Latest / Thinking Class / #109 - William Clouston - Why British Politics Is A Case Study In Governing Against The National Interest

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#109 - William Clouston - Why British Politics Is A Case Study In Governing Against The National Interest · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm talking with William Clewston.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: William is the leader of the Social Democratic Party, the SDP in the United Kingdom.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, William and I think out loud about the current state of British politics, focusing on the disconnect between government promises and actual governance.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: We explore the need for a cultural and civilizational vision beyond economics, the challenges posed by mass immigration for social democracy, and defining re migration, the importance of governing in the national interest and what the national interest is, lessons William has learned since entering politics, and much, much more.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: For those unaware of William Cleuston and the Social Democratic Party, you'll find that he and the party make a lot more sense than most mainstream politicians.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: The output of SDP policy can be much more well thought out than that produced by legacy parties, and indeed rising and increasing popular insurgent parties.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: As ever, make sure to like, subscribe, and follow the show on YouTube, your podcast platform of choice and Substack.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's grow Thinking Class together.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: William Cleuston, welcome back to Thinking Class.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Good to be here.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: William, last year Sakia Starmer stood on the steps of Downing Street after he had just been given permission to form a government by his majesty, and he said, When the gap between the sacrif sacrifices made by people and the service they receive from politicians grows this big, it leads to a weariness in the heart of a nation, a draining away of the hope, the spirit, the belief in a better future.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it is surely clear to everyone that our country needs a bigger reset, a rediscovery of who we are, because no matter how fierce the storms of history, one of the great strengths of this nation has always been our ability to navigate away through Sakama waters.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: From now on, you have a government unburdened by doctrine, guided only by a determination to serve your interests, to defy quietly those who have written our country off.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: You have given us a clear mandate, and we will use it to deliver change, to restore service and respect to politics, end the era of noisy performance, tread more lightly on your lives, and unite our country, four nations, standing together again.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well what do you make of that?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Will how have they how have they gotten on so far with uniting the nation, treading more lightly on our lives, and indeed governing unburdened by doctrine?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first thing I'd say about prime ministerial announcements on on the steps of Downey Street is that they don't often bear much relation to what happens.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Not sure really that was that was fulfilled.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And Theresa May actually started by uh talking about the um the Burning Injustices, which is quite a quite a strange one really for uh for her to use.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I I must admit, when I saw it, uh it was like a sort of AI-generated um uh bit of work, wasn't it?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he they're reading stuff out.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: It bears almost no relation to what's happened.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, everyone can see uh it's it's one thing to The thing is, John, it's a lot easier for an aide, a speechwriter, to write that sort of thing than it is to actually carry it out.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that they I don't think they've this isn't a government that governs in the national interest.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're not bringing anyone together.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: They've alienated a lot of people on virtually all the metrics, they've failed.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I pretty much knew they'd fail.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I thought they they haven't they didn't have any plan.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's no serious thinking.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Tim Stanley in his columns uh recently in the Telegraph talks about the leadership challenges.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, none of these leaders, none of these potential leaders have a even a clear ideology, really.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: They I think their guiding sort of principle is that we're the good people, so we must do good.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's it.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So there isn't a serious thinking.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh you know, they've introduced a lot of things which they didn't promise, aren't not in the manifesto, and the key things that are in the manifesto they failed on, so a terrible start and it'll probably get worse.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I remember my reaction to it, I was tootling around Austria in a camp van at the time.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to write a substack, and as is so very typical of me, I didn't publish it.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: But when I heard some of these statements, assertions, claims, such as a government unburdened by doctrine, it felt immediately like a lie.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: We had a Prime Minister uh who had previously been on record saying he felt more at home at Davos than in Westminster.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, a now Home Secretary, no, no, sorry, a now Justice Secretary, former Home Secretary, David Lamy, who said he believed in a progressive realism, which sounds like a a doctrine to me.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I suspect you could probably run through just about everyone in the cabinet and find some links to some kind of doctrine that they truly believe in.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it it felt like a bit of a a bit of a sleight of hand, really.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if you then consider the things that they have delivered, as you've just alluded to, not in their manifesto, in which your party, the Social Democratic Party, has recently posted on Twitter to draw our attention to it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: There are a fair few things that seem to be driven by doctrine of some sort.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take a look at those and I'd like to hear what you think are the most consequential for the nature of this nation and its uh in in relation to its history.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we've seen assisted suicide, which has been referred to as assisted dying, brought in, removing access to trial by jury has been proposed by David Lamy very recently, increasing taxes on working people.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've got the digital ID that has well not necessarily come out of nowhere.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Tony Blair and his government tried to bring it in on a fair few occasions, or at least ID cards at the time.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, removing the child benefit cap, mansion tax, removing IHT on relief on farms, setting up new public bodies, restricting salary sacrifice arrangements for pensions, and most recently delaying elections, the second set that have been delayed in the country.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: What does what picture does this paint of the government and what do you think is uh the most consequential of these changes, and what does it mean about we as a people and as a country and our notion of governance for the future?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I slightly disagree.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: We don't often disagree, actually, John, but I slightly disagree with you on the on the question of doctrine.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they have what I see as a total lack of doctrine or ideology, really.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I d I, you know, if you let let's ask ourselves, apart from the hard left, you know, there's a sort of Zara Sultana sort of I know she's not in Labour anymore, but you know, you've got a hard left that would have, you know, state planning and state control over everything.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well that we understand that.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: But most Labour MPs, and certainly most of the cabinet, I don't think have any particular left-wing uh doctrine.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, ask yourself about the really big things, the big things.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Are they reinvigorating the state sector capacity in house building?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Their policy is to hope, is to deregulate planning and hope the private sector build a lot of houses.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they won't.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: We can go into that later.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: These are because there are another set of things is is promises made that they're not fulfilling.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing a lot of things they haven't uh got a mandate for, but they're also failing on a few key things which they promised to do.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't see any I don't see any hint of any uh sort of muscularity uh there to get the state back involved.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they've got a majority of 170, which is the biggest uh parliamentary majority since 1820, I think.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: So they could do it if they wanted to do, but they don't want to do it.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's an absence of ideology, really.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: They're not really interested.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I I when I debate people in the Labour Party on housing, I I ask them, well, you know, if the Labour Party with a 170-seat majority aren't going to get the state back involved, you'll never do it, right?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't even believe in it.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's a lack of ideology, really.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh likewise with water and power generation and distribution, transmission, no, no ambition at all to get the state back involved there.