Pod Save the World - The Great British Breakdown Show

Episode Date: October 17, 2018

Tommy is in Austin with Beto O'Rourke for Pod Save America on HBO! So this week, Crooked contributor Ben Rhodes travels across the pond to sit down with David Lammy, a trail blazing long time Member of Parliament, to break down the looming catastrophe of Brexit, why Trump is as accepted in the UK as well as "a cold bucket of sick," and what progressives need to do to change course in Britain, the U.S. and across the West. There are 20 days until the election: votesaveamerica.com

Welcome to Pod Save the World. I'm Ben Rhodes. I'm guest hosting for Tommy, who is on the road doing his part ahead of the midterm elections here. But we thought that we would take the show on the road here to London. So I'm sitting here in London with David Lammy, who's a member of parliament. Member of parliament since 2000, David. It's been a while. Yeah. We met in, I think, 2007 when Obama was campaigning. And I think we're both older. You were like the fresh young member of parliament. And I was like, you were like the fresh young member of parliament. And I was like. like the 29-year-old staffer for Obama. Yeah, so that's 11 years ago now. And it was, God, it was a good time. How did you end up campaigning for Obama from being a UK parliamentarian? So I guess, you know, the truth is that Harvard has a pretty powerful alumni.

Yeah. And within that, it has a pretty powerful black alumni. Yeah. And I left Harvard in 1997, worked in the States for a short while, came back to Britain, became a member of Parliament in 2000, and shortly thereafter, began to connect with people like Deval Patrick and Obama. And in those days, I was in government. You know, they were really interested in what's it like, you know, Tony Blair. You know, you guys had Bush. Yeah. And it was grim. Yeah. And then obviously things switched. And we remained, as you know, in contact and

great friends. So you obviously are of African descent and when you entered parliament, there are not many black parliamentarians. I'm curious now, here we are 20 years after you, almost 20 years. I don't want to make you out to be older than you are. Here we are in 2018. What is the minority population of the parliament? Well, Ben, when we first met, I used to stand out. Yes, you did. In the British parliament. But as a black man, there are a few more of us, certainly less than 10, but I still stand out. But we would say minority and include all minorities, and there are 51 these days. But, you know, I remember when I used to meet your old boss and we would talk about it. What's it like?

It's not quite like that. It's getting better. But there's a lot more to do in terms of really representing the full multicultural sense of this country and right across Europe, you know, minorities are present but not seen in the legislature. Yeah. People don't have legislatures that look like the populations that they live in. Not in Europe, not yet. And just to situate our listeners a bit, how would you describe your constituency? My constituency is in the north of London. It is traditionally seen as a black ethnic minority constituency. I guess in, in it,

In an American context, you know, it would be placed in New York. It would be somewhere between Queens and Brooklyn. Yeah. In feel. Yeah. It is a traditional labor seat. I have an 82% share of the vote. Yeah.

So I'm pretty popular in my area. I represent almost 200,000 people. And it's a seat, sadly, that has had issues. It had riots begun there in 2011. And we've had riots previously before. Yeah. Well, let's get into, I noticed when I came here last that just like everything in the United States is about Trump, and that's the only thing people seem to be talking about in the news. Like here it's Brexit. And Americans obviously followed the Brexit vote. Here we've had kind of chaos, it seems like, in the pursuit of an actual Brexit. I mean, first of all, just for our listeners, what is the current state in terms of when the UK is supposed to negotiate? and exit, and how would you describe where Theresa May is in that process?

Britain is meant to exit the European Union on the 29th of March. Yeah. We will get the emergence of the deal that Theresa May has struck with our European partners sometime towards the end of November or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we took the referendum. We made the decision to leave. It was absolutely the case that there was absolutely no plan about how to leave.

There was a two-year clock that button that we pressed when we issued the Article 50. And, you know, your listeners will know that there has been a hell of a lot of turmoil. Yeah. Both in Britain and to some degree in Europe since that decision. And, you know, obviously you oppose the decision. And before we get into some of the issues in play now, one of the things that strikes me that is similar between the United States and the UK is just like Trump told a lot of lies to get elected and continues to. It strikes me that one of the reasons why Theresa May is having a hard time both negotiating something and keeping her coalition together is that the Brexit campaign was founded on a lot of lies might be the strong word. certainly some license taken with the facts.

