Latest / Thinking Class / #014 - Ed West - Lessons From History: Elites, Populists, and Cultural Amnesia

Transcript

#014 - Ed West - Lessons From History: Elites, Populists, and Cultural Amnesia · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everybody.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: My guest today is Ed West.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Ed is a columnist and author who writes the wrong side of history substack.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Ed's work has appeared in many of Britain's biggest publications, and he is also the author of many books, including Saxons vs.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Vikings, Alfred the Great, 1215 and All That, 1066 and before all that, Tory Boy, Memoirs of the Last Conservative, and What We Got Wrong About Immigration and How to Set It Right, amongst other titles.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Ed and I talk about why cultural elites and the ideas they hold matter, why knowing a shared common cultural narrative is important, whether we need historical leaders, examples of historic misalignments between rulers and ruled, examples of top-down impositions of cultural change in Britain, and what Ed means when he talks about nice things and why it's okay to have them.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was a real pleasure to speak to Ed on this show, and he's someone whose ideas are likely held by many, but heard by few.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Thinking Class Ed.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I've been really excited about this since we got it in the diary.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've been an avid reader of your Substack for some time.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I came across you, I think, through my spectator reading.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I realized you had a Substack page, wrong side of his history, I jumped on there and was shocked that someone had the ability to be able to produce three posts a week, I think you you put out there.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think in an equal measure you managed to entertain, uh make hopeful, but at the same time demoralize about the things you write about.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, wide-ranging topics like London's housing crisis, Alfred the Great, um, the inability of our political leaders to learn from the past or uh whether whether uh the recent past or the distant past.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you've also recently set up something called the Canon Club, which I just think is the most wonderful idea where you're trying to introduce us moderns to Western civilization, the Western canon, because we've become a bit ahistorical.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I don't know where you find the time to do what you do, uh, but I think uh this is a good way to spend your life and put put your talent to use.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So so thank you for all of that.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's great.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love all that.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Shall I I I can just keep riffing on the fanboy stuff if you like.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um within within your posts, I think there is, I think it's fair to say there's a general undercurrent of um writing and talking implicitly or explicitly about the difference between those that rule and those that are ruled.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you do that from various points of history.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this podcast, the reason why I set it up, is also motivated by that, which I think will come out throughout the episode.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But Ed, why do you think that uh cultural ruling elites, whatever we want to call them, matter and the ideas that they hold matter?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think, well, the more the more what I read about history um sort of brings up this fact that even a small educated uh elites end up, or we pretty much always end up getting their way in terms of kind of cultural trends and then political trends.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I think this is borne out by most of the research in social sciences that if if the educate, you know, if the top 10 or 20 percent in terms of income or education uh feel strongly about an idea or are very against an idea, they they will tend to get their way.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: They would, you know, that idea will tend to become the norm.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the the kind of mass of people um don't.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, so I suppose one reason, for example, the you know, the great kind of conflict in uh British politics in the last 10 years is over Brexit, because that was a sort of for a number of reasons due to party politics, that was an issue where um something that had kind of cultural implications was put to a vote.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and in this case, the sort of sort of history's losers still had the numbers to um to win that vote, and that caused sort of huge consternation because in most cases, you know, the 48% who are more educated and and wealthier and more knowledgeable, and and you know, and I accept the you know all these kind of remain talking points that on average remain voters are probably more intelligent, and that's totally possible to me.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in most cases, though, there's you know, even you know, half of 20-48% will tend to get their way.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh and if you look at sort of you know the past history, if you look at that lesbian era, you know, we all still I mean we're very tail end of it, but there was for hundreds of years this kind of notion of um English history being very uh identified with the Protestant Reformation, and that was almost you know, that was totally embedded in English identity.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, once upon a if you went back to like the Elizabethan era, the majority, if we had a referendum on a religion in Elizabethan England, the Catholics would have still won until way into her reign, probably the 40s, uh maybe the 1580s or something.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and what was actually supported by uh uh quite a small minority, but a very educated minority in London, Cambridge, and Oxford ended up basically getting its way because the you know the masses basically fell in with their elites, and eventually got to, you know, in that case got to a point where not only was the previous majority view um sort of beaten, but it was almost redefined as being kind of deviant and and treasonous, and which in some cases it kind of came to be.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I think history is just sort of full of that um kind of a repeated pattern.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's why you know the the divide in politics now is is a kind of a generally kind of left-of-center educated class who uh sort of tend to be dominant in um in most of institutions and the kind of reaction which is populist on the right, uh, and the right, you know, the populism has been stronger on the right since the 60s in the US, but it's traditionally it's it's quite an unusual situation.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and I'm instinct I'm not very populist by instinct, really, because I I am sort of you know very uh a member of the Liberal League, like a very fringe one and a very right-wing member.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: But I you know that is my kind of background, and I do think overall uh you know sort of more educated elites are sort of generally better at running things, they're better educated.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's better to have a parliament run by very educated, intelligent people than than one that isn't.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I I also think elites can be very self-serving and and they can be prone to uh groupthink, which can make them kind of more wrong in some ways than than the sort of um the masses who don't have ideology.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the history is also full of if you look at the history of religion in the Middle Ages, then um, you know, the most fiercely kind of what we'd now regard as kind of intolerant and bigoted religious fanatics were very educated, you know, while the the the kind of the uneducated people would have had kind of heterodox views, they would have had a bit of traditional folk religion thrown in, and they didn't tend to be as strong believers as the people at the very top.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I think there is a strain of kind of intolerance and fanaticism within the elites which can make them uh misguided, uh, which is like my recurring belief about our elites.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I suppose it's this uh age-old question of whether it's possible to have an alignment of of ethos uh between uh ruling cultural elites and everyone else.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think we'll get onto that a little bit later because I think ultimately this seems to be where a lot of the uh the the what I suppose what's the right word, the umbrage that people take towards you know, whether it's the the BBC, the guardian class, um those that generally have their hands on the levers of of cultural power, they they are, I suppose, increasingly becoming known in uh popular circles or populist circles, perhaps you could call it uh as the luxury belief class, uh term popularized by Rob Henderson, which is uh you can um say that you're signed up to some beliefs that you don't actually live by yourself, um, and you impose social penalties for those that do do not um follow these luxury beliefs, and at the same time as then being penalized in society for not following them, they also have the deleterious effects of having followed them in the first place and and you haven't followed them.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's interesting that there seems to be, as you say, an intelligent class that there's always been intelligent class ruling things throughout the past, but they can be sucked into those ideological headwinds in the same way as they would dismiss those who are populists falling into line with certain ideological uh tailwinds.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean Henderson's phrase is um it's a great phrase and it's a very useful one because it's unquestionably true.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he you know, he talks particularly about things like crime, you know, defunding the police, that which is very in the US is way more popular amongst kind of educated elites who tend to live in uh less crime-heavy areas.