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not really.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, nuclear energy, they'll be they'll be getting others to do the the work if they if they do it.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So no, I I don't s I don't really see it.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um transport, you could argue that the train, you know, the train franchise systems collapsed, so the states got back involved, but that happened under the Tories.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: That started happening under the Tories.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no ideology there, there's no doctrine there.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think what you have with the Labour Party, and it's very much it's very much um a a product of where of what the Labour Party is now, uh it's just liberals.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're just sort of progressive liberals.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they are.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what you've got.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So some of this stuff, you've just got a sort of, you know, a sort of general progressive liberalism.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have any you don't have any true ideology.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: They just think they're good people and they're on the right side of history.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a continuation of of Blairism, Cameronism.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's a continuation of what's put us into the problem in the in the first place.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I think I can broadly accept that.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like there are probably uh some remaining vestiges of um the long-held uh at least broadly leftist ideology of clash resentment where which has come out within the mansion tax, within the VAT on public schooling, um, whether it's just the general increase of taxes uh in the bid to um have a more distributist welfare state.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, I I think you're right, the progressive liberals, the highly secular progressive liberals who I th I I think it was Blair, wasn't it, as he uh as he came to power, talked about being um the a child of the the rock and roll revolution or or something along those lines, which ultimately is the beginning of uh the baby boomer period, the one in which it slowed off all of the oppressive, uh stuffy kind of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Britain and um and and at the beginning of the sexual revolution, and it all becomes about individual choice above all, and you can see that with things like and pleasure, of course, and that comes through uh the assisted suicide and and all the rest of it.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think I think you're probably right.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: There it they have not governed actually with a a unified vision um of what it is that they believe in, but there are uh these kind of hodgepodge of disconnected um ideological strains that that pop up here and there in a reaction to something that they think might get them a bit of money or win them favour.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think I agree.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I think there's certainly class resentment bubbles up occasionally.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I see that hints of strong hints of that in the uh inheritance tax arrangement for family farms, which, you know, I think farmers can get they can get advice and try and um ensure they don't fall down in that area to hand over their farms to their families, but it's it shouldn't really be necessary.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you if you if you believe in family farms, you you wanna you wanna allow people to to to allow their children to become farmers as well.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think the average age of farmers is uh about 61 in this country.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a real problem.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Likewise, I agree with you on the on the s on the uh independent schools VAT.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, that that was just I think resentment and and pr almost surely counterproductive, because the the closure of schools will put the burden on the state, and it's it's it's quite likely that it wouldn't be uh fiscally positive.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: So no, I I think that bubbles up, but it's totally incoherent, John.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's no my my criticism, my broad criticism of Labour is they've got no plan.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: They had plenty of time to plan, and they've come to government and they don't really know what they're doing in virtually any of the key domains.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So and I think that also explains why you have a lot of measures just happening.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you're scrapping the two-child limit on on welfare uh is an example of a a practical payoff to backbenchers.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not a it's not a plan, it's not a it's they haven't thought it through.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's just a just a political, short-term political thing.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you've already started to speak about plans, and what I thought would be good to segue the conversation into is vision, because in pretty much all of my life um I have uh watched the political theatre uh talk a lot about economics, which isn't to say that it's not important, but y there are usually financial analogies and metaphors pulled out, Britain needs to pay down its credit card.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: True, you know, you want to be fiscally secure and all the rest of it.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: But my point is that many of these election campaigns end up being fought on economic grounds.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose where a lot of people are particularly concerned day-to-day is at a more civilizational level.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not saying they're sitting there thinking about Gibbons' decline and fall of the Roman Empire and what that might mean today, but people can feel a country changing and they can feel their signs and symbols and rites and rituals and traditions fizzling away, and they're also complicit in it as well.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just down to the elites, but the elites are definitely complicit in it.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a changed nation.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And all we have are more and more people talking about increasing the tax base and how we get more jobs, and again, important.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: But where's the where's the actual vision coming for the nation?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: As in what is it?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Who are we?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even Starmer talked about we need to rediscover who we are, but there's there hasn't been any of that.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think we should get into the Restore Britain project, which I know you're part of in a moment.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: But in your eyes, when was the last visionary leader of Britain who actually thought civilizationally rather than just this is all about lines on a graph?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Probably Thatcher.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think Thatcher it was an attempt, a sincere attempt, although I think she was misguided, and a lot of the consequences of what she did were negative, but it was a serious attempt to sort of arrest decline, a sort of declinist uh Britain, and put it on a different path.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: So in that sense, she was very revolutionary as a as a leader.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think you've seen anything since then that comes close to that.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think what they are trying to do is just manage manage decline.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: In I mean, there's an analogy really in socially, culturally, civilizationally, and economically.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: What what Reeves is trying to do as Chancellor is that she hopes the the wheels don't come off on her watch.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: She's trying everything she can just to staunch the blood, uh manage things, you know, a bit of welfare here, a bit of borrowing there, and hopefully we can just keep the show on the road for a little longer.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it's the same with civilizational matters, it's cultural questions.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's no, you know, the the I I think that there's a reckoning, some of the shibboliths, some of the um platitudes and nostrums that we've had, we've been fed for 30, 40 years, diversity is strength, multiculturalism is strength, obviously are falling apart now as we balkanise.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: So people, there is a a vibe shift.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: People realize that actually division is not a good idea in a society, and some sort of common life uh laws and governance and modus vivendi depend on some sort of commonality.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And when you have people with wildly different views about how to live their lives, they inevitably compete, and they compete more when the center, the cultural center, refuses to set the cultural tone.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what they've done.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, successive governments have just failed to even try and set a cultural tone.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: They there's been no attempt for any uh migrant groups to integrate or assimilate properly.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about assimilation and integration in a bit in detail, if you like, but assimilation is not going to happen.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even possible, I don't think.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: A full assimilation isn't possible.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: People don't shed their their cultures on on arriving in a new place, it just doesn't happen.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the sort of a lot of the sort of fundamentals that we've been living with, no government has has faced up to or even uh sort of even tried to address.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: What we get is benign neglect at best.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you just get a series of things happening and people have to sort of muddle along with uh with platitudes.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um whether the public is prepared to continue this, I don't know.