionate people I'm not always sure I agree with him on that bit but because

362
00:24:14,036 --> 00:24:17,276
they're smart they think well they're still suffering in the world and there's still some

363
00:24:17,276 --> 00:24:22,196
bad things I'm smart and I care so if I change this system I'm going to make it better for people

364
00:24:22,196 --> 00:24:32,496
And he ascribes that nice, well-meaning, well-intentioned mindset as a big problem that ends up when you have the power of the state in corrupting everything and all the rest of it.

365
00:24:32,676 --> 00:24:34,756
And so I think that that's more likely.

366
00:24:34,976 --> 00:24:41,056
And one of the geniuses, I guess, in the federal system in the United States is that those laboratories of democracy can play off against each other.

367
00:24:41,336 --> 00:24:42,376
And you can see what works.

368
00:24:42,416 --> 00:24:49,096
And if school choice is going to work in Mississippi, other states might start adopting it, being pro-tech in California, yada, yada, yada.

369
00:24:49,096 --> 00:25:05,914
Whereas Britain and massively now the EU trying to standardise everything because one size fits all we know best best practice all that stuff That smashes away that kind of human flourishing And I also like your cyclical point because I think that you end up getting lefty governments in wherever they are

370
00:25:05,914 --> 00:25:07,074
that spend always the same,

371
00:25:07,174 --> 00:25:08,214
always spend too much money,

372
00:25:08,634 --> 00:25:10,254
always over-regulate and all the rest of it.

373
00:25:10,254 --> 00:25:13,874
And eventually economic reality sets in

374
00:25:13,874 --> 00:25:15,194
and forces a change.

375
00:25:15,334 --> 00:25:16,154
And you see that, I guess,

376
00:25:16,494 --> 00:25:19,014
the beautiful fact that Reagan and Thatcher

377
00:25:19,014 --> 00:25:20,434
were in power at the same time

378
00:25:20,434 --> 00:25:22,174
and able to lead that once.

379
00:25:22,474 --> 00:25:23,894
And we've got to hope that that will happen again.

380
00:25:23,894 --> 00:25:26,594
I think we're seeing a version of that in Central America at the moment.

381
00:25:26,914 --> 00:25:27,514
Yeah, yeah.

382
00:25:27,574 --> 00:25:31,514
They had a long road with serfdom and socialism.

383
00:25:32,354 --> 00:25:37,534
And one by one, all right, Venezuela is slightly different, but one by one, they're dropping now.

384
00:25:38,534 --> 00:25:41,214
And Venezuela is at the control, isn't it?

385
00:25:41,394 --> 00:25:41,754
Right?

386
00:25:42,614 --> 00:25:45,114
You know, you see in Argentina this stuff happening.

387
00:25:45,454 --> 00:25:50,174
You see the way that I suppose in El Salvador is, again, a bit different, but very interesting what's happening there.

388
00:25:50,214 --> 00:25:52,274
And they can maybe move on to the economic freedom bits now.

389
00:25:52,274 --> 00:25:57,314
all the while Venezuela has been this like command a corrupt command economy with more oil than any

390
00:25:57,314 --> 00:26:01,154
other country in the world and people are resorted to eating their like pets and zoo animals so I

391
00:26:01,154 --> 00:26:10,354
think you're right yeah absolutely so um okay if it's cyclical what do we are we just do we just

392
00:26:10,354 --> 00:26:18,314
play our hand and watch it happen like because a lot of people believe this is you know there's

393
00:26:18,314 --> 00:26:25,234
there's an outcome which favors everyone and um that would in that would imply that it doesn't

394
00:26:25,234 --> 00:26:29,534
there's always going to be people and i i'm i'm with you on that one i don't believe the world is

395
00:26:29,534 --> 00:26:37,194
fair just uh all these things there's a complete randomness in the world and as a result um if

396
00:26:37,194 --> 00:26:41,934
you're lucky then you have a certain type of life if you're unlucky you have a different type of life

397
00:26:41,934 --> 00:27:00,894
But really, the sort of centralizing force, which is, like I say, where we're at at the moment, it must exist for some good, even though it tends to end in, you know, mayhem, really, and a lot of death and destruction.

398
00:27:01,654 --> 00:27:07,994
When you talk about the decentralizing force, it's easier to argue that it doesn't end badly.

399
00:27:08,694 --> 00:27:10,154
Like, can you get too decentralized?

400
00:27:10,154 --> 00:27:10,994
I suppose you can.

401
00:27:10,994 --> 00:27:14,834
You could get hedonism, maybe, or something, and no one cares about anything.

402
00:27:14,914 --> 00:27:17,254
And there's a lot of infighting at that point, maybe.

403
00:27:17,614 --> 00:27:21,814
Yeah, the example that some of these, I guess, would be like Somalia, right?

404
00:27:21,934 --> 00:27:27,214
Where a total breakdown of law and order, no respect of property rights, all the rest of it.

405
00:27:27,254 --> 00:27:31,134
And it becomes the Hobbesian war of all against all or whatever.

406
00:27:31,294 --> 00:27:38,834
And again, actually, interesting natural experiment to some extent with Somaliland as a breakaway state that is doing better because it tries to respect some more of these things.

407
00:27:38,834 --> 00:27:48,254
so I think you're right that the decentralizing thing has less risk to it probably because every

408
00:27:48,254 --> 00:27:52,754
time it gets tried it's starting from a very high base you think about where we'd got to in the 1970s

409
00:27:52,754 --> 00:27:58,354
in Britain Thatcher had an awful lot of decentralizing and devolving and reforming to do

410
00:27:58,354 --> 00:28:04,154
and then you know you can do so much of it in a kind of political world before a lefty will come

411
00:28:04,154 --> 00:28:07,354
in again say well things are so nice now you don't need to worry about this we can go back to being

412
00:28:07,354 --> 00:28:12,694
nice and sweet and all the rest of it which is why you the kind of constant vigilance as the

413
00:28:12,694 --> 00:28:16,194
blessed Margaret did say you've got to fight a battle more than once in order to win it if you

414
00:28:16,194 --> 00:28:21,414
can bring state interference down and tax burdens down and spending down as much as possible that

415
00:28:21,414 --> 00:28:28,214
will be I guess a kind of buffer against the the re-encroachment of these ideas and burdens and all

416
00:28:28,214 --> 00:28:32,554
the rest of it I'm trying to think of some good examples where that hasn't happened because

417
00:28:32,554 --> 00:28:36,994
governance has been so good I mean Singapore is a great example in all sorts of ways it doesn't

418
00:28:36,994 --> 00:28:42,814
have a lot some of the some of the freedoms in terms of being able to speak your mind or leave

419
00:28:42,814 --> 00:28:46,574
chewing gum on the floor which is not a great freedom anyway but it's gone from in a generation

420
00:28:46,574 --> 00:28:51,954
from third world to first as lee kwan you said and has stayed amazing basically ever since because

421
00:28:51,954 --> 00:28:57,174
it's got a broad set of things right which is really impressive i think people misunderstand

422
00:28:57,174 --> 00:29:03,354
freedom as being freedom from rules always and i think the most important freedom is the freedom

423
00:29:03,354 --> 00:29:06,334
to opt in or out of something, which with Singapore, you can.

424
00:29:06,514 --> 00:29:07,454
You can choose to live there.

425
00:29:07,494 --> 00:29:08,234
You can choose not to.

426
00:29:08,534 --> 00:29:09,254
It's up to you.

427
00:29:09,334 --> 00:29:12,514
And I mean, I don't know how much you know about the free cities movement

428
00:29:12,514 --> 00:29:17,514
that we're part of, but we advocate for this exact governance,

429
00:29:17,694 --> 00:29:19,134
competition between governments.

430
00:29:19,734 --> 00:29:21,134
And, you know, the more the merrier.

431
00:29:21,854 --> 00:29:26,014
You know, like America's a great example of an experiment

432
00:29:26,014 --> 00:29:30,134
which goes along further down that line than most

433
00:29:30,134 --> 00:29:32,634
and appears to be super successful.

434
00:29:33,294 --> 00:29:38,554
And by the way, the American system helps ward against all these sort of federal centralizing powers,

435
00:29:38,894 --> 00:29:42,534
which I suppose is what the founding fathers were warning against.

436
00:29:43,614 --> 00:29:47,874
Because if it's going terribly in New York, because it has been for a while and will get much worse now,

437
00:29:47,934 --> 00:29:52,274
and California, the beneficiaries will be the Tennessees and the Texases and all the rest of it.

438
00:29:52,734 --> 00:29:54,134
It's a great system.

439
00:29:54,394 --> 00:29:57,314
If we had a federal system here, I'd tell you, I would move to Buckingham.

440
00:29:57,394 --> 00:29:59,554
This is a wonderful little place. I've never been here before.

441
00:29:59,954 --> 00:30:01,554
It's an amazing little place, isn't it?

442
00:30:01,634 --> 00:30:01,934
It is.

443
00:30:01,934 --> 00:30:06,074
I don't know what the politics are like here, but it's, you know, it's walking around.

444
00:30:06,074 --> 00:30:07,134
Well, to some extent, it doesn't matter, does it?

445
00:30:07,174 --> 00:30:08,874
Because we're so centralised.

446
00:30:09,014 --> 00:30:15,914
I think Britain is the most centralised economy in the OECD in terms of the amount of taxes that are raised at the centre.

447
00:30:16,534 --> 00:30:25,894
London has this, if you have to wear free cities, it's so overpowering in terms of what's the model in the United Kingdom?

448
00:30:25,894 --> 00:30:28,754
that smart kids or academically smart kids

449
00:30:28,754 --> 00:30:31,014
are told to go off to university somewhere,

450
00:30:31,674 --> 00:30:33,534
Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Exeter,

451
00:30:33,914 --> 00:30:34,854
whatever other places,

452
00:30:35,134 --> 00:30:36,414
and then by and large move to London

453
00:30:36,414 --> 00:30:37,554
because that's where all the jobs are.

454
00:30:37,794 --> 00:30:39,294
And it becomes the cultural capital

455
00:30:39,294 --> 00:30:40,174
and the economic capital

456
00:30:40,174 --> 00:30:41,074
and the political capital

457
00:30:41,074 --> 00:30:41,694
and all the rest of it.

458
00:30:42,174 --> 00:30:44,894
And has a great, if London's doing great,

459
00:30:45,254 --> 00:30:47,574
but it's been run by a bloke for so long now

460
00:30:47,574 --> 00:30:49,774
who has let crime go and all the rest of it.

461
00:30:49,854 --> 00:30:50,334
And it's horrendous.

462
00:30:50,374 --> 00:30:51,294
And I left London,

463
00:30:51,774 --> 00:30:52,694
not because I think you get

464
00:30:52,694 --> 00:30:53,534
any more political freedom,

465
00:30:53,634 --> 00:30:55,274
but just to get out to a small village somewhere

466
00:30:55,274 --> 00:30:57,514
where you are free of the effects

467
00:30:57,514 --> 00:30:58,874
that people have been voting for in that way.

