Latest / Thinking Class / #107 - Stephen Balogh - Democracy In The West Feels Like Theatre Because It Is. The Voters Know It & The Politicians Don't Care."

Transcript

#107 - Stephen Balogh - Democracy In The West Feels Like Theatre Because It Is. The Voters Know It & The Politicians Don't Care." · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm talking with Stephen Balak.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen is the chairperson for the Social Democratic Party in the United Kingdom and is active in nonprofit and public policy organizations, specifically those that promote the flourishing of society through the thoughtful application of socially responsible small c conservative politics.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Following a 30-year business career, Stephen now devotes his time to initiatives aimed at community building from local neighborhood to international levels, whether by means of social, political, or commercial exchange.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you will recognize Stephen as New Culture Forum's national organizer, where he has helped to establish a network of NCF locals groups around the country, and he has acted as contributing author to two NCF publications.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Stephen and I think out loud about whether democracy is working in Europe, why people across the continent are so dissatisfied in politics and beyond, why the traditional cleavages between people in the political landscape have now broken down and party loyalties have changed, how the body politic has been eroded by elite projects and sections of the left and the right, and what people of Britain need to rediscover if we are to flourish again, and much, much more.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: This was a conversation I really enjoyed.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen's a deeply thoughtful man, which will come across to those of you listening.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: As ever, make sure to like, subscribe, and follow the show on YouTube, your podcast platform of choice and Substack.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's grow Thinking Class together.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates, and so you're a good idea.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen Baller, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great pleasure to be with you.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's my pleasure.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You've been doing some interesting work of late, which saw you travel to Central Europe, Hungary to be specific, to deliver a talk on the state of democracy in Europe.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I think it's fair to say that if you glance at some of our papers, whether it's the Times, and you can hear from the likes of Fraser Nelson, the former editor of The Spectator, that we've never had it so good.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: We hear from historians that it's now that is the best time to be alive, but it doesn't always feel that way.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's fair to say that there is a profound dissatisfaction amongst the populations of Western democracies.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, Stephen, have we never had it so good?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or has democracy gone wrong somewhere along the line and why?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, it's a truly, um, truly fascinating question.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, those of us who are either indirectly or directly steeped in politics, um, in from whatever direction, as commentators or as participants, um, it feels as if that question is arising every day.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's um there's a constant, I'll use the word discombobulation between what we seem to be being told or convinced of, or people attempting to convince us, and our and our real experience.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it is um truly as just ordinary citizens um going about our business, finding that I don't know, the streets are less safe, the food prices are going up, energy bills are astronomical.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then the the the narrative, the political narrative that that um it's the predominant one, seems to be completely at odds.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, that I think there is um something wrong.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't I don't think that um you know today's um today's quality of life is um falling off a cliff, put it that way.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: But there is clearly um an erosion.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's an erosion in tangible measures, such as, I don't know, GDP per head and all the rest of it, average earnings.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the bigger problem is the intangible thing that is harder to for people to get arrive at a consensus over.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, democracy is supposedly the mechanism by which these things are discussed and resolutions are found.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or if there isn't a resolution, there's honesty in saying we're in a bit of a situation here.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I think democracy um as a mechanism, as a machinery, on the face of it is working well.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: One of the figures is that something like four billion people voted in elections last year around the world.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: So there is mass participation in elections, but the outcomes are not what people are expecting or hoping for, or a decreasing number of finding um satisfaction in it.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where the mismatch is, yes.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: You you're the paper that that you wrote, and we can, I suppose we can reference it without it being uh uh available uh on demand for for listeners and viewers, but you hinged your paper on a report from the Economists Intelligence Unit, which effectively had said that democracy is broadly working okay.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh some countries are a little bit more authoritarian than others, and they should do a bit less of that.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they were pointing to the usual suspects that are pointing towards Hungary and some other Central and Eastern European countries.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I think people can spot within the news cycle that perhaps that's a bit too much of a um uh an optimistic spin to put on it, given that we can see in our own country of the United Kingdom that Labour have delayed two rounds of local elections since they've come to power.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: They they point to technical reasons for this, but likely they're doing so because they know they'd lose on current polling numbers.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um we've got German politicians and the political class that are attempting to ban the increasingly popular alternative for Deutschland, um, the AFD from running.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've had Belgium over many years putting a cordon sanitary around the popular Vlaams Belang, that also right wing.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: National Rally is always attempted to be isolated in France's demonization policy, keep them behind closed doors.