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: And in many cases, you know, after the 2020 rise in crime, there was a lot of more privatised police forces, you know, the sort of private security firms, which you see in London.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: And you see in upper middle-class areas of London there are private security forces, and they also are the same the same areas where you see the little signs in the windows uh you know written by children about Black Lives Matters and systemic racism.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: So you know, being wealthy does kind of insulate you from a lot of social problems.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he talked another big thing about is things like you know sexual relationships, where it's a sort of status signal to be non-judgmental and support um kind of non-traditional marriage or you know, non-traditional relationships or whatever, where in reality um the the upper upper class, the upper middle class do tend to have very conventional lives.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're much more like to marry, they're much more likely to have all their children inside wedlock.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um they you know they aren't particularly kind of hedonistic in other ways in their sort of drinking and drug taking.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there is a sort of reluctance to uh to preach what they practice, as others have said.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's that kind of thing of talking the talking the 60s but walking the 50s.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I suppose as I remember one of the things I talked about is like the you know the dispersion in social values that there isn't sort of there isn't a sort of social control as there would have been 60 years ago from a kind of strict moral guidelines from that was given to everyone, but this is how you behave.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that tended to come from churches, especially in the states, but it was just kind of social convention in most countries, and everyone knows that and these are quite simple rules, and what now you have is the rules aren't kind of spelled out and they're more complicated, in fact.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: And if you aren't so um, you know, not just well educated, intelligent, but also well connected, it's harder to know what the rules for life are.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it's almost like the upper middle class kind of want to keep those rules secret to them.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: They they you know, these they live conventional lives, but that it would be really helpful if they kind of espouse that as a general policy view.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: So everyone should should aim to kind of live those lives.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, there is data on stuff like um on marriage that you know in the US, certainly lots of the kind of economic gulf is down to you know the basic decline of marriage, which again is just not entirely down to social factors.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: There are economic factors involved in the climate marriage, so it's it's not something that's kind of like fixable in the kind of easy sense.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, certain certainly, you know, each individual member of the lead, if he wants to signal that he means it's a university and is uh you know one of the one of the club, he's intended, he or she is incentivized to say certain beliefs, which for a society point of view aren't particularly helpful for the for the wide society.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a bit of a I don't know, like a tragedy the commons in that sense.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned earlier about almost wanting to keep some of these uh secrets to success, good life outcome secret.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: I I was speaking to Dr.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Rakib Asan on the show, and he uh writes and thinks a lot about social cohesion in Britain, and uh part of the conversation we got talking about the importance of personal responsibility and how it's it's a shame that that's been pulled out of uh policy making altogether because it doesn't really fit with the idea of uh the policymaking class being able to come and fix the issues.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and within that, I think I ended up inadvertently coining the term from the safety of the castle.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, those in there have decided to pull up the drawbridge.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that that is what it feels like sometimes.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose whilst we're on we're on castles, it immediately brings me to history.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you spend a lot of time thinking, writing about history, and um and I I get the sense that uh leaders are increasingly ahistorical.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose, firstly, is it important our leaders are steeped in history?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate there are ways in which this can go wrong.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know Hitler and Mussolini were famous for knowing their history and they weren't exactly good, but we also had Churchill.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm obviously going to bring him up as a Brit, but that famous speech of his, which popularized in the darkest hour, he uh starts um exhorting the British people that what we're seeking to defend is something that makes us unique.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're you know a Christian civilization, and if we are able to stand up to the Nazi the Nazi threat, then we might be able to embolden our European neighbours to do the same.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there's examples of which history is important to be able to rally a people and give them a sense of common purpose.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh do you have a view of why you think knowing our history is important and do we need historical leaders?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean you could add to Hitler and Mussolini.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean Putin is probably the biggest fan of and it's been a lot, apparently, you know, it's been a lot of lockdown reading about Paco the Great invading, conquering Ukraine.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, I agree with Domik Sambrook on this in some sense.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of history is uh it's probably quite bad for a society because historical memory can kind of um sort of bring old wounds back and and kind of trigger more conflict.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and in some senses it's almost better than that we forget about history a little bit.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean of modern leaders it's it's you know it's hard to not it's hard to look at them and just and and not be quite negative in there in comparison with um you know someone like Churchill who had this kind of sense of Britain's long history and its destiny.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder I wonder though if if you know history has become quite it's kind of two things because on one level kind of historical ignorance is is quite widespread.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um and on another it's kind of on the sort of subculture has never been more popular.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's I mean rest history is a kind of class good example of that.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: But there's also you know, on documentaries and books, history is there's a sort of avid interest in history.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: I suppose what is missing is a shared narrative, which I guess hasn't been around commonly for a good 60 or 70 years.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Certainly wasn't when uh when I was at school, which is you know, the kind of history of the of the country as taught through its sort of royal family.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's kind of common funny thing.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: I always is when you know people on Twitter are all sort of like whatever, so talk about oh, this is you know, this is not history you're taught at school, and they always have this kind of idea that all the history teachers, when we were growing up, were all sort of these kind of right-wing fanatics who had pictures of the British Empire on the wall.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I just think, right, how old are you?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like 110 years old for that anyone my age, or even older.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: It just hasn't been hasn't been the story.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that I suppose that sense of Britain, or I suppose you could say England, kind of the two are sort of mixed up, it was very much tied to that kind of post-Tudah Protestant and you know imperial uh sense of self, which is you know not just unfashionable, but it would be basically impossible to sort of rehash that.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: But I do wonder, I mean I d again, I think these things are confined.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I imagine there is probably a big gap in knowledge between people, for example, who went to like old public schools and went to state schools.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um unless they've changed a lot.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I remember meeting someone maybe in my early 20s who'd gone to a public school and he kind of casually measured Piers mentioned Piers Gaverson in a conversation.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know him that well, and I just thought like literally no one who went to my school would know who that is.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's just such it's such it would be such an obscure reference to the average person.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: But maybe I mean maybe there was a time when you know someone like that or like Warwick Kingmaker, you know, gets mentioned in a paper show by Mark, who's like obviously a greed, would be a would be part of that kind of common cultural knowledge.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I just I just don't think that's the case.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: One thing is that history is kind of as a is sort of seen as morality tale now, which I think is a really bad thing, uh, which is why the particular focus on um you know like the story of the rise of Nazis.