Latest / Thinking Class / #069 - Niall Gooch - How The British Public Lost Trust In Their Politicians & Institutions

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#069 - Niall Gooch - How The British Public Lost Trust In Their Politicians & Institutions · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking with Nile Gooch.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Nile is a writer and has appeared in The Spectator, Unheard, and the Catholic Herald.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: In this episode, Nile and I think out loud about the unique aspects of British identity, the impact of political ideologies on historical narratives, and why we need to strike a balance between kindness and justice in public policy.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: We also talk about why each of us need a deeper understanding of the cultural values we hold, why we must preserve historical context when engaging in discussions about contemporary issues, the evolution of the Catholic Church, the tension between tradition and modernity, and much much more.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: And in the exclusive Substack Q ⁇ A for paid subscribers, we discuss Niles' personal transformations, including his shift in perspective regarding war and intervention, the future of the monarchy in relation to its Christian roots, and a few other matters.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you're interested, head over to the Substack page for thinking class and become a paid subscriber.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: We experience a few connection issues while recording, however, I don't think you should notice those.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you do, I apologize, but it seems smooth to me.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was a real pleasure to speak to Niall because he's a fellow traveller in talking and writing about the world in which we live, and while both of us h hold down day jobs that don't necessarily lend themselves to that, it's always good to find a kindred spirit.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure to like, subscribe, and follow the show on YouTube, the podcast platform that you listen to or watch the show on, and Substack, where paid subscribers get the opportunity to contribute to questions for a special QA to thinking class guests that only you will get access to.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Let's grow Thinking Class together and enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Nial Gooch, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you, John.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Good to be here.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm glad I'm glad you're here in this digital ethereal realm that I've created, or at least uh been parasitic on, produced by this great podcast company, Riversides.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's a plug for them.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very glad you joined me.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've read your work for years.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: You've written Unheard, Spectator, Critic, Catholic Herald.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think what marks you out as different is there is a a depth to your observations that others don't perhaps um convey.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think that might come out in this conversation, and I think it's also partly driven by your worldview, maybe even your your faith as a Catholic.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you've made lots of interesting observations on state of the culture, state of institutions, uh, and I think we'll get into quite a lot of that today.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I am someone who's particularly driven by understanding what it is that made uh the civilization that we live in.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to talk specifically about Britain.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes we can talk a lot about the West, which becomes very abstract.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: But as someone who is an is an Englishman, lives on the British Isles, I care a lot about maintaining the goods that the civilization has produced, cutting away the bad.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you seem to be driven by that too, and uh write pretty pretty stridently uh and and articulately about it.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you you've made the argument that British culture is often derided and dismissed as nothing or it's boring, and you've said, well, it's it's neither of those things.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's not nothing and it's not boring.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that you think marks British culture out as unique and deserving of more praise?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think to me there's an awful lot you could say there, but it's it's partly about the sheer longevity of uh of the nation, of Britain, and of the you know, the predecessor states of the United Kingdom, um England and Scotland and Wales and Ireland.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to get into the Irish question, but it is a it's a part of the culture of these islands.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I think because for such a long time you had a broadly settled population here and you had very early development of uh a fairly uh powerful unitary state, which meant that you had a certain amount of peace, certainly by comparison with some other European countries.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's there's been a settled culture here for a very long time, and for whatever reason, uh there's a huge amount of depth and uh and richness in that culture.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And because of our of our role in the world over the last few hundred years, you know, we've taken that culture elsewhere.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it is uh it's spread and it's it's shared.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's it's difficult for people to recognise that it is originally uh a British culture because it's it's become so universal.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you think of something like uh the parliamentary system or um uh constitutional monarchy in its particular Anglo form, those are in many ways unique to this country, but people don't realise that.