If I Speak - 56: The one where Moya grills Ash on her new book

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Moya has a bone to pick with Ash about Minority Rule and the conversations sparked by her book tour, while posing the big question: why is it so hard to form your own opinions? Plus: what to do when a newly sober friend starts drifting away. We’re now yapping on TikTok! Follow us @ifispeakpod Send […]

Hola, bienvenido a If I Speak. I don't know any more Spanish than that. But I was going to try and do it in the style of like, you know, those learning language tapes. From like GCSE? Yeah. Yeah, I vaguely recall. They have the big pauses where they're like, didn't like you just did. Just so you can follow. Yeah, yeah, I remember those. Although Spanish to me has been a repressed memory of horror. That was a hard joke. Como te llamas, amiga? I... I don't know.

Mi soy muy... My Spanish is not good, Ash. And when I say not good, I mean, it is non-existent. In my school, we did French all the way from year six, not amazing French but we still did it, and we had one year of Spanish and after that year we were meant to decide whether we wanted to do French or Spanish and obviously I picked French because the, God bless Spanish, it wasn't the most charismatically taught language in my school, but that's nothing to do with the language itself.

Just the teacher. But, well, I don't wanna slag them off in case one of the offspring's listening, but it wasn't a, it didn't grab me. And also years very hard to ingrain a love of a language in someone if you haven't already got a prior knowledge. Anyway, enough about state school capacity. How are you?

What did you actually ask? Did you ask me how I am? No, I asked you what your name was. Okay, I did get it. Oh, well we're flying now. Wow, now. Getting a plane to Madrid. Like we're all good.

Okay, how are you? I know your name. I'm okay. I am kind of spacey today. Okay, well that bodes well for me grilling you about your book. Great. I mean, hopefully.

That's exactly what we want. Hopefully some competence will like kick in, you know. Why? Do you think you're spacey because you've been on such a emotional roller coaster? I think maybe emotional roller coaster. I think also my working patterns are so unusual for me. So it's really, really high intensity. And then the days off that I have, all I'm doing is sleeping all day. So I feel a little bit weird and I'm looking forward

to getting back in a routine. How are you? What are your, what are your headlines? I can't say my proper headlines on mic yet because it would be blowing my load too early. What can I actually say? I can say at the moment I am working, I can't do maths, I actually can't say how many hour days, but I'm getting up at 6.30 and finishing work at about nine because I have so much to do.

And it's very long, but it's fine. And it's shaping up. It means if I do this work now and also organize some other moving parts, hint, hint, I will have a nice summer. But it's funny because usually around this time then I'm starting to think about my summer trips and my big summer trips. it's funny because usually around this time then I'm starting to think about my summer trips and my big summer trips.

That's not happening this year because I've been doing so much moving around. I just know in my bones, I don't have capacity to go on like a three, oh, all the money, to go on like a three week trek around some company, company, country of the backpack company. So this year is very much a year of what domestic travel am I going to enjoy on a day trip?

Like, what is that gonna look like? What's my summer gonna look like? And I think my summer is gonna look like enjoying what I have on my doorstep. Maybe it's time for you to go to Hever Castle and visit Anderlin. Fucking finally! Day trip to Hever Castle.

That's what we're talking about, baby. Okay. And for exciting news, if you are on Bastion of evil TikTok like me, we have a TikTok page. It is at if I speak pod and shout out to the newest member of the if I speak fam, Chloe Laws. Xi Jinping. He doesn't, he doesn't go past the VPN. Chloe Laws, who is a hidden member of the team, who does so much work for Navara and

various other organizations that you definitely, definitely have heard of, but is putting a lot of her genius social media efforts towards our TikToks. I wanted to give a big thank you to Chloe. I love Chloe. Yes, I. Right. I've got some icebreaker questions for you in the style of Vogue 73 questions as ever we push for time so there's just three. Question numero uno. How were you described

in your school reports? Oh, great student, talked too much. Distracted everyone else around her, which I rediscovered when in the long saga of, so I have an ADHD diagnosis by a private doctor and that's like a classic, is it real kind of vibe? And I got this diagnosis for, I didn't want to go and get an ADHD diagnosis per se, but there was some interpersonal dynamics where I was suggested I had to go and get one. And I did, for whatever reason.

Just to clarify for the listeners, it wasn't me. It wasn't Ash. It was an intimate relationship. And the other party said, you should go and get this or dot dot dot. So I did go and get it. And I had to go through all my school reports, obviously as part of this. And they were all very funny because it was every single time it was like, you know, great student,

totally distracted and just distracts everyone all the time. But she's fine, but it makes other people's work suffer. So I was both flattered and sort of like, well, I definitely do have traits. And I don't want to get into the whole ADHD thing, but I do think, I think I have ADHD, but I think probably if 20 years ago mobile phones had been around, the traits wouldn't have been enough to warrant a diagnosis.

But I think the attention economy we live in, because all these things are like traits, right? You have traits and how many traits meet the diagnostic criteria? What exacerbates those traits meet the diagnostic criteria? What exacerbates those traits to meet diagnostic criteria? And I have friends who have very severely ADHD that have presented like very strongly since childhood. And the way it interrupts their life is different to the way it interrupts mine now.