468
00:30:59,414 --> 00:31:01,014
We did it a number of years ago as well.

469
00:31:01,074 --> 00:31:01,954
I live on a farm now.

470
00:31:02,034 --> 00:31:03,674
I've gone right to the very extreme.

471
00:31:03,834 --> 00:31:05,574
We live about half a mile down the track.

472
00:31:06,154 --> 00:31:06,474
Amazing.

473
00:31:06,834 --> 00:31:11,154
But it sounds, you know, it's not strange,

474
00:31:11,234 --> 00:31:13,594
not where we live anyway, but it's real.

475
00:31:13,594 --> 00:31:17,314
I really, like, I've gone down the philosophical road

476
00:31:17,314 --> 00:31:19,534
of leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone,

477
00:31:19,614 --> 00:31:21,434
to the point now where I live down the end of a track.

478
00:31:21,914 --> 00:31:23,654
It's not that I, I mean, like,

479
00:31:23,654 --> 00:31:29,994
and we we have minimal contact with the government it has to be said you you really feel that you have

480
00:31:29,994 --> 00:31:35,454
minimal contact every now and then i have to dip my toes into the bureaucratic world and i realize

481
00:31:35,454 --> 00:31:39,914
how fortunate we are but it still it annoys me it shouldn't be like that it shouldn't be like that

482
00:31:39,914 --> 00:31:44,154
it wasn't like that when even when i was you know i i lived in london i worked out of london for

483
00:31:44,154 --> 00:31:49,974
seven years even there you know that was only 20 years ago it felt completely different you know

484
00:31:49,974 --> 00:31:53,474
And my freedoms were much more evident.

485
00:31:54,014 --> 00:31:56,654
Never thought about freedom of speech until the last few years.

486
00:31:56,814 --> 00:31:57,034
Never.

487
00:31:57,434 --> 00:31:59,954
Never thought at all about it.

488
00:32:00,094 --> 00:32:08,074
And now that you do think about it, you realize that we have a terrible system here for freedom of speech compared to, say, the federal system.

489
00:32:08,474 --> 00:32:08,914
Massively.

490
00:32:09,094 --> 00:32:10,514
My wife is from the United States.

491
00:32:10,634 --> 00:32:12,634
She's a Hoosier from the great state of Indiana.

492
00:32:12,634 --> 00:32:17,674
and she said to me recently you know I never appreciated what the first amendment gave me in

493
00:32:17,674 --> 00:32:21,414
terms of enshrining my right to say what I want without fear and all the rest of it until the last

494
00:32:21,414 --> 00:32:25,094
few years of living here and she's lived here for a while now and to feel the way that that has

495
00:32:25,094 --> 00:32:29,114
turned and I think because again that the man of system the rationalist whatever you want to call

496
00:32:29,114 --> 00:32:36,554
it genuinely has never had the the philosophical groundings about freedom explained to them

497
00:32:36,554 --> 00:32:40,874
ordered liberty right as you say it's not just about license to become hedonists or whatever

498
00:32:40,874 --> 00:32:46,854
but the ability to act independently because you want to tinker and come up with new things and new

499
00:32:46,854 --> 00:32:50,594
ideas and all these sorts of things they never come into any of this stuff I don't think we teach

500
00:32:50,594 --> 00:32:56,774
it very well in school teach the benefits of it it's easy to be mocked and you know so for an

501
00:32:56,774 --> 00:33:02,134
example inside government I was in the department for education during some of the covid issues and

502
00:33:02,134 --> 00:33:07,774
the omicron wave was coming in and I sat in a meeting and they said right we are partly because

503
00:33:07,774 --> 00:33:11,774
the trade unions want us to, we're going to insist that every child, including in primary

504
00:33:11,774 --> 00:33:16,274
schools, is to wear a mask during the wave of this all day long, even when they're

505
00:33:16,274 --> 00:33:19,954
sat down at their desks. And that's okay, because it's a zero cost

506
00:33:19,992 --> 00:33:24,412
intervention. And I was the one person in that room, because obviously I'm the only political

507
00:33:24,412 --> 00:33:28,892
person in there, and the rest are all civil servants, but what about their freedom? What

508
00:33:28,892 --> 00:33:33,692
about their personal experience? And you'd have assumed that I'd called their mum a whore or

509
00:33:33,692 --> 00:33:38,072
something, right? It was that like, and then it was more like, oh, you've just said that the,

510
00:33:38,152 --> 00:33:41,872
I don't know, that grass is blue, or they just, they couldn't get their heads around this idea.

511
00:33:42,192 --> 00:33:46,532
But it's zero cost. And so I forced them to go away and do a study that reported back and said,

512
00:33:46,532 --> 00:33:49,132
actually, no, it's not a zero cost, and here are the problems, yada, yada, yada.

513
00:33:49,992 --> 00:33:53,892
Because there's no mechanism for saying you're encroaching on their freedom and all the rest of it.

514
00:33:54,012 --> 00:33:57,732
And there will be some people will say, yeah, but what about the freedom not to catch COVID and all the rest of it?

515
00:33:57,872 --> 00:34:00,812
We're talking about primary school kids here and mostly young teachers and all the rest.

516
00:34:01,232 --> 00:34:03,672
And COVID is an interesting example, I think, of people going, wait a minute.

517
00:34:04,232 --> 00:34:08,592
God, my liberty really can be taken away from me at the drop of a hat and all the rest of it.

518
00:34:08,592 --> 00:34:16,652
But in my case, I had never really contemplated liberty really until 2020.

519
00:34:16,652 --> 00:34:25,392
yeah not not in not in a in a tangible way and is that i mean at the heart of it why is i mean and

520
00:34:25,392 --> 00:34:31,412
you know your wife's american so you can you know america obviously when you go to america there is

521
00:34:31,412 --> 00:34:37,132
there is a liberty it's in the dna and it's also even a liberty movement i've been to conferences

522
00:34:37,132 --> 00:34:42,312
with 5 000 people they're just going there for liberty and things like this you know and it's a

523
00:34:42,312 --> 00:34:49,392
it's across it's all kinds of people young old whatever what why didn't we why don't we get that

524
00:34:49,392 --> 00:34:56,872
bit what is it about living on our little island here that we don't seem to care about that unless

525
00:34:56,872 --> 00:35:03,312
it's like thrust into into our faces like when we were told to not come out of our house and i said

526
00:35:03,312 --> 00:35:08,152
no i'm coming out of my house you know it's hard it was hard to see all those people sort of look

527
00:35:08,152 --> 00:35:13,972
with dagger eyes looking at you doing things you didn't you know but in america it's like you feel

528
00:35:13,972 --> 00:35:21,492
the power of this abstract constitution which kind of it's like an abstract power that you have

529
00:35:21,492 --> 00:35:25,632
because you because you know at the end of the day it's there or in the case of freedom freedom

530
00:35:25,632 --> 00:35:32,572
of speech you know that the bill of rights is is there for you and it's a it's a force i know we

531
00:35:32,572 --> 00:35:37,252
don't have that but why do we not even think about it much it's not in our dna i mean we

532
00:35:37,252 --> 00:35:43,752
arguably we were the first was the 16 and 1600s when people started thinking about individualism

533
00:35:43,752 --> 00:35:48,692
and liberty and this kind of stuff and freedom of speech and freedom of expression all this kind of

534
00:35:48,692 --> 00:35:54,232
stuff why didn't we adopt it properly i don't so i think we did adopt it and i think we adopted it

535
00:35:54,232 --> 00:36:00,272
actually even much earlier than that and before people were consciously putting it into philosophies

536
00:36:00,272 --> 00:36:05,632
there's an amazing book called the origins of english individualism by a man called alan

537
00:36:05,632 --> 00:36:07,632
McFarlane. I've got a young

538
00:36:07,632 --> 00:36:09,612
Padawan called Sam Bidwell, who some people

539
00:36:09,612 --> 00:36:11,472
might know from Twitter, who's obsessed with this book

540
00:36:11,472 --> 00:36:13,252
and goes on about it all the time.

541
00:36:13,672 --> 00:36:15,332
And he points out that England,

542
00:36:15,532 --> 00:36:17,552
and England in particular, different

543
00:36:17,552 --> 00:36:19,572
in the deepest

544
00:36:19,572 --> 00:36:21,692
ways possible, even than

545
00:36:21,692 --> 00:36:23,532
our continental neighbours, even ones

546
00:36:23,532 --> 00:36:25,772
quite similar to us, like the Dutch and the Danes.

547
00:36:26,152 --> 00:36:27,552
The English used to

548
00:36:27,552 --> 00:36:29,812
and still would marry

549
00:36:29,812 --> 00:36:31,632
relatively late, for example, much later

550
00:36:31,632 --> 00:36:33,212
than you'd assume, looking at church records,

551
00:36:33,212 --> 00:36:36,652
and move into very nuclear families very early on.

552
00:36:36,792 --> 00:36:38,312
I'll build up and answer your question in a second.

553
00:36:38,712 --> 00:36:43,452
In a way that doesn't happen even on the sort of southern bits of the European continent.

554
00:36:44,012 --> 00:36:46,932
And so you would kind of very small family unit, mum, dad, kids,

555
00:36:47,132 --> 00:36:48,652
and then they'd grow up and go off and all the rest of it.

556
00:36:48,672 --> 00:36:50,472
So you wouldn't have big multi-generational families.

557
00:36:50,472 --> 00:36:53,872
And you would move place to place based on where the work was.

558
00:36:54,172 --> 00:36:57,252
And therefore you don't build up the kind of cousin marriage,

559
00:36:57,532 --> 00:36:59,812
clannish networks that you get in other places.