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the fact that that Britain is an old country and that you know the the nations have the you know the home nations have have been within their current borders for a long time.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you've had time for this very kind of textured culture to build up, and you've had all these these great writers who, in some sense, now belong to the world, but who were once you know English writers, you know, Shakespeare is is the obvious one, you know, grew up in provincial England.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I I think it's partly that you know the settled nature of the culture, the fact we've been here for a very long time, and the fact that there are unusual things about the English and the British that don't actually obtain so much in other countries.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: The the universal aspect of the British culture is certainly an interesting one.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I I know you and I were talking before we pressed record, both of us uh are are descended from peoples on the Celtic fringe of England, but if we look specifically at England and I suppose um the English peoples, uh it is quite remarkable to see uh that uh what David Starkey has has said is that there seems there seems to be uh um that David Starkey has has made the point that there's something about the English people which shows that there is a a deep-rooted conservatism in them, and this can be borne out within uh attempts at restoration, uh to to take us back to a time that was before, uh, and whether that was either uh through an attempt at a Protestant Reformation to take us back to a more purer way of the the Christian story or um or indeed to overthrow the Stuart monarchy.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: But then there's also the the argument you can make that the United States was the ultimate expression of Englishness and its its love for liberty without any arbitrary government, and then it was enshrined within the various constitutions.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I I read someone explain how the United States, maybe not now, but it was initially the place in which the English could go and be at home without without all of that um uh overbearing, potentially uh arbitrary government that had been um uh developing over time.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it made me wonder, actually, Niall, what you think of the state of the monarchy here in Britain.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know you think quite a lot about the health of institutions and and you've written a lot about the political institutions, but if you think about the monarchical institution, I I wonder what uh people's relationship is to it, because one thing I've noticed on the internet is that even those who lean right, who would typically be fervent supporters of the monarchy, have been, I think, dispirited uh at the um pronouncements of King Charles, whether it be in his his Christmas speech to talking about the importance of diversity and other faiths, and um people saw it as quite a political um uh intervention, and then he has marked the beginning of Ramadan recently, um, and there seems to be amongst right-wing pundits this this feeling that the monarchy is slipping away from whatever it was that it was that it sought to pretend um protect and maintain.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have any thoughts on any of those things?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is there anything there, there or not?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I I go back and forth on this because I I do kind of recognize the strength of the uh what you call the new right critique of uh you know, I've heard it called Windsorism, which is that effectively the you know the royal family, you know, first the old queen and now the king have kind of bought into state i state ideology, you know, particularly in the last sort of 25-30 years, which is very much the kind of uh suppose you'd call it progressive, official multiculturalism, and that by buying into that ideology, the royal family have put themselves in a very dangerous position because formerly their position depends on a kind of political neutrality, and that's been the the understanding for a long time, but they seem to be moving away from that now.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the kind of causes that the royals publicly attach themselves to, particularly the younger royals, I do understand why people think that well, they're not actually politically neutral anymore, they are running cover for a particular understanding of the state.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the complication there is that well, perhaps actually the the the strictly neutral monarchy is isn't desirable.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it would be good if the monarch did stand up more for uh for certain causes.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: But you get into very very difficult territory then because you know I wrote an article uh you know when when Charles first became king suggesting that he could move away from his his mother's model of very limited interventions in politics and carefully kind of give his views on issues where there wasn't an obvious party political position, such as architecture, certain aspects of the environment, conservation, religious freedom.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I yeah, I'm very much in two minds about it because I uh I am attached to the monarchy and I I do see the strength of it, and I think that not having the monarchy wouldn't improve the position of British conservative British right-wingers.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, I I do agree that certainly under, particularly under Charles, and it already started under the old Queen, the monarchy is becoming a tool of what we call the progressive establishment.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think they're gonna need to be very careful that they don't uh alienate their natural supporters because uh you know a few years ago, for example, you had this uh business uh uh a royal party where uh uh one of the older courtiers offended somebody from the Afro-Caribbean community, and she was thrown under the bus, and you know the king and people around the king made a big deal of apologising and uh you know trying to make peace with the person in question.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I forgive me, I've forgotten her name.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: But that seemed to me a mistake because it annoyed a lot of traditional supporters of the monarchy.