Latest / Thinking Class / #117 - Lord Nigel Biggar - The New Dark Age: How Britain's Institutions Became Afraid Of The Truth

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#117 - Lord Nigel Biggar - The New Dark Age: How Britain's Institutions Became Afraid Of The Truth · Thinking Class

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm joined by Lord Nigel Bigger.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Nigel is an Anglican priest, theologian, and moral philosopher, a member of the House of Lords, and Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: His most recent books are The New Dark Age, Why Liberals Must Win the Culture War, Colonialism, A Moral Reckoning, What's Wrong with Rights, In Defence of War, and Between Kin and Cosmopolis, An Ethic of the Nation.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: In the press, Nigel has written articles for The Financial Times, The London Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Glasgow Herald, The Irish Times, Standpoint, The Critic, the Article Unheard, and Quillette.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, Nigel and I think out loud about what Bigger calls a possible new dark age, not one of superstition, but of intellectual intimidation.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: What liberalism properly understood means, which is a culture of truth-seeking, free argument and disciplined disagreement, why debate inside universities increasingly collapses into smears and reputational tactics, how institutions may be rewarding intellectual vice over intellectual virtue, and what habits of character, whether temperance, courage, justice or charity, are required if liberal societies are to endure in any recognizable form.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: We also discuss the pressures created by identity politics, demographic change, and why we might be about to witness backlash politics because citizens have felt unheard for so long.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: Classmates, cultural practices and institutions do not preserve themselves.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: They are maintained by those who want to practice norms that they value.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: And in this case, if the norms sustaining free inquiry are shattered, we can't expect them to be restored by accident.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: If you value serious historically grounded conversations about culture, politics and civilization, then you'll be right at home here with Thinking Class.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, and share the show with others who want to think more deeply about what we have inherited and what we owe to the future.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: You can also find essays, reflections, and further reading on Substack.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: Now for Lord Nigel Bigger.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates!
2:28
SPEAKER_02: I can't get enough of you down.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: You start my line.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Nigel, it's a delight to welcome you back on.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: We're here to discuss a problem which many have felt in recent years.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: The illiberal wave that seems to have swept over public life in many ways.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: And you've experienced this firsthand, as have several of your colleagues in the educational sector.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: And uh many of our most prominent institutions no longer consider merit fairness or justice, but seem to rather run in accordance with ideological bias.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: They can sometimes be driven by resentment, and I think many would agree are overseeing a decline, whether in educational standards or civic life, and that's having far-reaching consequences for the ordinary person.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: So, Nigel, I think you're a very good man to speak about these things.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: You're a theologian, a moral philosopher.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: You're the author of a new book called The New Dark Age.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to draw on your own experience inside some of Britain's most august institutions, in which you will argue that we must recover the courage to defend truth, fairness, and intellectual discipline, or we'll risk surrendering them to intimidation.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: So, Nigel, what's at stake here?
3:47
SPEAKER_00: What is your argument in the New Dark Age?
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think liberals need to win what has been called the culture wars, particularly within our institutions?
3:57
SPEAKER_02: John, um the subtitle to the The New Dark Age is Why Liberals Must Win the Culture Wars.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: So uh the word liberal, as you know nowadays, um is is a boo word in in some conservative circles, circles which I overlap with.
4:13
SPEAKER_02: So let me just make clear.
4:15
SPEAKER_02: When I say liberals, I mean those of us who uh think that we don't all possess the truth perfectly, think that um we need to test each other's views of the truth in order to get closer to it.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: Um therefore we need to be able to speak our minds freely about what we think the truth is, so that you and I can test each other, and so together we can get closer to the truth.
4:41
SPEAKER_02: Because if we don't do that, then um bad ideas, untruthful ideas, false ideas, uh uh distorted ideas will dominate uh public space, dominate institutions and and uh damage us all.
4:58
SPEAKER_02: Right?
4:58
SPEAKER_02: So so uh uh that's why we need uh a liberal culture in the sense of a culture where we are free to speak our minds um with due res due respect, due self-restraint, uh without the intention to offend.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: Um but we're do we're we're free to speak our minds uh so that we all get to test each other's ideas and get closer to the truth of things.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: That's that's really what's what's important.
5:26
SPEAKER_02: That's what's at stake, and that's what I think too many of those at the top of our institutions have forgotten.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, perhaps we could overlay the stakes with your own experience.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh you write in your book uh very uh in a very detailed fashion about what has happened to you at various points in your career in the last decade.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, and to throw one such example out there, and it's not the famous um the council council culture mob descending on you um through the Empire and Ethics project that you started at Oxford, in which you tried to put a balanced case forward for the um fruits uh and and otherwise of the British Empire.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: But you you you uh have put forward examples for example for example, for example, for example, of appearing at um uh debates uh and being admonished publicly, for example, at a at a panel event in Exeter College for being uh for being Donish, uh for trying to point out the inconsistencies in the position of others.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: And you you wonder out loud if there are no rules to public debate anymore.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And uh I I I wonder if you could elaborate on that a little more and and tell us about what you've observed you during your time in these august institutions um that have given you such cause for concern.
6:55
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
6:55
SPEAKER_02: I mean that incident let me make clear, um the picture in our universities is a mixed one.
7:01
SPEAKER_02: It depends what what's going on depends on where we're talking about, depends on which department, depends on who's the leader at the top, um, it depends on the professor.
7:12
SPEAKER_02: So uh uh what I what what we're talking about is not universal, but it is it is a problem.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: Um and it's a problem that university leaders are not recognizing.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: So the incident you you alluded to there, let me just explain.
