Latest / Thinking Class / #086 - Tom Jones - The 'Yookay': We Are Witnessing The Birth Of A New Country

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#086 - Tom Jones - The 'Yookay': We Are Witnessing The Birth Of A New Country · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking with Tom Jones.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Tom is a writer and counsellor for Scotland and Lower Wednesday in North Yorkshire, England, and he is the author of the Substack, The Tempekin Village Idiot, whilst he also writes for The Spectator, The Critic, Con Home, Capex, Unheard, and The Guardian.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, Tom and I think out loud about why there has been a noticeable shift in British political discourse since 2024, why state legitimacy and public trust is now at an all-time low, how Britain now lives under an anarcho-tyranny and what that means for the country, what the dark consequences could be that the judicial system is now losing credibility among the populace, why Britain is suffering the South Africanization of its politics, which should serve as a warning for the future, why mass immigration has led to the rise of communal politics, and why they be becoming more prevalent in the UK, why the Conservative Party faces a crisis of identity and leadership and stands at the precipice of destruction, why radical reforms are necessary for the political system to function effectively and even survive, and much, much more.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: You will like Tom, he's a deeply affable man, and I've really enjoyed this second conversation with him almost 18 months after the first one.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So do go and check that out from February 2024.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Before you dive into the show, make sure to like, subscribe, and follow the show on YouTube, your podcast platform of choice and Substack.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's grow Thinking Class together.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Jones, welcome back to Thinking Class.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me on again, John.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Tom, we spoke nearly 18 months ago now, at the time we spoke philosophically, I think, about things like Anglo-Futurism, about mass immigration and the ideology that sits behind it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a good natured conversation, even if we captured the brevity of um what has been happening or the gravity of what's been happening to the country of Great Britain.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: I would say, since we last spoke, I've noticed a bit of a shift in your mood, uh, particularly with regards to how you face out into the public sphere, whether it's in writing or broadcast TV.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm right, what's been driving that change in mood?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think there probably has been a change in mood, um, if I'm being perfectly honest.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that uh I think for a start, some of it came uh, you know, I I used to be uh I think a lot more irreverent about governmental problems because um as a Tory councillor um faced with you know the the kind of failures of 14 years of of Tory government, um really the only thing you can kind of do uh other than drive yourself insane at this what your own Basic that you are a member of is doing to the country.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um kind of the only thing you can do is is is make light of it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think so.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of humour that was a kind of coping mechanism for the at times frankly insane things that we were doing.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think um I think since we've come out of power, um I have been so so to so when Labour first came in, I was actually quite hopeful that uh I thought they were gonna do some cracker stuff, but I was secretly quite hopeful that they would move the needle on some really fundamental things that we had really struggled with that were actually very important.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm thinking about things like um house building, thinking about things like the uh NHS reform, uh social care reform, welfare reform.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I thought Labour would have, because of their credentials on a lot of these issues, um would have uh more room to manoeuvre than than than we uh had, especially towards the fag end of the government.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um I I've not seen that at all.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the the the change in in tone has basically come about uh because nothing is nothing is working, and now it's it's no longer my fault, and so therefore it's really serious now.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you you have made uh the argument uh since Labour's come to power that state legitimacy seems to be at its lowest ebb, which is saying something after, as you've alluded to, 14 years of conservative government which saw that particular government lose legitimacy like no others have before after such a large victory uh only a few years prior.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that state legitimacy is so low right now?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps even where do you even derive state legitimacy from?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because not everyone would recognise uh that term.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously it's you know, state legitimacy, I suppose, is from the consent of the governed.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I I think there are there are probably two concurrent issues here, and the first is that Labour were delivered to power with a huge parliamentary majority and actually not a particularly large um majority in the population.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um Labour did not get swept to power on a you know 1997 or 2019 style switching of the vote.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: They were delivered to power on the back of basically a collapse, a complete collapse of the conservative vote that just set them up.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, as long as their their vote held, they were going to win a very large majority, and that's exactly what happened.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I think part of the reason is that um it it was a vote of the last election was essentially a vote of kind of no confidence in any of the system.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: There was a core Labour vote that held up and uh core conservative vote that stayed at home, and uh, you know, a kind of the 2019ers uh who switched to our side that stayed at home or split off to reform.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I don't think the government was ever as popular as um as the as the size of the parliamentary majority would have you believe.