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Romania cancelled elections, and and yet this this same organization um has said that democracy seems to be doing okay.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: What why do you think an organization that would do that kind of research would come out thinking that when you could go and pick up the paper and find those examples quite easily?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, I think um I mean I I uh you you you mentioned the Economist Intelligence Unit.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: I want to give it a little bit of credit as well, because in its uh Democracy 2024 report, which came out, I think, in roughly February this year, it did actually go through quite an honest analysis of why there was such a mismatch between technocratic working of democracy, some of the exceptions that you're talking about, the edge cases, let's say, of parties which are either they're inside the democratic uh perimeter or they're placed outside the demo the democratic perimeter.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'd want I'd like to come back to that a little bit later in the conversation.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but um even the EIU um in its in its report said this dissatisfaction is is rising very sharply.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's been rising for 50 years on a steady gradient, and then it then there was a there was a turning point, um, or at least a a um uh an uptick in how quickly dissatisfaction was rising in the early part of this century, and very rapidly, uh very rapidly now.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it came up with, I think, quite an elegant framework, um, a sort of set of categories or areas of consideration.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: It talked about things like the choice deficit, um uh where where so many of the mainstream parties are largely converging on a technocratic ticket.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so-called third-way, maybe Tony Blair's famous third way, a sort of convergence of state and private interests and so on.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um equally, it's sort of choice deficit.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: When you look at the main party's offerings in this country and elsewhere, they're not so very uh different.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think also, um, and we get into sort of cleavage politics, that the parties are uh are representing, I think, increasingly narrow sections of the overall population, leaving very large swathes um effectively politically dispossessed.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and even things like uh citizenship deficit, that's another category that they use.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: What is the participation in society of uh citizens by various measures, not just voting, but civic um participation.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um one of the one of the uh features of the last 15 years in this country, ironically, after the big society initiative of um Cameron, um, is that um volunteering has fallen off a cliff since since about 2013-2014.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Many fewer people are engaging as citizens in civic activities for the betterment of the citizens around them.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it diagnoses that.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's one other large category, equality deficit, which broadly covers economic uh and economic malaise, a very, very obviously increasing um uh increasing disparities between the haves and the have nots, you know, which um which um uh leads some many people to look for radical, very radical um uh economic alternatives, you know, bordering on Marxism and the like.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I I like that framework.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: I took issue with it um um from the um in in my research.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And did and and the thing that is quite obvious is that there is an ideological underpinning to that categorization, which is uh a sort of um liberal conception of the individual as an atomized individual.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they may be categorized as citizens, but they are citizens by dint of them having their vote or certain rights.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's not by dint of them being part of a group.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And there is no measurement of sense of affiliation within a particular uh grouping, whether a nation or whatever the unit of of of um governance is.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that by that missing, that's very telling.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: It it's it's uh it it it is uh it is a missing part of the entire um framework for assessment, uh which which uh which I think is a much deeper yearning inside individuals to have put right.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: You you uh and I have already mentioned that there's dissatisfaction, it's profound, and you said that for the last fifty years it's been rising.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you've alluded to a few reasons as to why that might be but w what do you think it is about the last fifty years?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate there's lots to pick at there, whether it's the changing political landscape to the economics, to the demographics, and all of those things, but what what what what do you think has been the driver behind this rising disaffact dis dissatisfaction which doesn't seem to go away?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Goodness.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know quite whether there's a single underlying cause.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so maybe it is a bunch of a bunch of different features that may or may not be related to each other.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I do think, um without necessarily wanting to become too overly philosophical about it, is um this postmodern return which which questions uh questions meaning fundamentally, questions uh structures, questions concepts, questions ideas.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the one of the things I would I would observe personally is is uh what I would call loss of narrative, the loss of the ability of politicians, leaders to lay out a narrative, a a an inspiring narrative that touches um the hearts as well as the minds of um of people.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if you don't if you can't give a if you can't offer a narrative, if you can't offer a story, I think then you're reduced to effectively sort of technical lists of ways in which you might experience life getting better, a little bit of an uptick in in um, I don't know, the convenience of travelling or of um of other amenities, um, which satisfy people, you know, in the minute, um, but don't give them a a sense of belonging, a sense of progress, a sense of of real participation, I suppose.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I think that's I think that's quite uh quite um a deep and pervasive quite a deep and pervasive problem.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what it means also is that uh all of the attempts of the politicians to inspire um just rings hollow.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds insincere, it sounds fabricated.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now just to give a couple of an example.