7:25
SPEAKER_02: This was uh I don't know, eight, nine, ten years ago.
7:28
SPEAKER_02: I was invited to take part in a in a student uh discussion of empire, and I was part of uh a panel, I think, comprising three people.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: One of them was a female professor of international relations here in Oxford.
7:43
SPEAKER_02: At one point, um I I said to her, um you just said this, let's call her Polly.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: You just said this, Polly.
7:55
SPEAKER_02: But you said that a moment ago.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: They're not consistent.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: Enough, she said, of your donish tutorial tactics.
8:11
SPEAKER_02: And at the time I I was completely dumbfounded.
8:16
SPEAKER_02: Um and I didn't quite know what was happening.
8:18
SPEAKER_02: I I did I did it had the effect of shutting me down, which is what it intended.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: But on reflection, I thought to myself, what was what was going on there?
8:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, first of all, um this professor at Oxford University apparently doesn't consider herself bound by by the laws of logic.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: Doesn't consider herself bound to be logically consistent.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh what's more when uh called out um she resorted to um describing me as Donish Donish tutorial, okay that that countries up pictures of old white men in tweed suits sucking pipes, so you know, we're old and reactionary.
9:11
SPEAKER_02: Um and also she she implied bad faith.
9:15
SPEAKER_02: Tactics means that I I wasn't really engaging in good faith discussion, I was simply uh uh uh uh making a political move.
9:24
SPEAKER_02: And and and um so so in a instead of addressing the issue of her inconsistency, she deflected it by smearing me in a certain way.
9:35
SPEAKER_02: And of course, the fact that she was a woman and I was a man on reflection, that was important because women uh are currently regarded as belonging to a historically victimized group.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: Men are the historic victimizers.
9:50
SPEAKER_02: Um so it's it's it's it's quite hard, actually, for men to push back against women when they play that game.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: I now I would.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: Um but she was exploiting she was playing politics rather than engaging, she in fact was playing politics rather than engaging in good faith uh uh discussion, uh testing each other's ideas so we can both get closer to the truth.
10:15
SPEAKER_02: Uh that's the irony.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: She accused me of of bad faith politics.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: That was exactly what she was doing.
10:21
SPEAKER_02: And and that there's a lot of that.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh and I in in chapter five of The New Dark Age, I uh analyze and list examples of of bad intellectual practices that display uh intellectual and and moral vices.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we will get on to some of the intellectual vices later on.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: And uh uh these institutions in which you've been a part and of which you're highlighting these issues in have typically been the crucible uh or the crucibles in which we have developed the intellectual virtues that you've been speaking about.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: And uh I would quite like to explore the likelihood of these liberal ideals being able to hold.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think the first way I'd like to explore that is using an idea that Ian McGillchrist has put forward in some of his work where he talks about the nature of doubles, and that is anything that is brought into being creates something else that goes counter to it.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh it just uh and and within the thing that is contra to it, there is also a seed of the thing that it it is it is mirroring.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose what I'm trying to say here is these these liberal uh virtues and the peoples that carry them have prosecuted their cause for years now at this point.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: They've doubled down on institutional bias against whichever disfavoured group that they have in their mind.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: I think we could arguably say they are ethnically white, sometimes religiously Christian, often heterosexual, sexual.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: And I think people, even outside of those groups of people, have begun to realise this and they begin to decide, well, look, these people can't be reasoned with, and they're dispossessing you in some way.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: So actually, we need to remove them or disregard them by any means necessary.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that is a risk that we're creating a double here where there's going to be a counter wave that could be quite vociferous?
12:34
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I I imagine I imagine that's the case, and I I I I I think that's been displayed by President Trump in the US in terms of his uh aggressive draconian behavior toward uh American universities.
12:50
SPEAKER_02: I I'm I I'm a Tory peer, I'm not I'm not a reform uh member of the Reform Party.
12:56
SPEAKER_02: Uh I fear that reform uh um if it's not careful could uh could overreact.
13:04
SPEAKER_02: Um however I mean there's a problem with the fact that there are people sitting in positions of power in our museums, in our universities, in the DBC, um who have tied their reputations to progressive views, uh who are behaving in an authoritarian, repressive manner and they ain't gonna let go uh by sweet reason.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: Uh now so what's gonna dislodge them?
13:35
SPEAKER_02: I prefer it isn't the state because th that that that brings all sorts of risks of of um excessive state power and intervention.
13:46
SPEAKER_02: Um in some cases it has to start from the bottom.
13:49
SPEAKER_02: So for example um the National Trust um which has has has gone into decolonization big time, uh that provoked a reaction um from a group that calls itself Restore Trust, and there have been attempts to get Restore Trust members elected onto National Trust boards.
14:16
SPEAKER_02: That's not succeeded so far, but um which is which is which is a shame, but I think more members of of the National Trust need to understand what's at stake here, because they could, by voting, they could regain some kind of control over their institution.
14:32
SPEAKER_02: So uh one one thing needs to happen is more people need to wake up, and more people need to understand what's at stake, and more people need to understand they can't depend on other people to do what needs to be done.
14:43
SPEAKER_02: Uh so there's that.
14:45
SPEAKER_02: Um I think I would also uh I mean my book is an appeal, um and and the reviewer and the telegraph, although approving of the book, thought I was being optimistic, um appealing to academics to wake up because universities are probably our most culturally formative institutions because half the population goes through universities now, and universities invariably uh populate our elites with with graduates.