560
00:36:59,812 --> 00:37:04,412
because you don't have blood ties with these people you've moved to for work but you develop

561
00:37:04,412 --> 00:37:10,972
a kind of uh oikophilia as critical a lover place whatever and these other ties that bind that make

562
00:37:10,972 --> 00:37:15,152
you act as if they are a kind of blood oration because you're trusting them and all the rest of

563
00:37:15,152 --> 00:37:18,892
it but you're not having to bind these things in with marriage which obviously has you know

564
00:37:18,892 --> 00:37:22,552
consanguinity issues and all the rest of it allows you to develop more individual

565
00:37:22,552 --> 00:37:27,792
characteristics that allows you to hire the best person for a job and so meritocracy kind of comes

566
00:37:27,792 --> 00:37:31,632
along and more freedom that way and freedom to move and to tinker and to get away from the cloying

567
00:37:31,632 --> 00:37:35,892
embrace of parents if you want to and these things all come from very very deep roots and i think

568
00:37:35,892 --> 00:37:40,552
mcfarlane can take it back even further to sort of that's because we followed um sheep around more

569
00:37:40,552 --> 00:37:43,772
or whatever and you know he can he does all that kind of sociology stuff much better than i'd be

570
00:37:43,772 --> 00:37:49,232
able to to give it justice to here and so that stuff was in the dna certainly from the norman

571
00:37:49,232 --> 00:37:53,732
conquest and actually he would argue from before the saxons anglo-saxons had a different kind of

572
00:37:53,732 --> 00:37:56,512
conception this you know the king didn't automatically just get to become king again

573
00:37:56,512 --> 00:38:01,952
the Witton had to meet and all these deep deep deep currents and again influenced I would say

574
00:38:01,952 --> 00:38:05,592
by bits of Christianity and all the rest and some other great books we can talk about if you want to

575
00:38:05,592 --> 00:38:11,272
on that that builds up into this different system than we had and the earlier wranglings about how

576
00:38:11,272 --> 00:38:15,612
that manifests itself in a power sense of the English Civil War the constitutional settlement

577
00:38:15,612 --> 00:38:19,712
that I opened with and all the rest of it that gets exported to the new world definitely gets

578
00:38:19,712 --> 00:38:24,232
exported to the United States what became the United States to the point that Edmund Burke

579
00:38:24,232 --> 00:38:30,312
very very sympathetic to the american revolutionaries right i had a cry in the church in

580
00:38:30,312 --> 00:38:34,992
boston where paul revere did the whole you know one by two one by night whatever it is one by sea

581
00:38:34,992 --> 00:38:40,552
um the heartbreak that we're no longer officially one civilization still right um because it is a

582
00:38:40,552 --> 00:38:45,012
shared inheritance and you get some slightly sniffy yanks who go oh yeah you're just the

583
00:38:45,012 --> 00:38:49,192
ancestors of the people who weren't brave enough to leave the island and were the pioneers and all

584
00:38:49,192 --> 00:38:54,132
that stuff which i think is rot by the way because after losing the colonies uh this island

585
00:38:54,132 --> 00:38:59,792
sent people out and conquered the world and sent common law and all these ideas to other places as

586
00:38:59,792 --> 00:39:04,212
well like Australia and India and great swathes of Africa and the Middle East and all the rest of

587
00:39:04,212 --> 00:39:09,972
it. So I think we did have all this stuff and that sense of English liberty versus you know

588
00:39:09,972 --> 00:39:14,212
the absolutism of Louis XIV or then the horrors of the French Revolution and the kind of reaction

589
00:39:14,212 --> 00:39:18,572
all this stuff so I think we've got this great history of that and that level of freedom and

590
00:39:18,572 --> 00:39:23,472
the first sort of mother of all parliaments all these things. I think we lose it to some extent

591
00:39:23,472 --> 00:39:27,772
after the second world war are exactly the reasons that hayek talks about in combination with that

592
00:39:27,772 --> 00:39:32,492
sort of managerial revolution but the the atlee government had coming to atlee who obviously came

593
00:39:32,492 --> 00:39:36,612
after winston churchill had one parliament of five years and then like another year afterwards

594
00:39:36,612 --> 00:39:40,772
and and then labor didn't get back into power again for ages and even then they've never been

595
00:39:40,772 --> 00:39:46,092
as revolutionary or radical didn't need to be because they so changed everything so fast

596
00:39:46,092 --> 00:39:50,712
nationalizing everything nationalizing health and industry and all the rest of it and we're still

597
00:39:50,712 --> 00:39:55,412
stuck with that now and we're stuck with it and people think uh perhaps because we've got the

598
00:39:55,412 --> 00:39:59,412
americans as a sort of very similar but very different example that they're all gun-toting

599
00:39:59,412 --> 00:40:03,052
and talking about freedom and therefore that's not the english way which thatcher proved wasn't

600
00:40:03,052 --> 00:40:06,612
true either and she said when you know when you people are free to choose they choose freedom

601
00:40:06,612 --> 00:40:12,792
and i think we can do that again and i think we need to do that again i mean i'm just thinking

602
00:40:12,792 --> 00:40:20,112
about after the war and like you say um did we even did we ever have that freedom though if it was

603
00:40:20,112 --> 00:40:22,632
if it could be sort of taken away that easily.

604
00:40:23,052 --> 00:40:25,072
I mean, when you look at the American version of freedom,

605
00:40:25,072 --> 00:40:30,812
you realize it's the people kind of enforcing it

606
00:40:30,812 --> 00:40:33,232
and guns are a huge part of that, you know.

607
00:40:33,872 --> 00:40:38,132
But so it would be taking away freedom in the UK is very easy.

608
00:40:38,532 --> 00:40:40,572
And by the sounds of the way you described it then,

609
00:40:40,872 --> 00:40:45,192
after the war, it was probably framed as,

610
00:40:45,392 --> 00:40:46,052
correct me if I'm wrong,

611
00:40:46,232 --> 00:40:49,252
we need to do this because it's important for the country.

612
00:40:49,252 --> 00:41:08,512
We need to take away freedom. Now, in America, that doesn't cut as well, because people really do want to then defend that right. We don't really have a good way of defending it other than saying something. And when it's free speech that's being quelled anyway, it doesn't really work, does it?

613
00:41:08,512 --> 00:41:15,812
I guess the Americans are lucky and unlucky with their constitution being as sovereign and powerful as it is.

614
00:41:16,372 --> 00:41:19,152
Obviously, it's not infallible because there are a bunch of amendments to it.

615
00:41:19,652 --> 00:41:23,732
And the idea that there will never be another one again seems odd to me because our system is actually very different.

616
00:41:24,252 --> 00:41:28,052
We've got the same history, same sort of philosophical roots or the rest of it.

617
00:41:28,512 --> 00:41:34,252
Our political systems are actually shockingly different because in Britain, no parliament can tie the hands of its successor.

618
00:41:34,252 --> 00:41:44,890
there no law that is with a few exceptions that I think are legitimate there no law that is any stronger than any other that couldn just be repealed with a simple majority in Parliament essentially

619
00:41:45,350 --> 00:41:49,930
And I think Attlee or someone basically says that all the power that Lenin sought with the bullet,

620
00:41:50,410 --> 00:41:54,510
the British Constitution gives you with the ballot. And so you have, as I said at the start,

621
00:41:54,510 --> 00:42:00,430
this parliamentary system that does allow you to do great things very quickly. And if people don't

622
00:42:00,430 --> 00:42:04,530
like it, the idea is you should be able to vote against it at a general election and change course

623
00:42:04,530 --> 00:42:08,970
again so you should be able to do a similar version over every four-year cycles that i guess

624
00:42:08,970 --> 00:42:13,690
the states can can do in that experimenting i think the problem probably was that we got whacked

625
00:42:13,690 --> 00:42:18,910
in the first world war and lost a lot of great people and quality men and all the rest of it

626
00:42:18,910 --> 00:42:23,750
were still shaken by that in the run-up to the second world war so the effort of winning that

627
00:42:23,750 --> 00:42:30,550
war totally expended huge amounts of will and all the rest of it in britain right standing alone

628
00:42:30,550 --> 00:42:34,170
against the Luftwaffe, all these sorts of national stories that are largely true,

629
00:42:34,470 --> 00:42:37,330
and we should still be proud of our ancestors for doing it.

630
00:42:37,690 --> 00:42:39,350
You lose the empire in the course of it.

631
00:42:39,650 --> 00:42:41,450
You lose a lot more great people.

632
00:42:41,670 --> 00:42:43,350
You lose a lot more ideas about it.

633
00:42:43,350 --> 00:42:47,190
And then the well-meaning Clement Attlee, all sweet and modest,

634
00:42:47,330 --> 00:42:50,270
comes along and says, we've won the war, now let's win the peace.

635
00:42:50,670 --> 00:42:54,390
And you end up with socialism, which has been a cancer ever since.

636
00:42:54,790 --> 00:42:56,490
And it's not been rowed back fast enough.

637
00:42:56,630 --> 00:42:58,730
Churchill didn't manage to row it back when he came back in

638
00:42:58,730 --> 00:43:00,070
because so much of it had been done.

639
00:43:00,070 --> 00:43:05,390
and then he was poorly and then the the economic malaise that grips that grips you was so difficult

640
00:43:05,390 --> 00:43:08,730
the old thing that you convert yourself into socialism but you've got to shoot your way out

641
00:43:08,730 --> 00:43:13,530
well we got halfway out again with Maggie and then I think we've squandered it again and we could have

642
00:43:13,530 --> 00:43:17,210
done it maybe again after Brexit and we haven't done it again now so I think that there may be

643
00:43:17,210 --> 00:43:21,590
materialist reasons why not there's nothing constitutionally that says we're any less free

644
00:43:21,590 --> 00:43:25,530
particularly that you couldn't get rid of with a stroke of a few pens and a few bills in the new

645
00:43:25,530 --> 00:43:30,230
parliaments what's your stance this is going to sound a bit odd but what do you think about

646
00:43:30,230 --> 00:43:36,590
democracy like a lot of uh 50 of the people we have on this podcast are not in favor of democracy

647
00:43:36,590 --> 00:43:43,050
really and um for many reasons a lot of people believe it always leads to socialism it's the

648
00:43:43,050 --> 00:43:49,950
democratic system itself which which are right it results in in uh socialism what's your view

649
00:43:49,950 --> 00:43:54,410
you've been in on the inside you're probably gonna you don't have to be diplomatic either

650
00:43:54,410 --> 00:43:59,130
I probably do if I ever want to get voted into anything.

651
00:43:59,370 --> 00:44:03,670
Yeah. I mean, Churchill, again, Churchill said it's the worst form of government apart from all the others.

652
00:44:03,770 --> 00:44:06,670
I'm sure you've heard other people say that. And was it an HR man kind of stuff on us?

653
00:44:06,770 --> 00:44:08,930
You know, the people have spoken, the bastards. Right.

654
00:44:11,070 --> 00:44:23,490
I think the alternative to having that mechanism of of changing course is very, very is not obvious to me.

655
00:44:23,490 --> 00:44:25,410
what a better alternative is.

656
00:44:25,690 --> 00:44:27,470
You're not going to get an Aristotelian,

657
00:44:27,610 --> 00:44:29,930
Platonic philosopher king anytime soon.

658
00:44:30,290 --> 00:44:32,170
If you can't change course,

659
00:44:32,710 --> 00:44:34,070
you can't correct for big problems,

660
00:44:34,150 --> 00:44:35,870
which we're seeing in China, for example, now.

661
00:44:36,250 --> 00:44:37,570
It's always all going so well

662
00:44:37,570 --> 00:44:38,870
because they can just do what they want

663
00:44:38,870 --> 00:44:39,530
and all the rest of it.