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: So uh one of the books that I touched on in my research was um by Francois Faure, who was looking at the reasons why the attempts of the European Union to inspire people through narrative completely failed.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: He identified three distinct waves of um narrative that the European Union has tried.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of them is the Europe of rights.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So every citizen in the European Union has a certain right of values, attempting to come up with these mythical values that uh everyone instinctively, you know, universal values that everyone wants to live by, or of the way of life, the practical way of life.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's all founded.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I I a phrase I've just captured from Foray's narrative, he said, well, the reason why fundamentally is that the European Union is an elite-driven political process relying largely on technocracy and without and with very limited symbolic resources.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that to me was a very striking phrase, which actually I think you could port into the constituent countries, also Britain, and say, and if you think about the narratives over the last, I don't know, 20, 25, 30 years, I think in Britain, say maybe from the major government onwards, there was a loss of narrative and and um the inability to use the symbolic resources that um that that might previously have been available.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Things like patriotism, things like tradition, things like um uh a sense of neighborliness.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think I I think that's quite I do think that's quite pervasive.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I think alongside that, I'll throw one more thing and then pause, is that I think there's there's a lack of political honesty.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: So within my party, the SDP, we've been thinking a lot about obviously about political honesty and how um and and the things that have gone wrong as a result of it.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: The loss of um a capability to do planning long-term, for instance.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: So everything becomes much more short-term, consumption-based, extractive, rather than investing truly for the future.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the themes that we're we're thinking about.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think by by trying to satisfy very near-term desires, I think that is that is that is almost the micro version of this macro loss of narrative.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Feed yourself today, because tomorrow doesn't have very much meaning.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: As you were talking there, I was I was I was meditating on the the point you made earlier about there being the liberal conception of democracy that's been driving most of these things.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if anyone goes to read into liberalism and uh its contents and discontents, uh th they will find that its drive is to free off anything that would stop you from uh achieving the utmost freedom to do whatever it is that you want, and with that you get a dissolution of um traditions, rights, customs, um, and also any story which might be potentially exclusionary or all those things that we've become so familiar with.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that that um takes me on to a an article I read of an SDP party member, Rod Liddell, in The Spectator recently, where he he started to talk about the um the dissatisfaction of the British populace with the recent prime ministers.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: He said, you know, Keir Starmer, most unpopular prime minister on record, before that Boris Johnson, oh no, so before that Rishi Sunak, before that, Liz Trust, before that Boris Johnson, before that Theresa May, and it's just kept on reaching new lows.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: He said, There's something wrong with all these people, but there's something wrong with us.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I did uh bridle it that a little bit, insofar as I thought, well, I agree, but also they represent something that no one particularly wants.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: But just trying to link this to the point you're talking about, about having a lack of narrative, is that maybe there is something wrong with us, but maybe that thing that's been wrong with us has effectively been that we have been denuded of all the things that make meaning.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so everything, like you say, that is getting put in front of us seems like it is not going to be particularly inspiring.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to fix the issues that we can see, whether it's things you've mentioned, the rise in crime, the last the lack of um belonging or a decreasing belonging, because the demographic changes are just so great.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh whether it's the continual diminishing of your own home culture and history, which I would say at this point has been so denuded of any meaning that people don't really know what it is.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had to learn it myself, basically in my twenties.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that symbolism you're talking about just lacking around any narrative.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I'm flipping from Britain to the EU here, but just as a interesting anecdote, is I remember being in Berlin, I think I was 2017 or something, and I found myself sitting in one of the main squares in uh the city centre, and there was this pro-EU rally on, and basically on the stage that had been erected, um, there was the European Union flag, and they had Beethoven's Ode to Joy playing, which is the anthem of the EU.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just lots of people dancing around in a circle holding hands.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I say lots of people, it was just a few people who were there doing the organizing, and lots of people staring on quizzically at the stage, and there was lots of exhortations, come on, come and get involved.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And no one did because it looked bizarre.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I even me at that point, who was pretty staunch, pretty staunch Romainer and quite a progressive liberal, I was looking on at that going, this seems utterly uninspiring.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And um, bringing it back to Britain, I've got found myself reading a whole bunch of books recently that were written around wartime that are talking about the history of the nation.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of them, Arthur Bryant's Makers of the Realm.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the first chapter, he's he is talking about the industriousness of the Saxon.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the the type of island that they that they came to and the things that they did, and how over time all of the um institutions were built alongside and through conflict and cooperation with the Celtic fringe, and how that true diversity kind of worked.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't get any of that anymore.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: You no one even really has an understanding of that.