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Trump and Vance certainly are at least prepared, I mean it's a foreign country, but they at least they're prepared to look at their civilization uh as a as a coherent thing that they ought to protect.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I haven't heard any I mean we could talk about Restore Britain, it's in that group, certainly, but I haven't heard many uh politicians uh talk about cultural sovereignty, the need to protect your culture.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Trump and Vance have issued a new security document this this week, uh, which talks about Europe, uh, you know, this it's almost straight out of sort of Murray's strange death of Europe, you know, d civilizational decay and decline.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know, you don't have to be a uh a a first-rate philosopher to realise that if if Europe if European civilization isn't European, then European civilization doesn't really exist.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's those are b I think just basics.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um and, you know, so will it will will anyone address it?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: We we're trying to address it in restore Britain a little bit and at least be honest about it and and try and uh deal with it a little bit.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: You do get you do on the continent of Europe, you do get some politicians um addressing it.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the current uh uh Italian leader addresses it, and there are one or two others that will talk about it now.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's sort of happening.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: There is a vibe shift happening.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um but that's John, that's a political project.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: The project there is to try and replace the progressive liberals who are in charge, who represent a 15-20% of public opinion, with something that maps to a greater extent uh to general public opinion.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what they're trying to do.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um so who knows whether whether it'll work.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: But they their reac you know, in Britain, the way we've been governed is just to ignore it and pretend it's not happening.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Two things to pick up on there before we we delve into restore Britain, your involvement in it, its objectives.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh with regards to civilizationally predisposed uh politicians on the continent, what is also remarkable, and I don't know how much longer this will hold for, is those that are typically are put behind a cord on sanitaire.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: So Eric Zamur is a great example in France.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know all of his works in detail, but I do know that he is ethnically a Sephardic Jew who is very French, very pro-French, pro-French civilization.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw uh you may have seen this uh the other day as it was doing the rounds on the internet, um, some clips from a debate he was having with um I think it I can't remember his first name, but Glucksman.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we don't need to be well into French politics.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: What was striking is Glucksman was very much the man who, similar to Starmer, felt more at home in Davos than whatever the name of the parliamentary building is in Paris.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And Zamour was speaking as a man, as a historical being.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was he was talking about the importance of the region of Picardy, and not just because that's where the French fought against the Germans and tried to hold the line, but with regards to the origins of the nation, the Franks and all the rest of it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is totally missing, and actually that there are only a few people that I think have the ability to do that, that I've actually seen doing it within politics.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're certainly one of them.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have these wide ranging discussions.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: The other is also in Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe, who's on Tucker Carlson the other day, and he was just pulling out examples from English political history and British political history that showed he understood the nation and uh under people.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really hear anyone else talk about those things.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: But just as you were you brought up the American document.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just in case people haven't seen it yet, and I'm going to include it in the show notes because I think it's it's very important to understand how the world might see us, even if you might be a never Trumper or whatever you call it.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: But there are a few a few paragraphs that basically throws cold water on this idea that everything is just going to be fine from this national security strategy, which is published every year.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a section called Promoting European Greatness.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as you say, the Americans think currently they're thinking civilizationally.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're even thinking civilizationally for we Europeans because they recognize this is where they are from.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an economic aspect.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: They know it's a big market and all the rest of it.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: But first few paragraphs.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: American officials have become used to thinking about European problems in terms of insufficient military spending and economic stagnation.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: There is truth to this, but Europe's real problems are even deeper.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP, down from 25% in 1990 to 14% today, partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birth rates and loss of national identities and self-continent, not self-continence.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think, William, that these kind of messages from an ally that we have become utterly hitched to, and I know you you refer to us as a as a vassal state in that respect?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you think these kind of statements, even if the Rory Stewart's and Alistair Campbells of this world will be up in arms about it and they'll counter signal it, do you think this will start to set the tone within British politics once or if the the Labour government and the the um the uni party uh, so to speak, comes crumbling down in 2029?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is this the next way of seeing and governing in this kind of mould to overcome this civilizational erasure?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about way of seeing.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think the I think it's just uh it's a bigger question to ask whether it transposes, that view transposes and maps straight onto British politics and people start accepting the the ideas.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the first thing I would say about the ideas is that they have much greater correspondence with reality than the progressive ideas.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So the the the the problem with progressives is that their ideas just have no fit to how things really are, right?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they they they they live in a world which they want the world to be like their dreams.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: They want it to be all hello clouds, hello sky, it's all fine, everything's fine.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: We you know, Britain was always a nation of immigrants, which is nonsense.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was had a settled population, Anglo-Celtic population, for but best part of a thousand years.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: So they they make up a whole series of things that are just not true, uh, and created a whole series of myths.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it it post-war immigration apparently built Britain.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, it didn't.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so there's a whole series of things which they cling to.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they're they're far too indifferent about the possibilities of human groups just being antagonistic if they don't agree with each other.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: They have different ways of looking at the world.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so they throw everyone together and they want it to be a paradise, but you know, you might argue that you end up with Beirut or the Balkans.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's what you end up with.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what, say, John Gray would say you end up with.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the first challenge, actually, politically, is really to get is to sort of win the arguments on what is.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bit like, it's very similar to the, it's why I'm I'm attracted to the work of Garrett Jones, the economist of George Mason in the States, on culture transplant, because his uh work is empirical, data-driven.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it's not really, you know, he's not having an opinion, he's just looking at the data.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: What is the case?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh immigrant groups transplant their capabilities and and uh and capacities and outcomes onto the places they go.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's just what happens.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and obviously, you know, in in the in relation of mass immigration to Europe and the United States to some extent, diff some immigrant groups, you know, are just very, very uh burdensome to the public uh uh purse and uh fiscally negative.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Some have uh vastly disproportionate criminality, although majority maybe not criminal, but different in proportion to other uh population groups.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And this is just reality.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: And what one of our challenges is to get progressives to face reality, get real.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that and that we're still even not really at that stage.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: What we're trying to do with that is to s get them to see what is the case.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, John, when even if they even if you win that battle, they'll say, but it is the case, but then we really we it oughtn't to be the case.