Latest / Thinking Class / #129 - William Clouston & Firas Modad - The Iran War Is Breaking The Global Economy And Britain Has No Plan

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#129 - William Clouston & Firas Modad - The Iran War Is Breaking The Global Economy And Britain Has No Plan · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm John Gillam and today I'm joined by William Klusten and Firas Modad.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_04: William is the leader of the Social Democratic Party in the United Kingdom and a member of the advisory board for Restore Britain.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_04: Firas is an analyst and political economist focused on the Middle East and global geopolitics.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_04: He runs his own consultancy, Modad Geopolitics, helping companies understand the commercial impact of political, economic, and security risks they face.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_04: Firas is also a host on the podcast of the Lotus Seaters.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_04: In this episode, William Firas and I think out loud about what the effect of closure of the Strait of Ormos actually means for Britain, how Britain ended up so compromised with regards to its energy reserves, manufacturing, and international influence, why successor governments stopped thinking like stewards of Britain and started thinking like managers, what a sane government would actually do right now on energy, industry, and borders, why the combination of free trade purism and net zero ideology has been lethal, leaving Britain uniquely vulnerable, how the financial sector was ideologically captured and failed to see any of this coming, whether the integrated global economy is now permanently fractured, and what may replace it, the faith crisis underneath the morale crisis and why power stations alone will not fix what ails us as a nation, and what ordinary people should actually begin doing differently in their own lives in response.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_04: If you find this conversation valuable, please subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack, and share it with anyone who will find it interesting.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_04: Enjoy the show, classmates, and now William Cleuston and Fieras Modad.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Today I'm joined by William Clouston, leader of the Social Democratic Party, and Fieras Modad, a geopolitical analyst and a host at The Lotus Eeders.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_04: We're here to discuss the closure of the Strait of Ormuz, which has effectively been closed for three months.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_04: One-fifth of the world's oil passes through that waterway.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_04: And Britain, the country in which we live, imports most of its energy.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_04: It now manufactures very little of what it consumes as a nation, and we've built an economy that is dependent on global stability, remaining permanent.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_04: But that permanence is now over.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_04: And uh it was it was it was never the case that it was permanent.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_04: We see petrol prices rising in response, inflation is getting out of control, and the British government's response up until now seems to have largely consisted of virtual meetings and statements of concern.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_04: So, William Firas, you track these conflicts for a living and figure out what a sane response to these would look like.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_04: So perhaps we begin with you, Firas.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um the straits closure for nearly three months, Iran wanting to run a toll system.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_04: Uh what's actually happening and when, if ever, does this end?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, two things have happened.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing that has happened is that the Americans have proven that they can't really defeat a mid-sized country like Iran.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Not that they can't cause enormous damage to it, but that's a different story.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: They can cause an extreme amount of damage.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: The issue is that they can't stop the Iranians retaliating, and they can't achieve their declared political objectives.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And when we think about war, you know, the Klazobitsian phrase, it's an extension of politics.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: You're trying to achieve a political aim, which in this case is to denuclearize Iran, stop it backing proxies, force it to stop its missile and drone program, etc.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: etc.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: On all of these counts, the Americans have failed.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: At most they might get a suspension of the of the nuclear program, a temporary one, not its eradication, and the Iranians have shown that they can hit right back.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing that has happened is that every country in the Middle East has been convinced that it does need nuclear weapons.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because already the Israelis are saying that Turkey should be the next target, and that Turkey is the actual bigger threat than Iran.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Turkey, I think, just unveiled some missiles, one of them with 1,500 kilometer range.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: One of them they're talking about a 6,000 kilometer range, I believe, which is obviously a huge deal.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: They have a partnership with Pakistan, which is a nuclear power.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: They can develop their nuclear weapons, and after this war, they have been probably convinced that they need to.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so what you're going to see on the back of this is a bunch of middle powers asserting themselves a lot more forcefully, meaning multipolarity in action, and you're going to see a lot more nuclear proliferation, meaning that the consequences of future wars can be much more severe, and their global impact can be much more severe.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: How long does this last?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: It all depends on Donald Trump.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um he's the final decision maker here.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: He could decide to have another go, even though I don't think that another go at the Iranians will achieve its intended objectives.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: But even if he does, this doesn't change the dynamic that a lot of countries, especially Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, will decide now that they must have nuclear weapons to stop the Americans from trying this against them at some point in the future.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so initial response from middling powers is to build their own resilience militarily.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_04: Well, well, staying on the theme of resilience, uh, William, you have warned about this for years in your role in the Social Democratic Party, uh, that we we have no domestic energy self-sufficiency here in the UK or an industrial base really to speak of.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um how did successive governments make Britain this dependent on a on a single choke point that it seems to have no ability to influence?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Britain isn't particularly I mean, there's there's kerosene and there's one or two other things that come out of the Strait of Hormuz for the world, but Britain isn't actually by European standards, certainly in comparison to others, particularly um reliant.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um when when on on this, when you look at the, say, the US Britainish British trade situation, um, it often surprises people to learn that the biggest the last few years anyway, the biggest single um item uh between the US and Britain is is a US export of crude oil.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and in our energy system really is reliant on the Norwegians, particularly.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um there are interconnectors that go to France that give you uh el you know grid energy when when you need it from their nuclear uh fleet.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: But so actually Britain isn't terribly um reliant.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it we will get hurt, uh, all of the downstream results of this war, which is a a f uh classic folly, I think, and a strategic blunder by the Americans.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't disagree with anything that Ferrez has said, basically, there.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's basically right.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it's it's it's just a I I don't s I don't see a route out of it, that's the problem.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the the I mean the the the root out of the the route into greater um uh self-reliance and domestic capability and so on in Britain is uh ten, fifteen, twenty years of a deliberate uh government that wants to do it.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: We we're nowhere near that.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the government we have is a childish government of people that are obsessed.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: They have all the pathologies of the worst aspects of British politicians, you know, comms, short-term.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: None of them, very few in the Labour administration have had a proper job.