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was a storm in a teacup, just a very small lapse in manners potentially.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the monarchy was going out of its way to abase itself before people who are never really going to like it and don't particularly, you know, and arguably have an axe to grind against the traditional uh institutions and organization of Britain.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's a very dangerous time for the monarchy because as you've got you know demographic change, you've got an increasing number of people who don't have the kind of uh they don't have the law of the tribe, they don't have that kind of visceral attachment to the monarchy that is more common among uh the uh I'm not sure what the right word is.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say indigenous population, that's not quite quite right, but you know, take take me for example, you know, my my grandfather fought in the second world war, my great grandfather fought in the first world war, my family has been in this country for generations and has fought for it and has defended for it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that gives you a kind of deep link to something like the monarchy, in a way that newcomers, I'm not saying they don't or can't have it, I'm just saying it's more difficult for them to acquire, and it's not an instinct for them in the same way, particularly when you've got huge numbers of uh incomers coming constantly, which makes integration harder.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, I think that's quite a long answer, but I think it's a very difficult and dangerous time for the monarchy.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: They need to secure their support uh from the people who are actually traditionally inclined to support them.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is the place for long answers, Nile, so you never have to apologize uh for that.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh staying on institutional trust, that's a cornerstone of what it means for England and then Britain to have a monarchy.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so that's a very interesting question, and one that the answer will unfold before us, and indeed through the generations long beyond our time here.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Which other institutions are currently low in trust?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And what is it that you think needs to be done to rebuild the trust?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Why have they reached such an idea and how do they get out of it?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think there's a I can't actually think of many institutions that are that have kind of maintained their their prestige beyond a relatively narrow belt.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think most traditional institutions are struggling because they are there's a very strong disconnect, I think, between whatever you want to call them, the intelligentsia, the chattering classes, whatever cliche you want to pick, the people who tend to staff institutions are disassociated from uh what you call sort of patriotic, normal, mainstream views in a way that I don't think has ever happened before.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think of something like uh the Church of England, now I used to be a member of the Church of England and I'm not anymore, so I am quite careful in how I talk about the Church of England.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um but uh the Church of England has traditionally been a to put it simply is a kind of chaplain seat at the establishment, which has worked very, very well as long as the establishment is broadly Christian and broadly uh sort of in in tune with uh with what the church is is seeking to do.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the kind of people from uh from which Anglican from whom Anglican clergy are drawn again, they're sort of mainstream, middle class, intelligent people.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And but what you've got now is that those people aren't uh aren't conservatives anymore, or most mostly aren't conservatives anymore.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: If I think back to the people I went to university with, almost none of them uh are conservatives, even people who've gone into the professions, people who 40 or 50 years ago would definitely have been conservatives are not now.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I think a lot of institutions are starved by people who have come through the uh the universities in the last sort of three or four decades where the the academic culture is increasingly post-national, liberal, multicultural, and and views those things uh as not even political positions, but just the the normal thing that uh uh sensible, educated people think.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the frustrations I'm sure you'll have come across it with talking to people about politics, is that uh people often don't recognise that the view they're taking is contentious.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think of something like equality and diversity training, people find it hard to understand being opposed to it because they think, oh, it's just it's just encouraging people to be nice.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh why would you be against equality and diversity without recognising that equality and diversity kind of embeds a particular understanding of the world, a particular view of uh of equality uh uh and of uh and of relations between people so it's just it's seen as the default rather than a political position.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I think yeah, the the difficulty is that institutions are staffed by people who are who don't really have faith in what the institution had originally set up to do and also don't have faith in the possibility of a kind of non-political realm.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think of something like there's been a lot of complaints recently about museums becoming uh you know, decolonialising their collections and that sort of thing.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you say to someone, you know, a curator at a museum, well actually museums as far as possible shouldn't actually be political.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: They should be about uh teaching people about particular things, informing the public uh about ancient Egypt or ancient China or British history or French history or Renaissance art or whatever the subject of that museum is.