The Ricochet Podcast - A Very Fond Farewell

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

It’s hard to call it unbelievable when a 96-year-old mortal shuffles off, but Queen Elizabeth II’s final departure has had a peculiar effect. Hoping to have the feeling articulated without sentimentality, we asked on a couple English friends ( Charlie Cooke filling in for Peter and London Calling’s Toby Young) to discuss her importance, and what her death means for the Commonwealth. Source

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We hold these truths to bring you an important announcement. Buckingham Palace has announced the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long. Peter Robinson is gone this week, but Charles C. W. Cook is sitting in for him. I'm James Lylex, and we speak to Toby Young in England about the Queen. Let's have ourselves a podcast.

I can hear you! Welcome everybody, it's the Ricochet Podcast, number 609. Won't you join us at ricochet.com? By the way, you can be part of the most interesting conversations in community on the web. What do you mean by join? Oh, go there, find out, find the member side, find the place on the internet you've been looking for all of your days. It's waiting at ricochet.com. I'm James Lilex in suddenly cold Minnesota. Charles C.W. Cook is sitting in for Peter Robinson. Charlie is in the free state of Florida. And Rob Long, we don't know where he is,

but we presume he's back in his home base of Gotham. Rob, is that correct? That is, in fact, correct. There we are. Well, of course, the news is something that wants us to speak to an Englishman, Toby Young. Toby's the founder and director of the Free Speech Union and associate editor of The Spectator. More importantly, he's co-host of Ricochet's London Calling podcast.

Since we're pretty sure he's an Englishman, we wanted to bring him on to join Charlie to talk about the Queen. Toby, thanks for joining us today. I was driving through the middle of Minnesota in the middle of the North American continent when my daughter sent me a text that said, the Queen is dead. And since my car is set to read Siri voices in an Irish accent, I had the sort of voice of an Irish servant girl saying, the Queen is dead, all of a sudden coming from my speakers. I learned it before I learned it from the BBC World Service. Where were you when you found out, and how did you feel?

Well, I was in a restaurant in Piccadilly called The Woolsey. And an elderly woman sitting nearby leaned over and touched my arm and said, the queen is dead. And so that's how I first heard. And it was a very unusual thing to happen. I mean, as you know, English people are very reserved and we don't normally talk to strangers. So I think it was significant. It was symbolic of how impactful the event was that a total stranger touched me on the arm to tell me. Interestingly, the rumor was that the queen had actually died much earlier in the day but the family had kept

a news blackout because they didn't want any of the grandkids or the great-grandkids to learn about it while still at school they wanted to tell them in person so they waited for them to be with their parents or gathered at palmore balmoral before they before they announced the news no worries about sword play clashing in the back halls as they vie and fight for power no it's not very civilized at these days i think the succession was pretty pretty well established he's the only 73 year old who's beginning his first job king charles the third it's hard to remember to say king charles the third isn't it I mean, it's going to be the strangest thing in the world. Yeah, I mean, it's all… we now have to sing God Save the King instead of God Save the Queen, which has been on national anthem for more than 70 years. His head is going

to start appearing on banknotes and stamps. And one interesting factoid I discovered today is that if you're a very senior lawyer in the UK, you get the appendix QC added to your name. It means Queen's Council. It's kind of like a badge of honor. That all changed today to Casey. Well, at least RMS for the ships will stay the same. That's true. So, you know, Charlie, jump in. I don't know whether you consider yourself still a subject of the

crown. I don't quite know what your citizen status is, Charlie, to be quite honest. I'm trying to be very polite, but I'm asking you, what kind of American are you? I still have my British citizenship, if that's what you're asking. That's kind of what I was asking. I don't want to...

Are you asking if I have... No judgment here. If I have dual or even divided loyalties, is that where we're going with this? Well, I would imagine you do have at least some divided loyalties. So, you know, as you know, I'm a proud American. She was a remarkable woman. And, I mean, to take nothing away from her enormous accomplishment, I mean, longest reigning British sovereign,

wore the uniform in the armed forces, was instrumental in holding the country together during World War II. It does feel like we're all going to have to get used to something a lot less dignified and maybe impressive in her successor. Am I being

unfair? I mean, or Toby, you're on the ground in London. Is anybody nervous about the fact that this sort of seems a little batty sometimes. This guy is now going to be the king. What's he done? Am I missing something? Am I being unkind?