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I imagine at some point in the past, around that time, maybe before the Cultural Revolution hit education, which Peter Hitchens would talk about, that people people did actually know their history.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: They they could I'm not talking about, you know, jingoistic, everyone's just on message, just all for whatever the elites did in the past.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: There would have been dissenters, of course, but people would have known the history of the country and felt like they were a part of something.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas now, uh, I feel like people's roots have been pulled out.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so to get back to the Rod Little point, I think there is something wrong with this.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's because it's been forced upon us through all of the state activity uh and the the private sector activities that's taken place over the last fifty, sixty years.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: But would you agree with with that, or is that just a a ma uh the ramblings of a madman?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not at all, not at all.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think I agree with it in in total.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that strikes me as you're as you're talking, so I've lived in Ealing in West London for, well, 35 years now.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've lived in London most of my life.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think for the most part it's a wonderful part of the part of the country, part of the world to live in.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I found myself at a at a um party last christmas um and talking to um the the the mother of a school um mate of my son's from and she was from Spain.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And she and she said well in Spain we have a an extremely strong sense of culture, sense of national identity, symbolic resources to use that phrase again.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and she said I've lived in England for 10 or 15 years always in healing and this is not about her this is this is about what she's found.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And she said I don't know what British culture is.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what English culture is because because it's because it it doesn't exist before my eyes.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: I never hear about it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Does it really exist?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I found myself I found myself quite it was it was quite hard to say well well in fact uh on one level it was very easy to say yes there is a sense let's say let's say limit to England for for a little while there is a huge English um folklore um you know aside from literature and so on you know folk singing local customs and so on um and they still exist.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're under the kosh at the moment, you know, even in their own as it were natural environments.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: But somewhere like London which is so predominant has has effectively ejected all sense of connection with its hinterland.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so unless this Spanish family chose to immerse itself through I don't know you know getting into a a car and and and and immersing itself in English country life or provincial life or you know pubs and local town squares and so on, it would have no sense of it.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's not transmitted into the city.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is one of the obviously one of the um uh trends that there's been the urbanization the um uh the uh heterogeneity within those cities um uh whether it's happened naturally through um uh you know very very large scale movements of populations and so on or whether actually at the margin it has been deliberately done you know the deliberate forgetting of history deliberate cutting off from customs a deliberate denigration um because they're seen somehow to be in the past they somehow seem to be unhelpful towards a larger universalist ideal um and I think um I think one of the secrets one of the secrets of the future one of the yes is is is a is a is a systematic rediscovery of that first of all first and foremost by those who are themselves practicing it but somehow a retransmission even into these uh deratinated cities so that um it's impossible to s for for this uh let's say this particular individual a dear friend to say it's it's been lost now she chose to link it to the spiritual side of things she identifies that Britain is further ahead of Spain in in losing a sense of faith which he she says strongly underpins a national culture a local identity uh which to me is ironic in itself because of because let's say Christianity is a universalist um creed you know it is for everyone you know um but um I think that there's a way in which um in the past it um it has been able to and still today it's been able to support nurture enrich and and um give permission to local expression of culture and a local pride without it becoming exclusionary um to those who don't happen to be belong to it so maybe these are the uh ramblings of a of a of a of another madman um but those are some of the reflections that come to me from from somebody's individual comment um and a sense and a sense of I don't know regret on my part that I wasn't able to say you just haven't noticed you know just look over there you will find a huge richness there's a there's a bafflement to preventing it.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yes well when I had a conversation with David Starkey earlier on in the year he said what whenever any visitors come to England he he takes them to a a parish church and he takes them to the the the nearest cathedral so they can have that sense of history and all the rest of it.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he he himself as a as a a non-believer says that when he enters these places he does feel something but he he feels the the historical attachment to the Englishmen that have gone before the people that have built this place that have prayed in this place and that usually these things these places have have been these core locations for either just the quiet lives of lives of faith or really big things like the Temple church in London being the place that Magna Carta was spun out of that the Declaration of Independence ended up being spun out of you know the those kinds of people frequenting it and Christianity and the way it melded with the English culture which is which is unique and which someone like Alan McFarlane will show people as unique as an anthropologist have melded with the culture and turned it into our our very own code by which we we live and it's informed everything from our our rights and our duties and obligations and laws and all of those things.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I I do find that the commercialisation of the South East in particular really has hollowed out quite a lot of that.