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: We all did that at school, and I I mean I think everyone still does it at school, which is like history should be taught as like, oh, we should learn from history, and it's like you know, as a kind of never-again thing.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: But I think we should just you know the point of history is firstly it should just be interesting and fun.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: But secondly, as a kind of national narrative, I think it's quite important to understand, you know, where things come from and why you know our country kind of does matter and why our country is like as it is.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, the kind of thing I I'm interested in is particularly that's weaving a narrative from Alfred the Great, and then through things like Magna Carta, and then the kind of political conflicts of the 17th century, which explain so much of why we are.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that's kind of lacking.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: I I think particularly in in I I see that when you know when I'm sort of debating people about multiculturalism is another example, that there is a complete like absence of thinking about the historical examples of this, um, and the link between multiculturalism and an empire and the the difficulties it's always had with sort of liberal norms.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: I just think people are completely unaware of this and kind of willingly unaware of this.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um which I just find I just find baffling.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's like surely like you should if you're if you have a policy direction, you should surely like study where it's happened before, so you can have some sort of idea of what you're expecting.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't know, I guess I guess that just doesn't exist as a mindset.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's the um assumption that because there's a lot of um moral uh baggage attached to it, usually with a positive valence around some of these policy goals, um, that they're just taken on as being inherently good.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think anyone who sees anything as inherently good, or even for that matter, inherently evil, once it's set in your mind, there's almost no point in going and looking into it because it's just good, right?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh it's certainly something that has been missing for quite some time, uh, hence that we look around and go, Oh, there's quite a few issues going on here in various modes of life because of all sorts of policy goals.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: That that point you make about the common cultural historical knowledge and a narrative.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've experienced that myself.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I went to a state school in Northumberland, and whilst on my dad's side of the family, he uh his his father was an archaeologist, and so I'd have snippets of Hadrian's wall um knowledge about Roman times.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Every now and then we'd go out in the car and he'd point at stuff and go, Oh, your granddad found that, and this is what it was.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it was, you know, in yeah, it's uh it is really it is really cool, and but I didn't really start looking into it until I was an adult, you know.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, when you're younger, you're just a bit like okay, yeah.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: There goes dad on one of his his his rambles again.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um my kids for me when I'm taking them around churches and cathedrals.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe one day they'll appreciate it's fascinating.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, uh well, I live in hope for you because uh it it it's so enriching when you do discover these things, and I know certainly as I'm Northumbrian, but on both sides of the family, you know, that on one side there's someone who goes back to you know, and I found all this out much later on, as uh the name comes from apparently the legendary name comes from Ivar the Boneless, son of Ivar Makiva from the Hebrides, and you're like, Whoa, when you find that out, that's cool, even if he was a bit of a warlord.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um today's society, but yeah, exactly.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: We became good in the end, seemingly.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we felt we fell into line with the uh the the Christianizing culture, which certainly was much more gentle in its outlook, and then on my mum's Side, there's East Anglian uh down to you know over a thousand years, where apparently uh a king from a small uh Norwegian island came over, uh, his surname was uh Farthing.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So actually there's an Anglo-Saxon Farthing line, but there's a Viking Farthing line, and then they became treasurers for the local uh rulers.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and anyway, they were dispossessed when the Normans came over.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, you could see it in the doomsday, but um so but but once I learned these things, and then even learning about the history of Northumberland's like St.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Cuthbert and why all of a sudden I started to see why everything was named after Cuthbert and Aiden and who they were and the impact they had, and stories about the war, you know, praying to St.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Cuthbert and bring the the the fog at the fog of water and put the Nazis away.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's all amazing stuff.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when I had those, I I I found that I started to well, one, this kind of internationally minded, what amorphous cosmopolitanism started to melt away a bit.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I found that decisions that I was making, the way I was seeing in the world was much all rooted locally, socially, nationally, and and I started to actually have a sense of what you were talking about, why it's important to know what the country is and where it's come from and how it differs.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's um yeah, it's important, and I mean, I think it's healthy to have a sense of like rootedness in that sense, and and it's also important to just have a kind of common culture, uh I suppose a common cultural language that not isn't based in like Harry Potter and superhero films and stuff like that.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and that's what the Canon Club is.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's what the idea.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And we've had two so far where um it's just matter I'm really keen to do more, and there is definitely demands, and and they all sold out very quickly.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's just about time, but I found um, you know, I mean, history I've always read a lot about it, so I've always known a bit about it, but lots of more cultural things, you know, poetry, literature, and arts, music.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: I uh I'm kind of got to the age where I'm just embarrassed, there were so many holes.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I think a lot of people will feel like that, and it would be nice to have that common culture so that you know you could I don't know, reference Wagner or something, and you know, someone someone somewhere might understand what you're talking about.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it wouldn't be me, but um yeah, I I feel that in in when the common culture is kind of amorphous and also kind of quite low brow as well, then then it's quite important for us to kind of remember, you know, so to remember that kind of common cultural heritage.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and perhaps that's the where you start to get the alignment that we seem to be missing between rulers and ruled, which we've referenced so far.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that that that chasm uh between uh rulers and ruled at the moment, as we talked about, seems to be as big as it's ever been.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any times in history when elites have been better aligned to the masses and have served them?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't I mean uh trying to find a positive example.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think we we we're in quite um I mean I'm really criticized for sort of being nostalgic about the Victorian era, but I definitely think if if before the Second World War, before the first war, there was definitely a kind of cultural alignment across social classes in England, even if there was a a huge economic um divergence between people.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean in the Victorian era, I think you're the average uh MP or as the had social values that were pretty similar to most of the population.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that was probably reflected in the sort of social improvements that did happen in the I mean you could it's certainly the case that sub 70 years ago, if you have it, you could probably you know if you're an average voter in an average city, you could probably guarantee that both the you know the two party candidates you're voting for would have pretty much similar values to you on a lot of issues.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um the main division would be over you know you know economic redistribution.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: But on some moral values, that'd be very different.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what's happened is is that um you know moral values have just diverged a lot.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a wider spread um across society about what people would view, what we would believe.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and there can be even within parties, like huge divergences on sort of basic moral issues about what is right and wrong.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: So it does become um it becomes harder for representative to sort of sort of take the side of other people they're representing when they they kind of have such different worldviews.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I that's why the the analogy is really with religion.