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's very clearly been that's very clearly got even worse because Keir Starmer is now I think the most unpopular Prime Minister at this stage in his leadership of all time, which is quite simply staggering.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: We now have uh well we used to have three parties on about 35%, but the you know the Tories have really dropped back now, so we're on I think we're on something like sub-20 around 20, and um reformer are about 35 and Labour are kind of around about third, just topside of 30.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so you know that's for a first past the post system that's not really sustainable.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then I think there is a I I think there is a second problem to that, which is not particular to Labour, but I think is more of a an institutional problem, um which is that uh I think in large ways of the country um people have ceased to believe that the state is is is working uh fundamentally in their interests.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think you see a lot more outrage and uh essentially uh uh a kind of the two-tier system that's coming forward.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I think you see a lot of anger about that.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think you see a lot of anger on intergenerational lines because you know, somebody my age, I'm 30.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think I I first five years of my life I had some growth, and uh then since then I've I've not really experienced any long-term strong or sustained economic growth, and certainly not in GDP per capita, and certainly not in wages.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think there's a sense that basically that the the state is uh is no longer functioning as it should, it's not delivering better living standards, it's not delivering safe safely, and I think there is a really strong protest at the minute against what people increasingly see as a system of anarcho-tyranny where the uh the the governed are governed increasingly harder, and the ungoverned are increasingly ungoverned.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So a great example of this is the South Yeah.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so Britain we've I think it's I can't remember the specifics, but people born after a certain year will never be able to buy cigarettes.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um and obviously the price of a pack of cigarettes has gone up and up and up and up and up, and actually the the rates of um reported cigarette sales are going down, but the uh the uh basically all the diseases that are caused by smoking are staying about level, which suggests that people are still smoking at the same rate, they're just now getting their cigarettes illegally.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: But basically, um the cigarette ban is a great example of anarcho tyranny, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can walk uh the streets of there's no reason to pick on London for this, actually.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's a really big thing in the commentary of oh, London is fallen.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: You can walk in almost any provincial town, any major city, and you can smell marijuana constantly on almost every street.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um you know, everybody knows who does it, um, it's very easy to tell.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and people are now doing it openly and in public.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: They go increasingly undone, but cigarette smokers who are used to having the state tread very, very heavily on their lives are suffering even more punishments for a for a perfectly legal activity, because that is something that the state can actually deliver.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, tackling um marijuana smokers is actually quite difficult because they're a quite obstreperous group.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's obviously why they need to be controlled.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so because that's a bit too difficult, and because that's really hard, and because politicians, you know, want a quick headline and they want to do the easy things, not the difficult things, then they go for um uh something that is very easily enforceable, which is the cigarette ban.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Taking that a bit further, and I I wonder if it's a similar example, even if uh the law does get involved in in both instances, but just differently.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned two-tier.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: One of the big talking points that continues to rear its head uh in political life here in Britain is the jailing of Lucy Connolly uh for the tweet that she uh put out uh in the immediate aftermath of the Southport massacre of the young children.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um she effectively said, enough's enough, set fire to the the hotels full of the bastards from all I care on about the uh hotels housing asylum seekers.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: 31 months you got in jail.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if anyone goes and spends any time on Twitter and types and Lucy Connolly, you can probably find thousands at this point of tweets showing examples of cases where, for example, second, third, first generation immigrants have been treated much less harshly under the law for things like rape for attempted murder, um all of the rest of it.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so you find that you've got a uh a population of uh natives, let's call them, who are um judged much more harshly before the law, and then more recent arrivals who um who aren't judged as harshly, or cases take much longer to get to court, uh example being the two uh the two brothers of Pakistani heritage who beat up the um women police officers in Manchester Airport and have only just gone to trial a year later, uh, and having seen lots of people banned up for tweets or or um disorder following Southport mascot.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is this also an example of anarcho tyranny where you've effectively got you're allowing um actually having unfolded um crimes, uh violence having taken place, and yet those who may be res may have been guilty of um close to incitement or saying words to that effect are judged even more harshly than the acts themselves.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's that's that's a great example of of anarcho-tyranny in action, and I think that leads us to this particular example of the legal system and the law leads us to some some some very dark places.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I think for the first time this year, um the majority of people expressed that they have little to no faith in our judicial system, according to you, God.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's the first time that that has happened since records began.