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think a lot of people who've been through uh British universities in the last few decades would accept that you can have that non-political space.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what one of the main problems we have is that non-political spaces are shrinking because people don't accept the concept of a non-political space.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: It does make sense, and there's actually lots in there that I'd love to delve into a bit more.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's focus on political spaces, though, because in the last week we're recording last day of February 2025, in the last week, one of the news items has been on how there have been the the um switching around of certain artworks in the Houses of Parliament, uh, and uh this has included the removal of uh figures like um Lord Nelson um uh as well as other luminaries from British history, folks who have um been the leaders of uh various war efforts that have um secured the independence of the nation and fought great efforts to make sure that uh Britain uh keeps some level of primacy in the corner of the world in which it inhabited and beyond.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so has rightly been written into the record books.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they have been replaced with pictures of people like Yvette Cooper, current Home Secretary, former Prime Minister Theresa May, and several other um women, or uh anyone from a parliamentary background who perhaps represents uh an ethnic minority background.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking very recent, uh recent politicians who have now been put up in place on these these national uh luminaries, as we talked about.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And this created quite a lot of comment, not just on the right online.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: You had those who represent the old left, like Paul Embury, uh calling out how this just seems like a desecration of national history in some way, and a replacement and a rewriting of history.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I just wonder if those that mindset, that worldview which you've just described, and those people who who hold it uh would have even flinched at the prospect of removing these artworks, uh which even you know, Prime Minister Starman removed paintings of Churchill, Thatcher, uh found himself sitting alongside Donald Trump and JD Vance this week, saying, Isn't it great that Churchill's back where he belongs in the in the Oval Office?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um Almost the the irony not lost on him, or perhaps it was.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I just wonder besides the neutral polit the neutral spaces shrinking, do you think that even the highly politicized acts taking place within the political spaces that they don't ra that doesn't raise eyebrows anymore?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's strange because I to me I I I don't understand how they are I can't imagine being so uh uh impressed with myself that I put a you know portrait of myself up instead of someone like Nelson or or Churchill.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very strange mindset to me.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I think as well, it's uh I I mentioned earlier about the idea of uh the intelligentsia now almost being post-national and very wary of any kind of sort of patriotic or anything that's got patriotic connotations or feels uh like it's celebrating you know the old Britain.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that the reason that's happening is that there's a kind of year year zero mentality, which is that you know Britain began well at a pinch, really, it began in 1948, you know, with the founding of the NHS and the Empire Wind Rush, and old Britain is something that we emerged from.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, in a sense, there's been an attempt, I think, almost to re-found the country, if that doesn't sound too strange, and to make us, you know, it's why you get you know this this talk of Britain being a nation of immigrants and these kind of obviously untrue statements about uh kind of historic British identity and the way things have worked historically, there's a very strong movement to uh kind of push those things to to one side and to emphasize the you know what we they call British values now or alleged British values, and to centre not uh not a distinct national history of of a people in a place and of you know particular institutions, particular achievements that the British people have made, but to to replace that with a kind of ideologically focused uh new world.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why you know Nelson and Churchill are out, because they represent that old world, and paintings of the first female Chancellor or Vette Cooper they represent the the new world of I suppose kind of universalist ideals of the rejection of the old pale, male, and stale Christian settlement.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: That their whole their whole life and education and upbringing has encouraged them to reject that and look upon it as a kind of benighted past.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: So in a way it's not surprising that they've got no they've got no kind of attachment to to that past because that there's no reason why they would have been raised in you know the post-60s world.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned earlier about uh well sorry, I wrote I wrote a piece about Starmer last year and I I mentioned I think that he he's the first Prime Minister who really strikes me as being a completely post-1960s person in the sense that he has no kind of instinctive uh uh fondness or uh love of of uh British institutions.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's uh uh he's an unambiguously atheist, uh he uh he's never shown any kind of interest in in British history.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a sense that he's a he's one of the new the new men, if you like, who that the the big rupture in the 60s and 70s, and the ongoing rupture really, was designed to produce.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's not to say that he is necessarily a communist, as some of the more excitable opponents say, but he is a he's a product of the the new world, if you like.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the the old Britain, of you know, wood-panelled rooms and and oil paintings of great national figures, that means nothing to him and to the people around him.