664
00:44:39,890 --> 00:44:41,530
Well, their economy would be much, much bigger

665
00:44:41,530 --> 00:44:43,310
and stronger than it currently is

666
00:44:43,310 --> 00:44:44,290
because of a load of decisions

667
00:44:44,290 --> 00:44:45,690
that President Xi has made

668
00:44:45,690 --> 00:44:46,750
since he's been in office

669
00:44:46,750 --> 00:44:48,570
and no one's brave enough to correct him.

670
00:44:48,930 --> 00:44:49,550
Ditto Russia.

671
00:44:49,690 --> 00:44:51,530
They'd be in a much stronger, better place

672
00:44:51,530 --> 00:44:54,170
if they hadn't been this massive kleptocracy or the rest of it.

673
00:44:54,430 --> 00:44:56,450
And a proper democracy would be able to fix that.

674
00:44:56,950 --> 00:44:58,550
Yes, my contention in Britain, at least,

675
00:44:58,610 --> 00:45:01,210
is that we don't have as proper a democracy as we could,

676
00:45:01,670 --> 00:45:06,390
partly for this reason that so much of the apparatus of state

677
00:45:06,390 --> 00:45:08,310
doesn't change when people do, as I say.

678
00:45:09,210 --> 00:45:11,450
It's not just only 200 people that change jobs.

679
00:45:11,750 --> 00:45:12,630
When you're in a department,

680
00:45:13,050 --> 00:45:15,250
I don't use the Department for Education, for example,

681
00:45:15,430 --> 00:45:19,090
four advisors, four or five ministers, 8,000 civil servants.

682
00:45:19,590 --> 00:45:21,470
That's just one department, for example.

683
00:45:21,530 --> 00:45:22,590
It's not one of the biggest.

684
00:45:23,510 --> 00:45:27,270
I think the other problem, and this will be controversial,

685
00:45:27,910 --> 00:45:32,410
is that democracies work when there is a collective

686
00:45:32,410 --> 00:45:36,790
and cohesive national story to tell and everybody buys into.

687
00:45:37,170 --> 00:45:41,110
And that doesn't need to be, and it ideally is not an ethnic-based thing.

688
00:45:41,190 --> 00:45:43,650
And the whole blood and soil stuff, I don't think really works

689
00:45:43,650 --> 00:45:44,970
very nicely at all, obviously.

690
00:45:45,590 --> 00:45:47,790
And I see why people get tempted by it because they think

691
00:45:47,790 --> 00:45:50,850
that it's the only way to make people cohere together.

692
00:45:50,850 --> 00:45:56,070
but when you have academic studies that say in multi-ethnic societies the crucial thing

693
00:45:56,070 --> 00:46:02,130
is to push those differences down and and have a collective idea of what binds us and the more in

694
00:46:02,130 --> 00:46:06,610
common and all that sort of nice stuff and what do we do with woke and dei and all the rest of it

695
00:46:06,610 --> 00:46:11,770
we do the opposite we highlight all the differences and when you import lots of people and you don't

696
00:46:11,770 --> 00:46:15,950
forcibly integrate them into explaining our system and the rest of it and you end up with

697
00:46:15,950 --> 00:46:21,470
the multicultural system or society that Britain now is, then democracy doesn't work because you're

698
00:46:21,470 --> 00:46:26,550
going to only go after different groups. I think the United States has this to a large extent,

699
00:46:26,650 --> 00:46:32,230
where both parties will go, right, we need to say these things to appeal to African-American voters

700
00:46:32,230 --> 00:46:36,330
and this to Hispanics and this to the Vietnamese Americans and whatever else. And Britain is

701
00:46:36,330 --> 00:46:42,330
rapidly moving towards that. You saw the Muslim vote as an organization that was founded. There

702
00:46:42,330 --> 00:46:47,910
There was a Hindu manifesto, a Yoruba manifesto for ethnic Yoruba people in Nigeria,

703
00:46:48,150 --> 00:46:51,490
and all these other groups and people starting to appeal to them in Britain.

704
00:46:51,890 --> 00:46:54,150
When that happens, I think then you've got a real problem.

705
00:46:54,430 --> 00:46:59,070
So I think democracy works if everybody is in on the collective consciousness

706
00:46:59,070 --> 00:47:03,390
and that kind of idea that you are all one people and you have the same love of the same place.

707
00:47:03,390 --> 00:47:07,270
Talking of exactly that, and I was surprised.

708
00:47:07,590 --> 00:47:11,970
This is the first time I've been to this kind of a conference in the UK.

709
00:47:12,330 --> 00:47:19,350
And I think the panel I watched this morning, which you were on, is the Conservative Party dead?

710
00:47:20,350 --> 00:47:28,670
And what I noticed immediately in the first few hours of listening to people talk and questions is no one, a lot of people were mentioning reform.

711
00:47:28,670 --> 00:47:33,150
And this is very UK specific, but I was really, I just want to know what your take on this is.

712
00:47:34,250 --> 00:47:36,610
Talking about reform, reform, reform, reform, reform.

713
00:47:36,610 --> 00:47:55,830
And no one was mentioning Restore, which I think in my world, when we look at Restore, we see the real threat to, say, conservatism because what it's saying is what people often are thinking quietly.

714
00:47:55,830 --> 00:48:01,030
going back to what you were saying about this is what happens when you don't have a national identity

715
00:48:01,030 --> 00:48:08,530
things arise and people try and create that identity again i think what what restore are

716
00:48:08,530 --> 00:48:13,670
doing is exactly that that they're basically saying oh hold on a minute this is you know this

717
00:48:13,670 --> 00:48:19,730
is what we we were let's let's you know let's be that again and a lot of people who have been in

718
00:48:19,730 --> 00:48:24,050
this country a long time agree with that and i can see that you know i noticed that just down the pub

719
00:48:24,050 --> 00:48:30,830
you know in my local village people are listening to that and thinking yeah that's that's what i

720
00:48:30,830 --> 00:48:37,370
really like um i forget where i'm going with this oh yeah yeah i just wanted to know why is no one

721
00:48:37,370 --> 00:48:43,330
was really taking it didn't seem like anyone was taking restore um seriously whereas from my

722
00:48:43,330 --> 00:48:49,110
outside of view i'm not in the political sphere at all i'm i'm i'm i talk to lots of people and i

723
00:48:49,110 --> 00:48:55,190
listen to what said down the pub that that's people people will think restore is a really

724
00:48:55,190 --> 00:49:01,590
good alternative so what what why aren't why aren't are people taking this seriously here or not

725
00:49:01,590 --> 00:49:06,950
as a threat to them i mean if you're talking about conservatives and conservatism i'd say

726
00:49:06,950 --> 00:49:12,150
that is their threat because they're what they're talking about and what they're actually saying

727
00:49:12,150 --> 00:49:18,250
whether or not they do it who knows but is what um is is about a national identity again

728
00:49:18,250 --> 00:49:23,210
I'm all for a national identity

729
00:49:23,210 --> 00:49:25,610
I think that given where we are

730
00:49:25,610 --> 00:49:28,530
and given where we have always been

731
00:49:28,530 --> 00:49:31,630
and given where we were with the British Empire

732
00:49:31,630 --> 00:49:32,910
and all these sorts of things

733
00:49:32,910 --> 00:49:37,150
the idea that we would waste time

734
00:49:37,150 --> 00:49:38,890
in a new right-to-centre government

735
00:49:38,890 --> 00:49:40,790
working out who was actually

736
00:49:40,790 --> 00:49:42,210
quote ethnically English

737
00:49:42,210 --> 00:49:45,150
and deciding to send back

738
00:49:45,150 --> 00:49:46,290
wherever back is

739
00:49:46,290 --> 00:49:47,590
a load of people

740
00:49:47,590 --> 00:49:51,350
who just happen to be born with black skin or whatever else,

741
00:49:51,410 --> 00:49:53,290
which is, you know, I'll come to defend that in a second.

742
00:49:53,410 --> 00:49:54,810
I think this is completely wrong.

743
00:49:55,610 --> 00:50:06,988
It a waste of time It morally wrong It a totally misconception of how a lot of this country has developed And it comes from the fact that with

744
00:50:06,988 --> 00:50:12,548
Okay, so let's start with this. The start of this Restore movement, this is a guy called Rupert Lowe,

745
00:50:12,988 --> 00:50:17,768
who was elected as a member of Reform UK, and he was great on Twitter.

746
00:50:18,068 --> 00:50:21,608
And he was great also in the Public Accounts Committee in the British Parliament.

747
00:50:21,608 --> 00:50:28,428
The Tories actually gave him a slot in there later on, but he was very good at using the powers of an MP to write questions and all this sort of stuff.

748
00:50:29,428 --> 00:50:36,548
He then gets kicked out of reform, and I don't think they did it in a very nice way, and there was all sorts of accusations, and it was all deeply unpleasant.

749
00:50:37,068 --> 00:50:43,028
He sets up this thing called Restore that I joined as a sort of pressure group, I guess, and I thought this is a great idea.

750
00:50:43,028 --> 00:50:53,968
And then it pops up as a political party, as yet another political party to sluice more votes away from the whatever inevitable wranglings there'll need to be at the next election on the right.

751
00:50:54,128 --> 00:51:00,368
Whether reform cannibalised the Tory party, the Tory party recovers, you now make it more difficult with these guys coming along.

752
00:51:00,368 --> 00:51:04,308
The structural problem I've got is that this guy Rupert Lowe, I like very much.

753
00:51:04,428 --> 00:51:11,968
I've had dinner with him, very sound guy, all the rest of it, is basically a kind of classic Thatcherite Tory.

754
00:51:12,988 --> 00:51:17,808
It looked like he might join the Tories if Robert Jenner had taken over in May from Kemi Badenow, for example.

755
00:51:18,748 --> 00:51:20,848
And he talks a good sound game on all this kind of stuff.

756
00:51:21,888 --> 00:51:24,288
He's not writing his own tweets, right?

757
00:51:24,388 --> 00:51:30,008
Like what the guy says when he's in person with a camera in front of him, when he's doing a Twitter live or whatever it's called,

758
00:51:30,008 --> 00:51:33,588
is different in both the tone of what's being said

759
00:51:33,588 --> 00:51:35,168
and in the content of what's being said

760
00:51:35,168 --> 00:51:36,688
than what the guy is tweeting.

761
00:51:37,568 --> 00:51:39,688
And it's just there are demonstrable differences

762
00:51:39,688 --> 00:51:41,608
that people on X have highlighted.

763
00:51:42,048 --> 00:51:44,108
Whereas he, when he's speaking himself,

764
00:51:44,188 --> 00:51:44,708
says things like,

765
00:51:44,748 --> 00:51:46,648
no, I've never said I'd take passports away from anybody.