And my traits have definitely got worse over the years because of my relationship with attention or just distracting devices and apps, et cetera. So anyway, that's my take on the ADHD discourse. There you go. Question two, are there any particular tastes or smells which take you right back to childhood? So you're sort of Prousty and Madeleine. Creosote for 100%. Love Creosote. It's what they paint fences with. Creosote and firelighters. Firelighters are very evocative for me because we have an open fire,

we now have a wood burner. Every, and I rarely smell them obviously in the various rented houses I've lived in. There's not many fires. So when I smell a fire lighter, I'm right back there on the rug lighting the fire or watching my mum do it. there on the rug lighting the fire or watching my mum do it. And finally, very important question. Do you really like it? Is it wicked? Do I really like it? Is it wicked? Yeah, it fucking is. Sorry, I'm swearing a lot. Yeah, it is wicked. Do you know the other day, I very sincerely said to a friend, you've got to feel the rain on your skin because no one else can feel it for you. And I finally understood, I finally understood what Natasha Bendingfield was talking about because,

okay, you have to feel the rain on your skin, right? No one else out there can experience that emotion for you. No one else can experience these things for you. And I think what she's saying in that song, apart from obviously the rest is unwritten, is you have to take responsibility for your emotions, good and bad. And the friend I was talking to, much beloved, they were like, they were distressed about something. And it was an issue where I very much felt if you keep distressing, like stressing about this or feeling upset about it, there was a choice. You can choose to say, actually, no, I'm not taking my brain down that route. Or yes, I am. And then you'll

look back in 30 years, you think, fuck, why didn't I enjoy it more? Why didn't I enjoy this more? And this is something I've just been thinking about a lot. Like, my friends can give me advice to the cows come home, my friends can tell me stuff. But at the end of the day, if I have like a negative thought pattern, such as I'm this, I'm that, and I write this story, only I can change that. My friends can support me and help me to maybe come out of I don't know, saying, why is it never me? Why am I never chosen? Like, that's not a thought pattern of mine, but it's like one that I think a lot of people feel. Only you can change that thought pattern.

Only you can go outside and think, God Almighty, this is a beautiful day and I am alive and I can't believe I get to live this one gorgeous life. Even as bad as everything else is, I have this one gorgeous life and I'm so lucky to be here right now. And obviously that won't track for everyone. Some people are not living a one gorgeous life.

But if you are lucky enough to be in that position, you fucking feel the rain on your skin. No one else could feel it for you. Otherwise you will look back when you were 70 at photos and you'll think, why did I not enjoy this when I had it? So yeah, it's wicked. Well, Natasha Bedingfield is very wise. One day I'll tell you my crazy Daniel Bedingfield story,

but it's not for now, it's not for now. Okay. Because we must move on, but it is a, it is a nuts story. Are you saying we got to get through this? We got to get through this. Okay. So today it's a big one. It's a big one. It's the one that several people actually asked us for, which is very funny. We have trailed this for a while, but I had to finish the book first, which comes into what we're gonna talk about.

In the tradition of segmenting our show, I'm gonna frame this around an intrusive thought, because we are going to talk about your book, Ash, Minority Rule. It's now a bestseller. Bam! Bam! I'm going to frame this around an intrusive thought because we are going to talk about your book ash minority rule It's now a bestseller. Bam. Bam. Look at that fucking product placement straight Well, no one can see it because we don't wait. Can you do some ASMR on it? So people know it's there Tap in the color color cover Okay, so now bestseller straight at number four on the Sunday times bestseller week in the first week of sales, which is massive by the way, we're getting to book publishing right

now, but it's actually very hard to sell books. So I feel like there's two aspects of this discussion that we will have to cover. So there is the book itself, and then there is the promotional tour. And I can't ignore the promotional tour because the promotional tour in itself has become that bitch that causes all the conversation. So the promotional tour lays it in on this one chapter, well kind of two but mainly one, at the beginning that covers identity politics, a phrase I kind of never want to hear again in my life. And the angle that media went with in covering this chapter, Navarre included,

let's not rewrite history here, Navarre did it too, was Woke is Over. And it's not the first Navarre media to use this title for clicks. I will say that. This prompted, ironically, a discourse cycle that you talk about in the book itself, which is lots of opinion pieces from journalists, particularly right-wing papers, who definitely hadn't read the book and also weren't that familiar with your work because they're proclaiming you the queen of woke who'd abandoned their politics, your politics after years of pushing them. I've never thought of you particularly as the queen of woke. You're not really a queen of woke. I don't think I'm particularly woke. I'm asleep. I'm asleep.

You're not that woke. I don't think that's ever really been your steez. Um, per se, but you are someone who, uh, is very steeped in anti-racist politics, which I think they were conflating the two and we will get onto that. Um, obviously there was also a lot of chat on social media, especially from our peers, um, within a section that I like to call loud left-wingers who talk a lot. As I say, these are my peers. I am a loud left-winger who likes to talk a lot. And when I saw the promotional tour, I'm going to be so for real with you. It didn't sit that well with me. It didn't go down that well with me. But I have an advantage here, you know, three advantages, let's say.

One, I know I'm not right all the time and I know there's room for other approaches and perspectives. I was not talking to the audience you're talking to. I'm not trying to appeal to that audience. Therefore, there is room for me to look at that and think, hmm, what's the strat here, even if I can critique it? Two, I know, like and respect you. So I actually wanted to read the book before I decided what it. Two, I know, like and respect you. So I actually wanted to read

the book before I decided what it was about. So, and I wanted to know what it was saying. Like and respect me. Normally it's pick two. Pick two. So I actually wanted to read the book and be like, what is this actually covering? What's actually being discussed in here? And three, I'm also a journalist. so I know how people prepare for interviews. And what I was getting from a lot of the press was that people hadn't read the book in full. I can't say this for Navara's own coverage, which is very funny, because obviously Aaron would have read the book in full, probably like six times while it was being written and then afterwards.

But he doesn't do the titles. But most people I was like, hmm, they've done the uni method of chapter one and the conclusion. So to frame this in a way that feels relevant to our audience who I would say, some of them are really political, some of them are lifestyle-y,

some of them combine the two like us. I wanna talk about forming and venturing independent opinions, which I feel are in short supply, and I know this because of the way I try and make up my own mind about stuff and how often I go along with a herd mentality when I might actually have a different opinion, if I'd really considered it.

So I think this is in short supply in the digital sphere. I also think independent opinions can be short supply in the digital sphere. I also think independent opinions can be short supply in a physical one. Like it's getting harder to venture what you might actually think in some spaces where it might be most useful. Whereas if I'm with someone where I'm like, I know we all agree already,

then let's just hold forth, let's just save space to speak. But where am I actually useful to have like a bit of conflict, a bit of disagreement, say what you actually think? It's kind of getting harder. And I think that shows in both the blowback you got and some of the opinions that you mentioned. So I think this will allow us to talk about the book,

parts of which I found very refreshingly clear-sized and original, such as the transition from portraying the white working class as Chavs to the white working class as Chavs, to the white working class in right wing media. And we can talk about a promotional tour, and we can talk about how people at home might go about making their own minds up. So where do you wanna start with this?