He's had a, you know, a tough gig because he's been preparing for this job all his life. And he's finally going to do it when most people have retired. And, but I think he clearly doesn't command the affection the respect that the queen did um he's not nearly doesn't seem being regal um the ceremonial aspects of the job don't seem to come as naturally to him um he seems to want to um uh interfere in politics much more than she did, particularly on climate change issues, but other issues too.

And he's a slightly awkward, prickly, kind of difficult fellow. And so I guess a lot of people are speculating, you know, what will this mean for the future of the monarchy? What will this mean for the future of the Union, the Commonwealth? You know, she was the linchpin that held all those institutions together. So there's some speculation about whether he'll be able to, you know, fulfil that role

as effectively as she did. And particularly, you know, you can imagine Nicola Sturgeon after a few days have passed, kind of using this as an excuse to resurrect the, I mean, she doesn't need much of an excuse. She does it all the time. But to start petitioning for another independence referendum. You can

imagine some, you know, Republicans in Commonwealth countries like Australia and Canada using this as a pretext to have a, you know, renew the debate about whether to break away and leave the Commonwealth. So, you know, there's quite a lot of, I think, concern that people will use this as a way to bash Britain, as a way to diminish our importance. And, you know,'s quite a lot of i think concern that people will use this as as a way to bash britain as a way to diminish our importance and you know you can already see that the new york times ran a piece uh this morning um saying you know mourn the queen but not her empire um and uh there was i think the atlantic and new york magazine they've all been piling in across twitter the woke left have been kind of you, you know, they never miss an opportunity to pile on and criticise, you know, colonialist Britain, the British Empire, Britain's history,

litany of oppression and expropriation and the rest of it. So you can see this sort of suddenly, this is going to become a kind of great pretext for running down Britain and for breaking up Britain and for breaking up the Commonwealth. So I think it's, you know, a sort of some anxiety here that she's gone and we see our enemies massing at the gates trying to take advantage of this moment of vulnerability. Well, I mean, is there do they have a point? I'm just I'm, you know, I'mfully, it seemed like when you have the queen there, you could always say, well, she's the queen. Look at her. She's been great. You know, nothing wrong when it's personified

in the character of Queen Elizabeth II or Queen Elizabeth the Great, as Boris Johnson dubbed her in Parliament. It seemed harder to be mean. But once she's gone and you're really looking at a kind of a you know an also ran cast you know kind of the b-list let's be honest um it it the the institution took so i guess what i mean to say is the institution has taken so many slaps in the past few decades um that it

it seemed to be running only on the fumes of one person alone, one sort of, you know, irreproachable figure. And when that figure is gone, isn't it natural that people start thinking like, well, if it weren't for her, I mean, they broke a lot of precedents in the past 20, 30 years. Yeah, but, you know, I mean, in a way, that's a drawback of her having reigned for so long and lived so long. The institution has become kind of inextricably bound up with her, and now she's gone.

People think, well, can the institution survive? But, you know, a constitutional monarchy shouldn't be contingent on who the monarch is. There should be a seamless transition and, you know, Charles became the king the moment she died and he will be, you know, crowned after her funeral and in theory, at least, you know, the institution should endure and she's done quite a lot to, you know, retain the respect of the British people for not just her but also for the institution and I think the monarchy has an asset in the form of William and his wife Kate and I think

that Charles will do his best to mitigate any fall in the popularity of the institution when he becomes King by bringing William in as closely as possible and handing over some ceremonial duties to him and doing a kind of job share with a much more popular kind of uh member of the family who has the magic that he lacks well you know as far as charles being on the money though it's sort of interesting when you think okay has this guy actually ever carried around money in his pocket ever i mean he's everything's paid for you who's going to go up to the king and say or you know the prince and say you know that'll be five quid no i mean somebody probably that for him, but yet his face is going to go on the money.