15:22
SPEAKER_02: Universities have an enormous responsibility to to train future citizens to be liberal in the sense I I say, and they are failing, many of them failing.
15:32
SPEAKER_02: Because they don't even recognise the responsibility.
15:35
SPEAKER_02: Um so I'm hoping one uh I could persuade more professors, more university administrators and leaders to recognize what's at stake and do their duty.
15:47
SPEAKER_02: Um but it would also need it, you know, it'll need the the sharp encouragement of a free speech union or of telegraph newspaper or the spectator to to to embarrass them by pu by publishing what they're doing and embarrass them into thinking again.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: So it'll it'll need both sweet reason and political pressure.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, I would say that your book I think that would be unfair to say it was optimistic.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: I think it retains a kind of Christian hope and it provides people with the tools to um use their own agency, their free will, um, and their courage to be able to adopt those virtues and to push back.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh the reason why I said that so confidently is I actually interviewed uh quite literally one of your peers of late, Lord Jonathan Sumption, and I felt he did have optimism as somewhat of his strategy with regards to how British institutions might hold up in future.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: And we were talking specifically about the demographic transformation that the country's undertaking, and he recognised they're a challenge, but didn't have a response other than he thinks the institutions are are strong enough and will come through in the end.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: I I don't think you're saying that.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: I think you're saying that things are stark and we need to turn things around quickly.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: And um, whilst this is a little bit earlier than anticipated, and we'll maybe explore some of the other ways that these liberal values may come under pressure, is uh this ground-up movement potentially to dislodge what has taken place.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: How do we envisage this?
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Is this within current institutions and then failing that, people setting up their own ones?
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh or do you do you have to get Henry VIII and have a new age dissolution of the monasteries and start again?
17:41
SPEAKER_02: So, John, it's it's it's a combination of a number of things.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh in the it so the good news is is in the last five years, in the last six years, um there have been a number of initiatives at the grassroots level of civil society, nothing to do essentially with politicians or government.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: Um in 2019 I ran a conference in Oxford recognizing the problem called Um Academic Freedom Under Threat, What Is to Be Done?
18:12
SPEAKER_02: And there were about fifty people there.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: To cut a long story short, out of that uh conference, uh Toby Young, the pr the next uh January uh January twenty twenty twenty uh went and founded the Free Speech Union declaration of interest, I I chair it.
18:31
SPEAKER_02: But Toby has built a uh a free speech union that now has forty thousand subscribing members, um, has the resources to to apply for judicial review uh of of government policy, um, has spawned sister organizations in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Switzerland, and Canada.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: Uh and is doing a great job in holding institutions across the board, not just universities, but police forces and schools, uh holding them to account, uh sometimes uh funding legal cases against them.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so that that w that was simply from the ground up with with enterprise and initiative.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: And uh able to grow get a lot of support from individuals and from from uh wealthy donors.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: That's one thing.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: The Farros Foundation, which I also ch uh uh um uh chair, um, is designed specifically to promote um thinking and scholarship in our universities that there's not obsessed with race, gender, or decolonization that does think that Western serve has a lot to present in favour of it.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: And again, in three years, in three years we have raised uh several million pounds from British from a handful of British donors who who want our universities to become properly liberal again.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: So you've got you've got, as it were, ground level in initiatives then you've got the press, and in this country, unlike Canada, uh we have a pretty strong uh uh right of center or centre-right um print press, Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express.
20:18
SPEAKER_02: BBC is not helpful at the moment, but we also have GB News.
20:22
SPEAKER_02: Times Radio is a is a bit more helpful.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: And and the press can be used to to embarrass institutions and to to uh to make issues public.
20:34
SPEAKER_02: And then finally there is government, so um I mean government helps.
20:37
SPEAKER_02: So uh the group that uh emerged out of the 2019 conference went on to uh uh collaborate with uh the the the Tory government of the time and the subsequent ones, and we uh helped to uh design and promote the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act, um, which the Labour government uh paused when it came into power, but it looks as if most of it will come into operation.
21:08
SPEAKER_02: And we we have um in the Office of Students, the regulator of universities, someone now whose uh whole reason for being is to monitor uh how well universities are obeying the law uh in in maintaining free speech.
21:23
SPEAKER_02: So a combination of private initiatives, local people getting together and and and building something, with the help of um people with resources, individuals, the press, and and government.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: Um Yeah.
21:42
SPEAKER_02: So so in five or six years, you know, we've a lot's been achieved and there's much more p pushback than there was five, six years ago.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's heartening to hear that there are those with the financial and uh societal heft uh to uh that that are thinking.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Like stewards in many ways.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: They are trying to keep the thread of our civilizational inheritance going, which is which is heartening.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Another avenue to explore with regards to these liberal ideals holding.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: So it's no surprise that those who've run our institutions have had the left progressivism, which has been focused very heavily on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: And it presents itself as a universalist doctrine in many ways, other than it tries to suppress any previously favoured groups that it sees.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: What my contention is, and it's similar to the one that I put to Lord Jonathan's assumption, is we are undertaking a demographic transformation in which we're seeing lots of people arrive in the country who are from non-liberal cultures.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: They don't have the same historical background, so they're not likely to run their institutions the same way.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're moving towards a very ethnically different future where white Britons are the minority, and institutions are then being run by those who are from these non-liberal cultures and they haven't integrated and all the rest of it because of size of diaspora, there's every chance that the institutions themselves aren't going to remain liberal.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: And to use an example of this, I suppose I'll bring one of your intellectual vices out that you write about in your book, and it was to do with unjust cultural and political bias.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: And to quote you, you say, in giving account of historical events, justice or fairness requires that all parties are treated equally and held accountable to common standards.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Bias undermines authority.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, my contention is that people are seeing authority be undermined by those who are hiding behind universalism and inclusion for their own ends.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: And a great example of this has just popped up in Vienna.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: So there was a socialist Turkish MP who has just um blocked actually a statue of Johann III Sobieski, who led the battle uh uh at Vienna against the Ottoman forces to effectively prevent the Islamisation of Europe.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: And uh she, uh Aslahan Bozatema, has blocked it because she said it would promote xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Turkish sentiment.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And so I wonder how much you think about, and I suppose even your peers in the House of Lords, the demographic wave that's on the way, and how that actually there may be quite a few people who will use these liberal institutions and their current ideological alignment for their own ends, and there might be nothing we can do about it because of that demographic transformation.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Is this something that keeps anyone awake at night in the House of Lords?
