Transcript for:
Lecture on Democracy, Populism, and Conservative Politics in the UK

the problem is that democracy partly depends on fairy Stories the trick of populism is that of course there's always a colel of Truth in this the point is not is farage right in his criticisms the point is what would he represent and what would he do if he was in government as with most of these things when you try to do it you run into a lot of complication at the point where you go well I don't want to leave the ECR cuz it's in that's when the person says well in that case F you I'm voting for farage and that's how you create popular when it works you know you're the great reformer you're Margaret Thatcher when it doesn't work you're L trust you're a effectless imprudent foolish person who didn't bother to take decent advice Ro Stuart welcome to trigonometry it's great to finally have you on really looking forward to speaking with you uh the first thing we wanted to talk to you about is obviously this is going out after the election but you've made it clear that you are not supporting the conservatives in this one and perhaps maybe even going as far left as the greens so what does conservatism mean to you what is it conservative in your definition it means that it if famously the problem with with conservative politics is that it's very difficult to Define um but I suppose this Left Right division exists in every country and one way of framing it is that the um the left tends to have a very optimistic Progressive vision of the future and cons conservatives tend to be more respectful of the way things are tradition in the past uh in a in a UK context that means having a different relationship to history to landscape to architecture to the Constitution and um let supp a different sense of what identity is I mean the question is for any politician in any country has to be to some extent uh a nationalist moderate nationalist you can be an extreme nationalist but you are representing this country and and what is that thing that you're representing is there an identity to that place that makes it distinct from other places that's been inherited from the past is it just the group of people who are alive today or is it also the people who live died the people who are yet to be born what kind of obligations do we have to the that the past and the and the future what are our ideas of values truth Bey um and these aren't things which are very difficult which are easy to articulate because generally speaking contemporary politics gets very quickly into a conversation about money h so that that being the case I guess what I'm getting at is what are your disagreements and frustrations with the state of the conservative family in the UK more broadly that have caused you to move so far away from it while still calling yourself a conservative because you're not saying I've become a green are you you still claim to be conservative so what what is that dissonance so I think it's it's largely um about moral values so for me Boris Johnson was a ludicrous dishonest buffoon who should never have been allowed to be prime minister and he was facilitated by my colleagues in the conservative party lzr was a reckless risk-taking glib prime minister who did huge damage to our economy and should never have been enabled by the conservative party the hard version of brexit that was pursued was divisive and damaging when the conservative party had an opportunity to bring the country together and try to find a compromise and so I think in terms of ethical standards they let themselves down with Boris Johnson in terms of thoughtful policy they let themselves down with L trust and in terms of an idea of politics is finding compromise in central ground they let themselves down with a hard brexit so it it it's uh a sense that they betrayed important values much more than the question of uh right or left Rory as well there's a competency crisis I would argue in the conservative party you look at the country they inherited in 2010 and you look at the country that they're handing over to the labor party I mean let's be fair the labor party going to win we all know it I would argue the country is in a worse state 14 after a 14-year conservative term than it was before yeah yeah sure and how does that make you feel as a conservative that this was the party that you believed in that you were part of and seeing the way that the the country has been handled well I think um how I feel is not not not I does doesn't interest me very much I think um what I think is interesting is is is the way that you frame that so I think you you've got two things going there MH country is in a worst state I agree and but you ascribe it to a competency crisis so you have some idea in your head that somehow if there had been some other group of people these kind of super competent people the country wouldn't be in the mess that it's in and and that depends how much you think that the problems that we face in this country are actually quite structural quite deep quite difficult ult and how much you think it's just down to the fact that Rishi sunak is no good at his job my guess is that these problems that we Face are very similar to the problems that people are facing in France that they're facing in Germany that they'll eventually face the United States they are much more to do with a population's aging so what's the the single biggest fact that explains the problems the NHS is that we have twice as many people aged over 85 compared to where we were in 1979 and each one of those people cost 10 times as much as somebody age between 18 and 25 to deal with second problem Co For Better or For Worse this government but with the agreement of Labor and Li a huge consensus around this decided to lock the country down took a the biggest recession that the country had experienced in 300 years and spent 400 billion ion pound that's 400,000 million p in payouts and support for people during covid which have now left us with this enormous debt um these are the real fundamentals and there are other things that we don't quite understand around the frenches there are 800,000 people economically inactive which isn't happening in other countries but nobody really understands why that's happening we are an economy and a structure that's incredibly dependent on immigration so the government's taken in about 1.4 million people net over the last