• 26:36
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• 26:42
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• 26:50
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• 26:53
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• 27:06
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• 27:09
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• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think it's probably hard to argue with that estimation, and uh when when asked what his favorite book is, his favorite poem, his favorite uh um his favorite piece of music, I don't think he could answer any of those questions.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have one and and doesn't dream either, uh which is a remarkable thing to admit to.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but perhaps and this is sounds very partisan, but it's it's not meant to be, but perhaps um this uh this lack of creativity just doesn't bother him at all.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: He's not there to be creative, he's there to be effective in whatever way he sees fit and whatever fits with his his legalistic worldview, but that's uh another point.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think let's linger on worldview a moment.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I know I have people who wonder whether this podcast can linger too much on the topic of immigration, however, I think it's quite hard to not focus on immigration with regards to the impact that it has on a country and its culture and its institutions, and that was partly why I set the podcast up to talk about what makes big cultures and institutions and civilizations are the things that might actually um make them fray or uh or hasten their demise.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um mass immigration is is one of those things.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's probably fair to say that when someone like Matt Goodwin jumps up on TV and talks about all of the ways he you know he brings fact after fact after fact of how much it hits the public purse, he brings all of the crimes that are being committed, all these data points, all of these uh points being buried by people in positions of authority.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: And once he's typically um uh minced a few few of his his opponents, he um the the the opponent, whether on question time or whatever, whether as Labour Minister, they always fall back on do you want to live in a kind of country that doesn't accept refugees or asylum seekers?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: And let's linger on that point a little bit because you you've you've you're you're you're uh uh a journalist, a Christian, you've written about balancing kindness, judgment, and justice as Christians, and I suppose secularists with Christian operating systems, whether they recognize it or not.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't necessarily have to riff off the immigration point, but there are lots and lots of pressures on Britain today, and I suppose much of the Western world, which strains people's moral operating systems and is making people respond in ways in which um may not immediately seem to chime with something like the Christian worldview.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I suppose my question, Niall, is how does one balance kindness, judgment, and justice, uh, whether you're a Christian or you're just operating with a Christian mindset?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and and what might that mean for public policy in some of these hot button areas?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a very difficult one.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, something I've been thinking about, and I'm hoping to write a piece about at some point, is the way in which I think all political uh perspectives and all political viewpoints in a sense need Christianity to be a kind of a civilizing force because all political ideologies have I suppose what you'd call a failure mode.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: So for my own politics, which is you know kind of uh traditionally conservative and sort of I suppose patriotic, that you know, the the failure mode is pretty well known, you know, because if you go too far, you get a kind of hard-edged nationalism, you know, you get racial bigotry, um and you know, xenophobia and all those kind of things.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: So and maybe you know, on the left, you know, if you take kind of generally left-wing principles and those aren't leavened by an understanding of uh of the importance of the individual and of freedom, you get you know the terrible communist tyrannies we've seen in the 20th century and you know still today.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose that the the difficulty is uh working out how the uh how the Christian principles uh translate from uh the individual uh individual perspective, the individual imperative, up to the level of the state, because it it's one thing, you know, for example, when Jesus says turn the other cheek, that's given as an instruction to us as uh as individuals and as as maybe as communities and churches, but at the level of the state, well, surely that can't mean that we don't have a criminal justice system, for example.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh or you know, sometimes uh Christians on the left refer to you know the early churches having everything in common, but again, that's a that's a voluntary arrangement that that they came to, and I think the evidence is pretty clear that trying to force uh people to have everything in common on the national scale doesn't work.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you need to be really careful about what are commands for individuals and for communities and churches, and there are a lot of those, um, which are commandments about how countries should be run.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose the other point is that I think Christians who are thinking about politics need to work through what when there's a direct threat, when there's some clear Christian principle at stake, that's where there's a real uh important uh opportunity for Christians to to to speak to a particular problem.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: So where you know human dignity is compromised or where there's a very clear violation, that's where a Christian voice can be really loud, where trade-offs don't really come into it.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you know, something like um you know, assisted suicide, abortion, these kind of issues where there's a clear kind of Christian principle, or um even you know the basics of a welfare state.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you cannot not have a welfare state if you're a yeah, you want to have a Christian politics because you need to have that baseline level of support for the poor.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there's a there's a kind of human dignity angle there.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: But most political issues aren't really like that.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're about trade-offs, they're about weighing competing priorities.