Latest / Thinking Class / #017 - Paul Embery - Why British Politicians Are Treating Citizens With Contempt

Transcript

#017 - Paul Embery - Why British Politicians Are Treating Citizens With Contempt · Thinking Class

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Hello everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm John Gillam, and in this episode I'm speaking to Paul Embury.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: Paul is a firefighter, trade union activist, writer, and broadcaster.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Paul has been a member of the Labour Party since 1994 and active in the wider Labour movement for most of his adult life.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: He has served on the Executive Council of the Fire Brigades Union and as the national organiser of trade unionists against the EU.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: Paul has written extensively about working class politics and culture, including for Unheard, The Huffington Post, The Spectator, Spite, and Compact.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: His first book is Despised, Why the Modern Left Loath the Working Class, which was published in 2020.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: In this episode, we talk about the real-world impact of mass migration on British towns, political schism that has grown between the British political class and the majority of the electorate, the future of the Labour Party, why the British Left consistently lacks patriotism, especially in comparison to its European counterparts, and how the political class could reform itself.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: You'll hear from this episode that Paul speaks from a place of experience and not as an abstract political theorist.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: He speaks as someone who has been resident of Dagenham and has seen the sweeping changes that have taken place there over the decades.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: And he speaks as a trade unionist and as someone who's committed to improving the lot of ordinary folk in Britain.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Before we dive in, you'd be really helping me out by pressing subscribe, because the more subscribers that I have, the wider range of guests we welcome onto Thinking Class, and the more the show grows.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Paul Embury, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: Good to be with you.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Very delighted to have you, Paul.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: I know we were speaking just before the show as to why I'm particularly happy to have you on, because I think your your book, uh Desped by the Modern Left Loaths of Working Class, which came out in 2020, was probably one of the only revelatory commentaries at the time, and probably since, actually, that um helped those understand, or those people who self-identify as being on the left, uh, why they are actually out of step with what that particular political tradition was typically about.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I I read it in the year of its publication in lockdown times, and that was a time when I think many of us were in this big reflective, navel-gazing uh moment where we were able to take stock of what was going on around us.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: And we were, you know, six months out of the big conservative election victory.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I read back to back your books, uh, your book with David Goodhart's Wrote Somewhere, Eric Kaufman's uh White Shift, and from a few years previously, Roger Scruton's uh book, Where We Are Now, which was a bit of a commentary on on Brexit or post-Brexit Britain before we had actually gotten Brexit done, as it were.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you all came of it, came at it from very different political and and uh political angles and and as different commentators about the ideological divides that were grown between the ruling class, I suppose, and uh and and everyone else.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it really helped take stock of the the political landscape.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I suppose your message um to sum it up was you know you were lamenting the left's embrace of economic and social liberalism and all the things that go with that, like hyperglobalization, mass immigration, and and the rapid demographic change that came from that.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and that those who are were were self-styled on the left were actually turning their noses up at that traditional voter base.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think what I think probably why it hit so strongly was because you wrote about it not just with a bunch of data slapping people in the face with graphs and data sets, um, but you talked about it from a um a biographical um angle too, and talked about the real-world impact on the your hometown of Dagenham.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you said you had this kind of revelatory moment around 20 years ago that there was a schism between the political class and everyone else.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and Paul, I wanted to open by asking you what the nature of that political schism is and what did you notice within Dagenham that revealed it to you.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks, John.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um those years when I was living in Dagenham and I grew up there, uh, and those years, particularly around, as I've uh marked it in the book, around the turn of the century, um, were dramatic in many respects because we saw, and not just in Dagnam, of course, but I think generally in working class communities up and down Britain, particularly post-industrial communities, coastal communities, what you might call small town Britain, blue-collar Britain.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we saw profound change and very far-reaching change, uh, and change that I think caused a lot of bewilderment and disorientation among local people.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and we were seeing it around about this time, um, the emergence of the new global market.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've we've always, well, certainly for a long time, we've had globalisation to you know to varying degrees, but I think the the new global market really began to make its presence felt in British working class communities around the turn of the century.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And for places like Dagenham, where I was living, um, it meant two things.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, it meant de-industrialisation, quite quick de-industrialization.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Dagenham's obviously famous for the Ford plant, the famous film made in Dagenham, um, had been a major source of employment.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and suddenly you saw production shipped overseas, and you saw the Ford plant, which, as I say, had been a massive employer become a shell of its former self.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that deindustrialisation process, I think, took place quite quickly across much of uh across much of Britain.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And we saw as well very profound demographic change.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so we saw very rapid and large-scale movements of labour, um, and particularly those movements were into already hard-pressed working class communities.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what was, as I described as bewilderment and disorientation by those profound changes, was written off by the political establishment uh as kind of nativism and bigotry and xenophobia, and worse than that in some cases.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And people in communities like Daglam, I think, looked at, particularly the Labour Party, because a place like Daglam was always very much a traditional Labour voting area, and looks at the Labour Party and looks at the trade union movement, the left, the people who they thought were there to speak for them, um, and actually saw a movement that suddenly had started to treat them with contempt um and treat them as some kind of embarrassing elderly relative.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted their votes at election time, but they thought these people uh were a bit kind of reactionary uh and a bit contaminated, um, and they needed to be dragged out of their ignorance.