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: None of them have created any wealth, a lot of them are disconnected to reality, so I don't think any of this changes until uh 2029, if if then.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm uh a little bit uh pessimistic about that.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: But but on the war itself, I think it's fascinating that what's happened is that the US action and Israeli action against Iran has has legitimated something that the Iranians probably couldn't have done, wouldn't have done, but for that, right?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if the Iranians had just decided one day, we're gonna close the Strait of Foremost, close it and trap all the container ships and tankers inside, there would have been world outrage and and and or also a lack of understanding as to why they've done it.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But if if if, as the Americans and the Israelis have done, if they if you decapitate if you if you eliminate their leader, if you bomb uh unilaterally in this way, they re they react.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and the the serious milk miscalculation which Trump has made is that in in the world of drones, you're into asymmetrical warfare.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh all of the Gulf monarchy states are just incredibly vulnerable.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's asymmetrical because they have so much to lose.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: They have so much to lose, and the means of of destroying their facilities is so relatively easier.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and so that's the asymmetry.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole thing I'm I I don't know.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be very interested.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: You were doing the interview, John, but I'd be very interested to know Burrus's view on the outlook as to when this opens up, because it's not clear to me that it opens up anytime soon.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_04: Well, i i it's a it's a very good question, and one that remained on my lips following an interview with Gary Gerstel recently.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um he he wrote a book called The The The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Global Order.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_04: And he said in that interview that he didn't think it was going to open up again.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_04: Now it's you you can't make these predictions, but his argument being that the multipolarity is now baked in.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, this is just another rupture in what was the global economy.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I was going to ask for us as someone who spends uh a lot of time looking at the Middle Eastern world.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, Williams just mentioned that there's Britain is many, many decades out from being self-sufficient.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_04: You could probably make that argument with some of the European Union nations as well.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_04: So will there continue to be a focus on trading with the Gulf nations, even though they've taken a real hit, instead of going on and doing your own nationally self-reliant thing?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_04: Or do you think this is going to be an increase in the fragmentation in the global economy and different regions and different alliances will will begin to do their own thing?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_04: And and to William's question, will the Strait of Ormuz ever open again?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, i if it opens again, it will be under Iranian terms.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the long and short of it.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody can force the Iranians to reopen Hurmuz.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: They've decided that their focus is on the Persian Gulf and that they need to dominate it and dominate its energy production.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the smaller states of the Gulf are going to become increasingly irrelevant.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is why the UAE is is is trying to get this escalated, because they know that after this they're not going to be independent states anymore.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: The smaller Gulf states are going to be divvied up between Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And these are the only two countries with with any strategic depth and with any substantial capability.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine if the war resumes and the Houthi decide that they're going to do what the Iranians have done, and that they're going to also impose their own tolls on passing through the Red Sea, that means that everybody has to relocate their production to a country that they can project influence over.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And for most of Europe, they can they don't control their own cities.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Most European countries don't fully control their own cities.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: So that means that there has to be a lot of localization of production in order for it to be secure.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the end of globalization as we know it, because globalization has been underpinned by first the British Navy and then the American Navy.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And now technology has changed in a way to no longer favor naval powers.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is a secular and permanent change.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: If the Iranians get what they want out of the Americans, they will reopen the Straits.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's as simple as that.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um what does this mean for a country like Britain?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously you have to build national resilience, as as William has been saying.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can no longer depend on global markets, you have to think what is secure and what isn't secure.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to no longer think in commercial terms, you have to think in uh security terms.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: But financial markets are not equipped for this kind of thinking.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is the kind of thinking that comes mainly through state-led development, not through market-led development.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying turn communist.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: I am saying that the state in the future has a much bigger role to play in setting security priorities that relate to what people consume.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_04: But Will, you'll have a comment to make there.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you are one of the parties, if not the only party, that really thinks about the uh um responsibilities that a state ought to um have and and the activities they should execute.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_04: So what what what would uh a sensible state be doing here if, for instance, we can't, as we often do in Britain, rely on our financialized sector to figure it all out for us?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_04: What what would a sensible state do?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: It would just have to rebuild uh pretty much from from bottom up.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the first thing it it it would have to do is look at the energy system, which we we wrote uh uh a very good green paper on last year.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not easy, very difficult to do it now because of the AI um boom, and anyone wanting to ring ring up Siemens or any or the South Koreans or any other producer, even of gas turbines or you know nuclear power stations or whatever, is going to find a very long order book and it's very, very difficult to do it.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: He might might wait five years before anything happens, even if you had the money to do it.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um incidentally, if there is if the A I think the AI thing is a classic sort of railway tulips bubble and we'll we'll burst.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't see how the return was there.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if that happens, that might make it a little bit easier for a state to um to to order some of these facilities.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to get a grip on the on the basics.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: That that's it, you know.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and and there are some things obviously which are in the political news uh which they could and should do, you know, giving rapid licensing to Rosebank, um near Shetland, uh oil and gas field, just get it get those on target.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've suggested in the Green Paper uh using some of our coal again to generate power in in the interim.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um there are lots of things.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, the housing market is another thing.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: People talk about reindustrialization.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you built a few million homes and you were serious about it and the state got back into the business of doing it, you'd one of the first things you'd have to look at is the training situation, the supply side of building materials and so on.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do that overnight, otherwise you just suck in imports and make everything worse.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, but a precondition to all of this is a government that is even interested in these things.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: The problem the problem that we've had really, that the the it's been a sort of double whammy, really.