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's that historically people have not populations have have not accepted rule from relig different religious groups, even um however benevolent they are, and it's always been a source of conflict, you know.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you go back, the sort of ruling sort of warlords, the tribes who end up conquering other people tend to adopt their religion because it's it's almost impossible to rule people unless you sort of share a religion.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, you just have a sort of situation where uh kind of similar, like for example, the crusader states or the the Anglo-Irish ruling elites in islands where there is just a constant um division between the groups.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: And when you have really, really different sort of social values between a ruling class and the population, then the kind of sort of level of sympathy between the two is isn't is kind of unsustainable.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean the counter-argument is that is that eventually the population's large start to adopt the beliefs of the elites, which does tend to happen.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's happened in every society because people tend to mimic those those sort of social higher up the social ladder.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and and they tend to, in many societies, you know, adopt their religion as well.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've I'm looking at Spain, Spain became mostly Muslim because people just sort of adopted Islam as the as the kind of high-status religion.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's a bit of persecution, but not that much.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I mean, and that similar thing happened in Egypt.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, if there are incentives to adopt the ruling ideology, then more and more people will do that.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: And they're and on there obviously are in in our society at the moment.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so maybe the idea, you know, the idea, the kind of modern weakish idea is that everyone will just become more liberal over time, uh, and then and then they sort of win.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, I'm slightly skeptical of that.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I'd agree.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose uh our our ruling elite has um shorn itself, I suppose, is the religious aspect to it.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose not that long ago you would have found people being broadly Anglican, having bathed in that for a couple of centuries.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and now I wonder whether we've well, I wonder whether, in some respects, be there's something about the fact that we ended up with a multi-faith society in a way that we hadn't had before, besides Protestant and Catholic enmity historically, um, that um led our elites, despite obviously coming across a cultural headwind, which was saying religion's a load of rubbish anyway, and them going, well, it's not so not so gauge to be religious anymore.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: But whether it's almost shorn of itself of that and gone for the full full-blooded secularism and liberalism as the well, let's do this because this way we're not causing you know religious divide.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: But it feels like that liberal um project based on where we're at now um is probably no no longer tenable.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes you wonder where you go from here with regards to the ideology that is generally held by the elites when so many people, regardless of faith, background, and cultural background, seem to be not aligned with it anymore.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And uh will will they feasibly take up those luxury beliefs, as it were?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't seem obvious that they will.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there are sorts of examples.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you could you could pick and choose examples where uh uh you know elites have have imposed basically their view on on the public, and in some cases um they've been successful, uh, and in some and but there are other examples where there haven't been success.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the comparison between sort of the you know the gay rights movement, which did tend to be originally kind of quite a patrician thing, and it wasn't sort of democratically won, it was basically um sort of liberal MPs originally, and then uh you know, up to gay marriage where that where it was basically imposed by the courts with the backing of corporations.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that has uh undoubtedly won.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then the comparisons were made with sort of the transgender movement, which and there was a kind of explicit warning saying you know, if you oppose this, you'll look like the sort of bigots who who oppose gay rights.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't think it's I think the two are sort of very, very different.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: And in l in Britain, at least, certainly, the transgender movement has kind of started to suffer setbacks in that the public have turned against it.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um and what looked like a sort of something that was on the right side of history that would triumph is now increasingly you know uh viewed as quite extreme and and a and a big mistake.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and and in you know, in the case of children who've had surgery, or might be considered an incredible scandal.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then you know there are lots of uh areas where uh progressive ideas kind of had setbacks, you know, crime, for example, in the 60s, it's the American public turned very much against liberal uh criminal justice policies.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Because where something has obviously tangible uh and obvious downsides, the public will turn against it.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: And when there's like you have a crime explosion like America did in the late 60s, then that provokes you know a huge reaction against it.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think one one reason that kind of liberal ideas are more successful than the 1990s in the kind of Blair Bill Clinton era than they were in the 60s, where they led to Nixon is it was less there was less violence, it was less, it was less uh extreme sounding, it was kind of more moderate, and so they were able to push their ideas um kind of more subtly.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: And the 90s was a great period of kind of liberalizing views in both the states and Britain on many issues.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: On the the most, you know, the most explosive issue is probably regards to I don't, you know, I would say diversity immigration of Islam, in the sense that you have a sort of three-way culture war there, which makes things very complicated.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, Muslim immigration and integration has happened in the background of this kind of big divide between conservatives and liberals in Western Europe.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um and liberals, particularly sort of like more radical liberals who are sort of more kind of pro-free movement, have sort of seen Muslims as natural allies against the conservative movements because they they have uh they are more likely to have a sort of more pro-cosmopolitan worldview, um, and and you know, they tend to vote for centre-left parties.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: But it was always going to be a very, very uneasy alliance because um on kind of social issues, most Muslims in Britain are much more conservative than the average uh you know white British conservative.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, they've always seen conflicts about teachings in schools on this issue, and now since October the 7th, there's obviously much more of a an overt problem with violence and a threat of violence, which uh yeah, people are more waking up to.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean the the problem is that liberals are aren't in control of most institutions, including education.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think conservatives are probably better at actually integrating people because they have a more uh a more obvious sense of what the nation means and what you should do to integrate into the nation.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it comes, you know, it comes down to what I said about that clear rule books.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: If you look at migration in the 19th century, stuff like the Jewish free school was established, and it was established by the long-established British Jewish community, which dated back to Cromwell's time, uh, and they were worried that all these uh kind of Russians arriving would would cause problems for them because they were so sort of different looking, and and their behavior and their sort of norms were just seemed so out of kilter with British norms.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so their idea was well, we'll pay, we'll get these guys educated and we'll turn them into English gentlemen, and that was their actual phrase, we'll make them an English gentleman.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: But it was much easier because you knew what in English, what what an English gentleman meant then.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was a much easier rule book.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: And if you wanted to enter British society, there were sort of certain cultural norms which would kind of help you access it, and it was most importantly led by uh sort of social leaders who who expected things like patriotism to be uh what among those norms.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, today, you know, if you want to signal that you've been to universal, you've made it, you you espouse sort of progressive views, including kind of anti-British views.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's you know, that's how you rise up in society.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a kind of very it's very hard to integrate into that um into that kind of club because that the rules are so unclear and unambiguous.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so this kind of three-way kind of culture war makes makes things like very complicated.