24:58
SPEAKER_02: Um first of all, on on um equity, diversity and inclusion.
25:04
SPEAKER_02: Um The problem with with that trio is I mean on the surface, who who can disagree?
25:14
SPEAKER_02: And that that's part of their their disarming power.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: The problem is that the particular understandings of EDI ideological understandings are exploiting them.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: So the inclusion, what does inclusion mean?
25:31
SPEAKER_02: What it means is uh um it mean it means well should mean um uh um equal respect for people who think that they're in the wrong sex, people who are uh homosexually oriented, people of non-white skins.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: Well, no, we we can all buy up to equal respect, but in practice what it means is that what it's come out to mean is that uh anyone who thinks that the idea of uh uh uh changing your sex, and that's what I that's what transgender is about.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: Anyone, gender is about um um manners, really.
26:12
SPEAKER_02: So uh, you know, I can be a biological male and I can adopt I can wear women's clothes and I can wear earrings and rouge.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: Those are manners.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: And we've had we've you know had that we've had that around uh uh uh somewhat for a long, long time.
26:27
SPEAKER_02: But the idea now is somehow uh uh a biological male who is um um adopting feminine manners can become a woman, can change sex.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: Now, some of us think that's nonsense.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: But that in the current climate, in certain contexts, to say that is to risk your job.
26:47
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so so um um certain concepts of inclusion, which are in fact highly exclusive, um, are be allowed to run.
26:56
SPEAKER_02: Um and the same would go for diversity.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: We know diversity can be good.
27:01
SPEAKER_02: On the other hand, as you pointed out, um uh diversity can also be a threat to social cohesion, it can produce it can produce conflict, it can be it can produce bloodshed, folks.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: But but no one's allowed to think about that.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: So we we need to analyze and think critically about EDI, and therefore we need a liberal culture which allows us to do that without suffering penalties.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: So that's one thing.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: Um so to address the issue of really multiculturalism is what we're talking about.
27:31
SPEAKER_02: And that and that is uh I think that is increasingly recognized as as a problem.
27:38
SPEAKER_02: Um but we have we have uh ghettoized communities among us.
27:44
SPEAKER_02: Um and I I am thinking of certain Muslim communities.
27:47
SPEAKER_02: Let me be clear.
27:49
SPEAKER_02: Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, comes in all different forms, uh and there are different kinds of Muslim uh but there are certain Muslim communities uh that have emanated, I think, from mainly from rural Pakistan, uh that are very conservative socially and religiously and are not really at home in a um uh a more liberal feminist British culture.
28:20
SPEAKER_02: And um they don't want to be at home.
28:25
SPEAKER_02: And the question is, what do we do?
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Uh and my view is my my sense is the authorities have been terribly shy about addressing this problem because uh then th this is a good reason, I think, for their caution, John.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: Um you will remember, or you may know, I guess I guess you may not have been out of short pants then.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: But in 2000 I don't know what age you are, but in 2005, that was uh 20 years ago.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Yes, you you probably were out of short pants.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: Um you remember that that uh three uh young uh British Muslims from Yorkshire detonated bombs on the London Underground and on buses in London uh as a as a protest against degenerate Western society.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: Now I remember after that reading that the authorities this really alarmed the authorities because um I I can't quote the figures, but an alarmingly high minority of British Muslims when polled uh either didn't believe that Muslims were responsible or were sympathetic.
29:32
SPEAKER_02: And uh whereas the authorities in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s had had to manage, I think, uh a pool of supporters of the IRA, of the violent IRA in Northern Ireland, a pool of active supporters of about 700.
29:50
SPEAKER_02: They calculated that the potential pool of active supporters of uh um Islamic terrorist violence was much, much larger and much more dispersed.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: And therefore the problem of how to deal with the terrorist threat, I think, has made the authorities extremely shy of doing anything to radicalize this potential pool of supporters.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: Um and I don't know the answer to that.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: And it but it it may be a real problem, uh, unless I'm misreading things.
30:21
SPEAKER_02: Uh that's a real problem, and um it's it's caused by our aligned people into this country who did not integrate, and we failed to require them to integrate.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: Um But it's clear now that uh that we can't ignore the problem anymore.
30:37
SPEAKER_02: It's got to be addressed.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: And um I think all Britons um have to be required uh to to uh behave themselves in certain ways, uh behave toward women in certain ways.
30:54
SPEAKER_02: Um when they go on protest against the V uh against against Israel, they've got to understand that protests takes t takes certain forms and does not take other forms.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: If protest itself becomes a form of intimidation, the protesters have to be held to account.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: Whereas what we've heard uh with regard to some of the pro-Gaza protests is that um uh uh w when someone visibly Jewish comes across their path, uh the police regard the the Jew as responsible for potential trouble.