Has he ever handled finances? You know, you wonder exactly. They probably got people for that as well. You are not the king. You are not a prince. You got to worry about your finances. And, you know, you pay hundreds of dollars to protect your home, your car, and even your phones, but too many of us are not taking steps enough to protect our families' finances. Mortgage payments, private student loans, other types of debt, they don't just disappear if something happens to you. No. Life insurance policy can provide your loved ones with a financial cushion they can use to cover those costs. And it can provide you with peace of mind in the worst case scenario, they'll be protected. By making it easy to compare your options from top companies, PolicyGenius, PolicyGenius can help you make sure

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Charlie, down in Florida, did anybody, did any American, you know, touch your arm and say, so sorry for your loss? Well, not that, no, but... I saw that happen in New York, by the way. It wasn't a joke. I heard that. No, it's been an enormous story here and and in the rest of the united states i think the last time i can remember such a blanket uh alteration in people's behavior was after 9 11 i ordered a new iphone this morning i haven't had one for a few years. And the entire Apple website's taken over by a picture of Queen Elizabeth on the front page. Last night, I watched the New York Yankees game, and they had a moment of silence. They put Queen Elizabeth II's picture up on the scoreboard.

I mean, across the country. We at the Frito-Lay Corporation. No, that's actually what happened. I mean, there was a tweet from Domino's Pizza UK, which was fairly amusing, marking her departure. I just want to second something Toby said. I think there will be people who push at this moment to change the British system because Queen Elizabeth is gone.

But I don't think it would be a good idea because the Westminster system of government is inextricable in its present form from the monarchy. And whether you think that's a good thing or not, as you know, I have a great love of the American system. I don't want to import the British system into the United States. I'm a fan of the American revolution. But whether you think it's a good idea or not, it's really difficult to change the British system in a way that would be palatable to the British. And we saw this in Australia. Yes, in Australia, there's a lot going on. Many people there ask, well, why do we have a head of state who lives in London? The demographics have changed a great

deal in Australia, such that not everyone who lives there now comes from British stock. Whereas in Canada, the monarchy is very popular. But the questions that were thrown up in Australia in the late 1990s actually were almost impossible to answer and i think that's why they didn't get rid of the monarchy what do we put in the monarchy's place do we put an elected head of state if so what power does the elected head of state have how does that affect the prime minister which person is more democratically authentic is it say the current prime minister liz trust who was actually never elected by the people her party was and then she was elected by the party or the head

of state who presumably would be directly elected and the australians didn't want to answer those questions and i think they worried quite rightly about having a system say like france and the british i suspect don't either um so insofar as this leads to smaller republican sentiment i'm really not convinced that it will or should go anywhere um because the monarchy works and i think people grasp that yeah and i think it's um you know it's difficult to imagine the British Prime Minister or the House of Commons deciding to abolish the monarchy and shift to a presidential system in which power is divided between the presidential palace and the House of Commons, between the president and the prime minister, because that would inevitably involve a dilution of power in the House of Commons and

the prime minister, and no politician wants to voluntarily relinquish. It starts to sound like France, you know, he's trying to describe France. So I, I just, one more sort of larger question than I want to get to the series of really, really grubby, grass, tacky questions about power and what happens next. But the, the, the high, the high, high brow question is this, that have you found, I mean, I knew when, when Diana died, when Diana, when the princess of wales died

i i could instantly tell which of my english friends or british friends in general were sort of um aristocrats and which weren't because the ones who weren't said things like oh it was tragedy she's the people's princess what a great tragedy the ones who were said oh god thank god she's dead she was mad as a brush i could always i could always tell like i didn't know they kind of came out of the closet that day um have you been surprised at the people who seem genuinely moved by her death who you thought maybe were a little bit wobbly in the monarchy department or or the other way people who you thought look at lord that's an incredibly brutal thing to say about the royal family.

Well, actually, funnily enough, I went and saw Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle on Sunday night at the O2 Arena in London. And they had a warm-up guy who made an unbelievable, did an unbelievably crude bit about the queen and the late prince philip making love and even though i went to see these two comedians because i love the fact that they're so irreverent that nothing's out of bounds that they're politically incorrect they're anti-woke i suddenly found myself being deeply offended and feeling affronted by this warm-up man. And not only did I find what he was saying unbelievable offensive. He was English, though, right?