• 35:41
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• 35:43
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• 35:54
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• 36:12
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• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, thanks for sharing your support, and enjoy the rest of the show, pass mate.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: The cultivation of the English gentleman.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I spoke about this with uh an academic at the University of Leeds on one of the episodes, and I I brought up the um the the the very well documented differential between worldview between academics and uh sorry, between liberals and conservatives in the academic world used to be three to one about 50 years ago in favor of liberals, and then now it's something like nine to one.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I said this surely must be a problem because you know that was if that was a it's very bad analogy, but if that was a cordial, that's a very weak juice there.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really um giving people uh a look at a wide range of worldviews, but also he was writing a bit about epistemic humility and um uh particularly in the context of business schools, and yeah, in the paper that he was arguing for, there was lots of talk about the UN sustainable development goals, and they were all internationally minded policy goals.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I'd said to him, uh I don't watch a lot of Tally, but I was watching the the film Chariots of Fire a few days before, and uh it was about Howard Jacobson, the the Jewish runner and Eric Liddell and his rivalry with him, Eric Liddell being from Edinburgh.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh what was really interesting was they both went to Cambridge, and the Dons um in the Cambridge College that they went to spoke about how it was their duty to um create Englishmen from that point you were making it.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: You you're much more able to point to those.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And even Howard Jacobson himself said, My dad's a Lithuanian Jew, but he absolutely wants me to become an Englishman.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And as you pointed out, is that if you want to show you made it now, if you're in an elite position, including in many of the universities, it's more of a cool thing to be anti-British, anti-English.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think you are right about the the integration point.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think post-October 7th, I think conservatives probably do have an easier uh sell in so far as they can point to what it is that you're supposed to stand for and cohere around that.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I know James Orr, Professor James Orr from um Oxford, has been quite vocal on this.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he was on a trigonometry podcast with Stephen Hicks.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: And James Orr took the side of conservatism, Stephen Hicks took the side of liberalism, and he said, Look, all the things you're saying are great, Stephen, uh, about liberalism and what it's brought to us.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: But when you see what you see on the streets of Britain now and the social cohesion issues that we have, so if you don't have a story to tell, if you're not able to say what people are meant to cohere around and how it is meant to relate to one another, and you like don't point to anything because that's seen as an oppressive out-of-date story, and we don't need that, or that people don't even believe in the ideals of liberalism anyway.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: How is it that you can ever expect to govern them?
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I I don't know whether there's ever a prospect of it somehow swinging around, perhaps not in our lifetime.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's it's hard to to imagine it.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: No, yeah, it's uh and it's hard, it's hard to sort of come at solutions, really.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's it's a sort of long-running problem, and and it's uh uh not going away.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked a bit about the top-down imposition of cultural change that haven't gone down too well.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um there any other examples from history?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh some from Britain, where there's been a top-down cultural change project that has had negative consequences for us and how we live.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um the thing is most top-down change uh has been successful, so it's hard to um it's hard to say whether it's been you know good or bad.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, I mentioned the Reformation.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I mean, even before the Reformation, there were Reformations before that, um, the church leaders and stuff, you know, in uh sort of changing medieval society by uh by sort of making it more Christian, I suppose you would say.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's always being the people who have access to literacy and knowledge who have been um in charge of these rules.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: I suppose you know in more, you know, the if if you look at the age of revolutions, which starts in the in the in the 18th century, then the story has generally been about uh kind of kind of radicals imposing ideas which tend to get rejected, and that leads to reaction, and then some someone comes along who will be essentially conservative but you know accept some of the revolutionary changes.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what I mean.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm you know I'm talking about Napoleon, obviously, but the I mean that's what successful conservative leaders tend to do.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: They because all you know, all revolutions, including the sector revolution of the 60s, conservatives will always accept some bits of it.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: They always say, yes, there are problems with the old system, of course, that's why everyone wants change.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: But it's about accepting you know what is what is good and and and what has gone too far.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think what we have a problem now in a little bit is that we had this kind of big revolution in the 60s, and we've had a sort of since then there have been sort of spurts where it's become more had more energy and got and the 1990s, the early 90s was was one kind of age of political correctness, um, which kind of laughed at at the time, but it you know, political correctness success succeeded in the sense that it helped to massively spur the imbalance in academia, you know.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you said it's I think it's nine to one, but amongst younger, younger academics it's far higher.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: And in the states and some areas, it's almost like 100 to 1, and history is like 35 to 1, I think, in academics between Democrats and Republicans.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: And these are stats that came before Trump.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, you after Trump, you can say, okay, maybe the Republican Party's gone a bit insane, so you know it's uh people are gonna leave it.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: But this was happening well before him, and then you know, in the 2010s, for a number of reasons to do with uh generational change and technology, there's been this kind of radical shift in in political views amongst the educated upper middle class, especially in the states, on all kinds of issues, they've they've become far, far more radical.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, there was this New York Times kind of graph the other day, which said all this polarization between Republicans and Democrats on immigration.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, the Republican thing being is that they try and sort of make the chart look like it'd been but the Republican thing have been exactly the same, and the Democrats have just gone completely um wild.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of you know kind of progressive issues, which you know turned uh referred to as woke issues.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the Democrats are that you know, upper middle class educated white Americans are way more extreme than any other segment of society.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: And the more educated you are, the more extreme you are.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that includes you know, believing stuff which is kind of quite provably incorrect, you know, the stuff that their understanding of how many unarmed black men are killed by police, which is like several magnitudes out in many cases.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so when you get uh an elite that extreme, you either have two things either everyone else is gonna follow them, or there's gonna be kind of conflict in society, uh, whether, you know, I don't mean necessarily violent conflict, but I mean like strong kind of culture war conflict, and populists will sort of end up opposing them.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the populist thing happens because uh well, for a number of reasons, but one one is when when mainstream Conservatives accept progressive viewpoints, and their thing is just oh, we're gonna slightly slow down this revolution a little bit, then I think inevitably populists just end up taking their place.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean that's the obviously happened in the state.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean not the presidency necessarily, but obviously gonna represent the Republican Party.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, across Western Europe as well, and populists have um you know the populist right has overtaken the kind of mainstream right in almost all countries now.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in Germany, they're just ahead, and Britain's a sort of the exception.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's let's see where we stand in five years' time.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean I absolutely see I mean the the the electoral system makes it very hard for the conservatives to be displaced, but it also means that if they are displaced, they they're not coming back.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's a much more winners-take-all situation.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I absolutely see that.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um because they haven't really articulated why you know they they they disagree with uh progressives on a lot of these key issues and things like you know diversity and multiculturalism, they just you know they they routinely say, yeah, this is a great idea.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, like your conservative.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do you actually believe this is a good idea?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh, you know, if if you believe it and they believe it, I mean, what are we voting for?