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you know, immigration is the big one that's in the news at the moment, uh as you've mentioned.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And again, there's so many different trade-offs there to think about.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, with uh kind of the welfare of newcomers, the welfare of the existing population, and whether you need to kind of maintain a certain level of prosperity in order to keep on being able to welcome other people in future.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you know, the idea of uh if if if you let the country you know become too chaotic and disorderly, you can't help people in the future.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you know, you have to uh be you know being physically fit so that you can help other people.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all these difficult trade-offs and competing priorities.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh you could say the same about tax rises.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: You could say, well, you know, it's important for the wealthy to pay more tax, to you know, so we can redistribute wealth.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: But then you say, well, that has downsides too, because uh taxing wealth, taxing uh business more seems to uh reduce growth, which means there's less money to go around for everyone.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all these different trade-offs.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I think Christians need to be really careful to kind of distinguish situations where there's a very clear principle that you know maybe something that's intrinsically wrong, and other situations which are most political questions where there's a lot of trade-offs.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: I also wonder if we can extend this um this question of how institutions orient themselves uh in the face of extraordinary circumstances from the role of the state and how they might respond to something like immigration with a sense of Christian uh justice and ideals to the source of Christianity in the West, the Roman Church.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I I watched yesterday Conclave for the first time.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't watch a lot of I don't watch a lot of uh TV or movies, but my fiancee uh was insistent that we should watch it.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh anyway, we watched it.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'm going to say to anyone who hasn't seen it that I'm about to engage in a spoiler.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't usually like to do this, but perhaps you want to tune out for five, ten minutes.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um have you seen it, Niall?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't, but I've heard quite a lot about it.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: I know the twist.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going for the twist, but I suppose this probably won't be too much as a spoiler as someone who's a who's a Catholic because we see it playing out within the actual church.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a storyline in there which is ultimately about which kind of candidate, what's the profile of the candidate who's going to become the new Pope?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's I'm not going to say he got centres around, you might go and watch it, but there's a an Italian conservative called Tedesco, and then there's the person who turns out to be what the twist centres around, and there's a few different twists in there.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: But long story short, is during the course of the film, as they are sequestered in the various rounds of voting to try and get the 72 votes they need to elect a new pope, is you uh have those agitating around the conservative view saying, guys, the liberalization liberal liberalizing of the church hasn't been good at all.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, if anything, it's divided us where Latin used to be the unifying language, now we all talk amongst ourselves in our own languages and our tables and the cantina divided out by the the Africans and the Spanish and the Italians, the English.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and um and look, the the liberal the liberalizing of the church has led to um social anime, as it were.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then effectively, what happens are there are a few terrorist explosions that are taking place outside um one in Rome, uh, and then a week later, or maybe even a couple of days later, more take place, another one uh in Munich, another one in a French city, and then another one uh basically right outside of St.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Peter's.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: And they couldn't keep the this from the popes, basically.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, sorry, not the popes, the um the cardinals.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they usually try and shield them from what's going on outside so it doesn't influence their decision.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: And effectively, at this point, we've seen a terrorist attack.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's insinuated that it's uh an Islamic terrorist attack, and the Italian Conservative says this is this is what decades of cultural relativism have led us to.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: We can't recognise that there's a religious war going on here, we can't recognise that our societies, these Catholic cities, are under threat, and we need to know what we stand for, and we need to not be afraid to put up uh borders effectively around the world that we wish to preserve, and we're the fountain of that civilization, so we need to move back in this direction.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: You guys have led us down the path, and then effectively the chap Benitez, who the the twist centers around, he stands up and says that um the church is not the past, the church is not a tradition, it's about now, it's about going forward, and you know nothing of war, and effectively goes down the route of saying that we need not indulge in that worldview that had just been um passionately uh fought for by the the other candidate.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um anyway, he goes that the liberal goes on to become the Pope, as it were.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I suppose my question to you as someone who has been part of the Church of England, moves to the Catholic Church, um is what you make of those worldviews that duke it out because many see Pope Francis as being a similar type to Benitez, who I've just described, and Pope Benedict is perhaps more the Tedesco conservative chap.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um what what kind of a a Catholic church do you think well are you for?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a is it a and or is it a both of those and something else?