When you were- Where do you wanna start? Where do you wanna start? Let's do a promotional tour. Did you think that people had read the book when you were right, yeah. Where do you wanna start? Where do you wanna start? Let's do a promotional tour. Did you think that people had read the book when you were on that tour? It was different for different people. So I knew Aaron had read the book

and I knew that what he would probably find most interesting were the critiques of liberal identity politics, how they'd been absorbed by the left. And I knew that he would also be really interested in the criticisms of the media. Like, because I know Aaron and I know where his eye will go. Lewis Goodall definitely read the whole book.

And what was interesting to me is that the interview I think definitely reflected that and his willingness to talk about the lobby and criticisms of the kinds of media that he's been a part of. That wasn't what got picked up on either by the newsagent's own clipping operation or by people who are engaging with the interview itself. There were other people who I just think, yeah, hadn't, hadn't read the book, but that's kind of, you know, I hate to say it because that's not normal for me when I'm interviewing someone who's written a book. And what he'd done was, you know, to make it seem that I was just complaining about how awful it is to be on telly. He was like, oh, and she's complaining about how people in Tesco want to take pictures of her. No, in the book, it's me saying that when I was

in Tesco's, someone was tweeting to their followers, should I punch Ash Sarker in the back of the head? And I was like, you've changed that detail to try and make me look a certain way. So yeah, there's been like a range of people who have like read the book, engaged with it. People may disagree with me and I know that what I'm about to say might go down like a cup of cold stick. For me, in terms of what my strategy was going into it, the promotional tour achieved lots of the things that I wanted it to. Go on, go on. So here's what I wanted to

achieve with a promotional tool. One was obviously you want to generate interest for the book. It did that thing. The second thing is that I know... so I've been part of The Left for a really long time. And I think that there are some, like, one of the really fair criticisms of the books that I talk about the left and I don't define it, and that is going to come into the paperback, which is that it's actually really difficult.

You'd be like, we'll amend everything in the paper. No, no, no, no, no, but as in like, I was like, oh, actually, that's a really fucking fair point. And so like, I want to engage with that question of, well, what even is the left when you're talking about it? Because I think that that's actually a much more complicated question than it first appears. But I've been on the left for a really long time.

I mean, I've been doing various forms of activism since I was like 12 or 13. Like, and that was starting with like, you know, the movement against the war in Iraq. Like, I've been here for a really long time. And what I have noticed is that I think we've really unhealthy way of dealing with conflict, thinking about conflict and dealing with criticism. One is that when you're in a context where you're under such attack from the media, from the right, is that you don't want to let anything in. And I get that, but that means that I think that we've been very tolerant and indeed indulgent of wrecking behaviors and unhelpful ideas.

The second thing is that there is, and this goes directly to the criticisms of what I call liberal identity politics to distinguish it from anti-capitalist identity politics. But with liberal identity politics is that I've seen it happen a million times, which is there's a minority of people in a room who are taking things way too far, way too far. There's a level of sensitivity which is just unreasonable. But the majority of people are unable to say, we can't entertain this any longer because they're scared of being told that they're racist or homophobic or transphobic or sexist or whatever else it is. And they're scared

of being socially ostracized. And one of the problems in terms of like the political culture that we've entertained, particularly on parts of the left which are dominated by graduates such as myself, is that we don't seek to persuade people necessarily but we like to raise the social costs of disagreement. And I think that that's been really, really bad. So one of the things that I wanted to achieve with the promotional tour, not just the book, but the promotional tour was to sort of go, it's okay to disagree. It's okay to identify behaviors and tendencies that you don't think are helpful. And I wanted to put power and permission in the hands of people who are in these activist spaces to say, we're not going to accept this anymore.

And it can be done with empathy, but it's going to be done directly. It's going to be done directly. I really wanted to achieve that. And in terms of the messages that I've been receiving from people who are in these political spaces, they said that they found that useful and that it's a useful tool for them. And the last thing that I wanted to do is that I think that the longer we either denied

that these problems exist, like with the sort of excesses of liberal identity politics, is that it's sort of gaslighting people. And the thing about the internet is that it's sort of the shop window of politics. People's encounters with the political, it's rarely in real life spaces. And that's not to do with, you know, the left,

that's a general trend. You know, membership of political parties is on a downward trend, has been for decades. Same with trade union membership. People understand themselves politically through what kinds of media and social media they consume, what kinds they share, and who they're encountering on the internet.

And so I think that our way of, you know, and some people have said this, which is like, well, you know, we should keep this in the family, right? Don't say this in public spaces. The problem with that, the problem with that is that people don't see what's happening in real life spaces, but they do see the sort of mad shit that's going on on the internet. And for as long as you've got people who are on the left, who are committed anti-racists, who are committed to the fight against transphobia, who are also anti-capitalist and left populists, if we're not saying this is a problem and we want to deal with it, it's like what

other people are perceiving is that we think that's fine and actually we don't think that's fine. So for me those were my strategic aims with it, which I realize people will disagree with. I've definitely got some like, yeah, some slightly insider goss about how different, different bits of the media have tried to almost like force me into saying something that I'm not, including a left wing outlet, which edited things out, which it's not Navarro to say, not Navarro, but edited things out

because they didn't like some of the criticisms. But to me that just speaks to the fact that our culture, our political culture lacks resilience. A resilient culture can deal with disagreement, can deal with criticisms, which are coming in good faith and say, you know, we can take this in. We can take what's useful, we can leave what's not useful, and we can move forward. I don't think we have a resilient political culture. For fear of getting too much in the weeds, I want to pull it back to this idea of like opinion forming.