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: What's the dispute exactly?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think the conversation has been live for a long time, but I think it will get pretty fervent uh should the the Tories be roundly defeated and there's a uh a free free-for-all for the for the party.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's pivot a little bit to something that you've written and spoken about um uh a bit recently.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um you you write about nice things and that it's okay to have them.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um I want to get into this some more, but let's start with what you mean by nice things.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um my main thing is um things that we can share as a Saudi in a sort of open space without security.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I use the analogy of if you're a member of any sort of private club, I don't necessarily mean uh you know an upper end club, but any kind of space where you can leave things lying around without fear and and you can feel a sort of sense of trust, or um or you can you know go about your business without any kind of fear of crime or or stuff like that.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean that that is I mean, you know, one of my main main goals, hopes, is to live in a sort of more high trust society where there aren't um there doesn't need to be sort of constant security.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean I don't want to say I'm too pessimistic about it because you know crime in Britain is not high, really.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it's I mean we do live in a surveillance state, which is the main reason, but um you know we don't live in a hugely disordered state.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean one of the I mean I wrote that piece in particular was after the Manchester bombing.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the result of that was this completely idiotic law stating that anyone who uh wants to set up any kind of events of what a hundred people or something has to go through all these security checks.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, as people have said at the time, this will mainly affect kind of little church gatherings and smaller clubs and you know, the kind of civil society where uh you should be which should be encouraged and are kind of very like necessary.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: And this is brought about because uh politicians, this is like their instinctive response to dealing with the Manchester bombing, which was completely preventable.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, had they actually screened who was coming into the country.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, the Libya bomber came from the Manchester bomber came from a family with with quite extreme anti-Western views.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't stopped then.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: He was a drug dealer in the city, and the police knew he was a drug dealer, and they could weren't able to stop him or deport him.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and even as he was about to bomb the place, one of the security guards felt said afterwards, I felt uneasy, I thought there was something wrong there, but I felt like I couldn't say anything because I would be like accused of racism and my life would be ruined.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: And he was probably completely correct to do that.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so the response to this kind of breakdown of trust is that you know, if you go to a theatre in the West End now, all your bags have to be searched, and it's like that's such an unnecessarily penalty for that's such a like it's a small thing, but it's a bad thing to have these kind of constant penalties in your life because um the people who are supposed to be guarding you aren't doing their jobs properly.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: And there, you know, since that law was passed, a number of uh organizations and clubs have complained and said we haven't been able to run uh our events because of this law.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: It just seems like completely needlessly making our lives worse because we can't deal with the actual problem.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I thought this I mean this was slightly side issue, but this uh inability of um of lawmakers to kind of face a problem up front to me seems kind of quite a common thing.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, after the the recent acid attack, and you know, we saw two MPs saying we're linking this to microaggressions.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like this is this is not to do with microaggressions.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: This is the fact that someone who was uh who was convicted of sex crimes was allowed to was given asylum.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that's just like at least deal with the actual problem.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean I do feel also this this tragic case, this teenagers murdered.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and a lot of people said, Oh, we need you know to tackle down the dark web and and social media.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: And part of me, this is like not very rabbing me, but I think that's that's probably not really the case, is it?
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the dark web, I just don't think that's relevant.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: In some cases, this is just politicians dealing with an issue they don't want to deal with, and in some cases, these are just kind of tragedies that can't that just happen in all societies.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a kind of sense that we need to sort of be talking about something.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, to get back to your point about nice things, yeah, you know, the hat once if you don't have uh competent authorities who can deal with that external danger like that, then you end up just sort of needlessly punishing um society.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that's a good example, the nice things, the best example is stuff like outdoor swimming pools, Lido's.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's one, you know, one in there was not important about five years ago that closed down because they just they couldn't deal with the constant fighting between people.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: In when it comes to summer, people go and they go into Lido and they fight and just say, okay, so no one gets the swimming pool.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: It should be quite easy to it should be quite possible.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, why don't we just like punish those people and just like make it impossible for them to go to swimming pool and they can be isolated rather than everyone losing their access to yeah, there's a creeping normalcy, isn't there, to things diminishing over time because it's creeping, we don't really notice it, and then we just think it's think it's normal.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um I suppose there's examples of abound of this, and um and and you uh I think a good reference point is something that you've written about, and um, and I I had to bring this up at a at a friend's um dinner party a few weeks ago um when I was trying to make the point.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking about nice things in the UK that we used to have them, because people were like, oh, who's coming on your podcast told them about you?
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: So no, we used to have them, we don't really have them so much anymore.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they immediately jumped on it as to you know physical things and because of our colonial past, if we had nice things, we just took them from places.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No, what I'm trying to get to is you know, regardless of the ins and outs of that, is there's a cultural and social aspect to this too.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the reference point I'm on about is you you wrote about the Singaporean premier uh Li Quan Yu, who came over to uh to the United Kingdom, was in London just after the Second World War.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: He stepped out of a tube station and saw an unattended newspaper stand with an honesty box in the middle of central London, and he took a deep breath and said, and this is what I call a civilized people, or something to that effect.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when I brought that up around the table, everyone was like, What?
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: That existed, and that was supposedly in a regressive time when we were just you know morally uh backward people.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and this is uh and and that's that's where we come from, right?
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um that the the creeping normalcy.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean it was only that's I mean, yeah, that's and I thought I thought about that because I have a friend in Singapore and he just posts pictures partly to wind me up, I think.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in his bike unlocked on the main road overnight, and it just doesn't get stolen.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that was that was completely normal.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, people would regularly if you look at those the pathway news reels, which are so sort of subversive now, showing life in Brooklyn in the 40s and 50s, and the thing you always see is, oh, someone goes to the shop and they just leave their bike outside, it doesn't get stolen.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_02: That is completely possible.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, I have had like six bikes stolen, and you know, if I go out and leave a bike for night, I literally have three locks, which looks demented, but like my bike will get stolen if it has anything less.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: I just want all I'm saying, all I'm trying to signal is like it's a hassle to steal my bike.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: Can you go and steal someone else's instead?