31:31
SPEAKER_02: Whereas whereas um actually the protesters need to be required to behave themselves.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: And and and that that that may that may result initially on violence in the streets between police and protesters.
31:43
SPEAKER_02: Well, so be it.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: Uh the protesters uh and the and those leading pro protests, organizing them, need to understand that and require it.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: Um uh uh you're quite right.
31:56
SPEAKER_02: There's a demographic problem.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: It's not it's not demographic, it's it's it's not just it's not just immigrants.
32:02
SPEAKER_02: It's it's the fact that immigrants have been allowed to getawise and not integrate.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: That's that's the issue.
32:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh how we deal with that now, we certainly have to be uh in terms of whom we allow into the country, we have to be much more um um discriminatory, frankly, not against skin colour, but against culture.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh this was this was a contention of mine with with Lord Sumption is uh he he he speaks about democracy requiring us all to recognize a part of the same political community.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Um and right now I think we can agree that the political community is certainly not one political community, it is heavily dispersed at this point.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: But I suppose to to bring us back onto the the track of some of the arguments you're making in your book um with regards to the intellectual vices, I know that the the viewership of thinking class, they are thoughtful by their nature.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh judging by the demographics, I suspect they are pretty senior in institutions.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: And uh I would quite like to outline some of the intellectual vices that I think all of us should be aware of in the institutions in which we find ourselves, whether we're learning in them, whether we're working in them.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh, because you have said that failing to stand up to infringements by bureaucracy will let the Western world sleepwalk its way into authoritarianism.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: And I think we can see these things starting to happen.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord Nigel Bigger, what would you tell people to keep an eye out for within their institutions uh with regards to intellectual vices and how they might turn that ship around?
33:42
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so so um let me introduce what I have to say by saying that uh if we want a if we want a liberal society where everyone gets to speak the truth as they see it, test it, and and therefore we get closer to the truth and we can expose false ideas that might damage us.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: Um yes, we need respect and tolerance, but th those are those are thin things, and we need more than that in order to be capable of being respectful.
34:12
SPEAKER_02: So so we need to uh uh we need to go uh deeper than the than the typical liberal virtues of respect and tolerance.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: Um we need people who have been educated and trained to restrain their emotions when they come across a view they don't like or come across a view that threatens them.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: Um because the fact that they feel threatened and they might feel offended is not important.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: Because it might be that the view they feel threatened by or offended by is the truth.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: And they should adapt themselves to the truth.
34:53
SPEAKER_02: Um but but so so so it's not permissible to to react with a whole bunch of of um indignant, aggravated emotion.
35:03
SPEAKER_02: We've got to be temperate.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: We've got to display the virtue of temperance, self-control.
35:09
SPEAKER_02: Because because what is agitating us might be something we need to hear.
35:14
SPEAKER_02: Right?
35:14
SPEAKER_02: So that's one thing.
35:15
SPEAKER_02: Temperance.
35:17
SPEAKER_02: Another thing is another thing is um yes, uh oftentimes we are presented with views that threaten us, they they call into question deeply held assumptions convictions.
35:30
SPEAKER_02: And so we also need to exercise courage in facing things that threaten us because they might be true.
35:37
SPEAKER_02: Um and when we uh uh armed with temperance and courage, when we come to uh engage with a point of view that is alien to us, and without temperance and courage we can't do that, because we will we will smear it, or we will uh um uh dismiss it, or we'll misrepresent it.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: And I found this constantly from from people who criticize me.
36:05
SPEAKER_02: They constantly repeat things I've not said, ever said.
36:08
SPEAKER_02: And I I there was a review of my book on reparations in the Times Literary Supplement uh a few weeks ago uh that was so I I was minded not to respond to it, but I eventually wrote to the uh editor of the TLS and just listed the number of things he said I he said I've written that I manifestly haven't written, and he knows I haven't written because he's read the things I've written.
36:32
SPEAKER_02: Right, so so so that thing, you know, we we can build on temperance and and courage.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Justice.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: When someone says something, don't twist it.
36:43
SPEAKER_02: Don't reshape it into something you can knock down more easily just because you can't hit the real target.
36:48
SPEAKER_02: You've got to deal with it as it stands.
36:50
SPEAKER_02: Deal with it justly and fairly, and even charitably, because we often say things that are ambiguous, can be taken in different directions, and the temptation is to take the weakest construction and knock it down.
37:02
SPEAKER_02: Well you can do that.
37:05
SPEAKER_02: But if you take the strongest construction and then dismantle it, um you gain two advantages.
37:13
SPEAKER_02: First of all, your dismantling is all the more impressive, because you've dismantled the strongest construction.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: And secondly, observers notice you were generous.
37:21
SPEAKER_02: You gave the other side uh uh the benefit of doubt.
37:26
SPEAKER_02: And and therefore they'll be even more impressed by your deconstruction of the other side.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: And apparently that's what Barack Obama used to do every time he uh when he was a an attorney, uh a barrister.
37:37
SPEAKER_02: He always used to summarize the opposite case scrupulously before he dismantled it.
37:43
SPEAKER_02: So there we've got we've got temperance, we've got courage, we've got justice, we've got charity.
37:49
SPEAKER_02: And I I mentioned some other ones like thoughtfulness.