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of went through that process of Littman and Dagnum and came to the view that actually the the left and the Labour Party had got it profoundly wrong.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that what it was trying to do is lecture those people and say to them, you know, these very profound changes that are taking place in your community, they're actually really good and you should embrace them because it's probably going to be good for GDP and it's culturally enriching and all of those sorts of things.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and people who were there, who was who were in the eye of the storm uh and being subjected to these very quick and far-reaching changes, kind of thought, well, I, you know, even if it does put a couple of percentage points on GDP, I, you know, it's not the be-all and end all for me.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I actually value a sense of place, a sense of community, a sense of stability.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, I don't actually find it that culturally enriching, not because I'm anti-immigration, I'm pro-immigration is the view of most people, but uh if you visit really profound changes very quickly on communities, um, then it's not especially enriching for them.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: So going through that and speaking to people and listening to their concerns and realising actually that they had a point, it it became quite clear to me that that schism was opening up between the left, particularly the Labour Party and the working class in this country.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I do try and say to people, even today, look, you know, the people on the left and rights and whatever will say that the Labour Party lost the working class vote because of Jeremy Corbyn.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I say to people, look, if you really think that the schism between the Labour Party and the working class began with Jeremy Corbyn, then you don't really understand what's been happening in this country over the last kind of 25 or 30 years.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, if you look at the data, the Labour Party has been losing the working class vote in England since around the turn of the century, and I don't think that's any great surprise.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the Labour Party thought, well, you know, these people have got nowhere else to go.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're working class people, they're not really going to vote Tory, they've got nowhere nobody else to vote for.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we saw in 2019 that that really wasn't the case at all.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so what happened in 2019 I wasn't really surprised about at all.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think a lot of people who were living in communities like the one that I once lived in weren't surprised by it, but the Labour Party was shocked by it, and I think that was uh that that was a demonstration of just how out of touch they've been with those communities over the years.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, I know on your when your book was released, you had an endorsement from a former Labour MP called um Gloria Del Piero, she's a former Labour MP for Ashfield, and uh she she she wrote Um, for anyone who wants to see a Labour government again, read this book.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bitter pill to swallow, but it's essential medicine for some parts of the left if they're serious about renewing the bond with the people they were founded to represent.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what's become a bit of a cruel irony of this is actually, in many ways, that made total sense at the time because your book was written just after that historic landslide for the Boris Johnson-led Conservatives in 2019.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we'd see in staunchly Labour seats across the country, the Red Wall and the North fall like dominoes.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but then it was also published before they went on to just totally what seemingly blow their historic mandate.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it now looks like Del Piero's advice need not be heeded, and maybe it hasn't been heeded, it'd be interesting to hear your gear because at the time it didn't look like Labour would get in power for a long time, but maybe that was just the hubris of the Johnson-led government.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but should should they form that next government, uh, which is looking likely going to the polls now, uh, can we expect um lessons learned, or is it going to be more of the same hyperglobal cosmopolitan policies and and and are things going to get worse before they get better?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I don't sense there will be a massive shift, to be honest.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I think Keir Starmer is probably trying to turn the Labour Party back to a Blairite kind of liberal centrist party.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and actually I think that Starmer um and Blair's politics and personalities are quite similar.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're both kind of North London lawyers and they both see the world through that prism of uh of you know North London and the precepts of cosmopolitan liberalism and so on.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think the I think the direction of travel is kind of back in that direction.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that's really helpful.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, yes, the party will probably win the next election.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: I suspect the margin of victory may not be as wide as some people are predicting.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um certainly if you look at some of the recent polling, whilst the Labor Party is certainly making inroads into conservative voting areas um, you know, around the south, for example, uh, and some of the Shires and what have you, and he's still doing well in our fashionable cities and our university towns.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's not an awful lot of evidence that the the Red Wall constituencies that deserted the Labor Party in 2019 uh are in any great rush to flock back.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um there there still seems to be some considerable resistance in those constituencies to falling back in love with Labour.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's because people just feel so bitterly let down, those working class communities just feel so bitterly let down.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think the Brexit thing was huge in that.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean it's been a process, as I as I say, and as I've written in the book of 30 years or more, but we can't underestimate the impact of the Labour Party's position on Brexit and what that did to widen that schism.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, on the one hand, the Labor Party was massively in favour of remaining, no great surprises there.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But what happened afterwards, I think, was appalling, where the Labour Party essentially just tried to lecture working class communities, red ball communities, many of which had voted for Brexit, and kind of just said, look, you've made a terrible mistake and you've got this all wrong.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 2018 at the Labor Party Annual Conference, I was in attendance and they adopted the second referendum policy.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that was like the final Now in the Coffin, I think, where people just said, Look, you've ignored us for so long, you've abandoned us.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And now when we have finally voted in such a way where our political markets have to sit up and take notice, you're trying to ignore us again, and you're telling us we got it wrong and we'll have to do it all over again.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, don't underestimate the impact of that.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the talking points in politics actually is, and you touched on it in the question, the degree to which the Tories have just squandered this legacy.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is fascinating.