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you having a a population, the majority of which has no faith in the judicial system, has some really, really dark consequences.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh particularly, I wrote about this to the critic, and it was speculative.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I really do hope I'm wrong about most of the things I'm writing about at the minute, because I think they're really dark and awful places for this country to be heading to.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I use the example of um the LFG looking for growth guys, you know, going off and cleaning the tube, right?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that is a that is a state failure.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the spate state spends lots of money, it has this responsibility, it does not do it.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can have a kind of civic-minded vigilanteism where you go off and clean the tube, right?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um what happens though, if you have a kind of civic-minded vigilanteism for the judicial system because people have no longer no longer have faith in it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Deed deeds exist, but I think it's I think it's yeah, I and it's not it seems to be starting to happen on on that front.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: As a as a brief primer for anyone who doesn't know about the tubes story, uh, anyone who goes and spends time on the tubes of London these days, and I go down for work quite frequently and noticed in the last couple of years just how much it had descended into um a bit of a graffitied howl hole, it was all dirty, torn up.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Almost every carriage um on most lines, it really did feel quite post-apocalyptic.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And a group went out there and started to clean it themselves because transport for London, despite being heavily funded, did not use it to keep the tubes clean or even to try and uh stop the malcont contents from getting on the tubes in the first place.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: But on the vigilanteism on the law enforcement, Tom, I I don't know if you've seen this, but there's a group that's been set up which seems to be getting quite a lot of traction, at least on online and on the podcast world, called The Shield.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it was set up in Northumberland.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Judging by his accent, the chap is from uh North Yorkshire or or Cleveland, but he lives in Northumberland.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's basically a bunch of big burly men going out trying to stop people from grooming their kids.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that if there's any trouble that kicks off, they're gonna go and sort them out.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that that is getting you know lots of praise from people out in the culture.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, you know, if the if if the police and the courts aren't gonna look after us, then we'll do it ourselves.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this also ties in with the rise of um probate police, uh, which are uh have become a much more um uh much more referenced and and used service, they're becoming much more high profile.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a growth industry in Britain.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know that that that Shield group is at the minute I think it's just prevention.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but if people have got no faith in the judicial system, how long before it is no longer about prevention, it's actually about about justice.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and that is a is a really terrifying uh place for us to be because that is you know having a uh a state uh monopoly essentially on um justice and also on um coercive force is is kind of one of the building blocks of uh of civilization.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's you know, the the collapse of that is has terrifying implications.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's talk about some of the implications and where that might lead us.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it links to something else that you you've written uh about South Africa, and I think as a bit of a scene setter before we get there, is um there are various accounts on Twitter becoming quite popular that show the state of Britain, its decline.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of them being UK aesthetics, YWOKAY, which seems to be getting referenced uh not just amongst the right-wing corners of the internet, but beyond in mainstream culture, you find it being referenced, or at least the the terms in which it is generated um being referenced within uh mainstream publications like the Telegraph and The Times and all the rest of it.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um that shows quite starkly the state of Britain's streets, and as you say, it's not just London that has supposedly fallen in the eyes of the commissariat, but other places are are there too.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Tom, you you wrote um about the South Africanization of Britain.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I I quote, uh Britain is not South Africa yet, but there is a sense that the scaffolding of a once functional state is buckling and the grand edifice it supports is gradually tumbling down with it, brick by brick.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: For those with a doomerist bent, comparisons to the rainbow nation's dysfunction, division, and decay feel grimly inevitable, and the parallels harder to ignore.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you can take a moment to explain why it is you think we could be on the path toward a similar society to South Africa and what that looks like.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I think you know the the the comparison speaks to a kind of creeping dysfunction.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, uh South Africa used to be uh a first world nation, it is now one of the most dangerous um nations in the world.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: It is essentially it's it's gone backwards from um from I think the Le Kwan U book is from third world to first world, right?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, South Africa's done the opposite, they've gone from fourth to third, and uh, you know, uh decaying institutions, uh decaying infrastructure, rising division, the the collapse of state capacity, and the essential destruction of living standards of the vast majority of the population.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um obviously uh Britain is is is not South Africa yet, as I said, but but the direction of travel is similar, I I think.