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's that that's the next thing they'll try, you know, it really oughtn't to be the case.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not really interested in that.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it I'm more interested in what is true.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: So winning that argument, so from the from the sort of truth point of view, is is it true that if if Europe just just changes its population to a third-world immigrant population, do you expect European civilization to sort of survive as a coherent, strong uh civilization?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, no.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I wouldn't expect it to.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you get a as as that happened, as that pro as that process of vast demographic change happens, you get a whole series of other things happening, which is, I know you interviewed David Betts, and I'm I've got a fan of his his uh work.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um he calls it downgrading.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you get a cultural and racial minor uh majority being downgraded in its own in its own domain.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Most people don't like that very much.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, most people don't really want it.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I tend to use the world word disprivileged.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's I think that's what happens.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, should should a cultural uh majority be privileged?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it should set the cultural tone in a country.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you should most countries have some sort of majority culture that that says this is how we this is how we live.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: These are our customs, the our laws follow that.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think to a certain extent, a minority, particularly a minority arriving in a place, ought to respect that, be able to respect that without competing.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: The problem that we have, of course, is that we have in government and in institutions, we have very large uh minorities of white progressives that despise, deeply despise the culture and want to undermine it.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they, uh to put it very crudely, they team up with a m probably a minority of some immigrants that don't like the culture either.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um that messes it up for everyone because a lot of uh immigrants actually do like the culture, and that's why they're here.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And and a lot of immigrants want to assimilate and are very pro-Western civilization.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the different groups, these are the battlegrounds.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you think, though, I think continuing on with very, very large-scale mass migration into into Europe is is is just very foolish.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I d I think it's it's it's it's there's no case for it economically, uh, and certainly no case for it uh civilizationally culturally.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: A term has started to be bandied around the last few weeks.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly appears in that national security strategy by the United States government, but I've also seen it within the British press.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that that phrase is the end this is the end of mass migration or the era of mass migration.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh does that mean that effectively those m captains of industry who have pushed it for so long now accept that this won't continue for various reasons, and uh signals have been sent out to the various people part of these uh Davocratic institutions, uh including those in cabinet and various other ministerial positions across the continent, to say, look, we can't we can't continue with human quantitative easing, we've got to find another way, regardless of whether you think that's what's behind it and what might uh precipitate change.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh do you believe that the the the era of mass migration is over or is it is it going to continue?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really, really difficult question.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um let's tackle firstly, let's tackle it in terms of the level of addiction that we have now to it.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's like an addiction, I think it's a very good metaphor.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: You you start with relatively low rates of migration, labour migration, family reunion and so on, some asylum migration, and then it ramps up and up and up and up, and you get chain migration, you get family reunion, you get more of it.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, the more you neglect your domestic uh training programs, uh you know, the more you'll need short-term plugs to labour market gaps.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's what happens.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the at the rate we're going now, to correct it, you'd have to have a government that was absolutely rolls its sleeves up and prepared to take some sacrifices, to make some sacrifices, uh to have some turbulence for a few years in adjusting labor markets to it.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because the because the levels are so huge.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got hung well, and it's not just labor migration, it's it's things like the structure of higher education in the UK is structured to depend on um on foreign students.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: The foreign student income to the university sector is the only out of the three main sources of income, the only the only source that isn't debt-based.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: The other two, which is a grant from government, which is debt-based because government's borrowing$130,$140 billion a year, and uh domestic students have uh student debt uh with a student loan company, uh and that's debt-based.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: But so they're addicted to this.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and then actually correcting a a problem like that uh would be extremely challenging.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you know, a lot of not not the majority, but did you did you know, for instance, that the out of the hundreds of thousands of people that come here to study at universities, uh tens of thousands of those people apply for asylum, political asylum, every year.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Every yeah.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so you every, you know, virtually every flow and and and component of this is connected to another one.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you look at the health service, it's got no 42% of doctors recruited in the health service are foreign.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've made no attempt, no attempt at all to train our own clinicians, nurses, and doctors.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: None.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: We don't even try.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so you can't you you do the short-term gratification thing, you just you just ship in a Nigerian doctor.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think something like one in six Nigerian doctors working in the UK now, which is terrible for Nigeria, which is a country evidently in greater need than us.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um So no, it's it's it's it's very, very, very challenging.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when you've got the other major problem is when you've granted citizenship to very, very large populations of different groups around the world, they they are determined, many of these groups, to to reunite and get more of their family members into the West as soon as possible through marriage, through uh other visa routes and so on.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: So once it starts, it's extremely difficult to turn around.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, do I believe I I don't know whether it will, John, I'm and I hope it does correct, because if it doesn't correct, you might you you could just get further civilizational decay and further bankruptcy, because I think the majority, certainly in Britain's case, the majority of the groups coming here are fiscally negative uh and very, very costly.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: You just can't go on like that.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: The country, I know the Labour think Lib Dems and Greens think it's a charity, but it isn't, it shouldn't be.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so in the end you just you'll you'll you'll go pop.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Or you could get a situation which David Betts writes about, which is just you you get conflict.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: You get, you know, a low level probably at the start and then uh increasingly intense uh civil conflict.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I I don't want any of that.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: I want a strong Britain united where the population actually believes in the country and you have some sort of level of coherence or stability.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um but there's no guarantee, there isn't a guarantee that that that we win.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what you have to do is you have to I think we win the a lot of the arguments on the data, but there's no guarantee that you win politically.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we we've wanted a lot of things politically that have never happened.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the the the Liberals in control have continued to do it.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, perhaps we should go on to this question of restore Britain, because I because I as I see it, um the major challenge, certainly between now and the next election, I think it will be 2029.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't hold that Labour will fall before then, unless there's a major sort of national international economic crisis.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think they'll hold.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, we've we have a chance in 2029 of getting a government that that is prepared to govern in the national interest, that that believes in something like uh national citizen preference.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and unless we get that, we're in further deeper trouble.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I am worried about it, John, because the we we you know, at the moment, what you might call the cultural right is divided.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um the although we're on the sort of economic sensible uh left, I think we I think the the left in general, uh there's a lot to it.