Because for me, the most interesting parts of the book, like I'm too close to the subject. So the first chapter for me was not that interesting. And that's not a testament to like your quality of writing. Your writing is great. Like you're a fab writer. It's because I'd read it before because you know, I've, I've, I feel like those arguments have been things that I've encountered and talked about. And this book that was not aimed at me in per se, because I'm not in an organized space. I'm in the school space where I might read something like that, read Nemadabari, read on on Ifemi Taiwo, like I would have come across those

arguments before. You're making a pitch to people who might not be within those spaces, who also might have been put off even if they hold left-wing values. Am I right? Would you say that's correct? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So the bits that were most interesting to me were sort of the, I think the chapter about like economics and the method and then the one big gang parts one and two were particularly, like the way you charted the, I wanna use the word coalition because we always use coalition, but the way you charted how the 2011 riots

were not just this expression from working class people of colour, they were literally binding working class people of all ethnicities. It was class consciousness being like, we are rising up against the establishment. And yeah, okay, the expression of that, sometimes it was looting, sometimes it was that, but it was an expression of like pure outrage. And the response to that from the media was not immediate in like, first they were like, oh no, the, you know, David Starkey, you talk about David Starkey saying the whites become the blacks. And then you show how that was not an outlying opinion. So many different, what's the word, conversational influences, that's not even the right phrase.

Pundits, pundits. Pundits, yeah, but I'm like the people who directed our thinking discourse, some people agreed with that. They just said, oh, you went too far in citing Enoch Powell because obviously Enoch Powell is like the line that no one can cross. But so long as you say you agree, can agree with Enoch Powell, you just can't say that you agree with Enoch Powell.

100%. And you say that in the book. And you talk about how after that there was maybe an unconscious or conscious realization that these, there had been this big outbreak of like class consciousness expressed like this. And so there had to be a device, like a divisive movement had to take place. And that happened when they changed the position of white working class people from chavs, this unruly, you know, disobedient, socially othered group to the white working class, who were this, you know, downtrodden, hard done by, not being recognized. Like that to me was

really bloody interesting and really fresh and really original. And I wondered how how like you came to how do you form an opinion like that? How do you bring that argument together because the first chapter is fine, but there was a lot of Twitter in them I felt like I was just looking over Twitter. I didn't need to know about Jorts, you know, like Jorts felt so serious You know what? You know what? My husband was saying don't put Jorts in there Don't put Jorts in I was like, I'm gonna put Jorts in there because Like and the reason why is that again again, going back to this, like, shop window idea, which is that, like, if you say, if you think of the internet as the shop window of politics, then you kind of have to take seriously what's being said and who's saying it. And then the second thing was that with Jorts the Cat, which was basically, you know,

Don't explain Jorts the Cat. I refuse to let Jorts the Cat be explained on this show. I'll just play Jaws the Cat. I refuse to let Jaws the Cat be explained on this show. As the co-host. All right, tell her, tell her, tell her. You can read the book if you wanna know what it was about. But the reason why I thought it was important is that it sort of finally clicked in my head what the sort of rhetorical gesture is when people go,

well, what about this hyper marginal person who is Muslim and who is brown and who has a disability and who is trans? Well, what about this hyper marginal person who is Muslim and who is brown and who has a disability and who is trans? Or what about this person who I don't know exists in this context but I'm imagining that they might be. Like how accessible is this thing you're talking about to them, this person who I've conjured up for the purposes of my argument, is that it was sort of like a very warped version of the philosopher John Rawls' idea of the original position. So the original position is if you didn't know where you were going to be in a society, you didn't know if you would be very rich,

very poor, somewhere in the middle, you would want something that's more in the direction of fairness and egalitarianism, not complete fairness or egalitarianism because John Rawls is a lib, but that's what you would want if you didn't know who you wereitarianism because John Rawls is a lib, but that's what you would want if you didn't know who you were going to be. Whereas this is a sort of the only thing you can imagine is being the most marginalized person possible. And so then how do you craft everything around them? So that's why I thought that was important. But on the one big gang one is that actually like, again, I know I'm going to keep saying this, which is like in the paperback, but when you decide to finish a manuscript, sort of arbitrary, you're not done with the ideas and they're still developing.

And there's a whole bunch of stuff that I go, oh, this is actually really important for this same argument. And one thing which is that, another thing which explains the shift from Chavs, disgusting, multi-ethnic working class to white working class, which is, you know, monocultural, decent, left behind, all the rest of it, is that another thing that happens in the middle of that transition is the global financial crisis. So part of the story of the chav is you have failed to become

middle class, you've failed to become middle class, you've failed to embrace social mobility because you're so disgusting and inherently flawed. And then white working class, I think it's a response to like, oh shit, well, the social mobility train is suspended indefinitely. If you're not already middle class, you're not going to become middle class. So then you have to, you have to form a different kind of story to respond to this thing that's happened. So that's going to go in the paperback in terms of how I came up with the idea. Um, I can't remember a single moment.

It's just that I was there for the 2011 riots. You can feel that in the book. You can really feel that. And it felt so important, which I know is a really banal thing to say, but it was, it was so important. And the fact that there were people out there on the streets saying, we're getting our tax money back, right, saying that the reason why we're doing this

is because of the bailout of the banks and because we've been met with austerity as a response. I thought it was just so hugely significant. And, you know, that it was a moment where people were cross-identifying, right? They were identifying across racial and ethnic boundaries. So yes, the reason why the riots begin is because of the police shooting of Mark Duggan. It is my belief,

it is my belief because I agree with the findings of the forensic architecture investigation. It's my belief that the gun that was found many meters away from Mark Duggan that nobody saw him throw was planted there by police is my belief that that is the case. So while that is something which is like very specific to the history of Tottenham, black Brits in Tottenham, experiences of police violence, there are things that white working class people could identify with as well.