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like David David Um Goodhaw always talked about double liberalism, you know, social and economic liberalism being implemented and you know like a wave washing over us at the same time.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he's right about that.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But on on this, you know, why are we so why do we lack resilience?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we governed by have we been governed by people for 20, 30, 40 years who who've just been unaware and indifferent about these things?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's because the ideology just washed over them.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't important.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you're in a global you know, Britain's open with business, it's a global situation, and uh famously uh Blair, at the peak of his powers, I think it was in 2003 Labour Party Conference, said, you know, globalization is irresistible until it isn't, until we realise that it's actually uh it weakens the EU.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think there were there've been plenty of people that have pointed the risks out, and I think actually the pandemic was something that of it was obvious that in a pandemic and a country like Britain with a uh poor manufacturing base now scrubling around for supplies globally to uh treat people, it it should be a warning sign.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um I worry about I I I you know where are we going to get the politicians that understand this?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so anyway, just to finish, I hand over to Piras.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: The the the the is the twin the twin ideologies that are hurting us on something like energy is simultaneously free trade purism, which is just hello birds, hello sky, free trade, you know, you can have the Chinese take the lot.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, every shoe will drop if you don't have some protection of some sort.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: That combined with net zero ideology is lethal.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: You you that's a lethal combination.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have if you have those two, your resilience will just go down the pan.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I'd I'd suggest that exactly as you say, allow allowing a lot more licensing for oil and gas and allowing for the rebuilding of pool infrastructure, it just has to happen.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: You have to cheap energy underpins everything.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Without cheap energy, without abundant energy, there is no prosperity.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and William, you know this better than most.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um you've spoken about this repeatedly.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: You must have abundant and cheap energy.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is a country that is sitting on a sea of oil and a sea of coal.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Just drill, baby, drill.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um go I mean, Trump is right about this.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Go all out, produce as much energy as you can, everything follows from that.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um but a big part of the issue is that Britain has no defenses.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: The defence industry of Britain is su in such a dire state that now in the age of drones, any asset that you build has to factor in the possibility of cyber attacks and drone attacks.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it has to be properly defended for these things.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the only way to defend them is through volume.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: What we're seeing in the Russia-Ukraine war is you know, uh quantity has a quality all of its own, exactly as Stalin said.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: You must have the ability to produ to produce thousands of cheap drones a month if you want to.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't have a strong manufacturing base, you can't do that.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have cheap energy, you can't have a uh decent manufacturing base.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it all follows from the energy question.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you had a sensible government, the first thing that would happen would be Ed Miliband would be sacked and would be permanently banned from public life for all of eternity.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: His name would become a curse, really.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um this isn't happening.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: What you're seeing is no, we're going to commit to more net zero, we're going to commit to more environmentalism.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: What good is protecting the environment if you're starving and you're being occupied by foreign powers and your your economy's being w broken and thrown torn to pieces by foreign powers?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_04: Well, Firas, it'd actually be useful to hear on the other side of the ledger, because we often think about what would the state do, what would the private sector do.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_04: And you and I, outside of our outside of our uh public-facing um roles and uh as interviewers, uh, both work around the financial services industry.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_04: And um I think it would be interesting to hear what you find the response to crises like this is, because my experience, for instance, Will mentioned COVID, is that there was this mad scramble, uh, both post um the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union and then through COVID to make sure that all policy was around supply chain due diligence and keeping global supply chains oiled instead of listening to what the runes are telling you, which is become nationally resilient.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_04: It was how do we just keep the show on the road?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh what what what is the current state of play within the big hitters of the financial services industry?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_04: What what do they think uh is the appropriate thing to be doing?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_04: What are they doing and are they right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: I was speaking to uh to the to the geopolitics scene of the Big Bank.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the points that I made was geography defines your politics.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: In a country like Russia, where everything is, you know, um where you don't really have that many navigable rivers and you have all of these distances, the state has to be strongly centralized.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: They took massive offense at that.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of the biggest, most familiar names in the banking world.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: They took great offense at the idea that no, there is no reason to expect a liberal Russia.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh everybody can become a liberal, everybody should become a liberal.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: You look at The big consultancies, what are they saying?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're saying pretty much the same thing.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: They believe pretty much the same thing.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So what's happened is that the big hitters in the financial sector have been just as captured ideologically as every other institution.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it got to a stage where HR would be essentially intervening in analysis because there are certain things about reality that you cannot say about how the world really works, about how different countries really work, and how different peoples really work.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so the there is no suggestion there's nothing to suggest that that they've understood this.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's another point to add.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: When you have owner operators, the owner thinks about survival.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: When you have manager operators, the manager thinks about the shareholders and profitability.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been saying to clients that this big war in the Middle East is going to happen since 2016, 2017, something like that.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: What most of them did was basically pick up pennies in front of a train.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: They went ahead and insured a bunch of assets in the Middle East that we knew were going to be attacked when the war happened because there was too much financial capacity in in the insurance market, and everybody had to compete on profitability, and so they offered to insure these assets at an incredibly low rate because that is what everybody else was doing.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so they were pursuing profits.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there is this conflict between the way that modern corporations work, which is to think purely about quarterly results, and how owners think, which is survival.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And when you take out the survival, when it's just a job, and you know, this company goes bust, you get a job at another company, then you have no incentive to think correctly.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And this ties into the whole financialization of the elites, because traditionally the elites were landowners.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: They were deeply tied to a place and to a community.