37:52
SPEAKER_02: Um and in chapter five, um I I list examples of the vices uh of the s of the smearing, of the um of the misrepresentation of the straw men, um, of the um of of as you mentioned, of of cultural and racial unfairness, uh, etc.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: And I I name names, I I give I give concrete examples and I I cite chapter and verse, because this is not, you know, these are things I have encountered over the last last eight years, uh in the narrow field of discussions of colonial history.
38:31
SPEAKER_02: So if they're there, you bet they're also in in the field of English literature and sociology, etc.
38:39
SPEAKER_02: So this is as it were a microscope, a macrocosm of the problem that uh that that that um um afflicts um parts of our universities and some universities uh um it seems um to a very large extent.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, we we've we've touched on how universities have uh started to form uh intellectual vices and thus um um characters that are not necessarily conducive to um a world which uh has consideration for uh justice and due process and all of the things that we've spoken about.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: Um and instead we see more like ego formation and careerist moral theatre, and um perhaps we uh perhaps we can talk a little bit about the psychological basis for um some of these um rather uh popularized um uh ideologies that are now uh uh rife within our university.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: So one of those is decolonization.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: We've we've talked about it before.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: Um you you wrote in Western self hatred, the other has no place.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: It is a narcissistic relationship in which the African, the Indian, and Arab are brought in as extras.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: You also wrote the decolonizers fiddle in Oxford while South Africa burns, uh, referencing the Rhodes Must Fall campaign with a statue in Oxford, whilst anyone who goes and looks into South African politics and the way the society is run will see that it's it's really not doing very well, to put it mildly.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh, could you explain the psychological basis for this decolonizing mindset amongst our British elites and the institutions that form them?
40:28
SPEAKER_02: So the reason I I came to the point of trying to speculate as as to what's going on psychologically is is this.
40:33
SPEAKER_02: And let me take the Roseworth Fall incident to illustrate the point.
40:37
SPEAKER_02: So there we were in 2015-16, uh a few hundred Oxford students with a few professors.
40:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh and these are Oxford students, these are privileged students, these are uh often postgraduates, um, uh sometimes even Rhodes scholars, highly privileged Oxford students, um, clamoring for the downfall of the Statue of Cecil Rhodes, who was, they claimed, South Africa's Hitler.
41:05
SPEAKER_02: He was guilty of genocide, he built concentration camps in South Africa, he was a racist.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: Um and I uh I had to be two-thirds of the way through uh the Yayc standard biography of Rhodes by Robert Rotberg, and I knew that those claims were none of them are simply true at all, and one some of them are completely wrong.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: Um and I published uh my my correction of these wrong historical views, um, and neither then nor since have I received any response from anybody.
41:44
SPEAKER_02: And uh when the Rosemus Fall uh clamor resumed in forget when it was, maybe two, three years ago, the same claims were being made by these very these these unusually intelligent, highly privileged students.
42:00
SPEAKER_02: So what do I observe?
42:01
SPEAKER_02: I observe, first of all, the historical truth doesn't matter to them.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: That's not th they don't care.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: And these are Oxford University students.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: The truth doesn't matter.
42:10
SPEAKER_02: Uh they have they have been they've uh and they've got where they you know they they've they've they've been given awards, and they'll go on to to no doubt flourishing careers um by other people who have rewarded their vices.
42:26
SPEAKER_02: They didn't get there, didn't get here and suddenly turn turn careless of the truth.
42:30
SPEAKER_02: They've been allowed to get away with that for some time.
42:33
SPEAKER_02: So this is a systemic problem.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: Okay, um so that so they don't care about the truth.
42:39
SPEAKER_02: What's more, um I did observe at the time in 2015-16, South Africa was in the news because Jacob Zuma, the ANC president, was busy looting the South African state to build another palace of his and putting his cronies in positions of power where they could loot the state, and um South Africa was being driven to the edge of insolvency.
43:04
SPEAKER_02: And one of the main uh um protesters for Rosamus Fall in 2015-16 was a young black South African.
43:13
SPEAKER_02: Um and and what did these Argsford protesters have to say about this real life, real-time uh uh political crisis in South Africa, which was ruining the lives of millions of South Africans?
43:28
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely nothing.
43:29
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely nothing.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Um so that that made me think, well, okay, the the the the woke social justice warriors don't care about the truth.
43:40
SPEAKER_02: They don't really care about real time oppressed.
43:43
SPEAKER_02: What is this about?
43:45
SPEAKER_02: And that's when I I Well the the i i in my book on on reparations, and I think also in the book on the New Dark Age, um I I I drawn a variety of sorts of.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: And I do some speculation.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: So the sources, Rake Bay San, who's a left of center, I think probably Indian or Pakistani Britain, published a book in 2023 called Beyond Grievance, What the Left Gets Wrong About Ethnic Minorities.
44:18
SPEAKER_02: And also a left of center Australian anthropologist Peter Sutton.
44:24
SPEAKER_02: And both of them observing um uh progressive social justice warriors come to the conclusion this is not about the oppressed.
44:32
SPEAKER_02: This is about partly it's partly about it's about reputation and career.
44:36
SPEAKER_02: It's about uh how um uh you know these people have built uh uh careers and reputations through being social justice warriors, um and and the cost of them beginning to to acknowledge contrary truths uh socially and professionally would be too great.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: So so they're they're they're motivated really by social and professional interests, but also I think uh about the self-perception of being a crusader.