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um what what do you think the church could and can do?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Huge question, but interested to hear what your thoughts are.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there's um there's a writer on uh a Catholic priest, uh another convert, who he has this idea of the great thing about the Catholic Church and Catholic theology and practice and devotion is that it tries to be um both and rather than either or.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what he means by that is that uh so he came out of an evangelical Protestant background um and it where there were certain things that were rejected.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you know the the strength of evangelicalism is you know sort of um biblical scholarship and uh worship and discipleship, but they don't have, you know, from the Catholic perspective, they don't have uh the same sacramental life, they don't have the the same kind of enduring traditions and structure and so that this Dwight Longnecker, this guy's name is a beautiful American name, he uh he says, well, the when he became a Catholic, it wasn't a question of rejecting his evangelicalism, it was kind of building on it and being both ads.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, I always think, well, uh very often in in in church disputes um the the sides are are both right and you know sometimes both wrong uh at the same time, because I I I think it's certainly true that you can't have a church, a Christian church, unmoored from tradition and the legacy of you know the last two thousand years, because uh by by definition that is you know that's what what what the faith is and you know we it's very important to hold to traditional understandings, you know, that goes all the way back to um to St.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul and to the apostles who were you know recorded as saying hold fast to the to the things you've been given.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: But equally, I think that tradition can become its own kind of its own kind of uh idol, if that's not uh too too harsh a word to use it.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose that the church always has to keep in mind what it's for, which is to uh I suppose bring the the the gospel of a person, Jesus Christ, to the world.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: And to do that, you do need to be grounded in tradition, but you do need to be uh conscious of uh how the world is changing and how you You best communicate with people and whether the kind of words and concepts you choose to explain things are the most suitable ways of doing that.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not about changing the the substance of the faith, because I think that's a concern that traditionalists often rightly have, which is that uh revisionists will uh under the cover of changing the the the methods of communication, they will actually try to change the substance of the of the the teaching.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: But you uh you you need to hold fast to the teaching while thinking about uh how you communicate it, how you explain it, how it uh how you make it uh uh present in the world, if that doesn't sound too too pretentious.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I think uh in a sense uh I I am a conservative, a traditionalist in it in most respects, but I do think that it's always worth keeping in mind the point that the uh liberals, for want of a better word, will say about you know the way that the world changes, and so the way you need to explain things changes.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, I think uh there's there's a tension there, and I think it's a useful tension, and I think you'll often get popes from different uh sides of the church who have different emphases, and I think that's probably good for us.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, uh Benedict was a very scholarly, precise uh sort of man.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if he hadn't become a priest, he would have been a great academic.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well he yeah, he was a great academic, um and and and and a great theologian.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: But but Francis although he's not uh a precise uh thinker, he's he's not uh he's not really a systematic thinker, but he's got a really good eye for the for the grand kind of loving gesture.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you there's a lot of photos of him, for example, um embracing terribly disfigured people um and disabled children.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: And not that Benedict didn't do those things, uh but I suppose the the point I'm making is that there's so much in Catholicism, it's so rich, there's so many different things you might emphasize that it's actually good to have people from different strengths and different understandings.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you've got classically that the church has always had monastics, it's had people who live a very enclosed prayerful life, it's had evangelists, it's had all sorts of uh of weird and wonderful saints, and they're all doing something good, but not everyone can do all the different good things.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, very salient point.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when you come to think of it, think of a a Saint Francis known for his environmentalism, or Saint Cuthbert of Northumbria, also.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh and uh yes, I suppose you got any number of saints which they are known for something and the patron saint of something because of their very specific uh life that they lived, and a very different part of life that they contributed to and and were uh you know the the ultimate uh role model for I suppose.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a very good point.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Niall, starting to bring an end to the main part of the episode before we open to the exclusive Substack QA.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: There is one question that I like to ask all of my guests here on Thinking Class, which is what have you changed your mind on in the course of your life that made you think differently?