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And unless this place prospered, they couldn't muster their soldiers, they couldn't be of relevance to their lords or kings or whatever, they wouldn't survive.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now the elite is a purely financial elite.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: They don't like it in London, they'll go to Monaco.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: They don't like it in Monaco, they'll go to Dubai.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Dubai, Singapore, etc., etc.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the crisis that the financialization has created is really not easy to fix.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we've ended up in a situation where the countries where a billionaire risks being disappeared in a jail or falling from a tall building, accidentally, of course, fares better in the long run than the country where the billionaire gets to buy the election.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_04: You've both raised some thematic points there, which are very interesting.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's about the abstract representations that our managerial class deal in on a day-to-day, which they confuse for reality.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_04: So you've talked about how they they don't it it doesn't map on to them that a geography might might create political conditions in a certain country, etc.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_04: But you've also made some other points here which actually start to become quite instructive with regards to dispersed accountability in these huge bureaucratic regimes.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_04: And our British state is no different.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_04: It is a huge bureaucratic regime.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_04: Many have not done uh a day job, like Will has building his own business before stepping into politics.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um there has been a little bit of talk amongst some of the Labour uh Party runners and riders for replacing Keir Starmer about needing to go back into the European Union, and uh that's despite all the indicators in the European Union not particularly looking that clever themselves.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_04: Is this because people don't want the responsibility to be thinking deeply about building national resilience, what it actually takes to build a country?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_04: They'd rather stand outside petrol stations and talk about fuel duty cuts and put on high-vis vests, uh, and would quite frankly prefer to hand responsibility over to bureaucrats in Brussels than have to make laws themselves.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_04: Will, you've been uh rubbing shoulders with those um those folks in in the SW1 bubble for a few years now.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_04: Uh is is is that the sense you get beneath the veneer of the European Union would be better for Britain's future?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean it well it's a propos that's preposterous.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it this is a failing project and they're trapped in a Eurozone which they can't get out of, which is building up imbalances between the major states.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole thing is a bit of a disaster.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So rhetorically I can see why some Labour politicians want to do that, but it's you know that the it's just um it's nostalgia, is it?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you know it's the the great leap backwards.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think I mean I I my my view of the SW1 uh political class is when I got back involved, I also was involved in the eighties and then in 1999 until 2003 for the Tories.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: But uh there it's worse than people think.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it really is worse.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean Firaz has talked uh Peter McCormack interview that you gave for us, you d you go into um how a lot of the West the interests have been captured by you call it one thing, I could just call it big money, which distorts which distorts uh the interests, the governments are in hoc to this and and and and sector after sector, you look at Britain, and it's difficult to find a sector which does hasn't been basically broken up, slice and dice, and put on a tray for people to just start rent collecting.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's very bleak indeed.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you need a government that can even see that to try and defend citizens properly.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we we we just don't have that.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean what you have, the perennial what people think politics consists in is soundbites or the ability to be persuasive in an interview or to give a good speech.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and does neither of those very well.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I well I I'm I'm famously bad.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a good uh I I loathe giving political speeches, being quite honest about it.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mind interviews.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I you know I I I'll give sort of six out of ten for a speech.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: The content's okay, but I you know I'm not anyway, but e either way, people people are not serious.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you some examples.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, now what have you got?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: You've got people in the treasury talking about price controls on uh basic commodities and goods.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is ludicrous nonsense.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is just total stupidity.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: It can't work.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they don't understand how competitive the supermarket sector is anyway.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've I've built a few I've built 15 supermarkets, and uh I can tell you uh no one charges more than they have to because the competition is intense.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um then you get the housing minister using a slogan, build, baby, build.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's got he doesn't have the means to build anything.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know how to do it, he's got no background in this.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so there's no serious attempt to build capacity, he wouldn't know how to do it if he tried, so you just get slogans and then it'll just crash.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um so no, we're in we're in politically are in deep trouble.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see I think the wrong the wrong people are going into politics, actually.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's been the case for a long time.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I I I we in the new investment state green paper we've done, it's pretty it's pretty bold what we propose.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's certainly a minority of citizens would go for something as bold as that, because it's we're just saying, you know, you can't go on paying these entitlements.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can't borrow to pay entitlements.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have large millions of fellow citizens sitting at home festering.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's just an absolute disaster.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um you have to have a uh a recalibration of what the state does.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to the only way you can get public investment up and start building facilities again, energy and so on, housing, is by uh rebalancing against entitlement spending, reduce it.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that that goes for penches as well.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that the what's required is is is pretty bold.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I I there is a constituency for it, by the way.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was worried when we put it out, what would the reaction be?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people said there's a breath of fresh air.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we decided the joke, the sort of the Rod Little Joe, you've got no votes to lose, will just just go go for it, just you know, tell the truth.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we've we've we've done.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so there is there is probably a constituency for the type of bold action that we need.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that will happen.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna if I was gonna bet on it, I would say you're gonna get a crisis which dictates the adaptation away from the entitlement of the state.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: The entitlement of the state can't go on either way.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: You either do a sensible recalibration or you or you run into the buffers and it'll stop pretty much overnight.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_04: Well, uh to put to put that into context for listeners, the welfare state uh exceeds the amount the British state actually uh receives in income tax over the course of a year.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_04: So as you pointed out, Will, we we borrow money to pay welfare, which is uh patently insane.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Firas, over to you.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh let's think about these two things in tandem.