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I define South Africanisation as the collapse of public infrastructure and services, often either due to corruption, outright corruption or managerial incompetence, um, the retreat of the state in the face of growing criminality, so that, and then that prompts a rise in, you know, as we mentioned before, private security, also gated communities and possible parallel informal systems of governance, so not just uh justice but governance itself.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, communalist politics, um drawn along ethnic, racial, or religious lines, um, and increased social stratification.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so with an increasingly kind of Detached elite that's able to escape the inexorable collapse of the baseline quality of life.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and obviously following on from all this, a real kind of disillusionment with formal politics and kind of radical political apathy.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think those are the trends that that that we're we're heading towards.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And interestingly, you kind of mentioned UK aesthetics um and and a lot of these conversations going on on the online right, and I I think you are right, because the online right is probably the only, they're probably the only people who are doing any interesting ingenuity thinking about British politics at the minute.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, probably like for the last 10-15 years.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and UK aesthetics is is interesting because it is clearly trying to define a sense we are a new nation, we are no longer you know the Great Britain that say somebody like John Major presided over, but we are measurably something uh new, or there is a new nation developing within us.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that's I think that's basically what kind of South Africanization um leads into.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it as I say, it's interesting that this is an online right phenomenon, but it's not limited to that.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I think Wolfgang Streak, the Marxist historian, you know, has been predicting um uh the kind of collapse of capitalism uh for for quite a while.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and his uh his projection for what that looks like is not that dissimilar to South Africanization.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of the development of it's a bit more kind of a neo-feudalism, like a uh development of local warlords and things like that.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and obviously he believes that's the collapse of driven by the collapse of capital, and I believe that's that's been driven by other things.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that it's interesting that we both have the same direction of travel, at least.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I think uh I think South Africanization is um I think it's more than a metaphor, is what I was saying.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a probably a process, and it's certainly one that's already begun.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: One one footnote to the conversation on on South Africa.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh whilst we've alluded to the online right being uh notices of things, and that's what they build uh much of um the content of, it's noticing the change in something, sometimes even without commentary, it's just here's here's an image, and you can see that this isn't what it once was.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um is the likes of you and others who are not just uh online um personalities, you're out there, you've got you've got jobs, you do um actual political workers are termally online, but uh but but also also dealing with real flesh and blood blood people on a on a day-to-day.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, you do have your you're touching grass, as it were.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is that even even the likes of you who notice these things and are looking at this direction of travel will probably see that the um uh the ethnic conflict is not just inevitable, but it's it's happening already.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Ethnic and religious conflict, we see it either within suggested laws like Islamophobia laws.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: We see it with um the lights celebrating EDS growing up in in London, is that they're done under this idea of um safety and protection or celebrating a culture, but in reality it's also the promotion uh and permission of a culture, which is different.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there are also other things going on, right?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: You have people who will generally be quite anti-white, you have uh Indians and Pakistanis going up against each other.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's there's so much going on, and yet, whilst you can see these examples and they're in the papers, not everyone chooses to understand what they might mean or indeed recognize them.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I I have this clip that plays in my mind when we talk about South Africanization of Britain, which is um this video from within the South African Parliament, and I can see some of the uh some some um Afrikaner or white South African uh parliamentarians sitting there, and they'll have uh some of the various um different political parties' opponents, one of them being avowedly Marxists, they're quite literally sitting there talking about killing the bird and dispossessing the white person.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you might get a little bit of a shake of the head, but a lot of the time those white South African parliamentarians just stare forward and blink, almost totally unaffected by it.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder whether there's a bit of a case that's happening here.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know a lot of our liberal elite, as the game might start to change, they'll disavow whatever beliefs they had and perhaps move towards the new things that are acceptable.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I actually think quite a lot of people could probably sit there as the discourse gets pretty febrile, more febrile than it is in Parliament and hear things being effectively threats being made against them and do nothing about it.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you think we've got that within us in in Britain?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of people talk about our stiff up a low kind of um our uh just uh ability to just move on and be unaffected by things.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's just part of our natural and national character that we might not even respond to actual threats to the nation or when you see ethic or religious conflict really bubble up and we'll just try and turn a blind eye to it?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you think the the house of cards is coming tumbling down and everyone will see it and recognize it?
• 28:17