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: You've got the you've got, you know, the SNP, Plyde, uh, you know, the the Labour Party, the Lib Dems and the Greens, and possibly your party.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there isn't, I think we should be complacent at all.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's no guarantee at all that some gross liberal coalition assembles after the next election and keeps keeps things going that, you know, on the road to ruin.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's incumbent on us to try and ask the question: how are we gonna get the patriotic nationalist sort of alternative going?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and how how is it gonna be convened?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Restore Britain in that case, let's move on to it.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps for those and I suspect a fair few people watching and listening to this channel will already be familiar with it, but maybe William, you could outline Restore Britain's objectives, because it's not a political party, it's it seeks to be cross-party.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then after that, I'd like to delve into some of the differences between some of you that are part of the movement, you know, the political differences particularly.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: But let's let's begin with the objectives and what it hopes to uh hopes to achieve in having been set up.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's it's it's it's really its aim, its broad aim, is a sort of cultural restoration.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think it, you know, we acknowledge that most of our problems are downstream of culture, the cultural issue.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and in that respect, it's just a case of trying to assemble people that agree that there has to be some sort of restoration of a British way of doing things, putting the nation first, certainly on law and common law, restoring our way of doing things against the way that has prevailed over the last 30 or 40 years.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, getting control.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the basics that uh that Rupert Lowe, who's sort of convened and started this movement, uh agrees with.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some of the sort of what he calls common sense.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you might have a border, you might cut put your country first, you might try and balance the books and not head towards bankruptcy and so on and so forth.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it is, it is not uh, I mean, Rupert's Rupert's the driving force behind starting it.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a political party.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: You can be a member of any political party and be a supporter of it.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and certainly at one or two events that I've attended, and uh, you know, you've had people from um from the Tories and one or two reform probably uh still, which is which is surprising in a way, um, myself and it so and also cultural and academic help as well.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the the one of the first things that Restore Britain pu actually published is a research document on mass deportations, which is basically again, it's it's trying to apply common sense to uh a fact which is you shouldn't, it's not a good idea to allow people to uh settle illegally in your country.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in hundreds of thousands or possibly over a million people have done that, and we think that's wrong, and we think we deal with it by deporting people who are illegally here.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there'll be other reports um on uh in other domains and other dimensions, but the idea is to get to bring people that want to put the country first together and then see where we go with it.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think obviously it's well known that there have been challenges, let's put it that way, I'm being euphemistic, um, in in terms of Rupert's uh relationship with with um with reform uh given the history, and uh, you know, no no one knows what will become of that.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I think what we're trying to do is put the country first and work together if possible.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't, I mean, I I, you know, despite the differences I've had with reform myself, I I d I have proved the point because I I I I did negotiate uh an electoral pact, a limited one of 24 seats at the last general election with reform.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: And to date it's the only one that's that's happened with them.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, we did have differences, but if you can work together in the in the national interest, I think you you should do.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's define the national interest.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: I recently had uh Philip Cunliffe uh on.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: He uh is a professor at King's College London and had written a book called The National Interest, which is effectively politics after globalization.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: He makes the case that what effectively happened post-Second World War is that our governors ended up um shifting their mindset from governing for the nation uh as nation states to governing as member states, part of these transnational, supranational uh organizations and bodies with this idea of global governance, global good, um, and cooperation in in various things.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh how uh how would you say the national interest um should be defined here?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: So for instance, if Restore Britain besides the deportations, uh if what what does the national interest look like if you were to come to power or people of your ilk were to come to power, uh what how would they prove that they're governing in the national interest instead of in the interests of distant bureaucracies somewhere?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, before I get yeah, it's a good question.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh before I get onto that, I think you you're quite right to to note historically what happened in post-war Europe, uh, 45 to 55, was when it really started, uh early po you know, early post-war Europe.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened was probably culturally in in in the case of many states who are shamed by uh fascism and Nazism, uh, and for other reasons, some a lot of there was a lot of state failure, of course, you know, people forget it, but you know, uh if you're if you're overrun militarily and you're you're you can't defend your borders and and you're occupied, your state has failed.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: So uh there was a sort of re-uh uh a reassessment of really the direction that Europe should go in, and then you get what I call the sort of relic of 1940s-50s thinking that the the European Union or they started as a customs union, but ever closer union.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: So what happened was that European nations, the leaders of European nations, gave up on nation states.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: They gave up on it.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: They they they they thought the idea of of having, you know, France or Portugal or Spain or Germany or whatever, is it's that's old hat.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: We don't do that now.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have some sort of um broader picture.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that has consequences because you immediately you start that, of course, you you start prioritizing other things apart from your your national well-being and your citizens in in your own nation.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: So in terms of you ask what would what would it look like?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you d you uh a proper national government should govern in the interests of the nation and its people.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's vet it's pretty much as simple as that.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: So let's try and pick some examples.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, i i is it a good idea for your nation state to um deindustrialise and to offshore all its industry to China and end up with a massive trade deficit?
• 42:52
  unknown: No.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, it it it obviously isn't.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it because you you're beggaring your state, uh your you that will end up in your economic welfare going forward just deteriorating.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, uh pick another basic example.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a good idea to let people just wander in to your state uh to claim asylum, to get asylum, and then to have to reunite their entire families to settle.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: If I mean, is it it would that be sensible in economic terms if it costs you?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, so it's not in your interest to do it.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not in your own nation state's interest to practice that.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not in your interest culturally, if it particularly if you're dealing with antagonistic and and culturally dissimilar people from some very backward countries.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously not.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's obviously not in your nation's interests.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the liberals that govern us think that it's important just to be nice to other people.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that's just uh we just can't afford that sort of the predicament we're in, we can't afford that sort of thinking.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can't afford to be governed by people that that put The interests of other groups over and above the your your own citizenry.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, and and some of the rhetoric, I mean, I it is difficult, but may as well cut to the cho the chase, John.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: On something like crime and sexual violence, criminality, murder, and the rest of it, if you're importing groups that have proportionately higher propensity for this, and on the data are um there's a there's a there's a proper disparity there, you you've got to ask the liberals that are importing these groups how many people are you prepared to be raped or killed to satisfy your liberal instincts to try and help others all the time.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you have to put the state and the citizens first, and that's I think what you would you would get out of a state that was that was run in the national interest.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: I could go on and on.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, energy policy is another very, very obvious one.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, is it in the national interest?