766
00:51:47,228 --> 00:51:49,068
In which case, the Restore platform,

767
00:51:49,148 --> 00:51:50,348
if that's what their actual platform is,

768
00:51:50,348 --> 00:51:53,148
is no different from reforms or now from the Conservatives.

769
00:51:53,708 --> 00:51:55,908
And yet then on Twitter, he's a lot punchier.

770
00:51:56,088 --> 00:51:59,268
And the accusations are that there are some young, smart,

771
00:51:59,268 --> 00:52:04,028
if slightly over-enthusiastic people around him who are pushing some of this stuff.

772
00:52:04,448 --> 00:52:07,188
And I think there's a problem there if you've got young, enthusiastic people

773
00:52:07,188 --> 00:52:13,368
who can take, actually, a sort of rationalist, man-of-system,

774
00:52:13,608 --> 00:52:15,868
almost year-dot approach of going,

775
00:52:15,968 --> 00:52:18,648
I don't like this, I'm going to make this all clean and nice and all the rest of it,

776
00:52:18,728 --> 00:52:19,408
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

777
00:52:19,408 --> 00:52:22,388
which leads to one of these guys popping up on GB News

778
00:52:22,388 --> 00:52:25,368
and telling a black woman who is a host on GB News,

779
00:52:25,668 --> 00:52:27,948
even though she was born in Newcastle and she's really right-wing,

780
00:52:27,948 --> 00:52:29,248
that she's not really English.

781
00:52:29,908 --> 00:52:33,328
And I get that you can talk about not being English ethnically.

782
00:52:33,608 --> 00:52:34,588
Fine, I agree with that.

783
00:52:34,668 --> 00:52:36,548
Rishi Sunak, not ethnically English.

784
00:52:36,988 --> 00:52:39,808
But in his mannerisms, and I don't like Rishi Sunak at all,

785
00:52:39,848 --> 00:52:41,588
I think he's a rubbish prime minister and all the rest of it,

786
00:52:41,828 --> 00:52:43,468
he's almost painfully English, right?

787
00:52:43,548 --> 00:52:44,628
He's awkward, he likes cricket,

788
00:52:44,888 --> 00:52:47,348
and he's clearly being slightly browbeaten by his wife,

789
00:52:47,348 --> 00:52:49,288
and all those sorts of deep tropes and stuff.

790
00:52:49,728 --> 00:52:51,168
But the obsession with going,

791
00:52:51,268 --> 00:52:52,448
well, he's not really English, though, is he?

792
00:52:53,008 --> 00:52:54,828
Who's that helping? Who's that turning on?

793
00:52:54,968 --> 00:52:55,808
Who's that turning off?

794
00:52:55,808 --> 00:53:00,708
and when it comes to then the the the horrendous problems that we all know there are in the country

795
00:53:00,708 --> 00:53:06,708
of debt and of actual you know boris wave migrants who have come over here who are totally culturally

796
00:53:06,708 --> 00:53:12,108
incompatible and do need to go and the rest of it you're just drawing away support for average

797
00:53:12,108 --> 00:53:16,988
normal people who know there's a problem but don't like it when people are a bit too bombastic about

798
00:53:16,988 --> 00:53:21,388
it so that's why i've got a problem i think others do about restore as well and in the sort of the

799
00:53:21,388 --> 00:53:27,048
optics of all of this. And just like the article on the immigration point is, there will be some

800
00:53:27,048 --> 00:53:32,508
people that want that kind of bombastic approach. Many others want this issue to be sorted, but will

801
00:53:32,508 --> 00:53:37,168
just get squeamish if you see the stuff on British streets that we saw in Minneapolis. However right

802
00:53:37,168 --> 00:53:41,588
I think it is to only have people who are legally here, and however right I think it is that actually

803
00:53:41,588 --> 00:53:46,348
there is a conversation to be had about people who were given passports in Britain who should not

804
00:53:46,348 --> 00:53:52,148
have been given them and who will only be a drain on state resources forever and their kids and their

805
00:53:52,148 --> 00:53:56,348
families coming over and all the rest of it those people are only administratively British like the

806
00:53:56,348 --> 00:54:00,188
guy who was Egyptian who'd never been here who was given a passport to get him out of an Egyptian

807
00:54:00,188 --> 00:54:04,068
jail that guy's not British I don't think he ever will be given all the stuff he said he wants to

808
00:54:04,068 --> 00:54:09,148
kill all the whites and the Americans and whatever else so what actually is necessary is a sort of

809
00:54:09,148 --> 00:54:14,148
Katie Lamb type approach from the Conservative Party and she's a backbench MP who put forward

810
00:54:14,148 --> 00:54:16,348
what the Conservative policy was for a little bit at least

811
00:54:16,348 --> 00:54:18,268
until I think Kemi got scared of it,

812
00:54:18,588 --> 00:54:19,948
which was saying, I'm ever so sorry,

813
00:54:20,308 --> 00:54:22,588
it's a pity that you're here, you shouldn't have been given that passport

814
00:54:22,588 --> 00:54:23,908
and we're just going to take it back,

815
00:54:24,068 --> 00:54:25,528
which is what the Swedes have started to do

816
00:54:25,528 --> 00:54:28,408
after decades of lending in so many Somali gangsters

817
00:54:28,408 --> 00:54:32,068
that there is a Wikipedia page for grenade attacks in Malmo.

818
00:54:32,468 --> 00:54:34,928
They've started paying to say, right, here's 5,000 krona,

819
00:54:35,008 --> 00:54:36,248
we'll take the passport back, off you go.

820
00:54:37,028 --> 00:54:41,868
And so that kind of more administrative bureaucratic approach

821
00:54:41,868 --> 00:54:44,728
is the only way that's going to work at any scale that actually works.

822
00:54:44,848 --> 00:54:46,668
But that doesn't do so well on the Twitter retweets.

823
00:54:47,248 --> 00:54:49,188
Funnily enough, what I know about Rupert Lowe,

824
00:54:49,268 --> 00:54:51,828
I've got from long-form interviews that he's been on, actually.

825
00:54:51,828 --> 00:54:54,568
It was just that it was a couple of weeks ago.

826
00:54:55,008 --> 00:54:55,628
You might find...

827
00:54:55,628 --> 00:55:02,008
This is why I think that they, at least on paper, are a major force,

828
00:55:02,208 --> 00:55:04,988
that a lot of people aren't necessarily saying it.

829
00:55:05,728 --> 00:55:09,928
I was at my local pub, and we were talking about politics,

830
00:55:09,948 --> 00:55:11,008
as you do in a pub.

831
00:55:11,008 --> 00:55:16,468
and it's very small pubs of parliament right it's a very small pub and you can walk in there sit down

832
00:55:16,468 --> 00:55:22,008
and you can become part of the conversation it's one of those kind of pubs and the the subject of

833
00:55:22,008 --> 00:55:28,208
of rupert lowe came up and someone mentioned that he'd recently said or maybe someone on his behalf

834
00:55:28,208 --> 00:55:33,988
by the sounds of it if that's true had said that they would ban halal halal and kosher slaughter

835
00:55:33,988 --> 00:55:39,588
and you would be amazed everyone piped up in the pub said brilliant brilliant idea you know

836
00:55:39,588 --> 00:55:42,568
and obviously we're a rural community,

837
00:55:43,068 --> 00:55:44,628
a lot of farmers don't like the idea

838
00:55:44,628 --> 00:55:46,968
of caring for their animals

839
00:55:46,968 --> 00:55:48,848
and then shipping them off to that kind of situation.

840
00:55:49,348 --> 00:55:51,748
Plus, we are a nation of animal lovers.

841
00:55:52,268 --> 00:55:55,848
And I often think that something as simple as that,

842
00:55:55,848 --> 00:55:56,908
as that statement,

843
00:55:57,488 --> 00:56:00,808
could get a nation of animal lovers, for example,

844
00:56:00,828 --> 00:56:03,528
to rise up and vote in a particular direction.

845
00:56:03,928 --> 00:56:05,688
Now, I'd never heard it before.

846
00:56:05,928 --> 00:56:08,308
So I did Google it and it's, lo and behold,

847
00:56:08,308 --> 00:56:14,588
yeah he said that we would we will ban it but which when i thought it through and i was ended

848
00:56:14,588 --> 00:56:18,908
up being the only one arguing that side of the story i was thinking wait a minute you can't

849
00:56:19,728 --> 00:56:25,448
imagine the imagine the the process of banning halal slaughter i know a lot of you know around

850
00:56:25,448 --> 00:56:30,748
where i live a lot of farmers a lot of slaughterhouses have consolidated in birmingham in the

851
00:56:30,748 --> 00:56:37,168
birmingham area because there's a lot of um you know the lamb the trade in lamb goes in a certain

852
00:56:37,168 --> 00:56:41,348
direction to a certain demographic in society and blah blah blah so there's this whole economic

853
00:56:41,348 --> 00:56:46,928
part of that story and when you think it when i thought it through i thought how

854
00:56:46,928 --> 00:56:54,368
you can't do that let alone the religious connotations which really we shouldn't care

855
00:56:54,368 --> 00:57:00,828
about if you if you would say right there's a in in the uk we are animal lovers and as a result

856
00:57:00,828 --> 00:57:05,148
um halal slaughter is something that we don't agree with you can do it anywhere else but in

857
00:57:05,148 --> 00:57:09,188
our country we would like it to not happen i can get that i just was thinking about the logistics

858
00:57:09,188 --> 00:57:15,988
of trying to do that and thinking it's almost impossible to actually enforce that how how would

859
00:57:15,988 --> 00:57:20,308
you do that there's there's there's a whole economy there there's a whole there's there's

860
00:57:20,308 --> 00:57:25,688
large swathes of communities revolve around this even if i would agree and i think i'd probably do

861
00:57:25,688 --> 00:57:32,468
i i i don't like the idea of halal slaughter at all i would i would say yes i would vote for that

862
00:57:32,468 --> 00:57:39,048
but the thought of it actually happening seems an impossibility and so is that the kind of thing

863
00:57:39,048 --> 00:57:45,428
you're saying these are these are this is rhetoric which sounds good but but when it comes to it and

864
00:57:45,428 --> 00:57:51,568
we this is what we so often see in politics now is i mean you know they'll say anything to get in

865
00:57:51,568 --> 00:57:58,288
power and then it's almost now like a joke that you just do the opposite you just do the opposite

866
00:57:58,288 --> 00:58:02,048
literally and people are so disenfranchised and disappointed they

867
00:58:02,048 --> 00:58:05,548
don't care anymore you know is that one of those things that kind of you know

868
00:58:05,548 --> 00:58:11,368
yeah so so let me start by saying that this is often a tactic that the civil

869
00:58:11,368 --> 00:58:27,426
service will use for ministers saying it too hard to do it very complicated minister it will take us years to work up the plans and all the rest of it I think there even a sort of the internet line of it called having a cheems mindset that like there no point in trying to do difficult things because someone would have done it already otherwise