White working class people often have experiences of being harassed by police as well. It as white middle-class people that don't. And that there was this anger that was waiting, waiting for a place to erupt from. And that was to do with with class inequality. I thought that at the time, I thought that at the time, I also don't think the riots were simple or straightforward. I mean, you know, you had the Turkish shopkeepers up and down Kingsland Road and Green Lades coming out with, you know, massive fucking like baseball bats and kebab knives and stuff to protect their businesses. It wasn't as if there was just one single unified story. But for the young people,

for the young people, there was a lot of unity. And that was something which was completely ignored by mainstream media at the time. And also since in reflecting on it. I think there's two things that really jumped out of me, even in this discussion, which is one, you form your own opinions. And that annoys people quite a lot

because you then stick to them. You're willing to change your mind, but you have an opinion, right? And I think the other thing that's jumped out is, why do, why was thinking like, why does it annoy people so much that Ash has opinions? Because they can always disagree. And then what you said at the very start struck me.

It's because the act of disagreement itself is not seen as productive, it's seen as like a hard stop, right? Disagreement is not engaged in, and I wrote about this recently in a sub stack, and I'm not sure if we've discussed this before, we have discussed like conflict when we had a disagreement on a previous show

and you were like, oh, it's actually- A barney, we had a barney. It wasn't a barney though, it was just a disagreement, it's fine. Okay, a barnette, a barnette. A barney's like a row, like we would literally having a disagreement, which I fine. Okay, a Barnett, a Barnett. A Barney's like a row, we would literally having a disagreement, which I still stand by my position in that,

especially, I think I've improved extremely right. And I think you were so- You know what, I think my mind, I think my mind may be changing on it as well. I may be inching your direction. I think you were so soaked in writing this book about identity politics chapters particularly, or in the thing of the book,

you were seeing it through the framing of the book when I was actually saying something that probably was more in line with the cultural movements that you talk about. Anyway. I hate to say this, Moira, but you may have been right. Ha ha ha ha ha. It's a burden. It's a burden to carry.

Anyway. Like Cassandra, doomed never to be believed. But that was a safe space to disagree, right? And I wrote a sub-stuck about this recently, about conflict and like, what is the aim of conflict? And and for me the aim of conflict is like coming to a resolution and a resolution doesn't mean like you know if you're disagreeing with a friend that you have to be best mates it doesn't mean that if you're just agreeing at work you suddenly have to get along you just have to come to a space it's like okay we can work collaboratively we can like what's the resolution here is it that we

you know agree to disagree and then we go away and we think about it, and we're like, actually, they have some points. That to me is the ideal of resolution and space, but the conflict that's being engaged in around your book, but also just so much on social media, et cetera, is just kind of disagreeing for the sake of dominance and winning. And I find that really difficult

because someone I think that did disagreement really well, and I hope she won't mind me showing her out, is Shanice McBean, whose political writer writes a substack at the moment called On Revolution. And she, I think, saw it in a promotional tour. She wrote about sort of themes that she pulled from that promotional tour and how she felt about it. And it was like this really interesting exploration of gender politics and how it was being framed. And then

she read the book and then she also said, here's bits I agree with, here's bits I disagree with, overall a good text. Like that to me is productive disagreement where you're engaging with ideas and you're not saying because I disagree, this person is the worst in the world and we need to just cut them out of the movement, which also chimes with ideas that you're talking about in general but this is goes way beyond the left right it's like have we talked about conflict is not abuse before we must have done a little bit yes I think so early early in the pods any child to come in and tell us like how much we've talked about conflict is not abuse but like the concept of arguing, how to argue, have we talked about that in depth? Tell me now. I don't think so.

I don't think so. Cool. I don't wanna repeat myself, but this is something that I think comes together. It's like you have this, you've written a book, you're a very prominent person on the left. Like you would get resentment for that because of the sort of politics around left-wing

and also because people have different ideas. And because of the culture we have around disagreement, people don't feel like they can venture disagreement and get anywhere. So they just have to shout instead. They just have to shout that you're wrong, you're terrible and these ideas are all crap. Rather than being like, you know, like I am,

like I disagree to some parts, I agree to some parts. What's a productive way we can actually talk about this and think, hmm, let's think through these ideas. They're actually interesting and I'd like to engage with them. That to me is like what surrounds the promotional tour more than the book itself. And that's also coming into like forming opinions.

People don't know how to form their opinions and part of that's like not doing your own research, not either feeling you have the time or the energy. Like I get it, I go on an article, my brain shuts down because my attention span is ruined. You have to force yourself to read, right? You have to make that extra effort. But some of it is also just like this idea of either I'm going to disagree and that means it's scorched earth policy or I just ignore it and then I don't have to

like deal with the complications that come from potential disagreement. Well, it's the famous Roger Isles quote. I only understand two things, friendship or scorched earth. I think there's something, so I think there's a few things that explain why this culture is like the way it is. One is that Twitter has cooked the brain. It has cooked the brain and it primes people for conflict. The algorithms which dictate what information we see, how we see it and what things that we say will go far are unknown to us, but what we know is that they seem to prioritize hostility and outrage over consensus and curiosity.

And so that changes how we feel, that changes our behavior. Of course it does. The second thing is that we have a real lack of political leadership. And this isn't me saying that my role isn't political, because obviously it is. And I'm not saying that there aren't leadership aspects that come just from having a lot of prominence. Of course there are, but I'm fundamentally unaccountable. I'm fundamentally unaccountable. I'm accountable to my line manager at Navara and that's about it, right? And people quite rightly feel disempowered by that.

The sort of follower relation that is fostered by social media is inherently disempowering. So here's this person who has a form of political leadership. They're not really accountable to you in any particular way. So how do you shape the sort of strategy that they're acting by? The only thing that you have is shaming social costs and ostracism. That's the only thing that you've got. And then I think that there is a last thing, which is about a lack of... So I think we've also been governed by some of the wrong incentives and so this for me comes back to political culture and I think there are reasons for this. I mean I find myself agreeing with Shanice a lot.