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I liken it to, you know, you sometimes read stories of people who've become millionaires having won the lottery, and then two years later you read that either homeless and living on a parked bench somewhere because it's motto loud.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of reminds me of that kind of thing, that you know, this this huge political realignment that took place in 2019, where the Tories just, you know, stormed through the red wall, and people thought, you know, they're going to be in power for at least another 10 years, and they've messed it up so badly that it looks like the Labour Party is going to get back in.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I think if and when the Labor Party does get back in, the election later on this year, I suspect it will be a little bit like the Australian election last year, where the Labour Party kind of got over the line, not because it particularly inspired anybody, but because it was seen as the least bad of two bad options.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think we're in a weird place at the moment in politics where you know there's there's clearly a deep and visceral loathing for the party of government, and frankly, they deserve to be wiped out.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there's virtually no enthusiasm for the party of opposition.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that's quite dangerous because I think you you then raise the possibility of populist forces coming to the fore and forces that you know we on the left wouldn't necessarily want to kind of tap into working class sentiment.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think the the way is open for that potentially.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if the Labour Party governs in the way I suspect it will, which is a kind of very much that Blair right liberal centrist ideology, then I think that that alienation of the working class is is not going to go away.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think you're right, and I think there's data to back up those feelings with regards to the polling results, and uh as in on election days, so those recent by-election wins for the Labour Party, the big stories were Tory wipeout.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: But really, the the hidden story within that is actually Labour didn't really increase its vote share at all in those.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: It effectively remained the same.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: It might have increased it by about 800 votes in each case.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: But the big story was Tory had Tories lost 23,000 votes, and those people barely did barely distributed their votes anywhere else.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: A few went to reform and but and lifted them up the polls, and everyone else sat at home.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think I think it it seems that we're about to enter a period of government here in the United Kingdom where it's apathy for five years, which is obviously a scary prospect when you know there's a a good chance that what Labor would double down on are all of the policies that 60 to 75% of the electorate perhaps are not particularly enthused about, and yet they could have free reign over implementing them.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I suppose we'll see, we'll see what that means for the British political landscape in the in the next five years or so, and where we are at the the end of it.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's been um stories made since I think October 7th.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's probably fair to say that we're in a there's a bit of a pre-October 7th world and a post-October 7th world um with regards to um how people are starting to to see things uh politically.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: And there are there are some who've noticed that there are parts of the left who've aligned themselves with um Islamism uh at a kind of lower level, but um, I suppose at a most most obvious level, just with pro-palatine Palestine protests.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that has raised, I think, a lot of suspicion amongst um many quarters, both probably the old left, people who are culturally conservative and maybe floating between whoever represents those.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I suppose, Paul, it'd be good to get your view on whether that alignment between uh some parts of the left and and and Islamists um uh will win the day in the end, or whether that'll be their downfall.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and do you expect that that kind of sweet spot everyone talks about, which I suppose you sit in and being a blue Labour man, economically left, culturally conservative, will that win the day in the end?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: What what are your thoughts?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think what's been what's been really interesting in in British politics for so long now is that there is this huge body of voters, um, millions of people, in my view, who are, and you just touched on it, they are are probably politically to the right on cultural issues.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so they often believe in traditional values, they take a robust position on things like law and order, for example, they're very patriotic, they like the armed forces, um, lots of them like the monarchy and so on.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: They think things like national security are important issues.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um they don't like, you know, liberal progressivism in its radical form that we see so much of at the moment in our institutions.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: They don't particularly like wokeness.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but they are the same people are often to the left, not necessarily far left, but to the left on economic issues.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: So they do think that the economy is fundamentally unfair and needs rebalancing, and they don't like big gaps between rich and poor, and they may well support an increase in the minimum wage, investment in public services, trade union rights, and so on.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: They don't like boardroom excesses and uh that kind of thing.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: They'd like to see a resurgence of manufacturing industry of a domestic industrial base and and so on.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: But those people have just been largely um ignored and and neglected for so long.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that they were the people really um who certainly helped to carry Brexit over the line.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and it was what I've described as a kind of accident accidental alliance.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you had people in working class communities who were traditionally Labour who believed in a lot of that stuff, but felt that their party had neglected them and treated them with contempt.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: But you also had, you know, conservative voters in in the Shires who also bought into a lot of that stuff and felt that their party had just neglected them, and particularly during the kind of Cameron Osborne days, just kind of treated them as embarrassing elderly relatives.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I've always felt that if there was a party that kind of articulated that view, um, then it would probably do very well.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've never argued I've been in the Labour Party for 30 years.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've never suggested that the Labor Party should try to appeal just to, you know, what you might call the C2DEs, to blue-collar Britain, to the working class vote.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: The Labour Party at its best and at its most successful has always been a coalition.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's been a coalition between, if you like, more middle-class liberal people and working class people, what I call the coalition between Hampstead and Hartniple.