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_04: We've got an ideological straitjacket, it seems, with the current Labour government trying to lock us into uh various measures that Will has just highlighted, price controls, uh, which will end up having an impact on the economy like rent controls do on the housing market.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_04: And then we have this global economy uh coming um coming apart at the seams through what's been happening in the Middle East.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um what do you think life starts to look like in the kind the current, I suppose, affluent societies like Britain, uh in historical terms, though we have been declining in affluence.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um do you think there are what are the things that the nation would have to psychologically prepare themselves for I I worry about a run on the pound and the banking sector.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Something like fifty-sixty percent of uh British debt is held by different types of British financial institutions, from the Bank of England to the insurance companies to the banks themselves.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're getting to a stage where British debt is losing value rapidly because of inflation and because of the expectation that the economy is going to shrink on the back of this energy shock, while the level of entitlements that have to be paid out keeps on spiraling.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's become now more profitable to sit at home and claim benefits than to actually go out and work.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you're getting to a stage where the natural result of this is some kind of currency crisis, banking crisis, currency crash, which all of a sudden halts your ability to import things.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: And because the economy is so globalized, if you don't import, you can't produce and you can't export.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: So everything freezes up.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we're getting closer to a stage of a very serious crisis, and you're looking at a wider situation where Italy's debt is 120 something percent of GDP, France is 120 or 115, Spain is a hundred plus, Britain is almost a hundred percent.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: And these are core G7 economies, and we haven't even spoken about the United States or Japan, which also have a terrible balance sheet.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: When you add the pension entitlements to that, these numbers must be multiplied by four or five.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: So none of the Western economies is in fact solvent.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: They're all broke, they're all living on borrowed time, and what's keeping everything going is the dollar system.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: But the dollar system isn't backed by real assets, it's backed by the perceived power of the US Navy.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the Iranians just demonstrated the limits of that power.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: They just proved that this power isn't all that it is perceived to be.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: They could still nuke Iran.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: You could see a situation in the next month where the Americans decide to hit the underground missile cities and the nuclear program with actual tactical nuclear weapons.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is a conceivable outcome.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: But from that, the cascading effect is everybody must have their own nuclear deterrence.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a free-for-all.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole system breaks down.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we're getting close to a stage which is not just the Weimar Republic, but the Weimar Republic on a pan-European scale at least.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: With also maybe Japan thrown into the mix because their interest rates are going up to levels that they haven't seen before.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: When that happens, the kind of political upheaval that you see, the kind of change that you see is unbelievable.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you have these immigrant populations, and I'm an immigrant, but I'm not on benefits that I've never received anything from the state.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um you have these immigrant populations that are basically um being battery farmed, given housing in city centers, given school places, given healthcare, given a living standard that they would never dream of.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if they don't, what do you think the streets end up looking like?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: Do you get the Islamic State of White Shadow?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Essentially.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the the the cascading effects of what can happen after this are genuinely disastrous, and if somebody has thought them through, then they are an evil genius inflicting this on the world.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Odds are nobody's thought this through.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because the underlying liberal assumption is everybody can get along with anyone from anywhere, which is completely delusional.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: But this system doesn't work anymore, and it stopped working in 2008 at the you know, at the latest.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's just been limping along in zombie form, uh, and infecting everything else along with it.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: And now when it falls apart, who knows how it plays out?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_04: Will we just heard a sweep of the seemingly intractable issues facing our nation from the welfare state, the international welfare state, uh, the state of our military, the state of our financial system.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um if you if you were advising the Prime Minister this morning, maybe not this one, he's probably got a few too many things on his mind.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um, what do you think you would advise him?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_04: The th three things you'd advise him that are absolutely necessary to do in response to the kind of things you and Firas have already been speaking about that just have to happen no matter what.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think the the I've I've mentioned energy and housing, because I mean housing is the most the most pressing domestic macroeconomic issue.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've mentioned industry a lot and energy is basic, but they're all sort of long-term things.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: The most the most pressing thing, I think, for the government to do, and it won't be this government, uh, is to get a hold of the border and end mass immigration.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I I say that is that I think it's essential for for the morale of the country.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can't it it it is so demoralizing to have a state not have a border and to have you know tens of thousands of males from various states backward states, many of them, um, around the world just arrive and decide they're gonna stay, and most of them are allowed to say.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that is that is just sapping.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're demonstrating a lack of will, a lack of resolve, a lack of a sort of cultural moral decay.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I wanted to the SDP's policy on, say, the book the migrant crisis in the channel has been very strong.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's been pretty much the strongest of any party for several years, and a lot of people catching up.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: But you've got to stop anyone arriving unsolicited from ever getting asylum here, and you've got to remove you've got to have a deterrent which changes the uh which changes the incentives overnight.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you can read about it if you like how we do it, and and and I promise you, if we implemented that no one would turn up here.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that would have a profound effect on the morale of the country.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people in in just throughout the nation would think, thank goodness.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I I've argued for a long time there was such a level of demoralization in the West, you know, and in the United States and Canada as well, and to some extent Australia and New Zealand, all over the sort of Anglo Sphere and the European West, that that there was a lack of will to that anyone could do it, and then Trump turns up and basically has done it.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a I disagree with Trump on on it's funny actually, because he's very frustrating.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, his you know the strategic blunder in Iran has been diabolical and he's completely cocked up the trade protectionism which I advocate is implemented in the worst possible way you can.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's infuriating, but on the border, he's proved that a determined government can do it.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: So actually I think that that is that is one of the probably the prime thing.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: You and it's a cultural thing.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's not so many things that are uh are downstream of the of the broad cultural position.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I want to I want a a government that's that's strong enough to set the cultural tone and not be bullied by minorities and not constantly give way and defer to interests which are not aligned to the core of the British people.