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I've I've lived down there there myself and I've got family that live down there as well and I think to a great extent a lot of daily life is keeping up with the Joneses and there's lots of greasy pole climbing uh in the on the corporate ladder for those who are within that percentage of the population who who are doing that or it's just a you know Neil Postman entertaining ourselves to death kind of thing and there's no sense of the kind the city that they're walk that people are walking around and and what it's about and the people who built it it's now just badged as by the current mayor a global city and it's open to everyone which then kind of means it belongs to no one but if you do that then you're unable to really get under the skin of those things and so you have newcomers like the Spaniard you've mentioned come and they've got absolutely no sense of what's going on because they've got people in positions of power saying it's everyone's and everyone built it and we're running around busy but with an outlook calendar trying to fill up our bank accounts which I do think is is definitely more of a south eastern thing and it's kind of sucked in a lot of the periphery as well you know peep places in Kent uh they've become commuter towns whereas Kent itself has its own rich history and uh local um um people that have been inspiring through time and who've been whatever that there's there's all these places you can go and see but we're just not really aware of it.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh it's a it's a it's a great shame and I think you're right something does need to be rein reinvigorated.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about reseeding the cities with people who have that sense.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I but I I was invited recently to an event next month for about the state of education and how things need to change and this, that and the other and it's cross party and I kind of have a sense that it's going to be a lot about getting the grades back up and improve literacy and numeracy.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think we need something more than that you know I I I feel like someone with great vision and you spoke to me about this at a friend's birthday party recently needs to come along and actually start creating schooling that is in that classical Christian sense which is basically what everyone was taught from after the great literacy boom or according to following the great literacy boom and give people a sense of who what the nation is who built it but also all of those things which people have had imparted upon them through Western civilization which built it helped them understand the water in which they swim we need that kind of vision that kind of King Alfred vision like that school you pointed me to to do it because no one seems to do it.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's just tinkering around in that technocratic mindset like let's fiddle around with the spreadsheets and how do we get better outcomes and better pay and this, that and the other that's fine, it's great, it's important, but it can't be the only thing because again it gets back to that whole denuded of meaning No, yes again I I I completely um I completely agree with you.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think um one of the um I think one of the challenges I mean back maybe back to the the the contemporary political scene a little bit and the loss of narrative one of the one of the things I observe with with great interest obviously is the is the is the development of uh Reform UK as a party you know moving from being a protest party um about one issue to now trying to position itself as a government um a government um in waiting and I'm I'm I uh we we I think um uh I speaking for myself I think that the should you know traditional old two-party system needs not just a good spanking it needs absolutely shattering so that it can never reform into the hegemony that it has so undeservedly um held um you know latterly at one point it was I think a way a reasonably worthy structure but I just don't think it can hold anymore.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the questions I would one of the th one of the observations I would make and one of the reasons I'm in the party I'm in I suppose is is um the essential question um how do you factor in the value of community without reducing it to yet just another is it were economic or commercially um um exploitable concept um so that it's not just like a heritage thing um which is another marketing gimmick how do you make it real and I think um one of the without necessarily going into a big uh thing about this you know one of the one of the upside one of the whilst there were I think a number of upsides during the necessary upsides let's say during the Thatcher era it utterly lost um sight of the value of communities the value of social cohesion um and uh you know there was a lot of despoliation that that went on that we are still um still recovering from so to the extent that that was a um you know a a um governmental manifestation of very much free market ideology you know I did do think there needed to be an economic corrective to what had gone before um but it was like throwing out the baby with the um bathwater at the other end of things and again being some slightly simplistic about this you've got once more quite an attra you know a Marxist narrative um which um is because of the economic dispossession and the fact that the new rising generations really don't have the the economic prospects um let alone the social um social environment in which to thrive you know that's becoming increasingly uh attractive and neither of those poles I think represent the the the the the the solution because I don't think either of them really gets what um the richness of community about is about the richness of belonging the richness of identity rooted identity and you I I'm convinced you can achieve such a sense of identity without becoming nationalistic to the point of jingoistic to the point of you know aggressively exclusionary and I think that's that that's why I think it's worth striving for.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I do hope that whichever uh political force has the greatest power as the next election hoves into view.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I still don't think it's that obvious which it which which what this what it what the electoral landscape is going to look like when the next election comes in there are so many variables at play.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I would be I would be absolutely um devastated if the next government effectively defaulted to being a very free market price of um everything value of nothing construct.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know one of the my my hope is that there's enough discourse of the sort that we're having you know this micro conversation but writ large at a national level to make sure that new political movements don't um don't miss the opportunity to put community to put families to put the richness of society more broadly at the heart of their um program.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well that's probably a a a good segue into how traditional cleavages within politics and the landscape have broken down.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: So before I ask you that question to to unpack is where you were talking about the the hope that we don't effectively just go down a let's go full free market liberalism once again.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh referring of course to our past with that Thatcher did some good things as Prime Minister but the things which you and your party leader William Cleuston will say were not so good was look at the price of deindustrialization.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: We might have got some more cheap goods but look at look at the the wreckages that were left behind in our post-industrial towns and cities and they are there for all to see for anyone who bothers to go and look at them and if you don't want to go and look at them look at the data with regards to joblessness and all the rest of it.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's really not good.