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• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, I I I think basically everyone will see it and recognize it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I've written an article about this recently that that said that Britain is heading towards a system of neo-communalism.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so obviously um I I call it neocommunalism because rather than it being um kind of in uh an existing population where there is an existing uh ethnic hostility, you know, obviously we've now um brought new people in who exist in Britain without kind of significant geographical buffers in a way that they wouldn't um in in in the communal countries they came from.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that the article I wrote was based around the Li Kwan Yu quote that um in a multiracial, in a multi-ethnic society, all political loyalties eventually devolve down to the ethnicity.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um I think probably the key word in there that I always draw out uh is the word all.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's uh all political loyalties, and that that has uh two meanings.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it uh for a solar it means groups.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you are you you can use uh the examples of of Gaza and the Leicester cricket riots.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can mention uh also in the same breath Southport and Balymina as examples of um communal violence on behalf of the white community.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think we're going to be seeing probably a lot more of that actually, um, for various reasons.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um had the India-Pakistan war flared up this summer, and thank God it didn't, um I think we could have had some very, very significant violence.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and the other thing I think is the the the second meaning of the all is that it does mean all political loyalties.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we are going to see uh more openly communal uh uh politics, and I think that the um the the Gaza independence are a sign of that, but they are by no means uh uh you know there's a tendency on on the right to single these out as as something as the Gaza independence is like something apart and something different, but they're not, they're they're part of a wider trend.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: So in Harrow East, you know, Bob Blackman, who's a conservative MP, kept his seat by basically becoming uh uh uh uh an Indian nationalist.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um really regularly goes on uh Indie TV, um does a lot of work in parliament about you know Indian specific issues.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um you had many Labour MPs requesting um I think the government wrote the they they write to the Prime Minister of Pakistan lobbying for an airport in Mirpur, uh in Pakistan.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um you also I've you know I'm I'm a reader of um obviously a lot of conservative in-house literature.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have seen conservative um uh councillors, I can't remember, or campaigner like openly lobbying for communist approaches to Bangladeshi populations um in order to get them away from Labour and to back us, but on expressly expressly communal lines.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think in some way you can also see reforms rise through this.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I have I have even seen arguments that um the Lib Dem's continued success is in some way uh it's it's like a very soft communalism.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's a vote for a chocolate box Britain that doesn't necessarily say low immigration, but there is, you know, it's lovely and warm and nice, and and maybe it's a bit 1990s and things were a bit different then, weren't they?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so again, I think I think we we really do zoom in on the on the Gaza independence, I think probably because they're the most brazen case, but they are certainly not alone in this.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you can you start seeing it kind of everywhere.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Once you start seeing it, it's very hard to miss.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, you could argue, and I know you mentioned reform might be a case of this as well, and uh, up until they became very popular in the polls, you could pretty much see that all of the areas they were most popular in were areas in which demographics hadn't changed quite as much.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there it was people that were um of British ancestry that were worried about not just the direction of the country but lack of economic opportunities for people like them, all those things.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they they saw the impact of the the big cities having on our politics.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: But then obviously, Reform have been trying to make themselves uh in their eyes as electable as possible, and so that people are saying they're shifting to the left, they've tried to become a broad appeal to everyone so they can uh pick up as many votes as possible.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: But initially you could see that ultimately that was on the back of probably um an ethnic uh concern on the uh part of the uh the the native British population.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you could then argue that Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe's um group, which I suppose is uh not necessarily a think tanky, he refers to it as a political movement.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's effectively look, let's make this cross-party and think about all the things that we care about in Britain that we're trying to restore back to um something that we recognise as that country, is that is effectively a call to action on behalf of the British people who only have allegiances to Britain and remember Britain before it became, as you called it, a new country.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so it almost feels like, even though there are some of the big parties that are they're either holding the Hindu manifesto and saying vote for us or they're talking about Islamophobia, is that it feels like we're on a path that we'll just end up having parties and policies that re that that are seeking to represent those who perhaps only have pre-political loyalties to Britain and Britain alone, um, and perhaps those that try and service the interests of others, which we're starting to see through break-offs from other parties.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe we'll have, even if no one wants to talk about, uh, a most openly explicit ethnic and religious policies before you know it, because it seems that the centre's not holding in various places like the Conservatives and Reform and all the rest of it.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um on conservatives, so you're part of the Conservative Party.