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I certainly don't argue that the Hampsteads should be elbowed out, um, but I do argue that the coalition has become seriously unbalanced in the last couple of decades or so within the party, uh, and that everything was geared towards the the Hampsteads, you know, the middle class, the graduates, the people living in our fashionable cities and university towns, uh, and the Hartley pools were just kind of taken for for granted and and.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just elbowed out.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in terms of the point that you made about the kind of relationship with Islamism, I think there's always been people on the left, certainly on the far left, but but on the broader left as well, who have always been quite passionate about the Palestinian cause.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think some of those people are good people, by the way, and would have no truck with Islamism or terrorism in any form.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: For example, you know, I'm I'm very much active in the trade union movement.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of trade unionists, lots of trade unions in a formal sense support the Palestine Solidarity campaign.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: They think that the Palestinians have been victims of a historical injustice and they march and that they campaign for what they see as justice and would have no truck with what happened on the 7th of October or with any kind of wider terrorist belief.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I do think it's important we distinguish between those people, the more moderate people, and others who frankly are beyond the POW.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And some of those people unquestionably have kind of seeped into the Labour Party over recent years and frankly need to be drummed out of the Labour Party.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think what the Labour Party needs to do is to kind of make it clear whether it's the Israel-Palestine issue or anything else.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's important that the Labour Party and the wider Labour movement does get involved in those causes and where people believe in them, they're of course entitled to campaign for them.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, you know, ordinary people out there want the bread and butter stuff dealt with.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's a few instructive images that you can see about where parliament um it places its focus on questions like the back to basics, which you just described there, and then on these big uh media um uh these kind of media heavy moments like the Israel-Palestine question, where if you go on Twitter, you can often see the side-by-side between um a very small smattering of MPs discussing um illegal boat crossings or um or or generally the it's like how we're gonna manage our own immigration policy, and then the discussion of, for instance, borders in Gaza and the the places stacked now, appreciate that um there's a big um identitarian um aspect to it, and so it probably cuts to an even more visceral feeling.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: But the optics of that to the ordinary voter, which is hang on, these things actually impact us day to day, is not good.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's slightly depressing, actually, seeing so many members of parliament focusing on, for example, at the moment, the the uh Israel and not under play in the Israel-Gaza thing at all, it's clearly a major and and tragic conflict in all sorts of ways.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, it's right that Parliament takes an interest.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: But if you look at the output of MPs at the moment, um you know, the stuff they're doing on social media, their public comments through the media and so on.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you look at what happened in the the Common Commons uh a few nights ago with the chaos that was going on.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: I would just like I would like MPs, particularly Labour MPs, to have more of a focus on some of the domestic issues.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think they're pretty rubbish at that because politics has become so you use the word identitarian, um, that some of the big issues that are really affecting people in their everyday lives are just getting passed over.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I can't think of that many Labour MPs, for example, who have a real good grasp on you know what's going on economically at the moment, have outlined, articulated any sort of radical economic program, you know, talk about things like full employment, talk about things like reviving our industrial base, you know, how do we how do we improve our manufacturing capacity and that sort of thing?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um how do we close the gap between rich and poor?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: How do we invest in public services?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think to be honest, that's a sign of our times because I think if you if you go back to you know the 70s, even the 80s, you had big beasts in the Labour Party who were completely competent and and able to articulate those sorts of ideas, to engage in those sorts of debates, the Tony Benz, the Michael Foots, the Dennis Healy's, the Peter Shaw's and people like that.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and nowadays, uh, I I just think you know, some of the the Labour front front benchers, and I mean them no personal disrespect, but just are frankly a pygmy compared to some of these people.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: When you you never you never kind of hear them articulating some of these big, broad macroeconomic ideas, uh, and you just kind of see the trivialities and the squabbling and you know the complaints about hurty words and things like that, and you think you're just kind of missing what is important to many working class communities out there, and and I don't see that changing anytime soon, unfortunately.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think you're right, and there are a few things you touched on recently in your writings elsewhere, which map actually across the political divide with other people who are noticing the same thing.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: So uh, for example, you wrote um on your substack recently that the Britain that we all knew is fast disappearing.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you can go into the telegraph and find people who are politically on the right, like Alistair Heath, writing similar things um from a slightly different angle.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um there clearly is a sense of decline amongst the basics in in society.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: We look around, we go, well, things cost more, quality of life seems to be going down, uh, public services are fraying at the edges.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we could argue that social, cultural, moral norms have uh have decayed as well, and then we've got these identitarian uh debates or at least attacks that happen frequently um instead in politics, and then they get masked over in this other respect that that obscures the fact that there is a growing sectarianism there which is gonna have to be dealt with too.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um so back to this point about the Britain we we fast we we all knew is fast disappearing.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: What did you mean by that, Paul?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think the and and I think this is the the the phrase that I used in a piece that the age-old social and cultural norms um are being overturned at a pretty rapid pace um and in a way that I think is making many millions of people in this country uncomfortable uh and feeling that they don't any longer really recognise their country, um, and that so many people who are running our politics, are running our institutions have this kind of very hyper-liberal progressive uh approach to some of the big social and cultural issues and are very contemptuous of some of those more small c conservative values, which are still very much embedded among many communities within this country, um that that there is that big disconnect between our politics and our institutions on the one hand and ordinary uh people and ordinary communities on the other hand.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think the you know the piece that I wrote focused on, for example, the army saying that there shouldn't be any um Christian elements within acts of remembrance, um which you know just struck me as as being almost sort of revolutionary.