45:10
SPEAKER_02: And this is where the the kind of the k the the the quasi-religious quality of what's going on comes in here.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: Um because they b they behave as if they possess the truth, they're right.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: Anyone like me who raises questions against them, um I'm not merely wrong, I am I am wicked, I'm the devil, and therefore I I they don't try and engage me with reasons, they they engage me with with abuse and aggression and uh political tactics.
45:46
SPEAKER_02: And uh so I diagnose this really as a spiritual problem because they're behaving like little gods.
45:53
SPEAKER_02: They're behaving as if as if no one uh th there's nothing above them to which they are subject, because they possess all truth and all all righteousness, and that gives them the right to abuse other people because unlike other people, they're not creatures and they're not sinners.
46:09
SPEAKER_02: So I I think this is I think this is a substitute religion.
46:13
SPEAKER_02: Of a bad I'm I I I I'm religious, I'm a Christian, uh um but this this is this is bad religion.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, and it has it has real world consequences, so uh w what you outline in your book is there's a double moral standard at play here.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: You describe the mindset as being uh morally neutral and infinitely indulgent with regard to non-Western African culture, but on the other hand, morally absolutist and infinitely unforgiving with regard to Western British culture.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: And the real world consequences it's having, particularly when you couple that with multiculturalism, is you drive resentment amongst those who are non-Western peoples, who basically then see the world of which they now live as being nothing but the home of the former oppressor and perhaps even the current oppressor.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: And so that social cohesion point is watered down even further because people are unable to convince others that the West is not responsible for all the ills caused to a certain people, um, and it becomes harder to persuade them that much was bequeathed at all from the civilization.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: And so I suppose starting to think about where we might go from here, uh, Nigel, is there are a few people that I see who've recognized the problem and think we should try to do something about it, and also a few people who are genuinely liberally minded.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh you have this book, The New Dark Age.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: There's another book due out in a couple of months called The New Dark Ages, which is about how we become a post-literate society, and that's by James Marriott, a Times journalist.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I and I I see a few people I'm glad I got got in there with my title first.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I was thinking that.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: He just he just released.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: A bet is not pleased.
48:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Um but but it it shows that there's something in the culture going on, at least amongst a subset of those who have cultural heft, like you and James.
48:14
SPEAKER_00: But I do see few people with a coherent vision as to how to deal with the fallout from everything we've just discussed.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: So some of these ideas are so well entrenched and they've been around for decades.
48:23
SPEAKER_00: Orwell has spoken uh in the past about how the the left-wing intelligentsia of Britain uh is oikophobic, as Roger Scruton would say it.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: They they are self-hating of their own country and culture in a way that the the left-wing of France wouldn't be.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: Um and the downstream consequences of all of that in a multi-ethnic society, uh, amongst other things, uh, is not good.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: And so, whilst that's not the point you're making necessarily, it is one of the things that we we're facing into, and our institutions aren't really a battleground of ideas anymore, they are uh total um there there's a monopoly on on the discourse or has been.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: And um I suppose final question to you then, Nigel, is um how how do we recover liberal convictions without becoming illiberal in the process?
49:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh so it's a good good question.
49:25
SPEAKER_02: Um and I I you know, history tells us that that being liberal in the in the sense I've uh described and and actually knowing the truth and speaking the truth doesn't always win.
49:44
SPEAKER_02: So so I'm I'm not optimistic.
49:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's much at stake here and we're in a dangerous place.
49:49
SPEAKER_02: Hence the title of the book.
49:51
SPEAKER_02: The New Dark Age.
49:52
SPEAKER_02: We're not we're not fully in there yet, but we are at risk.
49:57
SPEAKER_02: And and and I I I know that drawing analogies with Nazi Germany is is uh hackneyed.
50:05
SPEAKER_02: Um but I do that, and I I do it with reference to histories of the 1930s.
50:11
SPEAKER_02: Um We're not there, but we are showing some of the symptoms of what produced Nazi domination in the 1930s.
50:21
SPEAKER_02: Um that that's the first thing to say.
50:26
SPEAKER_02: Um however, I do think my my firm view is that most people in the country are more or less reasonable folks.
50:39
SPEAKER_02: They don't know an awful lot an awful lot about these things, but and of course it varies from generation to generation but they have sensible views on trans things, they uh they're not persuaded the British Empire was all bad.
50:56
SPEAKER_02: Um most people are open to hearing what the likes of me has to say, which is why the aggressive illiberals are keen to shut me down.
51:10
SPEAKER_02: Not because anyone's forcing them to hear me, but because they're because they're worried that other people will hear me.
51:16
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
51:17
SPEAKER_02: Um but it it helps to know it helps to know that you you have your finger on the truth.
51:23
SPEAKER_02: And you know, I've my views on the British Empire I've tested over the last nine nine years or so, and I'm I'm even more convinced, and I've become less qualified in saying the British Empire did a lot of good.
51:36
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't have said that four years ago.
51:38
SPEAKER_02: I would say it now, it did a lot of good.
51:41
SPEAKER_02: Um so n knowing you have knowing you have the truth in the side i is a help.
51:46
SPEAKER_02: And then as I say, we do have a a a centre-right press that is willing to give these views a voice.
51:54
SPEAKER_02: Um I should also say, um although there's a problem with the mass immigration of people from very different cultures who then form self-sufficient, non-integrated ghettos, there are of course lots of people in the country from uh the Indian subcontinent or from Africa with skins not quite as pale as you or mine who agree with us, who agree with us, right?
52:23
SPEAKER_02: So I mean Kemi Baidnach, first generation uh uh black woman, Nigerian immigrant head of the Tory party, for God's sake.
52:36
SPEAKER_02: Impossible to suppose fifty years ago.