There are some things I disagree with but there's a lot that I agree with and one is is that I think that a lot of this is a sort of product of neoliberalism, a product of what's happened to the left over the past 45 years, is that we don't seem to act from a place of strength anymore. And it's because, you know, it's off a defeat after defeat after defeat, and a lot of betrayal in that as well, an awful lot of betrayal. So people feel primed to see betrayal in disagreement, which is, I think, an important thing. That's been a feature of the past 45 years. disagreement, which is, I think, an important thing. That's been a feature of the past 45 years. But there is a culture where basically crybullying is rewarded and incentivized,

to put it really bluntly. And so it's difficult to think of disagreement or making yourself heard as coming from a place of strength and confidence, the only way in which you can make yourself feel heard is through announcing various forms of victimhood, which is an important part of the book. And it's very post-analytical. And just to, I think, maybe talk about some of my experiences in terms of how I've been received is that like, look, I'm not a victim in this. I've written a book, the book is doing very well. And 99% of my friends are supportive and even where they disagree,

that does not imperil the friendship in any way. It really does not. There is a small number of people who I wouldn't describe as my friends, but you know but would describe as people who I have been friends with in the past, some of them not seen for years, whose only way of trying to, I guess, grab a hold of me again and feel that they've got some control of me is to sort of leverage social shaming, to which I'm just like, well, we're not mates.

If we're not mates. I agree with you part of it, so that I think when people who have vague channels to you disagree, I don't think it's necessary. I think it's from a place of social shaming. I don't think it's necessarily, it's like, to get a hold of you. I don't know how to put it.

As someone, sometimes it's the aversion of like actual direct conflict with you one on one, because I used to do that with people who I like knew vaguely but not enough to properly like talk to in the DMs. And now after several incidents where it's just like that has not gone well, I both encourage people disagreeing with me to also enter into one-on-one, if I know them, discussion so we can actually have a productive talk. Like, there's always someone the other day who publicly critiqued me who I have a relationship with and I was like, the public critique, you know, it hurts, but it's fair. It's just the lack of the

concurrent. We have a channel. We have a channel where we can talk. Like that would be more useful to me because it's like, what's the product? Like, what do we want here? How can I learn from this? If you're just yelling at me online without me being able to like respond to that in a way that feels safe? Like, and I hate you saying it's safe because you can, you can just lag me off online, that's fine. But like, if I know you and we've got that channel, let's use that too at least, because then maybe I could take something from this and maybe you can too. And maybe we can come out of this not feeling like there's a random enemy out there and you know we had a really good discussion it was great but I was thinking more about the opinion thing as well and I think because you talked specifically

about your situation there and you know this idea about political leadership I'm just going to broaden it out again to all our listeners and this idea of conflict and I had a flick through our episodes I don't think we've covered how to fight, which is funny because I've just written about how to fight and conflict. And I think one thing is as well, this goes for opinions, forming your own opinions and also your own position. When you don't have confidence in your opinion or it's coming from a place of just emotion, then I think the discussion becomes so much more heightened because any challenge to it

is not about like, it's a challenge to yourself. It's a challenge to your raw core, rather than being, you know, I think you have quite a lot of confidence in your opinions, which is why you're able to talk quite calmly to people who are saying, you're a demon from hell for venturing this tactical strategy. Like, well, this is how I feel about it, because there is confidence. You can disagree with people because you don't think it underwrites your entire personhood, what they're saying, because you're like, no, this is why I think this I can explain it. I have clear reasons for thinking this.

You might be wrong, but you have there's like a confidence in the opinion that you formed. And I think that's one of the reasons it's so key to try and start practising the formation of our own opinions, where we really understand why we're holding them, or why we're holding a position. It's like, what are your reasons for holding that? And there's gonna be people out there who are like mad conspiracy theorists who have very clear bonkers reasons for holding their position. But they're very- Jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams. Doesn't melt steel beams. Let's not get into that one. But there's like clear explanations.

That's why sources are so difficult arguing with conspiracy theorists who have like these clear explanations, because they're very set. Like they have a reason why they think this like here's the evidence, here's this. And I'm not saying we all have to be like, rational only. But I have found in disagreements and arguments, when I am most frustrated, hysterical, can't get my point across, feel really, really, to use the word triggered, it's because I've not actually thought through my position. Even if I know I'm right or I think I'm right,

I haven't thought through that position and why I hold it. Whereas when I think it through and have a very clear understanding of like, okay, this is why, the way I've argued recently with people, it sounds like I argue all the time, I actually don't. But when I've had discussions with people, it sounds like I argue all the time, I actually don't, but when I've had discussions with people, it's so much calmer and deescalated. Like I had one that was like a horrible situation,

and that was because it was with somebody who hadn't thought through their position at all, and it was from a pure place of emotion, like roiling, it was really not good, not gonna go into it. I was very, very like calm. But there was a discussion I had with my friend the other day in the club.

She'd said something and I was like, ah! Because it really set something off in me. It wasn't like a fight, we weren't fighting, but I was like, oh, that was a bit annoying. And she was like, oh, but this, this, this. And I was like, actually, you're so right. That was annoying. She was like, oh, I'm really sorry, that was annoying,

but also this, and cited something that made me perhaps more, she didn't use the word annoying, but also this and like cited something that made me perhaps more, she didn't use the word sensitive, but more raw. Like there was things and I was like, oh yeah, actually you're so right. Like I love you. Like you really like understand me and you both listen.

I used a different example in my newsletter where someone did this as well, my friends. It's like, they understand you. They can also give you a bit of analysis, but they're also listening to you. And it's like, I'd come to that just like completely head up and adrenaline. I hadn't yelled at her or anything like that, but I was not yelling. Yelling is bad. But I'd come up like there was a trigger.

She she says something that triggered me. Yelling is bad, but also malevolent whispering is worse. Also, that's really bad. She triggered me. I had not thought of my position. Two seconds of talking to her made me think of my, I was thinking out my position as I was talking. I was like, oh, actually, I see your point and I see this point.

And this is the clear bit in the middle where we meet and we come to resolution. We're just like, we literally finished that two second discussion going, God, I really love you. I love you. Like that to me is how to have a disagreement. I mean, I think there are practices that can help you get there. I mean, you know, the thing about writing a book is that it is a very safe space. It is such a safe

space. Like I was cooped up in like the little spare room and I love writing in the dark. I love writing in the dark. I do not want natural light. I have to go full Gollum mode. I love writing in the dark. I do not want natural light. I have to go full Gollum mode. You know, every time my partner would be like, do you want anything? I'd be like, the light, it burns. But like, it's a very safe space to examine your opinions.