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just say two things.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is it in the national interest to um uh to subcontract your renewable energy system to the Chinese Communist Party?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um is it in your national interest to to uh to subcontract gas production to the to the Norwegians in the same fields and create a de a trade deficit of 40 billion a year?
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a stupid thing to do, and that's what they've done.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we've been governed by a bunch of people that are completely their head is in the clouds.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're not contact they have no they have no connection to reality in this stuff.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we've been extremely badly governed by people who've book have put their own um their own uh self-aggrandisement above the people of this country, and it's got to stop.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: But there are plenty of them, and it will be a major challenge.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's let's delve into the future of social democracy in a nation which is heavily indebted.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're probably on the verge of of bankruptcy, and so that in itself is probably quite self-explanatory.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: If things go pop and you don't have the money, then you probably can't do any of the distributive stuff, even if you don't agree that there should be, you know, you've got an Anrandian view of the world, there shouldn't be a welfare state.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that there should be, but it probably it needs to be scaled back a lot.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're we're dishing out cash left, right, and centre.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that angle.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the angle which we've talked on a few times, this assimilation and immigration point.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think when we look at the future of Britain with regards to its demographics, and I'll be speaking to uh Paul Morland and Eric Kaufman on this very point in uh just next week, uh coming out on Boxing Day, uh, which is a week before this one's coming out, is um we we know that the the nation is going to be even more ethnically diverse than before, which on its face of it, you don't have to make a value judgment and say different people of different ethnicities equals bad.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is, is as we've talked about, lots of people come in, they actually have no reason to integrate or assimilate because they have a diaspora they can join, they can they can have their own rites, rituals, traditions, languages, they can effectively have their own law, of which we see that amongst various different groups uh throughout the country.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is, as we're getting cutting to the chase, is that whether we like it or not, there is an ethnic basis to any nation.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about ours, and we have a group of four nations.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: They are Anglo-Celtic, and they took a long time to form a union.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, whilst there have been there has been diversity amongst these nations and these peoples, is that we did have, in the end, a common set of rights, rituals, language, and traditions, which we shared up until quite recently, you know, the cultural revolution, as probably Peter Hitchens would would term it.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: And now what we see in the news are is I've I've just seen this today in the Daily Mail, is we have a British Somali mother of three who is the wife of the new leader of the Islamic State who absconded to Somalia.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: She's living in a council house in Slough.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: And people can see that A, she's not British other than a passport, because she is effectively part of a community that still has different rights, rituals, traditions, probably language.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: And B, even though they're not really allowed to raise us in this country because of what might be said to them uh in the dead of night by a police officer, is why should we pay for this?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose how how can we have a social democratic nation when we no longer have a collective we?
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: And people know we no longer have a collective we.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose you've talked about some of this already.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is that this can't hold.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what is the response to this?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, John Gray recently wrote in the New Statesman that actually, look, post-liberalism isn't the answer.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: What we need actually is an even stronger leviathan to keep the competing tribes uh from each other and to crack down on it.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately you could argue that some of that's already happening, hence the restrictive speech codes, the the different jail sentences being handed out to the majority group so as not to uh further alienate in their eyes the minority groups.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: What what does the what does a good future look like?
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know you think remigration in some way is is untenable, but I suppose there are some that I've spoken with who are from different non-Western civilizations.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll bring one example before you jump in to respond, is Driss Gali, who I I've spoken to a couple of times.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: He is a Moroccan and he is also a very proud Frenchman, and he's also a Muslim, and he spots the difference between the moderate Muslims who want to be part of Western civilization who really don't want to go back to Muslim countries, and says that we what we are fighting for here is civilization.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: And anyone who is not for it, we need to say they can't be part of the club.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to start thinking differently.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: And thinking differently might include saying, well, look, you're not part of the club, but you are here contributing economically and paying taxes.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you look, you can have associate status, but you can't be a citizen.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And for all other people who are either proving they're just living separate lives or and they are taking more out than they put in over successive generations, or all the rest of it, we need to find a way of get sending them back because it's not about the economic question.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's back to that point I made earlier, the civilizational question.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: So big long preamble, William, but future of social democracy in a country that is effectively got different diasporas popping up everywhere and lower social trust.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: How does it work?
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, there's a lot in there.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: So um so I would say um let's take the last thing you you you mentioned first, the question of commonality of culture, how can you make it work?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, any social democrat is going to be wanting to uh have a state that involves sharing, and that's based on trust.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't if you if you erode the trust, uh you you don't get the sharing.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's that's actually what is happening.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: People once the again to go back to David Betts, once the state, crown as he calls it, starts being um uh loses its legitimacy, once the majority think the crown, the state hasn't got my back, they've got others' interests first, then people will be disinclined to share, and the whole thing sort of starts to unravel.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: You get you get re-tribalization really at that point.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that is a process.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's sort of happening.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: People are starting to think in those ways, which is very challenging.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um some of the other things you mentioned, I mean, so the difficulty, the there has been a vibe shift, and it's not just on hardcore sort of X, Twitter, you know, things like that.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the pit people, it's not just that.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: There is in the in the general population there's a there's a slight vibe shift.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: People are are are asking themselves, are we safer, more um coherent uh as a result of the massive change that's happened?
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people say we're not, we don't feel we are.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the broader data proves that you know, 70%, 72% of Britain's more in common say uh that um emigration is far too high.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the question on what people call, if people use the term re-migration, people bandy the term around uh rapidly, you know.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the term is all over the place, particularly with younger activists on Twitter.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's not really defined.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I I was try- I I read a piece of the Salisbury Review to try and head to make clear, just to be clear about it from my own point of view.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it I I think there's there's an obvious difference between removing people from your state that are here illegally, which is to me a no-brainer, even if it's runs into millions and you have to do it.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um And there's a massive difference between that and saying, well, I think any culturally unassimilated minority should go as well.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's massively problematic.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's that's I just don't genuinely know how that could happen in under a system of rule of law that we have.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what what are people saying?