two years why well because if you go to a hospital you go to a care home you discover that all the people with the skills and nursing care and Medicine are not from Britain they're from other countries and the country can only run on that basis on the other hand we have a population that doesn't want more immigration and has a point because we're also shorter houses you bring in 1.4 million more people where are they going to live where's the road infrastructure where are the schools to support and if you're creating a pyramid where you're always supporting your older people by bringing more and more young people well that logically is just going to keep expanding until you'd end up with a population of 150 million people in what's already the most populated country on Earth so I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I fear you will find that things are not much better after 5 years of Labor government and then you will be tempted to say look at these bunch of incompetence because we're not prepared to step back enough and see that fundamentally the problems are not about whether or not Rishi Sun's bright or does his job well fundamentally the problems are that we haven't managed to face these structural issues as a country I agree with you but my argument is not particularly with Rishi sunak it's a conservative party as a whole when they came in in 2010 they knew that there was a housing crisis they have done little or nothing to solve that problem and we're talking about we have a population crisis not enough babies are being born well if you don't allow young people to get on the housing ladder to actually be a to buy a place so that they can settle down get married have children then isn't that the natural reaction to your own inability or unwillingness to deal with this one thing um so first thing is that there's been a terrible failure on housing you're right but maybe the thing you're not acknowledging is that this was one of their number one priorities so they set building 300,000 houses a year as being top priority they put a lot of the most talented competent people in the government behind trying to build those houses people like Michael Gove Oliver Lewin Greg Clark were given these portfolios and they failed so why did they fail and and that's what I'm going to flip around to you because you seem to imagine that that failure is somehow a failure of what well what are you hinting at Rory because you've talked in the past and we've had people on the show some of whom you've just criticized by the way like L trust so la bra and others Steve Hilton David Cameron's former adviser who all made the same point that you've made in the past which is it's actually very very hard to get anything done when you're elected cu the Civil Service won't let you essentially it's kind of Fairly simple as that is that what you're hinting at or is there something else going on that you think is causing us to not be able to solve our problems I think the structure is immobilizing people everywhere so that's why I'm doubtful that labor will be able to address these issues we're equally doubtful by the way be under um so uh what are the problems well look I've I've written a book called Politics on the edge which is trying to talk in detail about some of the issues of getting anything done as a minister and some of that is about the Civil Service but there's a br a question about the public I mean why is it that these uh houses are not being built the way in which uh planning works are concerns about biodiversity and climate um our concerns about landscape our concerns about rural communities the way in which uh ownership structures work in development companies the way in which land income operates um so the minister trying to say okay I want to build houses is looking at 15 different factors all of which needs to be hit on the head separately so biodiversity right one of the things that stops building is that for very good reasons we we care about species nature biodiversity water and that rules out quite a lot of sites quite quickly we care about archaeology and if you find a sense of archaeological site that also has an impact on planning we care about democracy we care about local consultation right we want to feel that a local town or Village can say we object we think this could be built in a better way right why do they get stuff built in China very quickly they don't care and drive it through but but we have to be a bit more honest about what the tradeoffs are here you know we have a dream that this kind of competent technocratic government's going to come in but usually our dream is based on a culture or Society very unlike our own in which you know the Chinese government will literally move an entire Community to drive a train lines through they will ultimately imprison people if they object I I mean I've been through this in my own neighborhood here in South Ken um they've been trying since before I was born since 1972 to build something on top of the tube station and it's been blocked again and again for 51 years and finally they've managed to get it through and we're all outraged why are we outraged we're outraged because it's not delivering affordable housing because the architecture is ugly because it's bringing in a supermarket that's going to destroy the local shops and we're all saying you know we're in favor of development but we want development that is beautiful delivers affordable housing and doesn't destroy loc up shops and transport for London is saying we got to generate money here we got to get a lift into South K CH station and the way to do it is to build this rather ugly large structure and bring in a supermarket um and that's kind of microcosm of what's happening in every Community around this country that all of us want more housing in theory all of us want more development but in practice we're all very bright educated well-informed people who care passionately about our era and as soon as you propose anything it's not quite that we're nimes it's that we've all able to come up with 50 Arguments for why they shouldn't be doing it in quite the way they're doing it so that to me seems like a an area where leadership is required because leadership is about selling people on the idea that you and I have to sacrifice a little bit because you and I are going to have grandchildren one day and we want them to be able to buy