What were some of the promises that were made by the Brexit campaign that they are finding hard to keep in these negotiations? Because basically the promise that I remember was we can leave, have all the good things about the EU in the common market to get more money for the health care system, not be inconvenience too much by the exit, not have to pay the EU. How have some of those promises proven impossible to keep? Well, huge promises were made. The British people were promised that they would get 350 million a week for the National Health Service. That has turned out to be a complete lie. The money is shrinking and indeed we're going to have a 50 billion bill to give to the European Union and rising. The British people were promised that it would be easy to extract ourselves from the European Union and that striking new trade deals would be very straightforward. None of that turns out. about to be the true. The European, the British people were promised that the EU needed us more than

we needed them. And it turns out that the combined strength of 27 countries, that just is not the case. The British people were not told anything about the problems that existed or would exist in the island of Ireland, between Northern Ireland and Ireland, the border that would be a real issue and that is an intractable issue across the, across, you know, in the negotiations. Look, I think it's right to say also, to put it absolutely clearly, that an investigation into the way that the campaigns were run, and particularly the Leave campaign, have demonstrated that there was outside influence, just like in the American elections. Yeah, so this was, and I don't know if people in the United States has been following this

as closely, but the Russians were involved too, right, in terms of, you know, Cambridge Analytica and the Russians were involved. Now, there will be debate to the degree that that made a difference, but I don't think there's any debate that they were involved. And I think it's also the case that there is a budget that you can spend and it was overspent. All sorts of things went on. And I guess the real problematic side to this is that in the end, in all elections, the big issue generally is the economy.

and most people vote on the basis of economics. Yeah. This was an election in which ultimately, those who voted leave, we were told that they put immigration. Yeah. And social cultural issues, sovereignty, Britain's sovereignty,

above economics, I think that's wrongheaded. Yeah. I think that that is now coming to pass. Yeah. And therefore there is a real change of mood and change of wind. Before we get to that,

you know, one thing Americans, you were a little bit perplexed by after our election is you had Nigel Farage, who was a lead voice in the Leave campaign here, starting to show up and hang out with Trump and Steve Bannon. He's eating at the restaurant. And people, I think, had no idea who this guy is. I mean, first of all, like, how would you describe who Nigel Farage was in the Leave campaign? Nigel Farage was a fringe figure in British politics on the far right. a politician who only spoke about immigration and how problematic it was to the British economy

and our country linked that to Europe and the sovereignty, if you like, of the UK. Why were we pooling our interests with other European countries? Why aren't we a standalone independent nation? He was on the fringe running this very small party UKIP. And what we saw really was his influence begin to infect. the Conservative Party who tacked right on immigration,

successive, successive elections, and indeed the Labour Party that also started to move into that territory. And in the end, the referendum began,

was all about the immigration issue. Even though it is, like night follows day, immigration is good for, for this country in terms of who are the care workers working in our, working with our elderly, who are the people doing jobs that no one else wants to do? How is an aging population to pay for its pensions and take care of itself?

Yeah. This takes people coming and being prepared to do that. And that is the truth of the story, most of these people, young people, not using the National Health Service. And that somehow that truth just got drowned out and attached to it a kind of xenophobia. that got really ramped up following the crash of 2008. And there are huge similarities. I was going to say, yeah.

I mean, I just listening to you talk, it is really striking how much this is the same political force in the sense that you have a Republican Party drifting right on immigration issues. You have a lot of turmoil following the financial crisis. You have an easier political strategy. on the right of embracing xenophobia rather than putting forward solutions. And then just as Trump kind of takes over a Republican Party that had already moved far enough

to the right that it could be taken over by Trump, you have a Brexit campaign that gets taken over, you know, by forces that are putting forward a real focus on sovereignty, on keeping people out, on blaming the other, on making promises they can't keep about the economy. and here we are, right? I mean... Yeah, so absolutely. With the Russians coming in

and some of the nationalist forces in Europe coming in. So what you get is a sense that the Anglo-American world is in crisis. Yeah. And linking back to your question, let's be absolutely clear.