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: And also then you just got to look at our national assets we sold an awful lot of them off our businesses have been sold off to American conglomerates.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: There really isn't that much family silver less left.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if we continue on down that route it feels like it's just going to be a continual scraping of the barrel and what we'll get is and I'll bring in Paul Embury as an example is more of these um uh microcosms that he described in Despised as a as a as a man from Dagenham uh Barking and Dagenham where he watched in the course of his life through free market policies which was about free movement of labor and effectively open borders his whole community just disappear over time move out further east and a whole demographic move in and start taking in jobs with whatever industry was remaining and we'll just have more of that because we're we're trying to get lines on the graph go up.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: So with that in mind Paul Embry he's a he's a Labour man he's he he has for many years been a bit of a white voice in the wilderness there as the Labour Party became less a party of the working class and more a party of the Liberal metropolitan um and the Tories um if we're talking about two party politics have typically always represented the the high income well heel well heeled leafy parts of um Great Britain all of that seems to have broken down Stephen describe how it's broken down and and and and um and I suppose where we think party loyalty is headed yes so yes you use the term cleavage politics which is effectively the point uh the the politics of political affiliation you know who who in in political structures represents me and those like me or those with my aspirations or those with my backgrounds and the old uh back to the um uh Gilbert and Sullivan's song there's a famous Gilbert and Sullivan song that people are either born a little conservative or they're born a little liberal I can't sing it to you but uh you know it was it was an immutable law that you'd be one of those two tribes.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know um unfair and unrepresentative and elitist though both of those tribes were um they at least were identifiable they had they had identity markers and group characteristics okay deeply stratified but yes so they did and I think that's that's all gone.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: There are many academic papers and and and researches that tend in the in in the same general direction the idea of an emergence of a new elite um which is characterized um particularly by those who have had um higher education okay it's maybe an increasing proportion of people but it still forms into an elite so it's the educated in some senses versus the uh non-educated that is not just a British thing that is a Europe wide maybe west wide phenomenon uh generational divides which I think are becoming uh exacerbated hugely exacerbated with each generation that's rising um the the the uh you know I'm broadly part of one of the generations which has had it extremely good I was growing up I was born in the 1960s late 60s you know and although um I I um part of my um um coming of age was the was the 1983 you know nuclear scares and so on and the two tribes go to war era um you know it was relatively peaceful relatively prosperous blips up and down and so on you know in very very broad terms and and so on but the the the the the the the new generations just cannot hope to get on the same ladders that that that I was able to get on.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there is a big generational divide.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that generational divide is that um with the influence of education in fact as you were talking about earlier it's much more as it were transnational it's much less rooted um the sort of orientation is um is is towards uh ideologically transnational issues which I think is a big big change compared to uh you know previous generations we've already talked about the city rural um divide uh which has you know broken cleavages um and um also ethnic diversity so um uh the political affiliations have changed um a great deal with the change in um change in demographics so in in short uh um i'm I quite like this term there's been the emergence of um what uh Piketty in a paper with others called the Brahmin left you know the uh the the the sort of privileged class that uh that that um actually uh as as Joel Kotkin argues um the um is is creating a a new um a new hereditary um elite where where where offspring are born with silver spoons in their mouths because they have the means in which to perpetuate their own um uh their own predominance.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the Brahmin left um there is a um a so-called merchant right a much smaller constituency which is uh let's call it broadly the the the I mean it's it's it's a it's a it's a a simplistic characterization but but um those who um those who've achieved through uh commerce through banking through you know their own um entrepreneurialism and there's nothing wrong with all of that but but forming a forming a new elite and then I think there's a vast grouping of people who don't belong to either of those but for whom traditional labor um conservative let's say liberal democrats in there somewhere and then you've also got the progressive parties of uh of the SNP and Plyde Cymru for instance um who who just do not represent um v vast numbers of people on the right and the left which are labels I don't particularly like um um who who are who are the contra of that they're not so well educated, they tend to be the younger people.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of them tend to be on the uh, you know, more more from the um from the from the uh outside the cities and so on, um, who who feel who feel that there's no uh so that there's no cleavage that works for them.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I think um part of my answer to the question is democracy working, is the absolute blossoming of new movements.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's a phrase that's used for these um of these groupings, movement parties.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Often, you know, they are mass movements that have grown up are about a single issue, whether it's on the left or the right, uh whether you know it might be ecological concerns or it might be about displaced democra demographics.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: And these movements growing up sometimes they're aligned to a political party or sometimes there's an alliance between a movement and a, you know, a sort of an understanding.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I look at this and I think that that that that represents a very vibrant manifestation of democracy.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it isn't along the lines of the traditional cleavages.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: And none of those new groupings really have their hands on the levers of power because the barrier to entry into real political power, whether it's the first past the post system in Britain or other, as you referred to quite a bit earlier, ways in which new groupings can be excluded from the democratic environment.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: They want to create new effective electoral cleavages and these people that is their yearning.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the elites are are wanting I think slightly too readily to say no these movements are a bit outre.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: They need to be placed outside the democratic perimeter.