870
00:58:27,426 --> 00:58:32,186
it's too difficult to do and all the rest of it so let's play out what it would actually look like

871
00:58:32,186 --> 00:58:40,166
halal and kosher by the way well so this is exactly part of my point that halal can be as

872
00:58:40,166 --> 00:58:46,046
simple as someone standing in an otherwise perfectly ethical slaughterhouse saying a little

873
00:58:46,046 --> 00:58:52,906
prayer and then the animal is humanely stunned and killed that's that's i think in the majority of

874
00:58:52,906 --> 00:58:57,786
cases in britain how it's supposed to work i didn't there are there are other other there again

875
00:58:57,786 --> 00:59:03,606
there are there are interpretations of the um the theology that say that doesn't count and it has to

876
00:59:03,606 --> 00:59:08,586
be still alive and awake and everything we've seen the most disgraceful uh images in some of these

877
00:59:08,586 --> 00:59:15,566
Muslim-run slaughterhouses where they've played the sounds of wolves very loudly to terrify the

878
00:59:15,566 --> 00:59:21,706
animals before they kill them. Why? Yep, because they're evil people. And they think nothing of

879
00:59:21,706 --> 00:59:28,066
the sanctity of animal life. Is that really true? I know, it's the sort of thing that I now sound

880
00:59:28,066 --> 00:59:31,306
like a complete nutter for saying it, but completely true. And it's one of those things,

881
00:59:31,326 --> 00:59:36,086
like the grooming gangs or whatever, that is so evil and so awful to any decent person,

882
00:59:36,086 --> 00:59:40,906
just a decent english person sensibility that you just think it must not be possible to be true

883
00:59:40,906 --> 00:59:46,746
but so that's the other end of the spectrum my understanding is that in the in the kosher method

884
00:59:46,746 --> 00:59:52,906
for for observant jewish people i think it's tshikta or something of that effect theologically

885
00:59:52,906 --> 00:59:58,226
the animal has to be alive and as conscious as possible and therefore kosher food can only really

886
00:59:58,226 --> 01:00:03,986
be prepared in the sort of what we would consider quite a cruel way jews have been back in in england

887
01:00:03,986 --> 01:00:06,546
since Cromwell let them back in the 1600s.

888
01:00:06,806 --> 01:00:08,906
So if you're an observant Jewish family,

889
01:00:08,966 --> 01:00:10,426
you've been here for 400 odd years,

890
01:00:11,246 --> 01:00:13,106
and you're suddenly told that you can't access

891
01:00:13,106 --> 01:00:14,326
any of this food that you need

892
01:00:14,326 --> 01:00:15,766
and that you're going to have to leave,

893
01:00:16,466 --> 01:00:17,166
is that right?

894
01:00:17,546 --> 01:00:17,926
I don't know.

895
01:00:18,586 --> 01:00:20,786
It doesn't seem right to me,

896
01:00:20,906 --> 01:00:22,286
but it also doesn't seem right to me

897
01:00:22,286 --> 01:00:23,806
that an animal should be killed in a cruel way.

898
01:00:24,206 --> 01:00:25,366
But then to Dale Vince,

899
01:00:25,366 --> 01:00:28,426
the mad eco-lefty guy who funds the Labour Party,

900
01:00:28,926 --> 01:00:31,486
he thinks that eating animals at all is wrong.

901
01:00:31,486 --> 01:00:36,006
and you know so this is a complicated interesting conversation that we could we could delve deeper

902
01:00:36,006 --> 01:00:42,386
into uh are we really when it comes and you know can you do one without the other can you say as

903
01:00:42,386 --> 01:00:46,906
some people might say oh but so jews have been here for 400 years and their contributions to

904
01:00:46,906 --> 01:00:51,866
society are enormous look at the nobel prizes yada yada we'll make an exception for them but

905
01:00:51,866 --> 01:00:58,766
not for halal because the people that use halal arrive more recently and are less likely to be

906
01:00:58,766 --> 01:01:02,726
net contributors right someone might make that argument right which is again very tricky guys

907
01:01:02,726 --> 01:01:05,486
because others would have to say in a liberal approach you have to ban everything equally or

908
01:01:05,486 --> 01:01:09,126
not at all these are these are interesting conversations that and this is the thing

909
01:01:09,126 --> 01:01:14,266
that we're going to focus not you and i but that a government is going to focus on trying to work

910
01:01:14,266 --> 01:01:18,446
out and spend all of its resources energy on working out rather than all the low-hanging fruit

911
01:01:18,446 --> 01:01:23,186
of an insane energy policy and insane immigration policy and insane regulatory policy insane

912
01:01:23,186 --> 01:01:27,786
education insane health care no military yada yada yada so there's a there's a problem there i think

913
01:01:27,786 --> 01:01:30,026
in terms of being reasonable on the rest of it.

914
01:01:30,286 --> 01:01:31,146
And the other bit of it is,

915
01:01:31,266 --> 01:01:33,286
is it just that you're creating a hostile environment

916
01:01:33,286 --> 01:01:34,866
for groups of people that you don't like?

917
01:01:35,206 --> 01:01:37,086
Because I don't like lots of people

918
01:01:37,086 --> 01:01:38,386
who have come to this country recently

919
01:01:38,386 --> 01:01:41,166
who are probably likely to eat halal food

920
01:01:41,166 --> 01:01:42,726
and probably want it in the most unpleasant way

921
01:01:42,726 --> 01:01:45,286
because I've seen the problems of political Islamism

922
01:01:45,286 --> 01:01:47,566
and I've seen the problems of lack of cultural assimilation.

923
01:01:47,806 --> 01:01:50,226
And the school that I used to live near in North London

924
01:01:50,226 --> 01:01:53,026
had five-year-old girls wearing hijabs, right?

925
01:01:53,106 --> 01:01:54,986
And I would obviously, that I would ban in a heartbeat.

926
01:01:55,326 --> 01:01:56,286
It's totally unbritish,

927
01:01:56,286 --> 01:02:00,406
the thing we've seen this last week of the adhan the call to prayer in trafalgar square again all

928
01:02:00,406 --> 01:02:04,826
the blokes at the front and the women in the hijabs at the back and so on and so are we really

929
01:02:04,826 --> 01:02:08,886
talking about integration here is it is it is it actually about the animal welfare these are really

930
01:02:08,886 --> 01:02:13,926
interesting and deep difficult conversations and i've got my knee jerk opinions on it that you'd

931
01:02:13,926 --> 01:02:17,966
have to think through and you you know legitimately probably have to kind of consult on and all the

932
01:02:17,966 --> 01:02:22,386
rest of it is that what we're going to spend our time doing as a first government to try and save

933
01:02:22,386 --> 01:02:26,826
the country from the doldrums that it's in good good point i'm not i'm not trying to be defeatist

934
01:02:26,826 --> 01:02:31,166
about it but like that is a these big conversations and if you're going to say no sorry just to finish

935
01:02:31,166 --> 01:02:34,906
you know if you're going to say don't care it's awful it's just bloody wrong i'm just going to get

936
01:02:34,906 --> 01:02:39,686
it done is that the same slapdash approach that we're going to take to uh to the uh to the economy

937
01:02:39,686 --> 01:02:44,426
right because that's kind of a bit where the trust uh program went to just right slapdash

938
01:02:44,426 --> 01:02:49,286
just get it done governing's actually really hard right labor fell for this where they thought

939
01:02:49,286 --> 01:02:54,006
Tories were evil our theory of change is just get the evil Tories out and everything will be fine

940
01:02:54,006 --> 01:02:58,166
and now the newspapers are full of of Labour ministers and spas going Christ actually it's

941
01:02:58,166 --> 01:03:03,706
really hard to do this we're in such a pickle it's very difficult so you tell me I don't know

942
01:03:03,706 --> 01:03:09,686
what do you think well no I I was just thinking it through then I would say that and this I'm this

943
01:03:09,686 --> 01:03:15,766
is how I'm assuming how it happened we invented with regards to halal and kosher we we invented

944
01:03:15,766 --> 01:03:21,866
a rule that said to be humane with an animal you must pre-stun you must stun it first before you

945
01:03:21,866 --> 01:03:28,526
kill it and that makes sense but there are these exceptions on religious grounds that so i would

946
01:03:28,526 --> 01:03:34,466
come at it from that stance i would say no let's have no exceptions because the idea is the animal

947
01:03:34,466 --> 01:03:39,106
is is is bad enough that it's getting killed anyway but why do it in a painful way that's that's

948
01:03:39,106 --> 01:03:47,466
that's not something that i think anyone well that's not true obviously plenty of people don't

949
01:03:47,466 --> 01:03:54,206
care but i would say that if the law was that and if the law was passed to say that but there's these

950
01:03:54,206 --> 01:03:59,766
exceptions then i would say it's not a real law then because the exceptions especially if it was

951
01:03:59,766 --> 01:04:06,786
religious grounds well that's that's a very kind of uh liberal take in general right and and with

952
01:04:06,786 --> 01:04:10,446
the stuff we've seen again from the prayer controversy in Trafalgar Square,

953
01:04:11,186 --> 01:04:13,306
Ed Davey from the Liberal Democrats saying,

954
01:04:13,426 --> 01:04:17,946
yeah, it's so un-British to suggest that people can't pray the way they want to, and so on.

955
01:04:18,026 --> 01:04:22,446
We had test acts on the statute for hundreds of years that forbade, you know,

956
01:04:22,526 --> 01:04:26,846
Catholic worship or whatever, or fined you if you didn't go to church a number of times.

957
01:04:27,106 --> 01:04:27,986
Is that un-British?

958
01:04:28,046 --> 01:04:30,746
Because we did it for hundreds of years longer than we've been doing lots of other things

959
01:04:30,746 --> 01:04:32,766
that we now consider to be British and all the rest of it.

960
01:04:33,246 --> 01:04:36,586
So, you know, I think without trying to be a cop-out on it,

961
01:04:36,586 --> 01:04:43,146
I think a lot of this stuff is really difficult to be morally and ethically and politically consistent about.

962
01:04:43,946 --> 01:04:48,706
If what you're actually saying is you acknowledge there's a problem with cultural assimilation,

963
01:04:49,106 --> 01:04:50,546
okay, then let's talk about it like that.

964
01:04:50,826 --> 01:04:53,086
And if you think it's a problem about animal welfare, okay, let's talk about that.

965
01:04:53,326 --> 01:05:00,346
And then we get into a very intractable, messy problem of competing rights and balancing rights.

966
01:05:00,366 --> 01:05:02,006
It's always been a difficult thing, right?