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned that uh it has obviously been a uh somewhat of a uh sticking in your craw that it uh did all other things so badly in 14 years, and you're still a part of it.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: You've made the case that someone needs to be around to rebuild it.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the conservative political developments.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's fair to say many people think having Kevin uh Badnock become the leader was a mistake, and that Robert Jenrik should have been, and indeed he seems to be the de facto leader, judging by his social media content, his appearances on television, the things that he writes, the speeches he gives.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um where are we going with the Conservative Party?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Have we got um people like Jenric, who have now a very impressive team behind them, effectively biding their time until after the general election, close to wipeout and then bring it back from the ashes?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have him effectively uh ousting Camille, though, you wouldn't say it openly before the next general election?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is that too much of a risk because the Conservatives are going to get trounced anyway, even if now they seem to be making so much sense through the likes of him, Neil O'Brien, McTimothy, and all the rest of it.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what what do you think the Conservative Party looks like over the next few years?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think if we uh wait until the next election to change course with or without Kemi, I think it's too it's way too late.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Way too late.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're done by that point.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um we will as an end of the world's oldest political party.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably, yeah, yeah.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or or at least the reduction of it to a regional party in in the same way that the Liberals were reduced to uh a regional party.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I I think it's I think it's been a disaster.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's been a an absolute disaster so far.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I I wrote an article um a while ago that basically argued, I don't think Kemi is running out of time.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd I'd been reading a lot of um I've been reading a lot of Nick Lamb, uh, which is probably why my outlook has changed so much because it's so uh so unbelievably apocalyptic.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but um he has a very different conception of time to most people, you know, it's like K-Time and trying to arise from the future and that kind of that kind of thing.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and he made me realize that actually I I don't think Kemi is running out of time.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the wrong way to look at it.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think that time is um she's simply being outpaced by time.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um so Kemi is doing a lot of speeches.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she is which nobody's watching.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody, I think the last one barely scraped 150 viewers on YouTube.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um she's doing a lot of speeches, she's doing a lot of very slow policy deliberation.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think it took her six months to launch her first policy review, uh, which she has now launched.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: She's promised no new policies, I think, for two or three years, and no new cabinet changes until the general election.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and even the kind of reactive media work is very, very, very slow.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's as if she's conducting politics when it's maybe 1998 and still um, you know, the the big weekly op-ed in the telegraph physical copy is like the most impactful uh way uh that you can influence politics.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, the the big speech at the think tank is the best way that you can generate headlines for the next day when you're in opposition.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than recognizing, you know, as Robert Chenric does, okay, uh the consumption of news has massively accelerated over the last few years.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um but also uh the delivery and availability of goods and services has has uh um has also advanced a lot and sped up a lot and that has you know created and exacerbated a culture of kind of instant gratification, which has reduced patients, expanded the expectation of choice um and dramatically shortened our tolerance for delay.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that politics is as subject to those effects as anything else.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, it's it's like what streaming service you subscribe to or what toothpaste you buy, is it's basically no different.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um voters increasingly expect political outcomes to arrive as quickly and as frictionlessly as products on the next day delivery.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can't deliver, they simply switch providers.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, in 1997 there was no nascent, real nascent political threat to the right, and now there is, and there's one that voters can switch to very easily, um, one that's not tarnished by 14 years of failure.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's kind of radically altered the time horizon that British politics operates in.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when you look at uh Rob Jenrick, he's doing a kind of instant reaction almost.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: He's also generating news headlines himself.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: His tweets even are very, very short and punchy, Kemi tweets in uh riddles, frankly.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everything's overwrought, everything's overwritten.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: And basically, I think the the the Nick Land quote I would use to to describe this, I'm gonna read it out, which is that uh time pressure by its very nature is difficult to think about.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think while the opportunity for deliberation is not necessarily presumed, it is at least with overwhelming likelihood mistaken for a historical constant rather than a variable.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: If there ever was a time to think, we think there still is, and there always will be.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: But there won't be, and there isn't.