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm not a practicing criticism myself, but almost revolutionary actually.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and I just I just wonder, and I think I asked the question in the piece, if if there's ever been an example of a country whose politicians and whose institutions are so hell-bent on trashing, frankly, their own history and their own culture and their own traditions, while at the same time um bending over backwards to promote the history, the culture and the traditions of other other cultures, other traditions.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I don't think there is, and people are not stupid, people kind of see this, and particularly if you, you know, and I think I'd I drew this example in in my book Despised.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you're a working class person in Wigan, you know, the let's say a native brief person living in Wigan as an example, working class person, um, and you are, and let's say a white working class person, and and I say that only to illustrate the point that I'm making, um, you are constantly, constantly told through through large parts of the liberal media, through institutions, both local and national, by our politicians, that you need to um you need to be open, you need not only to embrace other cultures and traditions, you need to celebrate them, um, because you know we we kind of we're a salad bowl now in the sense that you know we we've got all of these different cultures and traditions and we need to to accept that and we need to promote them.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: But if that person, and I think this is what a lot of people feel, if if that person was to demonstrate in some way or give some kind of expression to their own culture, to their own kind of native British culture, if you like, they're told, no, no, you mustn't do that.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's reactionary and that's bigoted and actually uh white working class culture, you know, that's something that we need to we need to get away from.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, by the way, there's nothing's ever really British anyway.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Why would you why would we promote Britain, you know, whatever it is you try and say about Britain?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, that isn't really British.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was some other country kind of gave that to us.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it just seems to me, um, and I'm I'm no jingoist, by the way, genuinely.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not somebody who thinks, you know, kids should be saluting the flag before school in the morning and singing the national anthem.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I do just feel there is a serious imbalance where you know that there is such an attempt uh within, you know, as I say, parts of the media and our politicians and institutions to constantly try and do down any expression of British culture uh and to insinuate that anybody who gives off that kind of expression is in some way a nativist or in some way bigoted.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, say to us, but you really must celebrate all of these other cultures and traditions.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and as I say, people are not stupid, they pick up on that, and it serves just to, I think, increase the alienation of those communities.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Dear classmate, John here.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: This isn't an advert, so you don't need to reach for the skip button.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: If you're enjoying the show, then show your support by liking, subscribing, and sharing on whichever platform you use to watch or listen to Thinking Class.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: You can find me and the show on YouTube at Thinking Class.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: You can also subscribe to me on Substack, searching for the at Thinking Class handle, or by entering thinkingclass.substack.com in your browser, and you can receive reflections, blog series, and recommended reading to your inbox.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: You can also follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening, thanks for showing your support, and enjoy the rest of the show, class mate.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the the British um the British ruling class, I suppose, whether it's been those when the when the left has held the reins or um or in just more modern times where it's quite hard to pinpoint where people actually sit on the spectrum, um, there does seem to be this um longstanding uh character trait, which Orwell picked up on all those years ago, and then Roger Scruton, other side of the political aisle, also termed uh oichophobia, which is this idea of just a general self-hatred of your own your own place.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I think Orwell spoke uh a bit about how there is no left wing in Europe that dislikes its own country as much as the British left.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: You won't find the French left in down France or the German left in down Germany or the Spanish left in down Spain and everywhere else.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: It seems to be that there is a um that there was there was that which probably sprang up from some parts of the the left, um, which didn't translate into the type of left that you're from, Paul, which I suppose people referred to as that more rooted community-based socialism, you know, those those the the miners, the trade unions, this sense of place, community, belonging rather than this kind of wider, internationally minded um view of the world, this kind of amorphous cosmopolitanism, which then kind of got dragged in with uh the kind of liberal progressivism we've been talking about today.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: And um it makes you it makes you wonder um at what point there's an there's an end point uh because surely it doesn't do anyone any favours to the place that we're all meant to be calling home, regardless of creed, colour.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh if if we basically say it has no virtues, it's got uh then it doesn't give you really any purpose to one work together to maintain it and two to fight for it if you need to.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it seems entirely self-defeating in the end.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think I think there's there's many people on the left who kind of look at Britain as a as a shop really rather than a home, um, as a place where anybody is free to come and go.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: And essentially our relationship as citizens with the nation state is is nothing more than transactional, really.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's it's kind of there to to serve us in an economic sense, uh, and not much more than that.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that probably speaks to the the kind of different backgrounds that these people have often experienced, you know, that I think the Labour Party nowadays, in contrast to uh yesteryear, is is pretty much dominated by people who have come through on that conveyor belt where you know they've been to they've been to university and they've worked for an NGO or a think tank or as a researcher to N MP Um in the charity sector or whatever, and then they end up in Parliament, they end up dominating, um dominating the Labour Party, the upper echelons of the Labour Party, um, and are just completely out of kilter quite often with the people who they who they purport to represent.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's actually quite it's actually quite disturbing because the the the Labour Party has always, and I touched on it before, the Labour Party has always been that coalition between Hampstead and Hartnipple.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'll give you an example.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at in France a couple of years ago, the Gilets jaunes.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now we talk about internationalism.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um that was an example where if we wanted to show a bit of internationalist spirit, we on the left could have gone, okay, well, these people are out protesting in France, and what are they protesting for?