967
01:05:02,006 --> 01:05:07,106
it's not just enough to have mills harm principle balancing how we behave towards one another

968
01:05:07,106 --> 01:05:10,866
you have a right of an animal to not be killed in a nasty way versus the right of someone who's

969
01:05:10,866 --> 01:05:15,146
lived here for 400 years to do what he thinks his god tells him he's got to do in order to be a good

970
01:05:15,146 --> 01:05:19,366
person right i might think that's silly i might care more about the animal how are we going to

971
01:05:19,366 --> 01:05:22,726
balance these things out and if it's done in this spirit of actually i just want to get rid of these

972
01:05:22,726 --> 01:05:28,246
people i don't like that seems that seems concerning okay as much as i don't want a lot

973
01:05:28,246 --> 01:05:31,746
of those people to be here if they're going to be forcing their five-year-old girls to wear hijabs

974
01:05:31,746 --> 01:05:34,506
and do political Islamism and, you know,

975
01:05:34,546 --> 01:05:36,706
horrible stuff from the pulpit and all the rest.

976
01:05:36,826 --> 01:05:39,406
I think the reason I brought it up at that particular one

977
01:05:39,406 --> 01:05:44,906
is because I think it's a cross-party issue, animal cruelty.

978
01:05:45,146 --> 01:05:48,966
And it's a really interesting one because it makes everyone think,

979
01:05:49,626 --> 01:05:52,806
especially, I would say, the left side of the aisle,

980
01:05:53,346 --> 01:05:57,366
who might say, well, that person should be able to do what they want to do.

981
01:05:57,366 --> 01:05:58,286
But hold on a minute.

982
01:05:58,566 --> 01:06:00,006
They want to hurt an animal.

983
01:06:00,006 --> 01:06:05,846
you know right i think it's i think it's a phenomenal a phenomenal it's a bit like uh you

984
01:06:05,846 --> 01:06:10,246
know the kind of the abortion debate in a way it's our version of it because we don't really

985
01:06:10,246 --> 01:06:15,786
care about abortion over here but we love animals right we really love them and and i would say that

986
01:06:15,786 --> 01:06:22,066
is part of at least my culture yeah the love of animals is a british sentiment almost certainly

987
01:06:22,066 --> 01:06:26,966
one of the reasons why we ended up leaving london was that we got a cocker spaniel called tennyson

988
01:06:26,966 --> 01:06:29,206
because I thought it was the silliest thing to shout in a field, right?

989
01:06:29,286 --> 01:06:29,826
Come here, Tennyson.

990
01:06:30,726 --> 01:06:34,986
And the way that he was perceived by people who arrived recently,

991
01:06:35,226 --> 01:06:37,346
the dog got kicked, dog got spat on,

992
01:06:37,646 --> 01:06:39,966
they're terrified because there's a Hadith that says that, you know,

993
01:06:39,984 --> 01:06:41,424
Dog saliva cancels prayers and things.

994
01:06:41,704 --> 01:06:42,544
It doesn't seem right to me.

995
01:06:42,744 --> 01:06:44,004
We've been domesticating dogs

996
01:06:44,004 --> 01:06:45,464
and they've been domesticating us back

997
01:06:45,464 --> 01:06:47,244
for what, 30, 40,000 years.

998
01:06:47,424 --> 01:06:49,644
And some of these ideas are much more modern than that,

999
01:06:50,004 --> 01:06:51,244
much more recent than that.

1000
01:06:51,384 --> 01:06:52,204
I hate that too.

1001
01:06:52,344 --> 01:06:54,384
So I'm totally with you on that front.

1002
01:06:54,384 --> 01:06:58,484
And yet, is this what we're going to prioritize?

1003
01:06:58,724 --> 01:07:00,684
We're going to not have an economy that's fixed

1004
01:07:00,684 --> 01:07:01,704
and a stupid energy policy

1005
01:07:01,704 --> 01:07:03,404
because we're going to spend all our parliamentary time

1006
01:07:03,404 --> 01:07:04,764
in debating all this stuff.

1007
01:07:04,844 --> 01:07:05,744
Maybe, maybe.

1008
01:07:06,004 --> 01:07:08,684
And again, I would like this to be a country

1009
01:07:08,684 --> 01:07:11,444
where people are really pro-dogs and really pro-animal welfare

1010
01:07:11,444 --> 01:07:15,004
and really well integrated and not forcing five-year-old girls to wear hijabs

1011
01:07:15,004 --> 01:07:18,724
and not marrying their cousins and all these things.

1012
01:07:19,244 --> 01:07:21,784
But to just kind of go, you know what's going to be a banger tweet

1013
01:07:21,784 --> 01:07:24,204
that's going to stick it to Faraj because he's a wet?

1014
01:07:24,924 --> 01:07:25,284
Done.

1015
01:07:26,064 --> 01:07:27,124
That's not how it works.

1016
01:07:27,264 --> 01:07:30,284
And that's not me being a merely mad civil servant saying,

1017
01:07:30,344 --> 01:07:31,844
Minister, it's too difficult because I don't want you to do it.

1018
01:07:32,264 --> 01:07:34,644
There are difficult considerations to work out.

1019
01:07:35,384 --> 01:07:35,744
Right.

1020
01:07:35,884 --> 01:07:36,924
God, I sound like a centrist dad.

1021
01:07:36,964 --> 01:07:37,924
I thought I was meant to be a radical.

1022
01:07:38,684 --> 01:07:46,444
we'll wrap it up in a sec um i just want to going on from that then um you're saying what you know

1023
01:07:46,444 --> 01:07:51,564
are we going to prioritize this right you you can prioritize whatever you want how do you fix

1024
01:07:51,564 --> 01:07:56,844
what's going on now you personally based on everything you know from inside the government

1025
01:07:56,844 --> 01:08:04,364
outside the government i think we need i mean from where we're standing there needs to be

1026
01:08:04,364 --> 01:08:09,864
another year or so of the parties of the right and the left knocking seven shades out of each other

1027
01:08:09,864 --> 01:08:14,424
i think that's actually quite healthy my broad take is that there will be a sort of darwinian

1028
01:08:14,424 --> 01:08:19,964
survival of the fittest or the survival of the most able to change or whatever uh approach and

1029
01:08:19,964 --> 01:08:24,864
that one party might just cannibalize the others um maybe that's restore maybe that's reform maybe

1030
01:08:24,864 --> 01:08:27,564
that's stories and then you end up you know hopefully with some of the best quality of all

1031
01:08:27,564 --> 01:08:32,364
of them in there uh and that then you've got a reasonable prospect to give to the the public

1032
01:08:32,364 --> 01:08:37,584
The fact that reform and the Tories have got pretty similar policies on lots of areas is encouraging for that.

1033
01:08:39,304 --> 01:08:43,524
So then you vote for the most robust right-wing party that can win.

1034
01:08:43,704 --> 01:08:52,124
If you get into power with that and the things that ought to be prioritised is an acknowledgement that we are, the hour is even later than most people think.

1035
01:08:52,564 --> 01:08:59,604
And that the economy will be so bad, unfortunately, by 2029, that we're not going to be able to do a lot of stuff straight away.

1036
01:08:59,604 --> 01:09:03,324
they're going to ruthlessly prioritize massive deregulation

1037
01:09:03,324 --> 01:09:06,444
to energy and to business in general,

1038
01:09:06,444 --> 01:09:08,464
trying to attract investment here,

1039
01:09:08,464 --> 01:09:10,364
trying to attract people back again.

1040
01:09:10,364 --> 01:09:13,024
Then maybe you get no income tax for someone moving back

1041
01:09:13,024 --> 01:09:14,104
from Dubai for a year or two,

1042
01:09:14,104 --> 01:09:16,304
something like to try and get some of our best people back

1043
01:09:16,304 --> 01:09:17,664
to try and rebuild things.

1044
01:09:19,224 --> 01:09:31,110
And I think that alongside that then there is a very serious policy on immigration that needs to happen which is to turn back at least all the people who are in the country illegally foreign criminals or the rest of it

1045
01:09:31,110 --> 01:09:35,330
And there should be a conversation about people who were given passports in the last few years,

1046
01:09:35,450 --> 01:09:42,250
who are not contributing in any way, actively seem to be failing to integrate.

1047
01:09:42,590 --> 01:09:44,190
That is very difficult to do.

1048
01:09:44,350 --> 01:09:48,750
And that's probably not something that's going to be able to be done in all the fighting between the parties right now.

1049
01:09:48,750 --> 01:09:53,330
Maybe it is because you don't want to set precedents that say, well, hang on a minute.

1050
01:09:53,490 --> 01:10:00,070
You now in 2040, you don't subscribe to what Prime Minister Zach Polanski thinks a British person believes.

1051
01:10:00,470 --> 01:10:02,330
Therefore, we're going to send you to the penal colony.

1052
01:10:02,690 --> 01:10:05,130
But that's there is one thing we've seen in the last few years.

1053
01:10:05,450 --> 01:10:06,690
Slippery slopes are really real.

1054
01:10:07,310 --> 01:10:09,950
So let's the first instance you do the low hanging fruit.

1055
01:10:10,290 --> 01:10:18,730
I think then what you do is to try and be a bit more sneaky sneakison about it is you look at the kind of the benefits and welfare system as we've got it.

1056
01:10:18,750 --> 01:10:23,590
because we are paying huge amounts of money for people to sit on their arses and do nothing.

1057
01:10:23,710 --> 01:10:26,990
Not people who are poorly or anything like that, but people who have recently arrived.

1058
01:10:27,010 --> 01:10:29,330
And maybe they have now got ILR or they've got passports,

1059
01:10:29,490 --> 01:10:33,130
but they don't contribute in any meaningful way and send money home and all the rest of it.

1060
01:10:33,490 --> 01:10:36,210
Let's have a look at some eligibility criteria there.

1061
01:10:36,510 --> 01:10:39,510
As I imagine, there's probably an awful lot that you could quite quietly do

1062
01:10:39,510 --> 01:10:43,610
in order to encourage some of these people to no longer do it when they can't just sit on the taxpayer teat.

1063
01:10:44,150 --> 01:10:47,230
And the last bit of that, I think, as well, is to just cut off all the funding to all these NGOs

1064
01:10:47,230 --> 01:10:49,630
and the charities and all the rest of it as well.

1065
01:10:49,730 --> 01:10:51,790
And that would get you an awful lot of the way there.

1066
01:10:52,390 --> 01:10:54,010
And then I think some other stuff about,

1067
01:10:54,270 --> 01:10:57,790
on the political Islamism front of cutting off funding

1068
01:10:57,790 --> 01:11:01,050
and looking at what some of our friends in the UAE

1069
01:11:01,050 --> 01:11:02,470
and Saudi and stuff have done.

1070
01:11:02,630 --> 01:11:05,570
Look, in Saudi Arabia, you now have,

1071
01:11:05,970 --> 01:11:08,930
the state has to approve what speeches are given

1072
01:11:08,930 --> 01:11:10,210
by imams in mosques.