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Temmie is still in that um viewing time and the time pressure of politics as a historical constant rather than understanding the world as it is, which I think is where generic is, I think it's where somebody like um Chris Philp, I think, uh gets it.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's kind of copying uh Rob.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I you can also see people like McKinsey and uh Neil O'Brien who like understand okay, you know, maybe they don't do huge videos, but they're doing Substacks, they're generating their own news, they're doing their own thing.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I I basically I think Kenny is is uh is set on a course that is uh going to just Peter out essentially.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna pull off the cliff, it's just uh going to run out.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly given the size and scale of the elections in May, if we have if we replicate the last result at the next election, that will see us wiped out of large swathes at parliamentary and council level of vast swathes of the country.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's very hard to come back from that.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Very hard to re-establish a footprint.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say it's decided Kabis to move aside and it goes to leadership election again within the Conservative Party.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Robert Jenrik goes up, a few other people get thrown up.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not too sure who those candidates would be.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is there is there a potential concern that given uh Jenric was overlooked the last time, and you can still find quite frequent noises from various people in the Conservative Party saying the problem was is we moved too far to the right, we need to attack Clacer to the centre.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that he's overlooked again, or do you think by the time it comes around, if it should come around, that Hemi is moving on, we are in dire straits as a party, that people will realise it's almost generic or bust, unless, and I will chuck this in just as a as a as a as a livener, is that there has been rumors um that Rupert Lowe is biding his time and maybe one day um we'll end up in the Conservative Party in a kind of generic low dream team.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Listen, you should never underestimate the Tory party's thirst for self-annihilation, right?
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: That is that is fundamental in what it is.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a self-annihilation machine that is occasionally interrupted by very vile bouts of extrapy.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um yes, there is a potential for us to overlook Roggen Rick and do the obviously electorally popular good thing, um, and put in, you know, uh I don't know, uh Penny Morgan, like that's or or even worse, yeah, bringing back Boris.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like all of these things, none of these things are too stupid to countenance.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but ultimately, you know, and I say this as a loyal party member of ten years, plus um if the Tory party's thirst for self-annihilation is so strong that they can countenance uh doing something like bringing back Boris Johnson, then that thirst should be slaked.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: It should get what it deserves, um, and we should probably not stand in its way, frankly.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: I would if if if it were Boris Johnson in the final two and not against Rob Jenrick, I think I would probably campaign very hard for Boris Johnson on the grounds that he would destroy the Conservative Party and it would deserve it.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: I actually mean that.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um any parts would be so stupid as to think that that is a a solution and that that man should also be Prime Minister again.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like it, I don't think it deserves to exist.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: I really don't.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I I actually I don't think Boris um will be a uh will do a comeback, but there are always rumors, and should the rumours prove to be true, I think I think, yeah.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: Boris Johnson is not the solution, it's the end.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we must welcome him the end.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, out come the torpedoes, and you're gonna be in the sub firing them.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, Tom, before I let you go, the last time we spoke, I did not ask this question of you because I hadn't yet brought it into the show, but it's something I asked one of my guests, which is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what was it that made you think differently?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I I thought about this um for quite a while and I I tried to come up with a lovely personal answer, but I haven't got one.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I'm gonna revert back to the to the politics.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think I changed my mind on two things.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think the first one first is that when I first got into politics, I was a I was I was quite a bit yimbi.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was uh I was a you know let's build high density in the cities type yimbi.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have I have since changed to a um a kind of no construction without reduction uh type position.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you know the the the scale at which immigration is fueling hand housing demand is now so vast.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: If you take into account immigration, we need to build over a half a million homes a year.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well we haven't, you know, we had a government target 300,000 and no government has hit that target since 1977.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um still, you know uh so I I don't think that I am still a I don't think I ever really was a let's concrete over-the-countryside yin be, but I have now switched to a you know the immigration problem needs to be solved before we do the housing stuff because um whether we reduce immigration or not, they will there will still be a housing crisis and quite a significant one.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the fact is that in you know two years migration has increased the UK population by I think uh a city the size of Birmingham, and we build 350,000 homes.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's that's just not sustainable.