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what you want at the start.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just come back just on because something Fur said was very interesting on the on the outlook.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of ruin in a nation, and and and and the and you look around as an investor, you look around the world, and I think Russell Napier is right that China is uninvestable.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you talk about debt here, but you want to look at local authority debt in China, you look at property debt, you look at oversupply of the housing uh situation in many of the growing cities with a population that's declining.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it there are so many problems festering in China that that is a problem.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: But but also it's uninvestable from the Shia point of view that you you can't be guaranteed in getting your money out.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you look at you look at where what is going to happen in the world and and the breakdown of the uh the sort of post-war global order, um, rules-based order, well, the what's going to happen is financial repression.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if you live in a state, I would probably my advice to people would be to invest in that state.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the only thing you can it's not as bleak as people realise it.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: The three sectors in the UK, the government government debt is at 100%, but the reason that our guilt rate is higher than the say continent, well, it's higher than the Greeks and the Portuguese, is the inflation rate outlooks higher here.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: We need the guilt investors need a greater reward because inflation is higher here.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: In the other two sectors, households have largely deleveraged.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the boomers are sitting on just mountains, billions and billions of cash.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And funny enough, corporates are, if you compare it to the French or many others, British corporates are sitting on a lot of cash as well.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's not quite as bleak.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's funny how granular it is.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: I the thing that worries me more than any other state is the United States, where you've got a fiscal deficit which is beyond the the event horizon, so big, I don't think you can bring that back.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: I just on the on the mass, you can't bring it back.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And their exorbitant privilege is based on this system, which is breaking down.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I think their net international investment position is poor.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's worse than the British uh position per capita.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and Ferris mentions the the the Japanese, you know, what what is their GDP fiscal is something like 270, isn't it?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Massive.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the Japanese own it, and they still own a lot of assets globally.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: But that's worse for the Americans because all those American assets are going to be sold.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the value is going to go down.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm worried about the states going more than anywhere else.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm with you on a lot of this, and I think that I have I generally have more faith in Britain than in anywhere else in the West.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: So because the European Are stuck under the EU, which is essentially uh an occupation by midwits.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's idiocracy.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's really being invaded by the people with the characters of idiocracy.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um Japan has its massive problems, but it has a strong manufacturing sector.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: China, I half agree with you on the debt, but the saving grace that they have is just the sheer manufacturing power that they have.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of stuff that they can produce, 30% of global manufacturing happens in China.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Britain's big advantage is in part its political system.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because one parliament with willpower can reverse so many things in Britain, which isn't true of the rest of the world.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: The political intricacies of everywhere else are far more severe.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned the United States and the issue of entitlements, they can't get rid of those under their political system.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: They can't stop spending like drunken sailors under their political system.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas the British system has this built-in flexibility through the Crown and Parliament and through parliamentary sovereignty that just allows a lot of the problems to be reversed with decent legislation in a relatively short period.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be enormously painful.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: It will be two very, very painful years, three very painful years.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: But then things begin to turn to turn around.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the British have a propensity for violence which is focused and healthy and good, which might be necessary, given the issues with immigration and what's happening there.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can't you can't motivate you mentioned morale and the popular will and borders, you can't motivate people to make sacrifices when half of London's social housing is given to foreigners or people who are foreign born.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is fundamentally unjust.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so remigration in the way that you know uh it has been presented as starting off with the with the people who aren't contributing, who hate Britain, who commit crime, this is also a matter of justice.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this is also a matter of morale.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it it's it's impossible to conceive of a just system where you can just land from somewhere and start receiving benefits, and the poor slob next door has to go and work to pay for your to pay for you.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the issue of morale is tied deeply to the issue of immigration, as you say, but not just to illegal immigration, also to legal to legal immigration.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you have the fact that these uh ethnic enclaves are insanely prone to crime.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: And not just any kind of crime with the with the Pakistani rape gangs, the most horrific kind of crime.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also a matter of justice.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I agree with you on the morale question, but I do have a lot of faith in Britain.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think I think that things are changing.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think the general view, the popular view, is changing so much, literally, as we speak about these matters and and things that you people didn't weren't disinclined to say previously have changed, you know, the the the boundaries have changed.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think people don't like or uh people are fed up with being gaslit, that people don't like being told there is not a major demographic change when there is, and they don't like being told if there is major defin uh demographic change that it's good, that it's a good thing when they don't think it is.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of these basic truths are sort of landing.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think I mean yeah, and you and you're quite right, I take your point entirely.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right, I would say the the the the households and the corporates are pretty good.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: The the British Hinterland is still incredibly strong, it's a wonderful, wonderful place to live.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think um we're just short of a good government, and the 2030s could be rather good.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you you have both uh been critical of those who have tried to cozy up to the European Union again.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_04: Uh William, you've also spoken for a long time, and and Firas, I'm I'm pretty sure you share this sentiment.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_04: I know I do, that Britain has been a vassal state of the Americans for some time and are in our special relationship.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_04: This isn't just a lazy anti-Americanism.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm fond of that uh that outcrop of what was formerly Britain, but uh it is true that we have uh relied on others for for far too long.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so my my question, which you've partly answered, is what does a Britain do then, instead of getting back into bed with the European Union, instead of looking to Washington to fix its ills and to uh to open up the waterways for it?
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um how ought Britain um um use its national sovereignty, which it has gotten back since since Brexit?
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_04: How how should it use it wisely in a world that it obviously still needs to uh trade with and uh conduct diplomacy with other nations?