And throughout this book, I mean, and it's not just to do with the commentary on the left. So the economics are the method chapter is about class and electoral politics and immigration is sort of pulling lots of things together. And I realized that I'm gonna have to talk about what definitions of class are out there and what's the one I'm using,

whilst also being aware that whichever one I say, whilst also being aware that whichever one I say, well, this is my heuristic, you know, this is my rule of thumb, is going to have limitations. And when I first started writing that, I did actually feel kind of defensive about the place where I knew I wanted to get up, you know, wind up, which was, you know, a sort of saying,

class is rooted in asset ownership. And then I was thinking about a sociologist called Dan Evans and his book, Nation of Shopkeepers, where it's very about these sort of habits and almost like textures. And at first that felt a little bit threatening. So I was like, it undermines my entire argument. And I was like, no, actually, one is threatening because I think there's truth in

it. I wouldn't feel threatened by this if I didn't think there's truth in it. And then two, how can I like, explain what it is he thinks? Say, here's all the things that are good about it. But this is the one that I'm going to still use, even though I know that it's flawed and limited. And because I wasn't in a conflict, I wasn't dealing with a sense of immediate threat. It was just me, my Google doc, the spare room. It felt safe to go, all right, I can let in criticisms,

I can, or rebuttals or contradictions, and it's gonna feel okay. And so writing, long form writing is a really good way to do that. I don't journal, and maybe I should, but I think that that's a way of sort of making sense of all of this incoming. And the thing is, is that like we live in such an information saturated era is that I think part of why we're trying to block out contradicting opinions is because we're already overstimulated and there's too much coming at us. So we're trying to create a little bit of space for ourselves and it it feels totally bombarded, you know, just all the time.

And maybe journaling can be a part of carving out that space. And my partner said something very wise yesterday. He was like, in order to write a good 800 words, you have to write 8,000 words. And he was talking about writing short comment pieces and how much better they are after you've done 8,000 words worth of thinking on it and you boil it down to 800. Similarly, if you're having, you know,

a conversation is limited, you know, when you're in that conflict either with a person or a group or whatever, is that if you've done your 8,000 words of thinking, you'll find the 800 that you need for that situation. Which can be nuanced and can be fair, but can also be solid in yourself. Someone, just to wrap this up,

someone said to me recently, they quote, I can't remember their quoting, but they said, the writing is the thinking. And I thought about that a lot. It's like, it really is when you can write a tweet or whatever, and there's not much thinking that goes into that, but when you have to put something on a page, it really exposes what stands up and what, when it's brought to light, uh, actually just dissolves into candy flossers per se. Um, but yeah, I think, I think a lot of, I just hope listeners

per se. But yeah, I think a lot of, I just hope listeners come to this and realise they can disagree without it making anyone in any party like a bad, an inherently bad person and also that forming your own opinion is so freeing, forming a nuanced opinion about something, oh my god, change it in life. Because you suddenly realise you can take agency back over how you think and that you can take information from one person, information from another person, and you don't have to actually know what you think immediately, you can just kind of mull it over and synthesize it.

And when you get off somewhere like Twitter, I have to say, that process becomes a lot less urgent in the moment. There's a lot of pressure to do that immediately. You can just kind of sit back and go, hmm. And also, you know what? You don't have to be a saint, right? You do not have to be Siddhartha sitting under the Bodhi tree. I know that I'm not,

but what the process of thinking and writing and feeling confident has meant is that one, the criticisms that I'm like, oh, this really does have something in it. It does not feel threatening to incorporate that. It doesn't make me feel like I'm doing a humiliating climb down. I'm like, great, great.

I can work this in for this next thing that I'm gonna write that feels really good. And then for the ones which, most of the shit, particularly stuff, which is coming from the left, I just ignore because I'm like, I'm not, I'm not crawling into the muck, but it felt so fucking satisfying this weekend just gone when, you know, there was someone at the Telegraph who'd called me washed up. There's this, you know, like I said, horrible person at the times and to be able to at them

with the bestseller list position and to tell them to suck your mom felt so fucking good. Now this is where we differ. This is where we differ. You know what, but I'm not, I'm not a saint. I'm not the Buddha. And actually like, and this is maybe where it's like, you know, politics is still a blood sport. It's still a blood sport.

It's still fundamentally about conflict and it's about which conflicts, you know, you really want to get into. And the thing about the guy from the times is that he'd actually originally wanted to interview me and then went completely cold on the Bloomsbury publicist. Why? Because they wanted to set up where I couldn't defend myself. And so when you know, when you know that that's how you've been played and that what they've what they've tried to do is totally fuck you over and they failed to do it. I will tell everybody to go fuck themselves. I will. I will.

Because you tried. You took a shot. You missed. This is where the Aries comes out. Okay. I'm Aries. This is where they like hmm

Revenge, where's the horse's head? This is this is the Aries Aries with a Scorpio moon as well. Yeah, that's that's not to get to astrology But that's where as my like sort of like prices like hmm revenge is to go very cold and just never speak of them again Okay, we have to help We've got listener. We've got listener dilemma. If I'm in big trouble... Can't the solution be revenge? No, not on my watch. Not on my watch.