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: We don't really want them in here because we fear or fear what they're going to do.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I think um I think it's a it's a fascinating it's a fascinating gigantic laboratory experiment.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the stakes are incredibly high obviously so you can't sort of uh can't take it too lightly but I think part of part of um one of one of the things that will decide the extent to which the next 10, 15, 20 years happen largely peacefully I think will depend on the extent to which these elites the Brahmin elites to an extent the merchant um elite embraces those they would rather not have anywhere near them and certainly wouldn't want fellow parliamentarians with them for instance.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: You made an allusion to look we've got in the next 10 or 15 years if we want to avoid things getting nasty for uh to paraphrase um we're gonna have to find a way to bridge the gap between the elites and the demos because there are lots of people whether it's David Betts talking about the the reality about potential civil war or Peter Turchin in his uh in his book End Times where he he has researched history to show that as the gap grows between elites and the demos to a certain extent and there's no going back then it ends in some kind of conflict and it's only it's only once the conflict's been had that things start to get back to normal.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: So presumably no one really wants to go and get their pitchforks out and get taked to the streets uh I would quite like to avoid it if possible.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: So so Stephen what what what has to happen for our current crop of elites to bridge the gap between them and what the demos clearly want but keep being told they shouldn't because they're all a bit stupid.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes so I think I think first and foremost it is um it is dialogue and recognition.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's a very that's a very woolly woolly phrase um just to you know r return to the point I just made I think it is absolutely essential that um the elites do not attempt to cast on the outside of the democratic um perimeter um these very large groupings because otherwise they will just have no recourse but to as you say the pitchfork.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: I would say actually there are there are some who for whom their first preference is now the pitchfork.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we're in we're in we're in a relative we're in a very unstable equilibrium if equilibrium you can even call it anymore.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think we've got very very uh very much time but I I I just to just to um yeah close on that point yes very much but I think I think also um that that these movement parties um which which is what I'm have in mind when I'm saying this they owe it also to to make them make themselves serious propositions not protest parties um so that actually that there is a there is that that they prove themselves to be valuable in the electoral space because there is a tangible um seriousness about their intent to govern properly to intent to govern properly.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean without making too many pointed observations it was interesting to see the Your Party launch you know which is a different part of the political spectrum to mine but it is a legitimate movement um but it managed it managed to give a very passable impression of a you know a self-parodying comedy about uh parties on the left at its uh at its launch event no I would say there's a lot long way to go before it presents itself seriously um and and and as it were deserves its place.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's a loaded term but deserves its place within um within electoral um politics.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I want to uh I want to just um touch on three or four two or three maybe areas um I think um that um I've said this already um um being honest being honest with the um electorate um is absolutely um absolutely critical um there has been too much um well dishonesty um um which which uh which is no longer tenable it is manifestly no longer um tenable so I don't quite know how that's going to happen I would very much want it to happen um organically within democratic politics that political voices I would say ours obviously um come to the fore with proper rooted coherent um policies and propositions um that that that that aren't a sleight of hand that just aren't a sleight of hand you know there are people who are convinced that this country is technically bankrupt already and that whatever people say um you know we're we're slight going to slide into anarchy big not least for economic reasons let alone socio-political incoherence but I want to say we're when it's not too late to return to honesty um that would mean some quite difficult adjustments um uh you know a a reorientation towards investment away from quick fixes in consumption it's something that Labour I think is congenital unable to do now it is congenital unable to say we have to find a way to uh reorient ourselves towards future benefits away from uh current consumption and such basic things as energy um and other fundamentals to our security on that point on these points I think I'll um one of the themes that I that emerged from my research and my thinking was this idea about um national interest as one of the as one of the as as a way of recognizing the demos uh as a way of representing the sort of politics around the demos because if you don't have the interests of the nation national interest at heart and that's not necessarily in foreign policy but it's about domestic security it's about um it's about um cohesion social cohesion and so on if you don't have something that gravitates towards that um and I don't see anything in Labour's political program that's heading I'm head is that's heading towards sectarianism and not towards national identity and national cohesion for instance um you um you it's a it's a fool's errand to think that democratic politics really can provide the answer.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I've talked around several themes I feel as if I've circled it a little bit but let me let me let me yes let me close in on this point of national national interest.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think to be to be serious in politics and to present democratic solutions you there has to be a rediscovery of a of a of a real national interest and that's not an ethno-nationalist thing it's not a you know it's not a um uh heading in that direction at all it is saying for a people to thrive these are the minimum conditions um that are needed economically socially culturally on on that note what I will do though just to just to add on the ethno-cultural point is uh I was just speaking to Paul Morland and Eric Kaufman yesterday that that that episode will come out um a week from from ours and we were talking about the demographics of the country and those Office for National Statistics data and projections that came out and said by the mid-2060s Britain will be a a minority white British country England will be before then because of this the state of demographic change I would actually argue uh that that somewhere in the national interest we probably do want to have a consideration for what that might look like because all of the things we've talked about with regards to history one we we know nations are are built from uh a people and it's not to say that that ethnic group um is is fixed it's not it and and it never has been through history there's always been changes around the edges and we've seen that in this country over that time but ethnic groups they've got culture they've got um their own signs and symbols and all the rest of it and all the things we've spoken about like how the English and the British peoples have used Christianity to build their own societies the reality is if we are headed into a future where the white British uh are going to end up being a minority and we can already see through the large diasporas that are growing that they are um not uh n necessarily signed up to the same um way of life so whether it's the various religious law courts that have popped up around the place like there is just some quite clearly obvious things that suggest that's not in the national interest and so I actually do think we're probably headed toward a point where for instance talking with Paul and Eric it was what do we do about this well they were talking about you really do just want to stop immigration.