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's a bad example because people who steal bikes they've got a 1% chance of getting caught.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if they're repeatedly caught, they might go to jail.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I once wrote something that I said that you don't ever go to jail, but I found a I found like three cases of people eventually going to jail for repeated uh bike theft.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: But it's just not possible.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, Lee Kuan News, his what he's created in Singapore.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I mean, reading this book recently, uh fascinating.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: But he um I mean he is kind of you know uh I suppose the examples of where uh a sort of the the values of an empire have continued in another place, while in the kind of heartland of the empire they are you know completely impossible.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously you wouldn't have an honesty book box in in central London.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the last time I saw one was in rural Dorset in a village where the median age was about 75.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I even mentioned it to the people, I said that's interesting.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Oh, well, yeah, well, it was broken into and stolen from like three months ago, but you know, we're trying our best.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like even there, you can't, but the idea of having a piccadie surface is also is obviously absurd and insane.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, I think it's it's possible to recreate these things.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just it's I suppose it's a matter, it's a matter of will in some ways.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, people live with the inconvenience than then kind of contemplate the you know the awful possibilities of actually putting people in jail.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, everyone just has to suffer, and like you know, your swimming pool has to be closed down.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, staying in East Asia.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've written uh um and you you kind of uh lampoon yourself about this as well, but you've written uh gushingly about a recent visit to Japan.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I've never been, but I'd love to go for many of the same reasons as you said.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean I'd I'd really love to go.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and and Japan uh is a deeply conservative country in its own Japanese way, not in the same way as us in the Anglosphere.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone who goes, no matter of what political stripe they are, they love it too.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what I notice when I when I speak to them and when I hear about the things that they love it for, particularly if they're of the liberal bent, is that they love it for those like deeply cultural, they know who they are, reasons, and that there's a deep respect between people and um and and there's there are social norms in place.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's all very socially conservative thing to say.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if you were to suggest anything similar in a British context, that they would be bridled at as being somehow oppressive or not right, and um, and that's that's the interesting thing is people say I would live there in a moment.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Prince Harry's a great example of that.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: He came back, was like, I would move here if you'd have me.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't realize it.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and and he's you know the archetypal person who would probably push back against anything that would be seen as I think there are certain things about Japan that people say it wouldn't be applicable to British culture, and in some cases, uh obviously correctly so.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, obviously, I was visiting there, and people who live there sometimes give a like a different story.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: For example, there are a lot of social like social pressures which can um people uh people do complain about your stuff like if you're if you're putting on weight, people will openly tell you you need to lose weight uh because you should be fat.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: And on the other hand, there are just no fat people there, which is very so I mean obviously wealth.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh another thing is that it's it is you know, it is quite a xenophobic country by most accounts.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: People work they say it's you know there's there is a bit of uh even if you're working, people will slightly not integrate you into kind of social life in the way that in the West, if you're uh if I'm national in London, you will you'll be completely integrated.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and people who have gone there talked about seeing sign, you know, signs in by bars saying no foreigners.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't see any of that, so I'm I literally didn't see any kind of sign of that.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently, there'll be signs saying, you know, only Japanese spoken, which kind of way of saying no foreigners.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_02: So you know, there are certain things that can't be replicated because Britain has you know always Britain's very much like Japan in its history in some ways, but it's also it's always been a much more kind of open country and is the British archive noted for their curiosity about the world, you know, as explorers.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there are also things that I think you know, I don't think we could be as as polite as the Japanese, but I think we get we could get like 90% of the way there if we wanted.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: I've really noticed it with, for example, I mentioned I was told off, I was having a conversation with this Indian guy and the I was just asking about life in Japan, and a Sari man like told me off and said, Oh, yours, I'm not gonna do the accent, I'll get in trouble.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you shouldn't talk in a train.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, okay.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I sort of sort of looked at him sort of respectfully, and sorry, you know, I didn't like uh I didn't know it was uh I was being loud.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I and since I've really noticed in England, since like everyone has their conversations on their phone on the on the train, like everyone has everything on loudspeaker.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: I've noticed this at all social classes, all ages.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: I was in the train last week, and there were two different couples doing it opposite me who were like talking on loudspeaker, and you know, one of them was quite elderly.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_02: I just thought this is really noticeable after Japan, the the kind of lack of politeness and respect for other people, um, which I think was I mean, one of the ideas I'd like to do, you know, the Medji restoration, which I'm fascinated.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to I'm writing this post about now, but I've kind of got sidetracked, so I haven't finished.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_02: But when the Japanese sent out several hundred of their sort of best young people to the West, in particular Britain, France, and Germany, to find out what they were doing, to how like you run of how you turn your country into a modern state, um, and it went all over Britain.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they and it worked, you know, they caught up really quickly and they overtook the West in many ways.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, let's do like a reverse version of that and send over some like you know, some bright Oxford and Cambridge graduates to like Japan and Singapore and Taiwan and places and find out what they do right.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because in many ways, um it's just incredibly freshing when you go there.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_02: But your cortisol level after being in a western city, like London, especially like Paris, and and Paris is uh Paris is beautiful, but it is a bit of a toilet.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: And your cortisol levels are just so low.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: After a while, you just become so used to being completely unsuggested because you know you're never gonna be bothered by anyone, everyone's so shy.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_02: There's just zero crime.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um I am on the train, on the tube, every every time on the tube, I I hear the door slam and I kind of go, oh god.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and if a wire comes on, what's begging, and it and like it gets what like it's got much worse in you know recent times, and then just just like just doesn't happen in Tokyo.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's very strange.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: And you come back to England and it's like you hear the you know, see it, sort it, say it ever on the on the train, and you just kind of feel a bit of despair.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I mean it's I would absolutely 100% recommend going there.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's just I can't wait to go there.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's definitely on the list.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're we're meeting a trip there next year.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's remarkable how quickly a social norm can disappear because that that talking on public transport, that once the barriers opened, that was that.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, but I remember even as close as like six or seven years ago, that wasn't really normal.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I was traveling around South America for a few weeks, visiting a friend who was out there on sabbatical, and I remember just being infuriated by being on night buses and everyone having their phones on and playing things really loudly.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, you know, this has been a great trip, but that'll be one thing.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking to get back to Britain, at least we mind our P's and Q's.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it genuinely didn't really start happening until 2020.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like just you know, I it was completely very, very rapid.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_02: I I guess it was in lockdown because it seems to be after lockdown, everyone's just forgotten that's paid.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_02: But people talk about I even noticed it in the theatre, people are doing that as well, people like chatting away and stuff like that.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I don't know how you reverse that.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you can have I mean you you we probably need to have some sort of government advertising campaign, you know, to like stigmatise things in a way they sort of stigmatize like drink driving once there has to be an effort or you know, littering.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_02: So you just don't don't have your entire conversation.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_02: Don't play your music to people on the train.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to hear it.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_02: No, I don't want to hear it.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: I listen to it myself in my own shit.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Disneyland, I mean sorry, Disneyland.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's a Japan, it's like Disneyland for conservatives, it's just like everything's a play park and everything's kind of shiny and bright, and you know, there's kind of music everywhere, but doesn't it's not annoying.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there is that kind of it is there is a certain amount of that meme of you know, the sort of soy face where people look at stuff in England is like uh or the West, it's like uh and then you see the same thing in Japan, it's like uh and it's definitely that because there's a lot of sort of modernist architecture, which I felt you know back home, I think it's horrible, but it just looks amazing in Tokyo.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we need more of this back home, and then you get back home like, oh, this is terrible.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_02: It just it just yeah, it doesn't wouldn't work.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, I I'm sort of being like the liberal who who you know likes kind of social norms there, but yeah, it's just absolutely great.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, we're heading into the end zone.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've spoken a little bit about prospects, perhaps lack of them or unsure of how to get them back with regards to nice things.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, as I had my customary scroll on Twitter as I made some various posts for the podcast, uh I came across a tweet from Sam Ashworth Hayes that seemed to uh really link with what we were talking about today.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna read it out and see what your take is on this.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's clearly room in Britain for a basics party.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: All you need is a party that could focus on competency over day-to-day media grid management, long sentences, violent and repeat offenders, keeping people safe and focusing the police on crimes that matter rather than thought policing, building houses and stripping back the state obstacles to growth, ending the insane red spirals ruining young people's futures, and reversing the ludicrous crime crime climb in energy prices since 2000 by getting the government out of the way of the market, particularly the net zero commitments that have destroyed reliable generation, pushing back on the endless trashing of Britain's heritage, and removing the barriers to government action by stripping state funding from leftist charities that lift up live off government grants, and most of all, securing the borders, tracking people in and out, ending the black market for migrant labour, the low-skilled visa backdoors, deporting illegal migrants.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's core conservative fare.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's also exactly what the Conservative Party doesn't want to deliver.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's been warped into a vehicle for defending rent seeking and needs to be der and it needs to be replaced by something that actually values Britain that will deliver growth.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's your take on this?