Farage, Trump, Salvini, Banyan, Riesmog, Johnson, Lopez Johnson, Le Pen. They're friends.

Yeah. They hang out. They hang out. They're actually all parts of them. the same movement. They're all part of the same movement. They trade ideas. They organize. Yeah. There are funds and money. Yeah. It's fine. It's. Yeah. It's deliberate. And it's a plan. And there's media platforms. And after leaving the White House, Mannion's been all over Europe. Yeah. Yeah. Sharing ideas. Is he been here? He has absolutely been here. He came here just before

Trump came here. And it's all deeply, deeply worrying. Yeah. Well, And then I saw, so Boris Johnson was kind of the more mainstream compared to Nigel Farage, the leading voice for Brexit. To situate our listeners, you know, he quit Theresa May's government as prime minister, basically saying that, you know, she wasn't taking a tough enough line in the negotiation, even praised Trump and saying, you know, Trump knew how to negotiate better than Theresa May. What do you think his play is? Is it basically he knows that Brexit's not going to end well? so this way he can get out and not be responsible and can still keep his cachet with the right. When you look at the Conservative Party now and Theresa May and Brexit and some of the other voices, what do you think is happening on their side?

So Boris Johnson is probably the biggest opportunist in British politics. And I think that there are people on the right of British politics who would say that as well. He was not, I don't think he can be described. an unsuccessful mayor of London in which he was in some ways ran as a compassionate conservative and governed as a compassionate conservative

but boy oh boy has he tacked right as his party has moved right in order to outflank Theresa May and he took this decision to head up the leave campaign never expected himself to win I don't think

one was a pretty unsuccessful foreign secretary has left. But I think what we're seeing is a horribly divided conservative party. Partly because the promises made do not ring true. You know, there is an idea amongst some, I think those who are really keen on sovereignty, that Britain can stand alone and almost reinvent its imperial empire past with no understanding that most of that was forged by bitter battle, those pink bits of the Atlas. You know, the Americans get us out,

but they're not coming back in that way, certainly. And there are some conceits, for example, we are going to reduce immigration. Well, you know, Ben, when you go to negotiate with the Indians, a trade deal, what's the first thing they're going to ask for? Visas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what they care about.

Immigration is going to increase, not diminished. And market access. Precisely. And there is also those who want a real, deregulatory push. They would like us to be the 51st state of America. They would like us to be kind of a Singapore or Switzerland off the coast of Europe. Very low employment rights, very low probably on environmental concerns. That is a vision and others do not share it. And some of them are prepared, frankly, to see the economy growth reduce least over a 10, 15 year period for this

ideal that will win out in 15 to 20 years time. So the conservatives are in deep, deep trouble. And I think it's right to say that labor is split also because it's also right to say that there is a hard left point of view that the European Union is a kind of corporate conspiracy, is a race to the bottom, I think, has increased inequalities. And let me just be honest, of course there are issues within the European Union, but it is my view that we need to be in. this international partnership, that actually the miracle of the European project and the European Union after the Second World War is a great ideal despite its problems. And that what Britain had was the benefit of both at the centre of the EU and to some extent alongside Germany and France, really important. And then this huge relationship with the United States.

that post-war deal after Suez, if you like, and that sense of decline that Britain felt was the best things are going to get. And the idea that you're going to kick over the can in Europe and then still hope that you have that proximity to the United States, I think is unreal. We were the UN in 2016, Obama's last UN General Assembly. Theresa May's government floated this notion of having a meeting

of the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, all the Anglo countries. And we said to them, why? What would we meet to discuss? I mean, there's the U.S., there's Europe. Yeah, we have alliances with those countries, and we have the G7 and we have the G20. We're not going to recreate a new kind of Anglo block. And meanwhile, the China's emerging in India. I mean, the world has changed.