This is I'm in big trouble. And if you, listener, are in big trouble, then email ifispeakatnevaratmedia.com. Ash, do you want to read out today's dilemma? I do. Dear If I Speak, Thank you for everything you do. Your podcast and journalistic work have been a light in hard times. I'm getting in touch because I'm having an issue with one of my close friends. For context, we're both Irish cis males in our 30s. The friend in question is someone I've considered a best friend since we met at the age of 15. However, over the past couple of years it feels like we've been drifting apart. When we first met we became very close immediately and ended up in the same group of close friends, the same workplace, the same college course and in the

same band together, so we saw each other nearly every day for a few years. We had a couple of small arguments over the years but nothing serious enough to fall out over. In the past couple of years, I've been seeing less and less of him. I feel like it's not just me, as after speaking to a few of my friends who are in the same group, they have expressed similar feelings about not seeing or keeping in touch with him as much. When we do see him, he seems more subdued and reserved. He never initiates plans or wants to do things like play music or go to gigs, which were the foundations of our group's relationship. Over the last few weeks, another close friend and I have suggested going to a gig, going for a drink, having coffee,

or most recently taking a walk to catch up, but we always seem to get the same response. Maybe, I'll let you know. He recently got engaged to his long-term partner, with whom we all get along, but we don't necessarily share the same interests with her. Our interests have been more in art and music, while hers lean more towards sports. It seems like over the years he's taken on nearly all of her interests and left his own behind. I don't believe his partner is to blame for this change in personality or for him not wanting to spend as much time with his friends, but I do find it strange.

I do think alcohol and substance abuse plays a part in this situation. In the past, he was a heavy, albeit social drinker, and would take drugs like the rest of us regularly. He has stopped this behaviour over the last couple of years after a bad experience with pills one night. Our group has been very supportive of him doing whatever he feels is best for him, although probably never openly discussed. And if that involves avoiding situations that could be bad for him, then that's great. However, we have plenty of friends in the group who don't drink and don't take drugs, and we still see them all the time.

I would like to approach this empathetically, as I don't know why this is happening. He could have other things going on that he's not telling us about. It could be natural, good friends drifting apart and not seeing each other as much. Or it could be an issue where his now-fiance feels our group is a little wild and may bring him down or back to his old self if he sees us from time to time.

I do feel that solid friendships are a two-way street. And if it's constantly me initiating conversations and plans, I'm worried that one day I'll give up and he'll be a friend that I just see at mutual friends birthdays and that will be that. I'm feeling a bit like Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inner Shirin when Brenton Gleeson says, I don't like you anymore. Whilst also trying to avoid feeling like a shady vampire outside his window at night trying to convince him to come to my pub. Do you have any advice for a confused person worried they're losing a good friend? Kind regards, special one.

Sweetie. Such a sweetie. No, but I'm like, sweetie, just fucking talk to him. Tough love time. Get your ass up and talk to him. No, lots of love special ones said with love. And I get how hard it is to have difficult discussions where you might hear something you don't want to, but you can't just blame his partner for like and speculate, oh it's her malevolent presence that's making him not want to hang out with us in case he goes back to his wild

ways. You haven't openly ever had the conversation with him where you've said, you admit that, where you've said come hang out with us, we'll make sure it's an environment where you don't feel like you have to do drugs. Like that's one thing. What's running through this is you're not talking enough. You're not saying the things out loud. When I cut down on my drinking, my friends didn't silently go, it'll be fine. They went, don't worry, we're going to create an environment. Like we'll support you with this and we'll create. They openly said we will have environments where you don't have to do this. You can say that, say, be great.

Just say it's like, I'd love to have a coffee. That's a non, that's a sober activity. You invite him for coffee. You've not said explicitly why. That's one thing. Two, just invite him and say, it'd be great to talk and then say, hey, I've noticed you're drifting away. What's going on?

Let's be honest. Because otherwise the resentment builds up on both sides You don't talk it out and you will just be mutuals who see each other birthday parties And yeah, if you have that discussion, you might say I've just felt a little distant This is why I actually don't want to be that close to you guys anymore Sorry, and that will hurt but at least you'll have an answer but you're not talking. Where's the talking? I Think you are right. I just want to sort of, um, I guess emphasize that you don't know why you're drifting apart.

And it might not be the drink and drugs thing. That might just be the change, which is easiest for you to, um, a light on as an answer. It also might be the case that he doesn't know why either because he's not that in tune with himself. And this is something which happens a lot in friendships. I've definitely been the drifter before when I was younger and was less good at identifying

why it was that I needed or wanted some distance. And now I'm in my 30s, I'm probably better at identifying those things. But I see with some of the men in my life that they fall into this pattern a lot, and they're not always good at identifying why they want to put that distance in. And it's not necessarily something that you've done. It might be something that he feels about himself. And his way of dealing with that is to sort of, you know, do the avoidance tango. I think that in terms of advice, Moira, you've got it spot on, what you need to do is say, I want to talk about this. It might not work. It might not work.

You might say, hey, I really want to talk about this. And, you know, your friend goes silent on you. Like that's happened to people that I know. And I think this is where the magic ingredient of time comes in, which is, it may be years, but I reckon this person will come back to you in the group in some way. And I don't know what it is that it's going to take.

It might be their life circumstances changing. It might be them getting to know themselves better. It might be them cultivating some emotional skills that just don't feel fully developed right now. But I think that when you've got so much shared experience, there'll be some coming back. I disagree. There's no guarantee he'll come back.

He could fuck you guys off forever, but that's just life. That's just life then. There's no guarantee. I'm talking in likelihoods. I'm talking about likelihoods and probabilities. Either way, you won't know until you chat. So have a little chat. Have a little chit chat. Have a little talk. Talk talk. Little chopchit. Just a little chopchit. Let's shoot the shit.

Let's shoot the shit. Yeah and if he doesn't want to meet up then get him on the phone. Bring bring. Like you're a news reporter. Hello I'm looking for comment. Like you just got to you got to talk to people. And the fact that you can talk to us means you can talk to him. When I heard you go bring bring, I just saw full toddler moir there. It was quite sweet. What really? It's like bring bring. I'm on my phone. Mummy, there's actually there's a there is a tape of me that exists, which is testament to how annoying I was as a child, which is my mum's, it's

a tape of Macy Gray that my mum had. And in the middle, the music cuts out because I'd recorded over it a child's voice. I can't remember what I was doing. I think I was like trying to interview people like, hello, this is Moya. um but yeah the music cuts out and it's just me talking which goes such such a precedent so such a precedent for my future career that's so sweet very very adorable anyway this has been um if i speak we've been speaking si claro If I speak, we've been speaking. Si, claro! Soy Ash Sadkar! Adios!