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know SDP say look we do need to we need to cease that we need to basically blunt the curve that there needs to be some more thinking on this because if we want England or Britain to remain anything recognizably English and British you're gonna need a majority of those people and we can argue on the percentages to to be of that ethnic group because ethnic groups carry culture and if we suddenly end up having with with even larger ones around we'll just become more like those cultures and if everyone decides that's what they want well that's what they want.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think they will do that and and that's why I think we need to smuggle that in somewhere because that will inform immigration policy it'll inform citizenship policy it'll inform benefits and welfare state and all the rest of it and that will all have a tangible impact to avoid that future which you know putting my neck on the line here I don't want that future yes so I I I I I agree with that as an absolute minimum I mean the longest standing of the party's policies on on ending mass immigration is the SDPs it's very good to see other parties finally um finally catching on um we do see absolutely absolutely the need for a societal cohesion based um based on uh that common heritage which has been um which was which is fundamentally bequeathed to those um who whose whose forebears were there Britain has been a very very generous country when it comes to um welcoming in other groupings in in in proportions um and with degrees of um let's say inherent compatibility of outlook and worldview where there can be to use a loaded term these days an assimilation um uh uh over time and I think until very recently that would there was an ambient flow that um that allowed for that it has got obviously completely out of control over the last 30-35 years um and so I think this is where this natural national interest come comes comes in again it's not an economic thing it is a socio-cultural thing um about um normal expectations and I think there need to be several waves of this there are some basic things I personally for instance would be against the very existence of of Sharia law courts I think it's anathema to the fundamental settlement of of being equal under the law about the law treating everyone the same um so that's that's one example and I that that that would be a very uh that and other other other considerations which are which are sort of boltons boltons of a sectarian future um anything that uh is necessary to avoid the um the the baking in of a sectarian future are obviously um going to be very very necessary but I think through that will then need to come um a um a a generation long as it were education um campaign together with enforcements and together with uh certain restrictions um which which bring bring about a um more of an alignment um and and not just expectations but requirements that people um people can form I think the the next year or two um is seeing very lively public debate it already is about what the nature of of of of that is um but I think um I would still say again um uh a a policy based purely on ethno-nationalist grounds um wouldn't actually yield the future that those who are advocates of it would um would would would want I think because there would be so many perverse consequences to it the the the um the um the cure would be worse than the condition as a result of it.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no doubt and that there is absolutely no reason to um try to move towards the in my opinion the the um pretty outlandish position of someone like Steve Laws uh it just effectively keep the Browns out uh it is that that that is not where this needs to go but I think understanding that there's an ethno-cultural core and you really you really do want to retain that um not out of a an animus but out of a recognition of human nature and society.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes um yes but we we this conversation as you pointed out is is ongoing and it's all coming out in the wash.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'm gonna let you go but before I do I'm gonna ask you that the the question I ask all of my guests which is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life that you perhaps thought was a fundamental um cornerstone of the universe you weren't going to change your mind on it and then what was it that made you think differently?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe there wasn't one of those things maybe it was something day to day yes I mean I I I um so I I I studied economics at university.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was an economist um by training um and I don't mind saying this was in the 1980s uh 86 to 89 um I would have been very much on the free market end um uh of of of politics the big bang in the city in 1987 or thereabouts um and I think I I I wasn't quite a a sort of um uh freedmanite or whatever fully but I think one of one of one of the things that has changed me um I happen to be a Catholic Christian so the so body of body of um uh wisdom called Catholic social teaching which is fundamentally about how we relate to our neighbor you know this personal mal morality but how you how you um how you uh associate and how you look after make sure everyone is looked after um as it were imbued in me a a conscience um which I think took me on a journey which which I wasn't so very aware of we've always been you know individually charitable giving to charity helping out in communities and so on so I've done my bit but I think it's only very very latterly that's crystallized into this um this deep political question um about the the the how to value a community without being able without without the means to price it and I think to me um if there's a big as it were political idea I'm putting it probably quite clumsily and there are far cleverer and more articulate people than I can who could articulate it and maybe deconstruct it as well.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that that that's that's that's where I am now it's not it's not um an radical individualism and a sort of trickle down thing that you know that that was was popular in the 19 um eighties um because I think um it is it is um absolute an absolutely unsustainable and um impoverished as it were um politico economic creed so I suppose that that's that's that's that's what I would um that's what I would say um you know personal conviction in there as well thank you for sharing that it was it was clearly personal Stephen it's been an absolute pleasure to welcome you on the show and looking forward to more conversations in the future keep fighting the good fight well that's kind of you John thank you so much thank you Stephen