We can't go back to the days when Churchill and Roosevelt kind of sat around. and divide it all up. And, you know, listen to your talk, I mean, on the left, it does seem like, you know, you can resent the bureaucracy of Brussels or the kind of corporatism in it. But I notice that, you know, you've called for a vote of some sort on whatever Theresa May comes up with, right? Is there any chance for another popular voice on the Brexit question, or do you think that that is not practical? I think there's a growing chance that I have been one of the leaders of the fight for a

people's vote here in the UK. Why? Because it's absolutely clear that in the referendum, significant lies were told in the campaign. And quite a lot of people, because we're not used to having referendum in this country, frankly, wanted to stick two fingers up to the government of the day. Don't forget our campaign was led by David Cameron and George Osborne, our Chancellor, Minister of Finance at the time. And they wanted, you know, you asked them, how do you feel about politics? They want to, you know, make it clear to you that they're not happy. Yeah.

Because there is an issue with an establishment in Westminster and here in London. There's a huge issue post 2008 on how austerity. Yeah. Let's be absolutely clear. And American friends may not understand this as well. But here in Europe and in the UK, purse strings have been tightened. Public spending has been shrunk. A lot of people really struggling.

Yeah. struggling in their families with falling wages, but also their access, their experience of the NHS, their experience of education, local authorities. This is our local government layer. Doesn't get talked about a lot. It doesn't get talked about a lot, hugely important, the people that take your rubbish away, the people that clean up your parks, the people that make you feel that civic glue cut to shreds in this country. And people were pretty angry. And indeed, some of that responsibility lies with the European Union. but most of it lies with the government of the day.

And perhaps, to some extent, the new Labour government before that. And in a sense, now we've had a proper debate over the last two years. We really have had a debate. People know the issues. They know the arguments. And very, very shortly, in a few weeks' time, we are going to get the deal. And so the proposition is, actually, can we seek the consent of the people to whatever deal we get? and we may get no deal.

And every single economist, the governor of the Bank of England, said, house prices in Britain would fall by 35%. And we would have a recession deeper than the recession we had in 2008. My God, you've got to seek the consent to the people. Do you want this deal? Or would you prefer to remain within the European Union? So that is gathering pace. Obviously, it's now a position that the Labour Party in its conference,

has finally said he's going to have on the table. Are liberal Democrats, green, Scottish nationalist colleagues are in the same position. And there are conservatives calling, including the former Prime Minister John Major, for a people's vote on that deal. So of course, I think that's where we're heading. So basically these three scenarios, Theresa May gets a deal. It's probably not going to be a good deal. You're going to pay a lot to the EU.

You're not going to get as many of the benefits of the common market. You're still going to have some of the cumbersome entanglements with Brussels. None of the things were promised in terms of money in the NHS are going to materialize. So you're going to have either she gets a pretty bad deal. You get no deal, which means a hard Brexit, which means you suffer all the economic pain of that kind of complete cutoff from the European market. And then there's a third option of whether it's a bad deal or no deal, at least some people's voice on it. How do you see – I mean, I know that predictions are difficult in this environment. How do you see this playing out?

I haven't got a crystal ball. I don't think Theresa May will survive as Prime Minister. I think there might well be turmoil in my own party. If we're not in the right position on this, I'm glad we changed that at our party conference. My own view, as I said, is I think there will be a people's vote. If there isn't a people's vote, then I think Britain will deepen the sense of division and the sense of anger. And let me put it this way. I think it was Lyndon Johnson that said,

when he signed the Civil Rights Act that the Democrats had lost the South for a generation. Now, he was being negative about, obviously, from my point of view, a great piece of legislation, but did not go down well in the southern states. And he was, in fact, right. Similarly, I think that those who have been the proponents of Brexit, when the winds of change come, or if they're to come, and there is this economic downturn. And Britain goes back, to being this sort of isolated, slightly problematic place on the fringe of Europe.

Like we were in the 70s, I think that those who've been on that side of the argument will pay a deep price. My worry is, just as we saw after the referendum, David Cameron, George Osborne, Nigel Farage, people flee the scene of what they had created.

That we will see a generation of politicians leave the scene and the mess will be picked up by those left and particularly the millennials. And let me just absolutely say there is a real sense in the UK that young people and the millennials

feel betrayed by a set of politicians who are now going to move to a situation where they haven't got access to Europe. They can't freely travel, freely go and work and settle. All of that is shut off and the economic prospects for the country are less than they were as a consequence.