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's I don't I'm by the way, I'm not denying that there's a a huge problem of millions of people that are unassimilated.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think effectively some of these uh communities, that it's it's a form of immigration that I would describe as colonization.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's I think what it is.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Gunnar Heinzon, the German academic, would certainly describe it as that.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think he's right.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but and it's and it is massively problematic socially, obviously massively problematic.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: But the question I always ask people that say, you know, that to say deport, re migrate is, and and your viewers should think about this if they're if they're in this category, is so what's left of the rule of law when you knock on someone's door whose family have possibly hit been here since the 50s or 60s, and you say, sorry, I'm just gonna deport you.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: And there's someone says, Well, I'm British.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh second, third generation British, and the state says, sorry, I'm just gonna deport you anyway.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I can't, I can't a point I've made rhetorically to people that say this is that if you tried, if a government, A, if a government tried to do that, is not part of any social democratic program for a start.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: It would be a very different government that would even try that.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: But if they did try that, if that was actually happening, John, you'd already be in a civil war.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: You'd be you'd already be in the type of situation that David Betts is talking about if that happened.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: So what I was do to try and sort of bring to re-moor people, to try and bring people back.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a a point John Gray made, I think he's very right in this, is that of course if a state did try and do that, they'd deport the wrong people.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean they did it wrong.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: I can't see I don't see that that's I th and in any case, Mike Jones uh makes a point as well.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people are talking about this stuff before they've even got control of their own border on the South Coast.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you why don't you try and get why don't you try and get a hold of your border first and stop illegals just wandering into your country?
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you get mass legal migration under control and why don't you try and deport people who are here illegally?
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's lots of things you can do as a state to tackle welfare dependency and so on to anyone that's here, even on ILR, you could you could, you know, I think it's perfectly legitimate, for instance, for a state to think of someone that's here that's not a British citizen that's claiming benefits, and to to to to put a new law in saying, well, you know, you've got two or three years of benefits if you're not a British citizen and then you don't get any more.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that's that's entirely legitimate for a state to look at something like that.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: But what I can't uh I can't envisage is that a democratic state, a Western democratic state, could start saying to different populations within it, we're just gonna arbitrarily take your passport off you uh and take you at gunpoint to a plane and ship you back off to Pakistan or whatever.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that's i i if you're in that you're you're the whole thing is broken down.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're not in a a governed, legal, legally ruled society at that point.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think you're right to say that the burden uh of defining what it is rests on those people who think it would be a good idea.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are some potentially more obvious um things you might do if, for instance, you care about the idea of democracy and cohesion.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, that point that I brought up in the long preamble of those who've taken out more than they've put in over successive generations.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I think Switzerland have have started to do that.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um which seems to me like a pretty fair thing, you know.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: W what was granted to you was a privilege to live here in Switzerland, and you've actually not made a contribution over time.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: And within that, I think also that there was poor German language understanding they were living in that part of Switzerland.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I think these things can be defined, but you're right, it can't just be an arbitrary you look a bit brown, you speak a different language, you whatever, off you go, or you just arrived after this point, you're gone, because that is not treating people with the dignity they deserve.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: But if what you are caring about is the maintenance of a democratic society, then you probably want to start thinking about things like, you know, before you dish out benefits, make sure that that person has at least a British grandparent.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, if you can move to a country without being able to support yourself and you're relying on the state, you're already not entering into the social contract.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I agree with that.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I I think it, you know, that there are the the on the contributory principle, which was the original welfare state beverage principles, that you put in and you get out.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then it links you to it, of course.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I I see I see no reason why a state shouldn't say to all labor migration that it gets no benefits at all, that it pays for its education and health and a lot.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to, you know, uh a lot of states do this.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of people don't realize that around the world you go to a state, you don't get its benefits uh as an entitlement as a uh someone that's on a skilled labor programme.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: Not always.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, a lot of states don't do that.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um So yeah, and and and also I've never I've never argued, in fact I wrote about it, that if you are if you are um a settled, uh unassimilated uh immigrant to the West and you are unhappy, you there's no reason that anyone should discourage you from going somewhere that you'd be happier.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, if you're not happy and you you're antagonistic to the culture here, then then maybe you should consider it.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: But you can't you can't um the the hurdle that I have, which is basic one, you can't arbitrarily knock on people's door who are British and say we're gonna say you were gunpoint and and and uh cut you off somewhere else.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: The whole you're in a you're in a war situation.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's not a that's that's something that, you know, no no social democratic government could could could can could uh consider.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is, I mean, you you you started the the broader question about you know the the parameters of things like debt uh and and and you know and welfare dependency generally and the the very large public sector borrowing requirement.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um that I think the the certainly there's certainly a democra a social democratic route.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it involves it involves uh it involves looking at welfare.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well the welfare spending is is out of control in some categories.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: There are some categories which are uh you might call them ostentatious, you might call them egregious almost.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: The the the the probably the the the one that comes in for the most um criticism is the the the personal mobility scheme, the motorbility scheme, which grants people that are successful in applying for it uh access to to new motor vehicles.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: Something like 12% of all new motor vehicles in the UK are part of this scheme.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh people in their 20s who have mental health uh challenges have been granted uh brand new cars on this lease scheme.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: And some of them are, and and you know, we we have to say, you know, Audi's or Mercedes, BMWs.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I've said before, as a as a sort of rhetorical line, it's not clear that that that someone with a mental health challenge of that type should just have an Audi on the state.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if we if we you know if the country does go pop in a if if the bond market really does go west uh and we get into a severe crisis, I think future historians will look back at this period and ask, ask, what, you know, what sort of people were governing us when we were doing this, where when we were carrying these things out.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're clearly spending more money than you could you c you you've earned, uh, or that you could afford.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's interesting, some a lot of the categories of welfare spending are just not hitched to reality in a way that, say, the defence budget or the housing budget or the transport budget is hitched.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it literally, if you qualify, you get it, and it just balloons up and up and up, and that's that's what has been happening.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I think in truth, if I want to be crude about it, Britain has got uh welfare spending levels that would be justified by a tax base of of something like the German uh West German economy of the 1980s.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but in fact we just don't have that.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we we're we're well beyond our means, and there will be have uh have to be an adjustment.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: But it in and more broadly, if the country's gonna have a future economically, there has to be an adjustment away from what people call the welfare state.