a flat when before they're 40 right right but so if I take but but if I take the example of South chip station right I turn around you say the leader you know my grandchildren I turn around and say no no no my proposal has more affordable housing than your proposal okay and to which transport fandon says the economics don't work okay then we can't generate the money delivering the affordable hous then that seems like a fair tradeoff to me you the transport for London building its ugly stuff yeah okay um but if we look at London this philosophy of building has resulted in nine Elms has resulted in 50 60,000 on a affordable apartment blocks going up because the developers are trying to build as quickly as possible and generate as much money as possible and it's not resulting in affordable housing what I think we need is millions more Council houses but to build Council houses on Transport for London or mayor of London land would involve totally changing our financial model we'd have to accept much lower returns you you could do it financially I mean you could borrow the money you could invest and you could get income back but it would be a much lower return than we're used to getting and I don't see anybody yet prepared to say we're not going to finance Transport for London off property development we're going to make these plots of land uh not lose money but we're not going to try to generate big bucks of them why not why Won't Anyone say that because um that would require the taxpayer put putting more of their taxes into running transport for so if transport for doesn't Finance the siging on the pick line or the new lift off cheap property development doesn't deliver affordable housing somebody else has got to pay for it and that will mean not the property developers paying for it means the rest of us paying for it either through higher tube fairs or paying bigger taxes so the the whole of the British government is kind of is often different versions of Ponzi schemes where in order to avoid charging people taxes which seem to be unpopular um we end up doing these weird financing initiatives a lot of which is trying to crowd in money from the private sector by offering them profit in return for money being subsidized in the government so that being the case Rory looking at the conservative party does it actually have a future in its current state [Music] um well I'm worried about the conservative party I mean I'm very worried that they are going to be tempted to Lurch towards a kind of Nigel farage reform wing and that the reason why they'll probably Lurch towards that Wing is that Kiam has now occupied the center ground and the risk is that over the next 5 years for a lot of the problems we've talked about in this show they're not going to be able to deliver you know Kama will not be able to do stuff in the next 5 years and that will provide more opportunity for populists because I mean we can see it we can see it in Canada where Trudeau is not performing we can see it in Germany where Schultz is not performing we can see it in France where macron's not performing in all these cases you have people who are broadly speaking center-left moderate fiscally conservative politicians just not delivering and the reason they're not delivering is because of the kind of big structures of the way we're aging the way our economies work the way our welfare states are financed um and you know we we want of course in the way that you're doing now to say well so you know what does that mean for the Tory party what does that mean for the labor party and and we want to find villains we want to say these guys aren't competent these guys are terrible because it's quite cheering up I mean if that if that's the case then our life's about to get much better it'd be lovely if we lived in a world let me reiterate nobody in this room is under the illusion that life's about to get much better nobody honestly I'm not thinking there's daor Butler coming to the rescue right and but the problem is that democracy partly depends on fairy stories depends on an idea you vote out one party you vote in another stuff's going to change get better that if things are bad it's because they're a bunch of idiots in power mhm if we look at some like Rishi sunak who is he he's a you know he's a bright hardworking diligent guy I mean I've got big problems with him I got problems with his sense of vision his leadership why um why have I got problems with I've got problems with him because he's not able to step back and see the bigger picture but it's not that I think he's his problem is that he's the the normal way he's criticized is you know he's kind of privileged he's out of touch yeah he's entitled he's corrupt he's you know his wife's making money he's incompetent he's cruel I don't think any of that's true I think the guy's a you know brighter than us he's more hardworking than us he's more you know he's a he would be a successful Banker a successful lawyer you know be successful in almost any business he's just no good as prime minister and that's because the qualities you require are very unusual they require an incredible extent of Courage Vision Values moral Integrity which is extremely improbable for any of us to generate to do what Rory you keep hinting at these big structural problems or even explicitly describing them and no one I think would disagree with your analysis but the question is if somebody came along who was this perfect prime minister Al Rory Stewart what would they then go and do what do you think actually needs doing we'll get you back to the interview in a minute but first that my friends is a sound of another sale on Shopify the all-in-one Commerce platform to start run and grow your business I know that building a business takes work look at my face I'm exhausted but the lovely thing about Shopify is that no matter how big you want to grow Shopify is with you every step of the way Shopify is a Commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide whether you're selling handmade jewelry art prints or podcast merch like us bu our merch Shopify simplify selling online and in person so you can successfully grow your business Shopify even gets you selling across social media marketplaces like Facebook Instagram and Tik Tok Tik Tok just makes me angry I'm too old so if you're ready to get serious about selling sign up for A1 per month troll period at [Music] shopify.com SLT trigger and now back to the interview what do you think actually needs doing reform of the NHS dramatically I mean it's now chewing up four out of every1 of our current expenditure we're spending four times as much on the NHS as we were in 1979 in real terms twice as much in terms of our economy and it's not delivering when you say reform how because your argument is we've got way more older people who need way more expensive care how do you reform that uh we would have to stop doing and reform always is the same thing it's about prioritization and prioritization means you stop doing some things so it's it's very very tough I can see that yeah yeah and so basically what you're saying to people is that there is nowhere in the world nowhere except for Britain now which is trying to maintain a system that doesn't have a topay or Insurance model as part of it okay so reform the NHS make it par C what else what else does a bright Visionary courageous principle need to do planning reform is Central I if to build infrastructure we need to do that I think you probably uh not probably definitely from my point of view you'd want to rejoin the European Union Customs Union at least why is that so important because we need uh to have very close economic and political relationships with our nearest neighbor and that's because trade partly Works through proximity uh that's because small and medium-sized Enterprises are desperately dependent on being able to do that kind of trade and being within a customs area allows you to do it but it's also a symbol to investors around the world that instead of Britain retreating it's expanding back into to larger areas and that's also necessary because there are no trade deals coming from China India or the us because we're in a world of protectionism now not in a world of free trade okay so rejoin the Customs Union what else AI so AI is the only thing that one can imagine transforming productivity but to get there you would have to challenge unions you would have to take some risk on regulation you'd have to take quite a lot of risk on results you would have a lot of people terrified about AI taking over functions that humans are currently doing but productivity gains basically means fewer humans doing the same thing and AI is one of the ways of delivering that anything else probably my main ones yeah so so sorry final one sorry final one which is maybe more fundamental than any of them is that Britain isn't really run by politicians it's run by our civil service our civil service is enormous how's the NHS run it's not run by a Secretary of State for health consists of 1.1 million people right there are 350 million GP appointments year the numbers are kind of Staggering so the only way of running a good country is by improving the quality of those people how they are recruited how they are promoted how they are trained and that is a 20year process of investment of really thinking about how you create a really Elite professional civil service and that also requires some very tough conversations because a lot of the things that I found as a minister that were getting in the way give you an example that I I don't think I put in my book but you know mattered to me and sort of illustrat some of the paradoxes so when I was the minister responsible for part of the our effort during the Syrian War I discovered that my Syrian team was moved from London to East Kilbride near Glasgow 400 miles away why because somebody thought it would be great for the economy of this depressed area near Glasgow to have these civil servants moved up there so I say well wait a second we're fighting a war right who's going to be in the meetings with the ministry of Defense who's going to be in the meetings with the foreign office these meetings are happening in London oh don't worry Minister people will always be able to fly down for the sorry first they say they can do it on Zoom then I say no but that's not the point right a lot of this stuff is happening in the margins and meetings it's not just happening on the zoom call oh don't worry they'll be able to fly down then I noticed they're not flying down so then I go up to Glass I'm like what's happening and they say oh Minister we we've just done a a carbon audit and we've discovered that all these people were taking these flights so we banned anybody from taking flights down from Glasgow to London uh in said people can do all this stuff virally now there are two very valuable things happening here right regeneration revitalization employment near Glasgow and climate policy but what's lacking is what is the point of what they're doing point of what they're doing is they're trying to get involved in our biggest National Security priority which is fighting a war in Syria and they're not there and they're not helping if the number one question you're asking yourself which is what is the most effective practical way to make a difference in in Syria it is not to move these people up to Glasgow but our civil service machine is brilliant at prioritizing secondary issues and taking away from the fundamental question which is what is the most effective way of delivering what matters to the country Rory what it seems to be and this a brilliant answer thank you is that under underneath everything that you're saying is an unwillingness to have uncomfortable conversations sure do you think that's how that's one of the M the real issue actually is the inability by politicians and every other person to confront uncomfortable facts whether it's about housing whether it's about the NHS whether it's about GL uh geopolitics etc etc I think that's right I think we live in a world of fairy stories that's one of the reasons why populists do well but all the main parties also exist in a world of fairy stories and one of the most dominant fairy stories in our culture is that you don't need to choose that you can always have the best of all things and the best of all possible worlds so that story I've just told about Syria many people will listening from the civil service will be like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa you don't need to choose you know you can have regeneration and you can have good climate policy and you can have a great situation in Syria right or if I complain about the fact that my Yemen team my head of my Yemen team um was working a job share so I had one head of the em