And this is against a backdrop, of course, in which there's a huge, a bit like in the United States, there is a, you know, as you talk about the, you know, the Rust Belt, those middle states, middle America. Here in the UK, we have a north-south divide. Yeah. Where there is, you know, significant wealth in London. I mean, not in a constituency like mine, but in the centre of London. And vast parts of the north of England shut out of that economic dream. Yeah. Well, so in that situation, which has got a lot of similar with the U.S., I mean, millennials here didn't vote for Brexit, just like millennials in the U.S. didn't really vote for Trump and now feel completely unrepresented by the politics that they're witnessing. You know, we spend a lot of time on these podcasts in the United States.

It's kind of thinking about what do the progressives do, what does a Democratic Party do, what is labor's roadmap for dealing with this, both to reclaim power and to solve some of these problems. You've got Jeremy Corbyn who initially was thought as kind of a placeholder, you know, unreconstructed socialist, but who then did quite well in the last election and was able to mobilize young people and did seem to be returning the conversation to economic issues from the immigration and kind of xenophobic politics of the right. Within coming out of your party conference, where do you think the direction is for labor? Well, I actually think that the challenge for progressives after a period in the centre ground of politics, the kind of Blair Clinton period particularly, is to recognise that in a period of huge inequality and rapid technological change, where there are, there's less work and less quality jobs, you know, to some extent in the middle and in the bottom,

and where that idea of paying your way and leaving a good legacy for your children is kind of vanished, it's clear to me that the only way forward is for progressives to understand that they need to get behind much more redistribution of wealth. Now, that is the old socialist position. I know it's a dirty word in the United States, but in the end, it's redistributive policies. Well, yeah, in the U.S., you do see, though, this new crop of candidates embracing, single-payer healthcare, Medicare for all, people like Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, and the crop of Democrats running in the House includes a lot of people pushing for similar ideas. Do you think this breakdown in politics should lead, it sounds like you're saying, it should

lead progressives to be somewhat bolder and embracing, you know, more aggressive solutions and being less bashful about being for what they're for. Look, absolutely. So the reaction to this changing world is, I'm a right-wing populism that blames the other, blames the immigrant, or you have to redistribute, which means a minimum income guarantee. It means the sorts of policies

that Obama begun pursuing in healthcare in the United States. It means a different relationship with big business and corporations, much more akin to the German model where workers are on the board and have far more proximity to power. It means huge,

Huge advances in education. Some of the challenges that exist in the United States, for example, they simply can't continue. And you can't afford to put so much money into remedial. You're going to get it right first time around, right? And we have challenges still in our education system. You know, don't forget here in the UK, we saw this horrendous fire, Grenfell Tower, this housing development, social public housing, largely. where 72 people lost their lives in a preventable fire.

In a way, it was a bit for us like the Hurricane Katrina moment, where Britain had to face up to serious issues of inequality, of poverty, of poor housing and very, very poor local democracy and policymaking at the centre, and indeed a degree of greed around gentrification. All of those questions are questions that the progressives have to have answers for, have to be bold and confident about.

And to some extent, I think that Jeremy Corbyn has captured a mood because he was the first politician here, brave, to challenge austerity and move in that direction. Now, the prescription, the formula, the individuals, of course, will change and come and go and they'll do the debates. And I have to say some of the challenges, I think particularly for progressives, is staying united, is recognising that for us, it's also. so a big tent. Yeah.

I think that in Britain, it has to include social Democrats and socialists. Yeah. And the United States will have its own version of that. We saw some deep splits between Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Yeah. And in the end, you then allow the right to go forward, united, and dominate. Well, do you think in one of the other things is that, you know, we were talking before about how there's this kind of movement on the right that spans the Atlantic, you know, Trump, Farage, Bannon, I would say Putin and others.

Do you feel like there's enough dialogue, cooperation among progressive parties, the Democratic Party, the Labor Party, some of the European parties? It strikes me that there could be more effort to develop common solutions of these problems than there is. I think there could be way more discussion, way more mutual organization. And it goes back to what I said before. The hard right are organizing. And they're financed all over the world. What are we doing? Yeah.

You know, we're complaining. We're fiddling around. And we're largely out of power and a long way from power. So of course we've got to act together. Globalization is real. These are global tides. These are central themes around income, employment, the nature of an economy. What does redistribution look like?