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: Not the welfare state, but the the the welfare state, you know, a state being primarily concerned with just dispensing welfare, to it to an investment state, to a state where net investment as a percentage of GDP is where it was in the 60s and 70s, which was up at 12%, 15% sometimes, and it just declined.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and it declined, and now virtually I mean it's well worth people listening to examples to explain what I'm on about.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: Housing is a great example.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: So now we spend about 30, this year we'll probably spend about 36 billion pounds uh in in something called housing benefit, which is basically paying people's rents or subsidizing people's rent.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the fact that the state has to subsidize people's rents already tells you that there's something going on wrong with with their ability to pay those rents and the ability of the housing market to deliver uh rents at the right prices and no tax base and their earnings.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: So there's always a there's already a problem if if the state ends up saying, well, I'm just gonna pay rent for you.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: But we only spent about$8 billion building houses.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in the 60s and 70s, before housing benefit was really a thing, it was literally the opposite the other way around, as a proportion.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, literally for every pound you'd spend on housing benefit, you might spend six or seven building houses.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's the it's it's the other way around now.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh you know, it's gonna be tough, but that I I I think there's no there's no solution in sight that doesn't involve that relationship being totally tipped up.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: You the state has to start building some houses uh and it has to stop spending money uh at the scale it is uh paying people's rents.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's just it's just that's and and there are so many other areas that you could say this.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so you you the state is going around mopping up blood and stenching bleeding when it's done nothing to c to deal with the actual fundamental cause, I'm afraid of the L.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: A question I ask all my guests, William, and I asked you this last time, so I'm gonna have to reframe it, but it's about what you've changed your mind on during the course of your life.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you you've answered that, and you you gave us a a full and frank response about your political beliefs arc.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: You you were pro-Europe and EU, you then became a remain you were a staunch Romainer, then a reformed Remainer, then a a Eurosceptic, and then you had a brief dalliance in the Conservative Party and were highly libertarian.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there I think there are lots in there that people could probably um uh relate to.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: Let me change the question a little bit.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you've been politics for a few years now since you became leader of the SDP.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: What have you what have you learned about how politics works uh that perhaps you didn't know before you got into that role?
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a good question.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not a terribly good thing to know.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I've I've discovered uh if you even when I was in the Tory party for four years and I was a uh you know parliamentary candidate in 2001, uh I learned something about it.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I wasn't not nowhere near to the extent that I have this time.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um so what I've learned really this time, particularly by getting to know people in g you know in government while they were governing, I knew quite a few Tories, not me.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Massively Sini, but some ministers and some other people that I got to know pretty well.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then some civil servants, and then some think tankers, and then the whole SW1 media bubble, political bubble thing.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: What I've really learned, John, is that we they're not as good as the public would have thought they were.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now I think that's probably changing.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, public respect for politicians and politics is down at sort of 10% now.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it is collapsing.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps the perhaps the people realize they're not very good.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I it's been shocking to me to find out how inept, how uh ungrounded, unlearned uh the people that govern us are.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's been the shocking thing.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: How literally incompetent.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and how and also how superficial, you know, how how incredibly comms orientated it is.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: John Gray has criticized modern politics as a form of a branch of the entertainment industry.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of a lot of the way politics is done, both certainly both the major parties, has been like that.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's it's it's shocking to see major important issues just being dealt with in a sort of comms way.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose the best example you can think of recently is the budget.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and the Labour got in last year and as a pil as a comms device said, oh, it's w it's far worse.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a black hole, it's far worse than we thought.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_01: Far worse.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, and and because of that, we're gonna have to r raise some money, put up taxes, and spend more on welfare.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: And why did they do that?
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because they wanted to spend more money on welfare.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a comms approach to it, it's not an economic thought-out thing.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like comms, it's like a sort of firefighting thing.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_01: Did it again with the budget this time, spreading gloom and doom stories about how it's so bad.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and and it's very short-term and it's very superficial.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, the when we did the energy group uh the energy green paper, energy abundance, we sort of this is a very good green paper.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_01: I most people that know about energy say it's the best thing any party has produced on this topic.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a very serious thing, but you you you know, we're not we're not governed by people that take these things terribly seriously, unfortunately.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's to be honest, that's been the big, the single big realization is that actually they are not they are really not very good.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh now the secret is out.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: We are governed by our inferiors, or at least people who should who should be much better than they they are.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Will, before I let you go, what can we expect from you and the SDP?
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's coming out?
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we've I mean we're concentrating on a lot of things the next uh two quarters.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got hopefully a uh uh a green paper on on China, how we react to China, how we deal with it as a country, what are the parameters of it?
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you that's a massively important question.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's another green paper which we are working on, hasn't really got a title yet, but it's it's about the investment state.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's about how we get the state to function properly to invest, because investment equals future prosperity broadly.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's we looked at energy in detail, we looked at uh age of indifference, you know, the the end of indifference, which is basically industrial policy.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: We looked at farms.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the next thing is the investment state, and and that hopefully if we can get that done reasonably quickly, it may be uh in the first or second quarter of next year.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course we've got the elections in May where where we we try and hold on to what we've got uh in in the big in the great city of Leeds and extend it.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it'll be the first time where we've really been up against the full spectrum of all parties battling it out.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we're very excited about that.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, so all of those things really keep on trucking.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, given the SDP is a party with um resources that are uh that pale in comparison compared to the established parties and now reform, it is absolutely to the you and your party's credit that you produce such serious, well-thought-out work.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because I basically never see this from any of the other parties.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You never see anyone in media talking about just how great a policy is that's come out of Labour, Conservative, or or even reform circles.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um so the fact that you're able to do that on a membership that's much lower and lower income shows that you actually are very serious people.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: You actually are thinking about the national interest.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_00: You are not just about the comms.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, for what it's worth, I uh I fully appreciate what you do.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that if only, if only SW1, if only the think tank class did even half the amount of homework that the SDP does, maybe, just maybe, we might have some policies worth governing the nation in the name of.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We might be better governed, yeah, it's true.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Great to be here.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for the opportunity.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: You too.