and team for two days and another for 3 days in a week and when I challenge it everyone's like well this is necessary for diversity it's necessary to provide maternity cover it's necessary for a good work life balance that people are able to work half the week right and I say that's fine but the fact is this is very inefficient because the person I'm talking to in the first two days doesn't know anything about what I'm talking to last oh no no Minister that's not true they can do a very very good Handover in the middle of the week there's there's no way that it's going to have any impact on efficiency right so we we don't like challenging right we we'll have something in our head which is a good thing I'm not saying it's not a good thing I mean I personally feel in my own life the lack of work life balance I I can see why you know from my life from my wife's life why being able to work a 3-day week can be incredibly important for a family for your own mental health for the development of your children for a healthy Society particularly in a world where people can't afford child care all that stuff is true and I can completely understand why from A diversity point of view if you want to keep women in the workplace and have senior women in the workplace you need to provide structures to allow them to do that but let's at least accept that sometimes the you're making a choice and that there are downsides as well as upsides I mean that's in a way what makes me a conservative that every bit of progress comes with a sacrifice it's the great Thomas Soul line there are no Solutions only tradeoffs and what you're really saying to translate it into simple language and you used to be a soldier is we're doing things for good reasons but they're detrimental to the mission yeah that's what we're doing yeah our whole society is a massive example of lots of things things being done for good reasons which are detrimental to an effective growing productive efficient Public Services economy and Society now that may be fine if we if we if we acknowledge that but of course we don't like it we don't like the result if we were like okay you know we've got nice Democratic planning processes we support biodiversity we support climate we do good maternity cover we're doing nice regeneration projects we're saving on climate and the impact is our econom is not going to grow so much there are going to be big waiting lists at the NHS our impact on the ground in Syria is going to be pretty minimal than an efficient but that's okay um because we've got maternity cover because we' got all that stuff yeah there's many stuff in many ways our you know our values are better we're living out our values we just accept that we're not going to but but of course we're not like that we want to have AR can all the time and this is one of the SE I I'm not I mean maybe obviously there's a risk as a conservative it sounds like I'm just beating up on leftwing issues like maternity cover and climate um I see similar things going on on the conservative side so let me now have a go at the right people like list trust will have in their heads the answer that the answer to things is privatization getting in the market and that also results in catastrophic consequences so when I was prisons Minister Chris gring one of my colleagues managed to privatize the probation surface on the basis of something that looked really beautiful on a bit of paper the incentives were going to work out the private sector was going to deliver private prisons is another example it's going to be cheaper private maintenance it all turned out not to work at all would have been much better if the government had been doing it because of the risk profile because the way these private sector companies are financed because of the way in which they go bankrupt and let you down because the way in which they keep the government over a barrel let again an example we've just been through you know Fujitsu bids on the post office contracts they get themselves stuck in they're making billions of pounds because the government can't extract the stuff from there too a different form of ideology is leading to bad results in that case the ideology is we believe in the market private sector companies are much more efficient than the government when actually it turns out that oftenly the private is even more inefficient than the government even more wasteful than the government and has the government over a barrel so it doesn't matter whether you're on right or left we're suffering from a similar problem which is the way in which instead of really ask yourself what am I trying to do here what's the most efficient way of getting there we of course as humans put incredible ideological blinders preferences and things then which really stop um stop us yeah getting results and I think one of the ideologies you're going to be particularly critical of and I'd love to get your view on this is populism and what is happening with looking across Europe we can say that it's a populist Revolution reform although they may not get a huge number of seats they're certainly going to do a lot of damage to the conservative party in particular so what do you make of all of that Rory so populism is something that's really exploded since 2014 and done so in India Brazil the US Europe we'll see again the French elections now we saw in European elections we'll see in British elections what's it really about it's about a style of saying the problem is that you've been betrayed by the elite and that the there are these real people who I'm speaking for I'm speaking for the people I'm speaking for the nation if we just get rid of this horrible Elite you know we can bring kind of authentic stuff that reflects our values and we're going to challenge you know wokery we're going to challenge sloppy thinking and we're going to sort it out the trick of populism is that of course there's always a kernel of Truth in this right because some of the criticisms I've just made of you know the stuff I'm talking about with Syria and my civil could be made by Nel farage and of course when he says this government said they were going to cut immigration but they've actually just brought in 1.2 million more people he's right when Donald Trump says This brilliant Elite humiliated itself in America and Iraq and Afghanistan and these things were completely catastrophic disastrous $3 trillion