52:39
SPEAKER_02: Um she's the reason I'm in the House of Lords, because she gets what I'm saying.
52:45
SPEAKER_02: And Matthew Matthew Said, I think his parents were Syrian, and I think, although he's an atheist religiously uh brought up as a as a Muslim, he is a vociferous opponent of of or in fact uh uh I was reading him on Sunday of multiculturalism um of cousin marriage among Muslim communities.
53:06
SPEAKER_02: So uh again that there are there are people, as it were, who belong to ethnic minorities who are showing leadership, and that's that's really important.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: Um a very brief point of correct correction on Matthew's side, he's actually half Pakistani, his dad was Pakistani, and what makes him even more impressive is that he shows those liberal tendencies you've spoke spoken about with regards to search for truth, even amongst those who he is ethnically apart.
53:39
SPEAKER_00: Um so he's been quite scathing about some of the cultural practices um within sections of the Pakistani community here in Britain.
53:47
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
53:48
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
53:48
SPEAKER_02: So uh again, again, the other thing to point out is the importance of individual leadership.
53:52
SPEAKER_02: Now, you know, not everyone, for whatever reason, not everyone feels able to be brave.
53:57
SPEAKER_02: My view of courage is it's no one no one intends to be brave.
54:02
SPEAKER_02: Um courage is really just a situation where you love something so much you just can't stand to hear it being uh uh slandered anymore.
54:10
SPEAKER_02: So you speak.
54:11
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
54:12
SPEAKER_02: It's it's a combination of love and and recklessness, really.
54:17
SPEAKER_02: Um but but more people need to do that because the truth is uh uh the situation I as I see it is that um a minority of minority of illiberals dominate, and they dominate partly because they're in charge of institutions or because people's institutions allow them to dominate.
54:33
SPEAKER_02: That's often what happens.
54:34
SPEAKER_02: And so the rest of us under these institutions feel as if society is against us.
54:41
SPEAKER_02: And because we feel intimidated, no one says anything.
54:43
SPEAKER_02: We look around, no one says anything.
54:45
SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness, I'm the only dissident here in the world.
54:50
SPEAKER_02: Um but that changes when more people pop up and say, no, nonsense.
54:56
SPEAKER_02: And then you realize I'm not alone.
54:59
SPEAKER_02: And when when organizations like the FSU gather steam, you join it and you discover there are 40,000 other people subscribing to this thing.
55:08
SPEAKER_02: And when uh our views, my views get get expressed in the Rider Center press, more and more people realize what they've been thinking was common sense, isn't that common sense?
55:18
SPEAKER_02: Uh so I think uh we need individuals to stand up who feel able to stand up.
55:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh we need enterprise, we certainly need people from uh ethnic communities who feel able to show leadership here, um, demonstrating just how British they are in in fighting for the liberal culture we uh we shed blood over producing.
55:42
SPEAKER_02: Um and then we need people at the trouble institutions to realize what's at stake and to stop indulging illiberal bullies.
55:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh we also need changes in the law.
55:55
SPEAKER_02: Uh the uh the the certain parts of the law really muddied the waters.
55:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh the the Equality Act 2010, which uh defines harassment as something that someone perceives, not something something someone intends, something that perceives.
56:08
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's that gives all manner of hostage to uh in bad faith exploitation.
56:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh so the legal changes too will help.
56:18
SPEAKER_02: But I no, I I'm I'm I'm not optimistic, but I am not despondent.
56:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, Nigel, it's been an absolute pleasure as always, and I know you're coming back again with a colleague of yours, Professor Turton Carroy, to talk about the relationship between Britain and India through the centuries.
56:36
SPEAKER_00: But before I let you go, you've been absolutely prolific on writing books.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: Six uh in the last six months, two books have come out.
56:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh what what can we expect from you next, other than your excellent Substack articles?
56:48
SPEAKER_00: Any more books in the off thing?
56:51
SPEAKER_02: Let me just name the recent ones.
56:52
SPEAKER_02: Reparations, uh, Slavery and the Tyrian of Imaginary Guilt came out in September, The New Dark Age, Why Liberals Must Win the Culture Wars came out last Thursday.
57:01
SPEAKER_02: And uh I and Robert Toomes are about to complete the manuscript for our island's story, a better story about Britain.
57:10
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh in 50,000 words, uh uh a bite-size, I don't know, 150 pages, uh telling a story about Britain and the Empire, and um underlining what we've achieved and what we need to admire and value and conserve, and yes, reform, but conserve.
57:32
SPEAKER_02: Um so that will come out, I think, in October, November, just in time for um uh uh deployment as as multiple Christmas presents.
57:42
SPEAKER_02: Brilliant.
57:43
SPEAKER_02: By the way, by the way, it it's it's it's our island story with the apostrophe after the S, because it's not just about England, it's about Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England.
57:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, uh I will look forward to that.
57:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh it it it harks back to that H.
57:56
SPEAKER_00: E.
57:57
SPEAKER_00: R.
57:57
SPEAKER_00: Marshall book from the the 20th century, which I'm sure you're well aware of.
58:01
SPEAKER_00: Um Well, I shall look forward to that.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: And Robert has been on the show as well, and perhaps that can be your fifth appearance.
58:08
SPEAKER_00: But until your fourth one, Nigel, uh it has been an absolute pleasure.
58:13
SPEAKER_00: Keep fighting the good fight, and we'll speak again.
58:16
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for the platform, uh John.
58:17
SPEAKER_02: Really important.
58:19
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.