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose, yeah.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I've I've touched on uh becoming a Catholic, which I suppose is a pretty big change.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's that's a huge, huge subject, really.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think uh on some kind of other other issues, I when I you know 20 years ago when I was a student, I was a very enthusiastic uh neocon.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I supported things like the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq very strongly and I think over the last two decades, I think I definitely changed my mind about uh Western countries' ability to change to do that kind of nation building and that kind of uh idealistic intervention.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I don't think I'd say it can never be done because obviously it's been done on a smaller scale and had some success, but I I would say as I'm much more realist in foreign affairs than than I ever was.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think I wouldn't say I was kind of cynical, but I think uh I'm I'm much more conscious of the fact that it's very difficult to change a country, it's very expensive.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think maybe as I've got older as well and since having children, I've become more kind of instinctively hostile to the to war.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I'm a pacifist, not that I'm uh against you know having a military and using it when we need to.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I think you know, 20 years ago I imagined myself, you know, when I watched a war film, you imagine yourself as the soldier.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: And now that I'm in my early 40s, I've started imagining myself as the as the parent at home worrying about their son.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe that that comes to everyone at some point.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'm I'm a lot more sceptical about intervention.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a lot more of a I don't know whether peacnic is quite the right word, but I uh you know the the more of history I read, the more you become aware of just the sheer misery of war and and the disruption and the the way it uh marsh it damages culture, it disrupts families.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose yeah, I've been I've become much more of a peacenick than I was 20 years ago.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, that's that that's one of the big changes.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I I one I think that's partly to do with becoming a Catholic as well, is just thinking a bit more about you know what the church says about war and peace and uh and reading some of the quite quite challenging documents that have been put out over the years.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I do believe in just war theory, for example, but I've read some really interesting critiques of just war theory and of the danger of using it as a kind of tick bock exercise to get to uh a war that we really want to do.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think that's one of the big ones is is my my skepticism about intervention and war.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think the skepticism about intervention is is generally growing, and I know uh what's happening in the Americ uh in America with its its vibe shift represents that on a grand national scale, the idea of American America first, let's let's not get involved.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I'd say besides people like yourself, driven by conscience and obviously your own practical experience having become a father and and what have you, is I think there is also an understanding that peoples are different, cultures are different, they're deep they are deep-rooted, and it is fanciful to suggest that you can go and as you say, do some nation building and build it in whatever image it is that you're seeking to aim for because culture runs deep.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I wonder if that does become even more noticeable now that those of us in the West do live alongside people of very, very different cultures with very different social mores, that even living alongside one another in the same nation shows that there are there are differences there, and in many ways they get exacerbated by being side by side rather than fizzle out.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it's going to be even harder when you're trying to run a transcontinental uh war um with a people that you up until the last 70, 80 years, never really had any sizable contact with and and cultural transfer with.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: So very, very interesting uh point, and no one's no one's ever brought that up before in that section.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um Nial, before we move to the the exclusive QA, let's take this opportunity to tell the listeners where they can find your work.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: I know we've mentioned a few of the publications you typically write for.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and is there anything that people can expect for you uh coming out in the near future?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, I think I'd churn out a pretty steady stream of articles in you know Unheard, uh Spectator, Catholic Herald, Occasionally the Critic.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but also uh later this year I'm self-publishing uh a detective story that's just coming out in the early summer, and then towards the end of the year, uh a book of ghost stories as well.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the two kind of big writing projects for the year.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: What made you choose self-publishing over going down the finding a publisher route?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think it just uh it's a very difficult world to get into, and there's a lot of I don't know a lot about it honestly, but I you know just going through the the editing process and the uh sort of the the rejections and it's such a competitive feel that it just felt like a lot of uh extra work for for not much extra benefit because in a sense I don't uh no one makes a living from writing novels, so and I don't need to make a living from writing novels, so in a sense I'd much rather have complete control over what I'm putting out and uh you know only make a relatively small amount of money from it um rather than go through all the you know rejections and uh editing processes.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, I don't know, it's it's something I thought about, but we'll we'll we'll see, I guess.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense to me, a similar thought process.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm uh frameworked a book, and then it made me go, hmm, why do that when what I could do is put the chapters out on the Substack as I write them.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it can go alongside the podcast, that helps give things back to my paid subscribers, and then at the end of it, I can package it up into a self-published book uh for many of the same reasons that that you've explained there.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, good luck with that.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it sounds like a big break from the things that you typically write about, so I'm sure very refreshing.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh Nial, uh I on that note, uh I will bid you farewell from the main episode and we'll move right into the exclusive subscriber QA for my Substack subscribers.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for joining me.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's been it's been great, and I'm glad we finally had the chance to speak.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh notwithstanding all of the technical issues which I think I may have caused.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for your endearing patience.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope we get to speak again, Mar.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: No problem.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for having me on, John.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's been it's been really good.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: Glad to hear it.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Take a care.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.