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're protesting for a fairer economy, and they're protesting for national sovereignty, and they're protesting against the corporations.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, isn't that the sort of thing that we would normally get behind on the left?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: But nobody, virtually nobody on the left got behind them because you know the Gilets Jean were just a bit too working class and they used to fly the French tricolor when they were when they were marching, and immediately you just saw the left thinking, oh, we don't really want anything to do with with those people.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that for me was indicative of just how much the left has moved away from from working class people that, despite their internationalism, they couldn't bring themselves to support the Gilets Jean.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the point that you made as well about um, you know, the the international left, the left in other countries, uh, generally had no issue, you know, with with demonstrations of patriotism.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: I remember just after Starmer took over uh as Labour leader, he gave a statement or a speech in front of the Union flag, and there was outrage among some quarters of the left, you know, because and you saw it on social media and stuff, people saying, you know, this is borderline fascist and he's embracing the far right, and you think this is just crazy.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a political leader standing in front of his national flag.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: The left in France would not bat an eyelid if one of their leaders was standing in front of the trickler giving a speech.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that also extends to um the whole argument around open borders and immigration.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: That actually 30 years ago, uh many people, arguably most people on the left, uh, understood the importance of regulating the labour supply, understood the importance so as to allow government to be able to plan around housing and welfare and employment and wages and so on, um, that the labour supply needed to be regulated.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, the open borders position was regarded as a fringe position on the left.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was mainly kind of Trotskyists and anarchists who kind of supported the open borders position.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Nowadays, that has completely turned around, where the open borders position has almost become the default.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: And anybody on the left who argues for the traditional position of regulating the labour supply, uh, as I do, is looked upon as some kind of bigger, as some kind of of museum piece.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, and and again, I make the point that in working class communities, which I think broadly are pro-immigration, as long as it's kind of managed properly, they just they just don't see this.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: They just can't understand why their leaders on the left are so intent on peddling this kind of citizen of the world ideology, which demonstrates that they don't really have respect for people's sense of place, their sense of community, they sent their sense of belonging.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: They don't like you know very rapid and large-scale economic or social um changes in their area.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: They understand that change happened, but it excuse me, but it needs to be done in a way whereby it's managed properly.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that kind of disconnect, I think, is attributable to things like that.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's just so wide at the moment.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: That point you make around large-scale change, whether it be demographic and thus social and economic, uh, and that heady brew of a combination between that plus these um ideological uh statements that you see um brought out quite regularly around diversity or around multiculturalism.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: Let's dive into that a little bit because I'd like to see where that may ultimately lead us uh when there are likely to be populist pushbacks and what they might look like.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um so just this week, Paul, you wrote um on Twitter or X, we should all want to live in a country in which people from different backgrounds get along.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Our society is deeply fragmented and it will take a huge effort to overcome that.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's why when public leaders claim diversity is our strength, it rankles.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: It tells us that those public leaders are either knowingly reciting a false slogan for ideological purposes, or they don't understand the scale of the challenge before us.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: Either way, they are not fit to lead.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: And just before I get your reaction to that, someone who would describe himself as a conservative uh commentator, but certainly is trying to reach along coalitional lines, Matt Goodwin, the political pollster and academic, he uh was on Winston Marshall's show recently, but he writes a lot about it on his Substack.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: That um multiculturalism has failed at something that Merkel said in about 13 years ago, Cameron said it about 13 years ago.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and he says that this coupled with this idea of diversity being our strength, it prioritizes group differences over commonality.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: It says that we have nothing that's worth holding to onto ourselves and nothing positive about our own national character and and uh values, which you've um touched on before.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in the end, if we've got nothing, no commonality, nothing to retain and promote within our cultural institutions and social cohesion, what chance do we have of um actually maintaining a sense of togetherness?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um what's uh what what's what's your take?