Wars that killed a lot of people in the CH he's right okay the problem though is that the solution that they POS does not respect the rot of law does not respect our institutions does not respect minority rights it's not about compromise it's not about working together it is polarizing it's deceptive it's aggressive and it's generally incompetent let let's take some of those you mentioned that it's not it's not respecting the rule of law and uh it's not respecting the rights of minorities can you give some examples of those two things in a western context I'm sure we can find stuff in Brazil or wherever but yeah so very simple examples Boris Johnson he's kind of muted populist but you can see the first elements there he comes in uh first thing he tries to do is try to lock the doors on Parliament to get his brexit deal through tries to pero parliament in the end and to do it he lies to the queen he tries to use these kind of medieval laws to try to drive it through he's overruled by the Supreme Court now traditionally all prime ministers in Britain would say huge respect for the Supreme Court huge respect for the rule of law we're backing off from this he goes straight out there and says the Supreme Court basically betraying the people I know who sign I'm on I'm speaking for the people right hold on Rory sorry I don't want to go into the weeds of these but on that first of all I don't think anyone in the populist movements would identify Boris Johnson as one of their own I think he's just we can agree he's a duplicitous person politician and we absolutely do on that also the Supreme Court is actually a very new thing in this country so the idea that it's an ancient institution to which everybody would bow down seems to me inaccurate well let's take the two things you're right Supreme Courts the new institution its predecessors though played the same role so the privy Council and the House of Lords played the same role fundamentally though the question is when Johnson faces an obstacle does he respect the sovereignty of parliament does he respect the rule of law or does he do what he actually did in Parliament on that day which is say I'm speaking for the people and what does he mean by I'm speaking for the people he means he's speaking for people who voted for brexit and probably not everybody who voted for brexit so there's probably not even a majority of the people but he says these are the real people and that the people who oppose him are enemies of the people now maybe you're right that farage wouldn't recognize him as a populist but that is for me the essence of populism I guess the the counterargument that I can conjure fairly easily in my head to what you're saying and I'd be curious to get your your take on it is I I think if we look at across Europe um and this is also increasingly true in the United States even though their attitude to immigration is very different to the European attitude actually I find that Americans are much more Pro almost unlimited legal immigration for historical geographical reasons Etc but in Europe what I think a lot of people would quite reasonably say is not only have we had very high levels of legal immigration which was not democratically there was no mandate for the levels of immigration we saw more people came into this country under the Blair government than came into this country between 1066 the Battle of Hastings and 1950 the conservatives come in and they basically double down and have more immigration again I take your point and you're smiling because your argument might well be well we that's what our economy needs we can park that for one second in addition to that we have increasingly high levels of illegal immigration for which there is no no economic rash now there is no reason that should be happening I'm a first generation migrant to this country I don't understand why it's happening I don't understand why tens of thousands of people come into this country on small boats every year and so the counterargument to what you're you're saying might be well if the elite are not doing the things that they're either elected to do or the things which have any rationale for being done well why wouldn't we vote for Nigel farage yeah well that's that's exactly why he's but why is that wrong to do that's what I'm because as I was trying to say the point is not is farage right in his criticisms the point is what would he represent and what would he do if he was in government as I say a lot of Donald Trump's criticisms are perfectly valid but I hope you don't like the idea of Donald Trump becoming president just because what he says about Iraq or Afghanistan happens to be true right I don't think that's why people are voting for Donald Trump I think the reason people are voting for Donald Trump is they hope someone can deal with the problem of mass illegal immigration in America yeah so and they believe that he's much more likely to do that Joe Biden and he has I personally believe that the immigration problem uh is the thing that is undermining Centrist governments almost more than anything else what it is and that it is ridiculous of Britain and other European countries not to put the arrangements in place with third party countries and not to challenge the completely broken concept of Asylum which we inherited from the end of the second War much more sensible way of doing it would be to say we will accept a certain number of people as Asylum Seekers every year and we'll Define that number so I would say 0.5% of your population a year you can take and we will do it in a way that prioritizes female judges from Afghanistan people who are direct risk of war in Somalia and we will do it as a Target that we sign up to along with Europe and the United States and Canada will all sign up to this would be a great help if places like Japan and China signed up as well because they aren't taking anybody you know Luxembourg is taking more people every year than Japan but at least the G7 could sign up to this and if we manage to get that through then I think the corer of that is and we're not going to accept people who just happen to get on a boat because the people get on a vote are predominantly young men from low middle class families who've managed to put together 10 or 20,000 EUR in order to pay a people smugg and there's absolutely no reason to be taking them for France France is a safe country and nobody has any