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: And unless you are going to artificially increase your population with immigration forever, um, eventually there will become a point at which you know there will be too many houses.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: Not a bad thing because everybody gets a second home, uh, but it does mean you've lost quite a lot of your lovely, lovely countryside.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think probably the the thing I've changed my mind on most recently is the belief that the current political system can be made to work with just the right leadership.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's true anymore.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: I um I uh I I I've been working on a book proposal, um which is it's based on an idea for public health basis, um which is uh basically called decision space.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um so decision space is the kind of range of of options that are available to our uh politicians, um and they are constrained by uh I've got six uh different things that constrains it.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: Public opinion, um which is increasingly shaped by uh campaigning charities and the blah, but it's not a real reflection of of public opinion a lot of the time.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's political consensus or social pressure, so that's to do with the increasingly um small range, social range of of uh range of socioeconomic status that we pull politicians from.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: There are fiscal constraints, you know, the increasing importance of treasury, the OBR.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and also, you know, international finance markets, there are legal constraints, things like the UCHR, you know, our sign up to um international treaties.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is there are six of these different constraints.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they have really, really, really reduced uh the decision space of our politicians.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the decision space is now so small that it uh uh basically cannot be it cannot offer a solution to our problems.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: The only way we can do that is a radical reinflation of the decision space.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so uh with the right leadership and the right strategic thinking about reinflating the decision space, I think that can work.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it requires, I think, a vastly different political system.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um certainly, I think probably uh a more expensive one.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, we've got we've got government ministers who are going into office with like I think the Treasury has the most number of SPADs and they've got like five.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: That is nowhere near enough to run uh uh a complex um world important economy with the a really important finance sector.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: It needs to be 50, it needs to be 500.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, even really small things like you know, I would probably take the Prime Minister out down next rate and put him in Kentuck Hall.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'd put him on the top floor of Kentucky Hall, and I'd put all the other ministers uh in you know various different buildings, and that would be full of thousands and thousands of SPADs whose job it was to deliver the democratic agenda.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh, but that's just one thing, you know.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think we we really need to look at the way the House of Commons works.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's because it's essentially become a common room for glorified councillors now.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I say that as an unglorified councillor.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we probably need to to look at the way that the lords work.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe the lords could be used as a pre-legislative body, and you can just kind of leave the comments to I don't know, to rot a little bit and put the lords on a um regional elected basis where they have no constituency function whatsoever, um, which would create an incentive for political leaders to put forward people who um who are experts.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe we have to move to an American cabinet system where you can just choose the best people for the job, regardless of whether they're in the comments or not.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we we probably have to to look at membership of the ODR, we have to massively roll back Quangos and NGOs.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think this will be a uh a radical, such a radical reorganization of our governmental system, it will be much bigger than even the stuff that that Blair or Derogatory or or Thatcher delivered, and I think you're looking at something uh you know that's probably not been so big since Great Reform X or North Coach Rebellion, really.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'd say that's probably what I've changed my mind on most recently.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Keir Starmer.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: There you go, inspiration comes from everywhere, every every classroom, uh also every room is a classroom, every man is a teacher and and all that, um even if you're not expecting them to be.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: Tom, so that sounds like a pretty interesting that sounds like a pretty interesting book uh that that's coming out.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, hopefully you get uh you get that that publishing deal.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we will keep an eye out for one that might be might be hitting the shelves should you should you get there.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is there anything else that we can expect from you and where can listeners viewers find you if they want to read and hear you speak?
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the best two places to find me are as a terminally online personality, um borderline terminally online personality disorder, uh on Twitter at 93 Vintage Jones um or on my substack, which is the Potemkin Village Idiot.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: I would highly recommend both.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Tom, thank you very much for coming back on the show.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck with your book proposal, and I'm sure we will get to speak again.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much, John, and thank you to everyone for listening.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: Keep fighting the good fight.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are run making it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.