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because uh when you wrote despised, you talked about how there was This huge um rise amongst the voiceless within Dagenham towards votes in towards say the BNP, which became almost the only outlet to express this discontent with rapid social change.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I suppose Matt Matt basically has been on record recently, having had analysts looking at it, saying that the demographic change that Britain has seen the last 50 years, we're about to see the same scale in the next 10.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: So if that's the case, and then you have these ideological slogans, which the Labour Party will continue over the next five years at least, if there is no outlet, what does how do people react to that?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think we'll I think we'll just become more fragmented and I think we'll become more atomized as a community.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think that I think there'll be probably more places in Britain uh where people are quite often in different communities living parallel existences and um parallel lives.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I I I don't necessarily predict you know riots on the streets, uh you know, God forbid, civil wars and things like that.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly hope that sort of thing doesn't happen, and I don't think it necessarily would happen.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I just think we'd probably resign ourselves to to kind of being people often say, you know, we're a multicultural society.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: What what actually we are, we're a we're a country where there are now pockets of monoculture up and down the country, all different monocultures kind of living side by side and not in many cases particularly mixing, particularly you know, if you go to to some of our some of our towns outside London, you know, the the Lutons and the Bradfords and so on.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I can't help but feel that we've kind of inflicted that upon ourselves really with a completely neglectful approach to integration over so many years, not regulating immigration at the same time as saying that people who do arrive, you know, there you go, get on with it.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and often those people will congregate in in some of our poorer areas through no fault of their own, of course.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, we we we've had no idea really how to and no uh and no enthusiasm uh about how to integrate some of those communities.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think in many respects we're paying the price now with that kind of fragmentation and the atomization.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think we the way I describe it in the book is is we we went for the said the word uh the phrase earlier, we went for the salad bowl over the melting pot.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um what we did is we just encouraged, we actively encouraged separateness and difference, which I think the policy of state-sponsored multiculturalism is it's encouraging separateness and difference and almost saying that we don't want people to integrate, we don't want people to assimilate, we'd be better off as a society by encouraging um you know this separateness and difference.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and I don't buy it actually, and I think you know, you often get people who say who say to anyone who questions state-sponsored multiculturalism, you know, they must be some sort of bigot, they must be some sort of nativist, they must be some sort of xenophobe.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I always use the example of Japan.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um now, Japan, okay, Japan has got its faults, it's certainly not a perfect country, and we know, you know, it's got it's had its dark moments in history as well.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but Japan really doesn't obsess, today's Japan really doesn't obsess about promoting multiculturalism at every opportunity.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's fairly kind of culturally homogeneous.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, it's very culturally homogenous.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and at the same time, uh, you know, it manages immigration quite strictly.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but those people who do find themselves in the country from abroad, uh, I think people would tell you they're generally treated pretty well.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is regarded, I think, widely as being a very civilised country, a very tolerant country, a very peaceable country these days.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, crime is is pretty low.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I don't think anyone would suggest otherwise.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, no one could realistically suggest other otherwise.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and yet, as I say, you know, it isn't a country that that pushes multiculturalism at every opportunity.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea that you have to promote this stuff constantly in order to be classed as being, you know, a decent, civilised, tolerant country, I just don't think is is borne out.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, I'm a I'm a trade unionist, and trade unionists generally try to create the maximum unity between people and to overcome differences between people.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but we've we've we've done the complete opposite in this country.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think at the same time as trashing our own history and our own traditions and our own culture, we've, as I said before, we've encouraged those of others, and all that's done, I think, is alienate, if you like, the native population and just created separateness and difference and parallel existences across parts of our country.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a really sad thing, ultimately.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that balkanization of Britain politically, culturally, uh religiously, ethnically, I suppose, which has been uh bred through those uh methods you talked about, this promotion of these ideals or ideologies, uh, has clearly uh led to all these issues we've been talking about today.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, in the spirit of unity, um, which we've uh touched upon, is uh given that um there seems to be an alignment with regards to seeing Britain as a big shop uh on the global marketplace amongst uh the conservatives of the last 14 years and likely the next Labour government and before that the the Blairites, um is there room for alignment across the political divide between those who would consider themselves conservative and not culturally and thus uh on and sorry, and on the left as well, uh, and those who are of the more kind of old left socialist bend.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, Roger Scruton in in his How to Be a Conservative book, which outlined his his philosophical worldview, he he wrote that um that, in my view, the truth in socialism, the truth of our mutual dependence and of the need to do what we can to spread the benefits of social membership to those whose own efforts do not suffice to obtain them.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he was famously conservative, and you're a trade union man.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: And um uh I I wonder if there are any parts of uh the right, for example.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: I've talked about Matt Goodwin, then I've talked about people who wouldn't be considered themselves on the right, uh, like uh Dr.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_02: Rakib Esan, who does lots of work on social cohesion, you know, British Muslim, but recognises the Christian constitution of the country, Eric Kalsman, who uh I I don't know if he'd describe himself as conservative, but certainly goes down the heterodox route.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, there seems to be lots of people of different political stripes that are all coming from they come from different angles, but towards the same answer we've talking, talked about, which is what is it that we cohere around and how is it that we live a more positive national life and and disavow these things that have led us down this stray path?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what what do you see as the the prospects of a coalitional uh uh arrangement between those of us who would typically be on different sides of the political aisle?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting question.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't foresee any sort of electoral coalition.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I I don't think that's likely.