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: William, you've given a lot this a lot more thought than I have.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well no, I think I think I think it has to slowly rebuild, just stick to its knitting and slowly rebuild its own interests and its own capacity to look after itself.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: As simple as that.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think they it's it's not it's not going to be easy, but you you have to be prepared to say no sometimes, and you have to be prepared to to to be assertive.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean I'll give you some examples that are that would be quite controversial, but there are lots of American uh corporations that have very large turnover in the UK and book profits through Dublin for uh intellectual property.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's wrong.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because those profits should be going to the UK Treasury.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and you have to have a government that's prepared to be more assertive and say, we're just going to assess you and tax you.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise you close those coffee shops down or you close those units down.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that's the sort of government you have to have.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and yes, you I mean, I I'm not saying there are no limits to this.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not, you know, it's the same as our relationship with China.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: You need to there needs to be boundaries where you have to say no.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is in this jurisdiction, in this place, in this domain, that's not on and you're not going to do it.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we we haven't even begun to do that with China.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the the Ed Miliband, as far as says, you know, is is going hell-bent on this net zero project.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in net zero as a as a broad I mean there are Danish and German suppliers, but broadly speaking, the renewables outsource and subcontract British energy production to the Chinese Communist Party.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a very foolish thing to do.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: Very foolish indeed.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: So slowly but surely you need a political class that wake up.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not anti-Chinese, I'm not anti-American.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I think you need you need um you need a state that is prepared to say, no, we're going to assert this here.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been so partly because of the the uh entanglement with the European Union and supranational government generally.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you just haven't had a a generation for j for for for a generation now, a set of politicians that are capable of uh taking these decisions and actually taking responsibility.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: Salazar said in the 50s that European states had just given up on the nation.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and they they gate they they they gave up on the idea of governance and accountability, and so you got this, well, Europe decides.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't ask me, it's the it's the rules.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well that all that has to go.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go back to I, you know, we we've we've put some detail in the investment state of how it would work.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: You'd have a Department of Economic Planning, you'd have quarterly meetings with all the press there, and the the presentation would be literally on what sites you are developing for what purposes and what programs w we have, uh and the government would have to be accountable and it has to be have to, you know, quarterly reports on all these things.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you need.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_04: Hmm.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: I I uh you were gonna say something for us.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I agree with that.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the the fundamental issue isn't just that they've given up on the nation, is that they don't they lost any sense of love for their nations and for their people and for themselves.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't not see that in terms of a faith crisis.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is sort of, you know, depression, loss of faith of in God, but at a civilizational level, at a continental level.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that when you are considering the question of morale, religion factors into that.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the loss of religion has been a fundamental part of the loss of morale.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh these two go hand in hand.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: So renewal, you know, I Chesserton has a line uh Romans didn't love Rome because she was great, she was great because they loved her.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: And this is true.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: You look at I remember Gordon Brown talking about that bigoted woman uh for saying that, you know, she can't get a GP appointment, and there are all of these people showing up and taking her children and grandchildren's jobs.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, why don't you love that woman and her children more than you love the foreigners?
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's a real question.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's a real question, and and it's a really important one.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Trump's appeal for the Americans is that he wasn't ashamed of them.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas all of the American elite is fundamentally ashamed of Middle America.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same sentiment that's been expressed here in Britain.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: George Orwell wrote about it.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: There is no sense of love.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, why would you talk about love when you're thinking about geopolitics?
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because it matters.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because morale and commitment come from somewhere.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's that that's what I wanted to mention I think that's spot on, and I think I don't think it's e it's easy it's easier to identify the problem than to to to sort of have a solution.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the fundamental thing is the the the bedrock of all of our all of our culture is Christianity and and and and that all of these states are orphans having become predominantly post-Christian, really.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: That that is and I don't I don't have a apart from uh asking people to attend church occasionally, I don't have a I don't really have a solution.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I I don't know what to do about that.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: But you're quite right that when when you when you've lost belief in your very society and in what and it and when you've when you've lost um when when you were unprepared to to def to to defend it.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well I mean it's very interesting.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: I might p m a lot of my family are are Australians, so you you you look at you know, crudely what I would call Anglo-Settler states.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, Rhodesia failed for demographic reasons and you know, for broad the the the West couldn't defend it.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: They they're they had to apply a a liberal principle of of of free voting to a society that hadn't invented that or wasn't accustomed to that, and you that you know what happened.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the it's fascinating to see in New Zealand, Canada and Australia particularly, to see the what I would call a guilt the guilt spiral, or Eric Frafton calls the guilt spiral.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're in a spiral of guilt.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have these uh welcome to country uh um uh ceremonies which delegitimize your very state.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these the Australia is a settler state, it's an Anglo-settler state.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: People that set it up created something that was, I think, unique and very special and wonderful society, but now they've got to pretend collectively, which is so demoralizing, they've got to pretend collectively that they hadn't built this society and really this they're there illegitimately, and really they oughtn't to be there.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the problem that Firas is going at.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the m that's the morale problem in the West.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: And unless you can deal with this and have a restoration or a correction to that, I th I I agree with all the economics and power stations don't actually they won't cure it.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: They don't matter and they don't have any value in and of themselves, other than you do them because you love the web of relationships that you're in.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: But the reason you see this guild spiral is fundamentally because you're in a Christian society without Christ.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: You would never be able to guild the Muslims into taking over Persia or Egypt or Anatolia or wherever.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work on them because they don't have these values.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: But what's happened is that Christian joy and Christian celebration has been taken out of societies because they've become, as you say, post-Christian.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so the source of joy and the source of love has been taken out, for now at least, um and it will come back.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the ancestral guilt that comes from being Christian, that comes from Christ's commands to look at the the the the the beam in your own eye first, that's still there and that's still operational, and that's why these societies still function.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so a restoration of love of God, of love of neighbor, of love of country, these things are necessary for the restoration of industry and safe streets and manufacturing and energy.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: They actually do go hand in hand.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_04: You've both raised uh points which I've been turning around my heads quite a lot of late, and they spilled out into a microphone in a speech uh a few weeks ago, and I'll and I'll regurgitate some of the key points of that because um I think from uh Britain's point of view, it isn't only the elite problem with regards to they changed our social imaginary of the ideas that were circulating and percolating through society.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_04: There's the denigration of what came before and the and the Christian faith of being something oppressive or old hat or absurd.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, that's true.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_04: But the downstream consequences of it for those who took that on, who decided to give it up, is that we gave up the story that basically brought the only story, as far as I can see, that bestows as much dignity on human life than any other story can.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think Britain is becoming ungovernable, um, not because of what The Economist says about people just having too many expectations on politicians that they couldn't possibly do, but partly because we are forgetting how to self-govern.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there are those that were cut off uh from the um uh uh from um the nation through um various policies that have seen communities built around certain industries suddenly put onto the teet of welfare.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_04: People chose to go on those, and there have been generations of dependence.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_04: But the fact that we even thought it was okay to to cut off a whole part of a nation, many parts of a nation, to live lives like that without giving them anything else is shocking in itself.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_04: But the fact that we sometimes willingly choose a life less dignified with some of our choices and our demands is also something that comes out of having lost our ability to know when to restrain our more base appetites, or when appetites become totally free of any reigns.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_04: And you don't you don't hear this being spoken about anywhere.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_04: There is no replacement for this other than a kind of banal moralizing about being kind.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_04: There's nothing there's nothing there.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um as as I always tell my children, don't listen to your teachers when they say be kind.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: Be good, then you worry about being kind.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there's a very different uh there's a very big difference between being a nice guy and being a good guy.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh anyone can be a nice guy with a few nods and winks, but being a good guy is something totally different.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the other point I'd make, you've you've made some really interesting points about the settler uh societies, the Anglo-Settler societies, is I don't know if I'm just observing this from too far of a distance, but it appears that the guilt ceremonies really are only expected to be conducted by those who are uh downstream from the original settlers, because I don't think the um East Asians that have populated Australia and now the Indians, and the same over in China, will be having quite as many difficulties with the idea of um being part of and ultimately in the end demographically taking control of the states in which they are now citizens.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think there'll be any apologies for that.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_04: They will just go, well, this is great, this place is a good country, and you know, it's uh it's partly mine now.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_04: I don't need to be guilty about the past, weren't my ancestors.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they have a right to be guilty.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_04: You did steal this country, and we're here to to to make it all equitable.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um do you see a route out of that?