reason to say I'm at stress in France and I'm going to be safer in the United Kingdom it's not kind of definitional that whatever is driving them across the channel it's not persecution and and so I think liberals of that sort who seem to fantasize about open borders and think that are going down a very very dangerous and misleading path well it sounds to me like we agree entirely on on all of that that's what I would advocate for and all I'm saying is I think the reason that you are seeing people vote for people like Nigel farage and populist parties around Europe is no mainstream politician that I have heard is been willing to make that argument and then deliver on it we haven't had that position be articulated in public and then be delivered on it and we know over the next five years it's not going to happen either well so to to be fair to Rishi Sak and the conservative government I think that broadly is their position and they would like to get to that position but when they try to do it what do you have you have one solution Rwanda and move people to Rwanda seems fair enough and we can debate about whether Rwanda is the right place but the basic idea that you could move people to a safe country if the problem is they're being persecuted that isn't the United Kingdom seems fine uh there's an idea that labor tried to have with France which is okay France stop these people getting on boats in return we will take genuine Asylum Seekers we will share the burden with you of genuine Asylum Seekers turning up in France but we won't have these boats coming illegally where are they getting in trouble they're getting in trouble because they appear to be completely unable to coordinate with the French police I mean why are these 40,000 people coming it's because French police we've never been able to work out how to change the legal system so at the moment unless there's legal change you arrive and you can claim Asylum and because we don't know what to do about claims against in the European Court of Human Rights and of course people like me then and this is the problem on the one hand I absolutely think this is ridiculous these people shouldn't be coming here they have no right to be here but if you then say to me would you want to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights I think who what a second and this is a really important institution that was set up in the 1950s by conservative government it's done an enormous amount to help rights around Europe so how do I balance that against this so I I don't think it is that Rishi sunak disagrees with you or me on this I think it's that as with most of these things when you try to do it you run into a lot of complication I think we've just got to the core of our disagreement which is or the disagreement that a populist might have with your position let's say which is that at the point where you go well I don't want to leave the ECR cuz it's in that's when the person says well in that case F you I'm voting for farage and that's how you create populism sure absolutely absolutely and of course um the the question with any radical politician you call populist revolutionary progressives radicals could be Jeremy Corbin could be Nigel frush is sometimes it's true sometimes it's true that the whole system is so broken that things that we venerate our constitution the European court and human rights may have become such incredible obstacles to change that they need to be shattered but of course as a conservative I would say be very careful doing that because this thing European Court in human rights you're focused on because it's stopping you dealing with people arriving on boats but you may not understand all the other things that it does and all the other things that you lose when you shatter it and and and that's that's the that's the problem that the fundamental argument against any populist revolutionary is an argument of prudence it's an argument to be thoughtful be careful think this thing through what are the unintended consequences what you're doing where does this go and that has to be balanced against perfectly valid human instinct which is we need to get on with things we need to sort things out screw that going to move fast we're going to break things which is the L trust view of the world and of course when it works you know you're the great reformer you're Margaret Thatcher when it doesn't work you'll L trust you're a effectless imprudent foolish person who didn't bother to take decent advice or you're quas quoting and you glib and you do stuff without understanding the consequences Rory what argument I would love to see what you think about this about populism is very necessary a lot of people would argue because holds a major parties to account and the only way really to hold a major party like the conservatives to account is to hit them where it hurts which is them not getting reelected them losing seats in Parliament and reform ukip is the most effective way of doing that democratically so what is populism and why is it a problem one problem with it is that it is essentially isolationist all these populist movements involve retreating from the world and this is really the story that we've seen since 2014 and this is the story we'll see more of with Trump with farage that's populism has redefined the way the mainstream parties operate so basically Biden's foreign policy is inherited from Trump and to some extent Obama's late policy was shaped by this kind of complaint so what does it mean it means that America's put first and we don't get involved in well we don't want to be a global policeman anymore so that means Putin invades Crimea nobody responds Obama draws a red line in Syria but Chara breaks it he doesn't want to get involved uh Biden withdraws all his troops from Afghanistan the whole thing collapses like a pack of cards Trump threatens to withdraw from NATO and almost certainly if he's elected will allow a protin puet government to be in KF and what's the result of that since 2014 every single year we have seen more refugees more internally displaced people more civilians killed in Conflict second thing about populism populism is basically uh very very well disposed towards strong men authoritarian government their model of government is the Macho person comes sorts it out right they look enviously at Singapore Saudi Arabia UAE sometimes although they don't admit it they're