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: And what would you tell our current crop of political leaders to pay attention to?
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_02: It all sounds very good.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_02: We'll say make Sam Prime Minister immediately.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think, yeah, there is yeah, the I think a core area is obviously housing, and that's not working.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that is that is related to planning.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the net zero thing is if you're keeping the energy prices so high.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the main thing is I I think people are only becoming aware of this, partly through TikTok videos, strange enough, is that Britain is is quite a poor country now, compared, especially compared to the United States, but even compared to other European countries which are also seeing relative decline.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's I really would want us to become richer.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, the the housing and the planning thing would be a very easy way to become rich in that sense.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, on the crime thing, I mentioned before, you know, crime has decreased since the 90s, but between the 50s and the 90s, it increased massively.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: And considering the level of surveillance we have in society and how much things like the iPhone reduced crime, um, you know, crime could be much, much lower than it is.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: Lots of lots of kind of things which we take for granted shouldn't happen.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think a lot of this comes down to sort of just basic competency and I kind of I kind of widespread belief, which I think is accurate, that uh the people um that there is a bit of combating crisis about uh about running things.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the the um the the case of the acid attack asylums, it was actually alkali, wasn't it?
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_02: But um that's kind of the core of things.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_02: It should it's not that hard to have a system where someone like that is kept out off the streets or out of the country in some way.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I mean some of it is ideological, but some of it just seems to be people aren't really good at running things.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and obviously there there is a sort of growing young, there is a sort of growing younger generation of young conservatives.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_02: Not you know, young conservatives in as in that organization, but younger kind of right wing people who are very, very fed up by the housing situation in particular.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that's why there's been a lot more focus recently on the immigration and housing.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's becoming so much more acute that there is a growing awareness, well, I mean realization that their lives are considerably worse than those of their parents in many ways.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously technology is much better.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_02: There are lots of things that, you know, there are lots of ways in which things have continued to get much better.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: But we haven't had growth for 15 years.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the combination of the kind of economic stagnation uh aggravated by the high cost of housing that there is, and the the sort of declining status as as as people, um in a you know, in a in a kind of political culture where there are lots of sort of increasingly aggressive different political identities.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: It makes for quite a febrile atmosphere, I think, in some ways.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and there is you know, there is a gap in market for for a politician who can who can address these issues and just seem even vaguely competent.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_02: That would be.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think part of me would just would like to just have some boring corporate person running things, you know.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_02: Just uh have some MD of a company.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'd like basically Ryanair, also you know, Michael Lear on the country.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because you know, it seems like quite quite good uh sure it'd be like 10 pounds to go to the toilet or whatever.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_02: But um well, you know, like Tim Martin, Tim Martin Rowenspoon, someone was speaking the other day, Tim Martin and Michael Lear between them have delivered more on the average 20-something's life than all politicians of the 20th century.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, one provides a decent cheap up, and one provides holidays to good revelations.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like that's that's the those are the two kind of core areas where life has definitely improved.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, but I mean the problem the problem with kind of populists and populist alternatives is that, and this is the case everywhere, they do tend to be quite incompetent or chaotic.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of it comes down to they you know they are way they because they are sort of so sit socially stigmatized, more kind of mainstream, more competent people don't tend to gravitate towards those movements.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_02: So you do tend to end up people who aren't very afraid.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like Trump's the obvious case, you know, he's just his kind of presidency was kind of marked by a lot of kind of personal chaos, um which means complete inability to sort of get things done.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the if the choice is between kind of very ideologically hostile elites or completely incompetent waist rolls, and yeah, I mean it's not a great choice for anyone.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: Politically incompetent waist rolls.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's a that's a hot take from today.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I mean I completely I mean Sam's uh you know uh he's he's you know he's got his finger on the pulse there.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think he's definitely correct.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, there were like three or four core areas where uh uh uh you know a lawmaker could make substantial differences to quality of life in quite an effective way, if there was, you know, but a lot of it comes down to the will to do it.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's hope the Labour Party gets its finger on the pulse.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh otherwise, let's hope that in five years' time a back to basics party appears.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Ed's been an absolute pleasure to speak to you today.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for joining me.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I know we've spoken a little bit about where people can find you, but for the record, where can people find your publications and follow you and all that?
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, good.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it's uh wrong side of history.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think the actual web address is just edwest.co.uk because thanks to Elon, I had to change the sub stack because of blah blah blah to competing things.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, we'll just Google Wrong Side of History Substack and you'll find me there.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: Great stuff.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks very much, Ed.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep fighting the good fight.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me in Thinking Class today.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at ThinkingClass and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_00: 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.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and joining me on this journey.