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_04: Do you see a root out of that?
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um that this this this this guilt that isn't applied to any other people, or uh because we are seeing a swell amongst a certain uh certain swathes of youngsters, but it's not a hundred percent of them, it's a fifteen percent of them saying, I'm kind of done with this.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_04: But do you actually see a way out of this self-flagellation to to move forward in our own interest?
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um not not anytime soon if you listen to Eric Kaufman.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the the values of younger cohorts in the United States and Australia and so on, it's it's it's not looking particularly brilliant.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, there is a reaction.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh funnily enough, you know, continental Europe is uh seems to be more robust uh in its youth um politics in some some pockets.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't yeah, I think it's I I I I don't see any early um correction to it.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: In in places like Australia, of course, it's it's it's geographical.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: You get more of this in Melbourne and Sydney than you do in uh New England or somewhere like that.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_00: But but it's um it's patchy.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's it's very da I mean it's very dangerous to the what Australia is doing is doing what we've done, which is to engage in an experiment um based on a uh a load of um fairly half-witted liberal assumptions about, you know, based on slogans like diversity of strength and so on, which have no correspondence to reality.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and um so it's a very profound thing to to to to unhook a modern state like Australia from the Anglican that built it.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what they're doing.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I mean the the the you can be optimistic in some ways that the Australia does have control of its borders, and actually the the overall quality in terms of productivity uh that they get out of uh migration is higher than we get.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at least they decide on some of it.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um but no, it's not it's not I I don't I there's so much of this is up in the air.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um you can you can make your own decisions about where you want to live, but at the moment I I would say the British Hinterland's as good as anywhere in the world.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_04: First look like he was going to say say something else there, but um but I I won't I won't open up a can a a can of worms on on the future demographics.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_04: I think we've made we've made the point there.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um question as we close is we we have heard all about what we would suggest a sane government ought to do.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um now we should start thinking about what each of us should do if we were sane, if we wanted to be more self-reliant or more locally rooted or more resilient.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um what should someone fear us, somebody listening to this conversation, actually begin doing differently in their own life to shelter themselves from the storms that are coming?
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um This is Britain, so I'm limited in what I can't say without being accused of uh f Fed posting, as the youngsters would call it.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I would say at the very least, uh go to church and get to know your neighbours because you don't know when you're going to need that community and it might be much sooner than you think, and because it is a good thing to do in and of itself and God commands it.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that that's where I'll leave it for now.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say?
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a line, I caro which novel it is, there's a line from a store cousin novel, Ed Wardian novel, that someone asked someone for a life advice and they said, Yeah, three things.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: Don't smoke, walk whenever you can rather than taking a cab.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: And third, set aside 20% of your income.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, save.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I think actually life, I mean, contribute to others.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: Duty is the big thing.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you what if you're it's not all about you, I think the stoic virtues are very important, um, you know, moderation and so on.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: But um if you're if you have purpose uh in life, you you have a life, you have some reason to get up.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a young person, I would say uh try and um find your your life partner and uh get married and have children.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_04: Well, very sound and personal advice.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_04: And for those of you who are more uh public service inclined and sick of being governed by your inferiors, then it might be time to roll up the sleeves, put on the hard hat and the high viz and get out for some photo opportunities because your country needs you.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Firas, William, it's been an absolute pleasure to host you both today.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um before I let you go, um, I'll let you plug what's coming next.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_04: So, William, this the the Social Democratic Party, the SDP, has been very, very productive, as always, on the policy front.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_04: You've already mentioned a few today around energy abundance and the investment state.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_04: What can we expect from you and the party next?
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, we're next should be uh a green paper on China, uh written by a world authority on that.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward to that.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: I can't promise a date, but that's what's next.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean for the moment, just take a look at the investment state and and try and absorb what we're we're saying there.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's um it's not conventional politics, but it is truthful.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_04: Are you working on anything interesting in your role at the Lotus Eaters?
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right now I'm just doing my show and the daily podcast of the Lotus Eater is I write on uh modaggiopolitics.com and you can find me on X as well.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_04: Chaps, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for joining me.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_04: Look forward to speaking again.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_04: Take care, guys.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.