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't think you know that there's likely to be an initiative along those lines.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if there were, I don't think it would necessarily be successful, partly because of the nature of the electoral system and and partly because of other things.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there can there can be a a coalition of ideas, I think, uh, and a coalition of of influence potentially.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you look at the Conservative Party now, um I mean you've got the I think they're called the new conservatives with people like Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates who are articulating some of the kind of social and cultural small c small c stuff that Blue Labour, for example, um which we describe as socialism with a small c has have kind of been articulating.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that there are there are people on both sides of the the divide, the left and right divide, who have identified that stuff uh and and can work together uh to try to, you know, in the battle of ideas, if you like, to to try to win a particular position there.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think also around the whole issue of free speech as well, um, where I think the people on both sides who articulate that stuff, I think are both identic, both sides have identified, look, we've got a real issue in this country with um free speech, with people thinking that there has to be one conformist, one orthodox opinion on certain topics.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if anybody steps outside of that, then particularly if they've got any sort of public profile or any job with any kind of responsibility, uh, then you know their career needs to be destroyed, their reputation needs to be destroyed.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: Ideologically, I think we're much more now in a in a straitjacket uh than than in my lifetime, I think, than we've ever been.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think that is quite sinister, some of that stuff.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think there are people on both sides who realise that we need to push back against this stuff.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: We need to push back against some of the the kind of radical woke stuff that we're seeing that not only does not resonate among ordinary voters, but I think, you know, actually worries, concerns, troubles ordinary voters, um, because they it's almost as if they feel that their own instinctive beliefs, which are, as I say, quite a small seeker, conservative in a lot of cases, uh, are regarded now as being you know beyond the pal when it comes to our institutions and um when it comes to um our politics, uh, and that isn't good and that isn't healthy.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I I always say to people, I I'll share a platform with most people, uh, and actually, you know, there are some people on the right, and you've named some of them, who have been really good, I think, at identifying some of this stuff, and in such a way that many people on the left can identify.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: We may disagree on some of the economic stuff, and that's fine.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we'd be mad not to not to join forces uh around these things because I think it's only by joining forces that we're likely to have any serious pushback against it.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: Indeed, I've kept you long enough for one last question to try and tie things together.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I had Frank Faradi on the the show and I asked him, what do we think the prospects are of the current uh cultural and politically reforming themselves?
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh or do they have to be replaced?
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, There's no chance of reform, they have to be replaced.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: So let's do a hypothetical that they are able to reform and they're able to stave off the excesses of a populist pushback or general just discontent and bring an alignment between them and ordinary folk.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um what would you tell our current political and cultural elite they ought to pay attention to if they are to successfully reform and not lose confidence?
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think they would need to understand, first of all, it isn't just about the and I would say particularly to if you like people on the left who I'm closer to politically, is that the economy is really important, but it's not just about the economy.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just promise to throw money at people and think that that's all that they want in life, because it's frankly quite a Thatcherite argument to say that people are motivated solely by that.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, if you look at the two elections in 2017 and 2019, where the Labour Party went to the country with arguably economically more radical manifestos than than for a long, long time, but were still, particularly in 2019, were still rejected wholesale.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: That tells us that it isn't just about whether or not you promise to improve people's lives economically.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: People like a bit of cultural security, they like a bit of cultural stability.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: We are, at the end of the day, and this is the key point that the political establishment needs to understand, we are social and parochial beings with an attachment to place, with an attachment to community, with an attachment to culture.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: Many people do like tradition, um, many people are small c conservative, and whilst, as I said before, you know, not every public policy can necessarily be pitched at those people exclusively, we need to understand how how much those people have been alienated over the last 20 or 30 years in politics.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you tap into people's basic communitarian impulses, their patriotic impulses, their belief in what some people describe sometimes uh derisively as you know, faith, family, and flag, um, if you understand people's impulses around that, um, then you'll stand a good chance of taking them with you.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you continue to peddle this kind of hyper-liberal progressive ideology, uh, then you may get over the line at election time, but you're still going to have a country that is not at ease with itself, and you're still going to have millions of people who feel alienated by the political establishment.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then you do open the way to populist forces.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that would be my message.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Paul, here's to a coalition of ideas.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, thank you so much for joining me again today.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_02: I have really enjoyed our conversation and it's been uh delightful, despite the heavy, sometimes depressing uh prognoses that we've come up with today.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Paul, before I let you go, uh could you tell the listeners where they can find you if they want to follow you and see what you're up to and what you're thinking about?
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm uh I'm quite uh quite active on Twitter.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: Paul Embry uh is my handle on Twitter.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've got my own uh Substack uh column.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if people want to read my regular musings, then and the link to that is on my Twitter profile.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh despised is still available, I think, in all decent bookshops.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I pop up on GB News quite frequently as well.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, thanks so much, Paul.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone should definitely go and check you out.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_02: Again, been a total delight.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hope we can speak again in the future.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for coming on the show.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: Pleasure.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, John.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for joining me in Thinking Class today.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_02: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_02: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_02: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.