And what do we say is the minimum guarantee? what is back to that conversation about what is the welfare state that holds people and that indeed provides some sort of insurance scheme against the backdrop of, I think, tougher times, tougher times ahead. So we have to get organized and I welcome much further discussion. And I suppose it's why also for politicians like me spending time abroad and having friends like yourself and others is so important. Well, and one of the challenges for the left is, because I agree being bolder on the prescriptions for what happens at home, but somehow not leading that to the kind of older form of socialism that opposed any kind of globalization, cooperation.

It can be compatible that the U.K. and the U.S. can move in that direction at home while still embracing some degree of global integration, global movement of people's trade, cooperation issues like climate change. So it also is necessary, you know, when you get into foreign policy and trade and migration policy, to make those ideas work across borders. I think climate change is a great example because it's always interesting that this is one area of public policy where progressives are united. Yeah. That we have to work together. We have to be internationalists. We're upset that we haven't gone further. And we recognize also the challenges exist in some of the developing world in moving in that direction.

and in a sense we take that template and we've got to extend it further. We can't just confine it because we're so concerned about the future for the planet to that one area of public policy. Look, I think the other thing is to remember what the alternatives are to this.

We now have Trump ripping up. Yeah. He may even rip up the WTO. Yeah. Oh yeah, I think he's setting that direction. Yeah. He's certainly completely altered the trade norms that we have been used to up to this point.

And again, I think he's selling a myth to parts of Middle America that simply won't fly, right? So we have to be in a place of reconstructing that global world, recognizing its challenges with the technological tide that exist, but nevertheless prepared to work together. And there are big issues. A growing issue in our countries is mental health of young people. There is emerging evidence that some of the change. around social media use are contributing to that. Those require global solutions to stand up to a new type of big business. In fact, they cannot be done alone, and we cannot allow or believe that the right are going to be the ones to do that. They aren't going to do it.

Yeah. Well, I mean, even the problems that the right doesn't like, like refugees, you can't deal with, I mean, you need almost a Paris-style agreement with every country involved to divide up the responsibilities to deal with that. Unfortunately, that requires a United States that is mobilizing some degree of international cooperation. You know, we are so inside of the reality show in Washington with Trump. We do pay attention when he goes overseas and, you know, he's genuflecting in front of Putin in Helsinki or picking fights with NATO. But I think Americans don't get a lot of a window into what people around the world are thinking about Trump. you know, here in the UK, here in London, how have people received the presidency of Donald Trump and how might that be changing their views of America?

Well, let me tell you that there are very straightforward things here that Donald Trump has done that have, I think, challenged everyone. So, for example, we experience terrible terrorism in Westminster and in London Bridge. Donald Trump thinks it's cool to get onto Twitter. Pick a fight with Sidi Khan. And to pick a fight with the mayor of London, to characterize London as being sort of overrun with the sort of Muslims and Lundasthani.

And that is deeply offensive to people in the UK at a time of great national concern around terrorism. No, no US, there are, you know, our great allies. No one would behave like that to friends. we of course see the way that he's dealing with minorities, the way that he's dealing with children, immigrant children in his own country. I am particularly connected to the Black Caucus.

I hear everything that he's doing on race and rolling back the tide. And of course, I guess because we're here having this conversation in London, we also join the dots. We know who he's connected to back in our own country. you know, and frankly, far right movements. You know, he thinks that Le Pen in France is, you know, it's great.

She's a good woman. So all of that, I think, sits badly, which is why so many people turned out to protest and march against Trump. Now, they are, let me be absolutely clear, they are not marching against the American people. Yeah. So they still separate out Trump from the broader American public? Well, some of your listeners will remember that, you know, George Bush didn't go down particularly well. Yes.

In London, in France, in Germany. If George Bush didn't go down well, can you imagine how Trump's going down? He's going down like a cold bucket of sick. That's true. But I might say that the American people and the democracy that is America have the opportunity to turn their backs on Donald Trump when their election comes. The UK, on the other hand, is stuck. with this Brexit.