1073
01:11:11,490 --> 01:11:14,910
And when Trump did that first appearance in Saudi,

1074
01:11:15,030 --> 01:11:16,730
when he's sort of touching that weird orb in that thing,

1075
01:11:16,730 --> 01:11:22,930
music was illegal in Saudi and when Trump spoke last year he ended his speech with YMCA for the

1076
01:11:22,930 --> 01:11:29,370
village people right so you know there are big cultural changes that are happening in that part

1077
01:11:29,370 --> 01:11:32,550
of the world that we should look at and how they deal with extremism there banning the Muslim

1078
01:11:32,550 --> 01:11:37,090
Brotherhood be a great start and all that that would entail as well and that would be a start

1079
01:11:37,090 --> 01:11:40,350
and then let's see after five years when you fix the economy and got some military back again

1080
01:11:40,350 --> 01:11:44,610
and fix welfare payments and sent back all the illegal immigrants and stop the boats

1081
01:11:44,610 --> 01:11:49,050
and or the foreign criminals and all the rest of it and then let's see okay all right that sounds

1082
01:11:49,050 --> 01:11:53,690
pretty good countries in a better way then we can start having thornier conversations about how much

1083
01:11:53,690 --> 01:11:58,510
more needs to be done to force people to integrate whilst at the same time promoting the best

1084
01:11:58,510 --> 01:12:03,370
appreciation or the rest of it one thing you didn't mention there sorry one last question

1085
01:12:03,370 --> 01:12:16,156
reducing the size of the government that would always be my my issue the government too big there too many civil servants Too many people working there That costing too much Too many people deciding on how you live your life

1086
01:12:16,676 --> 01:12:19,856
Is that something that you think is even possible?

1087
01:12:20,276 --> 01:12:23,716
Like, we saw this in America, a version of.

1088
01:12:24,416 --> 01:12:26,996
And, you know, the richest man in the world just walked away.

1089
01:12:27,316 --> 01:12:30,296
And was obviously not going to achieve anything anyway.

1090
01:12:30,296 --> 01:12:34,776
I don't expect the size of the UK government to get any smaller

1091
01:12:34,776 --> 01:12:38,136
but I'd even test to take 1% smaller

1092
01:12:38,136 --> 01:12:39,576
not 1% bigger

1093
01:12:39,576 --> 01:12:44,136
I didn't mention it because I've been banging on about it in my own head for so long

1094
01:12:44,136 --> 01:12:46,296
I've taken it as a fait accompli now

1095
01:12:46,296 --> 01:12:48,156
we absolutely do need to shrink the size

1096
01:12:48,156 --> 01:12:50,176
shrinking headcount is really important

1097
01:12:50,176 --> 01:12:53,176
and when you try and do that in government

1098
01:12:53,176 --> 01:12:54,916
they'll go no no we'll find savings in other ways

1099
01:12:54,916 --> 01:12:57,236
because they know having more people means they can do more bad stuff

1100
01:12:57,236 --> 01:13:00,876
and so actually I think headcount even if it's expensive to sort of pay people off

1101
01:13:00,876 --> 01:13:04,796
is going to be worth it in the long run because then you've not got a kind of overworked special

1102
01:13:04,796 --> 01:13:09,156
advisor go around trying to stop all the mad projects that are happening everywhere one of

1103
01:13:09,156 --> 01:13:13,196
the things that I think that Musk had to deal with with Doge and all the rest of it is that all

1104
01:13:13,196 --> 01:13:17,616
the senators and the congressmen and the governors had the pork that they liked from the bad spending

1105
01:13:17,616 --> 01:13:21,436
because that's I guess the downside of that federal system and therefore couldn't touch

1106
01:13:21,436 --> 01:13:25,736
this waste of money here because senator so-and-so was going to be up for re-election and so on

1107
01:13:25,736 --> 01:13:28,716
if you have a plan for all this stuff and do it really early on in the parliament

1108
01:13:28,716 --> 01:13:33,716
everyone's hands are dipped in that blood early on the way that our constitution means you can

1109
01:13:33,716 --> 01:13:38,316
just cut a lot of that spending much more quickly i think the economic reality will also force us to

1110
01:13:38,316 --> 01:13:42,836
reduce headcount and spending and that kind of stuff and i think crucially when it comes again

1111
01:13:42,836 --> 01:13:47,276
to that welfare bill that's how you can massively cut the size of this there's stuff you can't touch

1112
01:13:47,276 --> 01:13:51,076
and then like pensions it's trickier and all the rest of it that you can make more efficient but

1113
01:13:51,076 --> 01:14:00,556
But cutting away a lot of these people, astonishing amounts, I think, we'll find where people are being paid who shouldn't be just to sit around and do nothing but bring in family members and all the rest of it.

1114
01:14:00,736 --> 01:14:03,116
What about reducing the workforce?

1115
01:14:03,516 --> 01:14:06,456
Does that ever get talked about inside government?

1116
01:14:06,456 --> 01:14:06,836
Oh, yeah.

1117
01:14:06,956 --> 01:14:09,056
I mean, Boris tried to push this for a while.

1118
01:14:09,576 --> 01:14:17,176
And so you'd ask the civil servants and they would come up with the kind of classic bleeding stump strategy of like, well, I suppose we could manage 4%.

1119
01:14:17,176 --> 01:14:19,396
But, you know, you've said 20%.

1120
01:14:19,396 --> 01:14:20,316
And how many children?

1121
01:14:20,316 --> 01:14:26,836
we're going to calculate how many children die when that happens and how many farms will just

1122
01:14:26,836 --> 01:14:30,676
suddenly explode and how many this, that and the other. And they'll really lay it on thick,

1123
01:14:30,676 --> 01:14:33,756
whereas I don't believe that happens at all. But what you do need to have is an understanding

1124
01:14:33,756 --> 01:14:38,576
that where some of the kind of welfare is teat, whether it's business or people or whatever else

1125
01:14:38,576 --> 01:14:42,956
has been done, there is short term pain and dislocation and then things get much better.

1126
01:14:43,116 --> 01:14:47,396
So I think New Zealand has this in their agricultural sector where all the subsidies

1127
01:14:47,396 --> 01:14:58,422
were taken away and everything collapsed very briefly And now you get New Zealand lamb everywhere It a major export because they learned to be market leading and all the rest of it And so you got to have a level of comfortableness

1128
01:14:58,422 --> 01:15:01,062
with that sort of creative destruction

1129
01:15:01,062 --> 01:15:04,062
that, again, the sort of free marketeers talk about.

1130
01:15:04,202 --> 01:15:04,922
And that's scary.

1131
01:15:04,962 --> 01:15:06,782
But I suspect we have to use the crisis

1132
01:15:06,782 --> 01:15:09,722
of how bad the economy is going to be to get to that point.

1133
01:15:10,062 --> 01:15:11,582
And what Thatcherism showed us

1134
01:15:11,582 --> 01:15:14,042
is that you can turn this stuff around so quickly.

1135
01:15:14,042 --> 01:15:17,862
Just a bit of economic freedom can cause absolute miracles.

1136
01:15:17,862 --> 01:15:22,202
And I'll end with this, that the criticisms of Thatcher in those first few years were,

1137
01:15:22,282 --> 01:15:24,882
God, the economy is so bad and unemployment's so high.

1138
01:15:24,962 --> 01:15:25,602
It's so terrible.

1139
01:15:25,702 --> 01:15:26,702
She doesn't know what she's doing.

1140
01:15:27,262 --> 01:15:30,042
A few years later, it was the Harry Enfield sketch.

1141
01:15:30,162 --> 01:15:33,982
Loads of money where they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

1142
01:15:34,042 --> 01:15:36,742
And all they care about is being filthy rich and all the rest of it.

1143
01:15:36,862 --> 01:15:38,842
Because suddenly everything turned around like that.

1144
01:15:39,022 --> 01:15:41,162
And that's what a little bit of economic freedom can do.

1145
01:15:41,302 --> 01:15:42,082
It did in the past.

1146
01:15:42,322 --> 01:15:43,182
It can do so again.

1147
01:15:43,402 --> 01:15:45,802
And then we can start affording all this other stuff as well.

1148
01:15:45,802 --> 01:15:48,962
because the problem of no growth means it does become zero sum

1149
01:15:48,962 --> 01:15:50,782
and then we get mean about things.

1150
01:15:50,942 --> 01:15:53,062
If you can get people onto that prosperity agenda,

1151
01:15:53,282 --> 01:15:55,162
then wonderful things can flow from it.

1152
01:15:55,302 --> 01:15:56,362
If you don't, nothing can.

1153
01:15:57,462 --> 01:15:57,822
Bravo.

1154
01:15:58,242 --> 01:16:00,222
Well, let's keep our fingers crossed.

1155
01:16:00,382 --> 01:16:02,242
It sounds like a lovely future.

1156
01:16:02,402 --> 01:16:04,962
I'm not sure I can see it at the moment, but who knows?

1157
01:16:05,262 --> 01:16:07,262
Anyway, James, thanks for coming in, mate.

1158
01:16:07,302 --> 01:16:07,762
Thank you, mate.

1159
01:16:07,982 --> 01:16:09,122
Really enjoyed speaking to you.

1160
01:16:09,602 --> 01:16:10,362
Likewise, thank you.

1161
01:16:10,582 --> 01:16:10,982
Thank you.

1162
01:16:10,982 --> 01:16:19,122
all right you made it to the end of the show so i'm just going to go ahead and assume

1163
01:16:19,122 --> 01:16:23,842
that you got some value out of this episode if you want to help the show

1164
01:16:23,842 --> 01:16:31,442
please follow or subscribe right now it takes only two seconds and it massively helps the show

1165
01:16:31,442 --> 01:16:37,742
if you want more well you can get bonus episodes and early access to all episodes

1166
01:16:37,742 --> 01:16:47,942
on fountain.fm by subscribing for the measly price of just, well, one venti frappuccino in Starbucks

1167
01:16:47,942 --> 01:16:54,202
for a whole month. That's right, six bucks. Or you can just support the mission by streaming

1168
01:16:54,202 --> 01:17:01,442
sats on any of the value for value platforms like Fountain or use the Bitcoin and Fiat donation

1169
01:17:01,442 --> 01:17:06,962
links in the show notes. We run this show on a tight budget, as I'm sure you're aware.

1170
01:17:06,962 --> 01:17:13,782
so any additions to that or to the strategic bitcoin reserve will be greatly appreciated

1171
01:17:13,782 --> 01:17:19,962
and one more thing if you know someone who'd love this episode share it directly with them

1172
01:17:19,962 --> 01:17:25,742
that personal share beats every algorithm in the book all the links the community

1173
01:17:25,742 --> 01:17:29,622
and the newsletter are in the show notes see you next week

1174
01:17:36,962 --> 01:18:06,942
Thank you.