tempted to think oh oh look at China it's amazing they build all these trains and Roads and wonderful right and that's why often populism is associated what we call Democratic backsliding so in Hungary and Poland in India in Bangladesh you begin tamping shutting down opposition and media shutting down the universities that criticize you pursuing the alternative political parties taking them into the courts using the Civil Service against your opponents to assert yourself against your opposition and what's the result of that well since 2014 the number of democracies in the world has begun to fall dramatically you know we just had an an attempted coup yesterday uh six elected governments in Africa that were Pro Weston have now fallen to military governments that are pro Moscow that also is a consequence of populism and the final thing right so isolation of foreign policy authoritarianism in domestic politics and the final thing is economic basically these populists are protectionists you know Trump has driven a move to put up massive tariff barriers around the United States Biden has responded by 105% tariffs on imported Chinese vehicles they're all pushing for industrial strategies right they're taking us back to the economics of the 1970s they're IL they're illiberal in every way they're illiberal socially they're also illiberal economically all the normal logic of Economics that suggests that actually markets work better than strong men picking winners that Global free trade works better than protectionism is going out the window so this is a it's a this closing in economically politically internationally is a very dangerous path for the world that will make the world more dangerous less free and poorer so I guess my question is what should somebody do who's going to vote when they look at the options that are available to them which it doesn't matter which country you're in they all seem weak to put it mildly well I think uh one thing which is uncomfortable is we need to be better at analyzing what the problem is I mean I'm I'm often criticized because this book Politics on the edge provides a very negative picture of politics and you know my friend aliser will say how you going to encourage anyone to vote or get involved in politics if you make it out as being so Grim I think you've got to explain how Grim it is the only way to reform politics or the NHS is to explain how screwed the system is the only way that we will generate reform and better politicians is by really explaining this uncomfortable stuff by doing so you begin to give a bit of space I hope uh for the chance of changing our electoral system which I think would make a huge difference changing the way that ministers operate changing the way the House of Lords operates changing the way the media is owned and managed the structural changes which will make a healthier system where you're more likely to get people that you'd want to vote for I know exactly what you're saying but that is a very long long longterm project and I know we've talked about the competency thing I just look at people like K starma and it goes back to our earlier conversation the unwillingness to have uncomfortable conversations and I look at starma for example and I do not see that he can't even say what a woman is Rory how is he going to have another type of uncomfortable conversation that shouldn't even be uncomfortable do you see why I'm despairing I can totally see why you're despairing but starma um why is he like that presumably not because he's really like that he's like that because that's the incentives that have been set up in the system he's always certainly going to win a majority of 300 seats on the back of what we call a mingard strategy which is not answering any uncomfortable question not having any policy he's going to win it a record-breaking probably the largest majority ever achieved in British history by saying nothing so if that's the case the question is what's going on here you know is it that he's a particularly incompetent weak individual or is it that he just understands how our culture works how our media Works how our voters work how we think and it's worked out that we don't like uncomfortable conversations well we like them on the show which is why it's been great having you on Rory uh we're going to go to questions from our audience in a second but as you know before we let you go uh the thing that we always ask at the end is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be before Rory answers a final question at the end of the interview make sure to head over to our locals the link is in the description where you'll be able to see this does Rory see conservatism in the current Tory party I spent 15 years working on a middle e ASA WR three books on Asia spoke three Asian languages I made the Africa ministrator knowing about Africa Rory what haven't we asked you that we should have done we're not talking um about knowledge and ignorance we're not talking about the fact that a lot of the at the heart of many of these conversations is the fact that we are drowned in information that we can't begin to make sense of things you know I gave the tiny example of you know what would happen if you were made Secretary State for health tomorrow and you suddenly had to get your head around 1.1 million staff 335 million GP appointments good goodness knows how many an me we pretend that we're in a world of Knowledge Management we pretend that the difference between good and bad results is how much you know in truth we live in a world so overwhelmed by knowledge that in fact we're in the dark that a lot of what we're talking about is risk uncertainty hunches nobody really knows what's going on and one of the reasons why markets work is that they don't depend on people in the center knowing stuff they're about the way in which prices communicate tacit information tacit preferences allow a complicated Society to operate without having to r on the notion of the the Superman and I think this this notion of the Superman this notion of the kind of all knowing all powerful leader is at the heart of most of our problem CU such people don't exist and those people who claim to be such are frauds Roy Stewart thank you very much heading over to locals where we answer your questions La as a former serviceman former Soldier what was your response to sunx behavior during the D-Day celebration [Music]