So, I mean, I think that we ought not to get too caught up in saying, oh, poor old America, look, they've got Donald Trump. It does seem to me that the other things we associate with America, strong progressives, campaigning, organizing, protesting are to some extent alive, alive and well during this period that feels a bit like a circus. Well, you know, it strikes me that the next two elections, our congressional election and the presidential election will be pretty definitional for America in the UK and around the world, because if people see the United States revalidating what Trump is doing,

that might cause them to fundamentally rethink what they believe about the United States. In other words, he got elected. Now we have this very unusual president who picks fights with allies, who picks fights with allies when they're terrorist attacks, who behaves in undemocratic ways at home, cozes up to dictators abroad, picks fights with NATO. If that is, in a sense, endorsed by what happens in next two elections, well, then maybe

the United States isn't the country that is the natural leader of the world. If it's rejected and rejected strongly, there's a space for the United States to kind of reemerge and kind of play the role that people would like it to play in many parts of the world. So, I mean, do you get a sense of people here are going to follow our congressional election more closely than they normally would for that type of reason. Oh, I think people would love to see the fight back. Yeah.

They would love to see a rebalancing. Can I caricature it this way? I've sensed when I've gone across the world that people are slightly perplexed with this Brexit story in the UK, partly because they see us as small C conservative, balance, nothing radical. Yeah. In relationship of United States, and I remember being there with you and others, when Barack won.

But I also remember being in a George Bush White House. There's a sense in which America is the country that is just on trend. Yeah. You know, and somehow what's happening in America really affects the world. Yeah. So I think if you're sitting in London

and you see the Americans a firm and affirm, Donald Trump, it's a giddy feeling that you feel here in your soul if you're progressive because that has implications in your own country. And in a sense, it goes back to this point that the Anglo-American world is in crisis. If you're a progressive, it's in crisis. Is this a different world order emerging in which we see the likes of Putin, Ergawan,

I would put in, you know, Trump, Netanyahu, these sort of big man theme. Do teretia. Are we back to that kind of models of leadership? Which destroyed this continent, twice. Absolutely. And we don't need it again. It also, you know, if you're a parent, we're both parents. It sets a terrible example to children, this sort of behavior.

Oh, I worry all time about, I mean, my daughters are a little too young, but, you know, kids who are kind of 10 to 15, what they're watching on television and how that's going to impact the people they become. The stakes really are global. In an interesting way on the trend side, Brexit preceded Trump, you know, we tend to follow these similar trends. sometimes the UK's a little head, sometimes the U.S. is a little head. But it does seem like maybe a closing question or note is that in the U.S., the one thing that makes me optimistic is the energy right now, the political energy, does feel like it's emanating from progressives, you know, that that pendulum is beginning, you can feel it beginning to shift. Do you have a similar sense here, or is Brexit just so complicated and you're so bound to it that it's

it's going to be more difficult to break free of it. I have a lot of belief in the millennials. I meet them. I see them on social media. And in that sense, they are a progressive generation, it feels to me. However, human beings are living longer. Baby boomers are still on the stage.

In many places, they're still running the stage. And then we've got this mini generation, which I think you and I and Gen X, many baby boobies. So there's a there's kind of a lot to play for. Yes, we've got an energy, but I do see. And, you know, I am subjected to quite a lot of racism, outright, racism, death threats

from parts of the far right here in the UK. And indeed, actually, I also get threats and things that emanate from the United States. Now, we've got a fantastic police here that makes sure that people like me and my family are safe. But perhaps because I see that really acutely, I've watched the way over the two decades I've been in UK politics. I've seen it grown. Yeah. And the social media just amplifies it. And social media absolutely amplifies it.

I think that, you know, I'm not in the mood to be. Can't afford to be too complacent or naive about our opponents who feel emboldened at this point. because of the things that we have discussed. So, Ben, the point is we have to organize. We have to work together. We have to finance. We have to be on policy. We have to remember why we're in this business

and that there are lots of people, lots of people in both our countries and across the world who are aching in this globalized world and we have to be responsive to their needs. Well, look, I think that's a great note to end on And as we've been talking a lot about in the United States, that's a call for young people to be more engaged to make the choices that will determine their lives. Because one of the difficult things about the Trump and Brexit elections is that older people cast votes that had huge impact on young people that went against their wishes. Well, David, thanks. It was great talking to you.

And it's always good to see you here. And thanks for taking our podcast global here. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, all's good.