He was American. Oh, he's American. That made it much worse. And it was as though he was trespassing on, you know, I think most people there knew that she was on our way out. But the thing which really, really annoyed me is that everyone started laughing. You know, in the audience, the British people in the audience found this bit hilarious, you know. And I felt exactly like, you know, a member of the LGBTQ community must feel when, you know,ave chappelle makes a joke about trans people doesn't just object to the joke but really objects to the fact that other people find it funny i

suddenly found what it was like to be a member of this kind of offended yeah but i think i think generally um so i was rather surprised by how offensive i found that bit but i think people have have surprised themselves by how upset um they felt on learning the news and they've sort of discovered how much she means to them now that she's gone um i mean you know it it's a it's an oft quoted fact rob that um she she that the thing british people dream about most often is the queen yeah um and i think she has kind of you know she has she does occupy this quite large space in the kind of collective unconscious of the nation but it's only become apparent that you know how big a space she

occupies now that she's gone uh charlie were you how i just want to know how you felt. Were you moved? Well, it was peculiar. Did you get a little choked up? No, I didn't get choked up. And I have two feelings, I suppose. One is vicariously through my parents, who have never known another queen and therefore another Briton. And they were profoundly affected

i wouldn't say they were weeping into their beer but i mean my mother said to me before it happened a few months ago that it will just be absurd to her not to have the queen in place and she's on the postage stamp she's on the money she's on the mailboxes my mother's middle name is elizabeth because she was born just after the queen was crowned uh and were you named after her were you named after her no i'm named after my grandfather actually that's gonna stay good lord it's starting to get a little no um and i suppose that relates to how I felt. And the best way I've tried to put this to Americans who know that I am, you know, a great lover of the revolutionary era, is that it feels a little bit to me as if someone has changed the flag. i'm devastated it's not that i'm changed and it's not that i before queen elizabeth died spent my days thinking about queen elizabeth but she was omnipresent and had been there my whole life and it's a little bit like you know tomorrow you woke up and they said well the flag the the stripes are now green and you would say well okay i guess that doesn't profoundly change

america but all of the houses down my street that have american flags which is basically all of them would suddenly be different but the symbols of the country would have been altered so so have you or toby have you ever dreamt of the queen i haven't i have yeah what was she doing about once a week bro she's usually you know she's usually kind of confiding in me or comforting me or sharing a cup of tea with me um or showing me her dogs um or sometimes yeah i mean it's it's not it's usually usually very respectable dignified you know um pg dreams about the queen don't get any ideas sweet i could see that i could see the problem uh i i have i have one i know james wants to jump in i have one grass question

so what happens now is there's a big big funeral and then i guess i don't know how many months before a coronation and then there's a respectable break for i don't know how many months before there's i guess the the investiture of william as prince of wales i mean we're looking at at least a year and a half of big, big British events where that golden carriage gets trotted out and people line the

mall and that's kind of what Britain does best, right? I mean, is this a bullish sign? I mean, that there's going to be three big, noisy, glittery events in London and Great Britain for the next, I don't know, year and a half, perhaps? I mean, one thing is that that will probably help the incumbent Conservative government. All that kind of pomp and ceremony is, you know, it resurrects a kind of love of tradition and history and heritage and continuity. You know, it arouses Conservative feelings in the breasts of the british people

so i would and it also distracts them from you know the the day-to-day problems the government is likely to um encounter um now that britain is in a fairly parlous state you know inflation's the highest it's been in 40 years gdp for the first time in 60 years is more than sorry our debt is more than 100% of GDP and we're about to go into recession, energy prices are out of control, we're in a cost of living crisis and so on and so forth. So the new Prime Minister, who was I think Queen Elizabeth II's 15th Prime Minister, who she only, you know, appointed three days, I think, two days before she died. She's going to have her work cut out. And I imagine, you know, for her, you know, this is actually a great boon.

There'll be a couple of things. First of all, Charles, you mentioned, I mean, he's 73. So he's obviously not going to have it rain as long as Elizabeth. You were talking about the way he's going to bring his predecessor into the organization and involve him more. Do you think he's going to be seen as a transitional figure, that everybody's got his age baked into this? Well, I think people, lots of people are thinking, well, can't we just skip a generation and go straight to William? But evidently, we can't. And I'm not sure, it you know too cruel to say people are are hoping it won't last very long um but um uh you know in his his and that might be a forlorn hope because um both his parents lived to a ripe old age so he may be on the throne for another 20

years um and i don't think you, it's possible he could kind of step back a bit when he gets older and hand over more to William, and he'll probably do that. But he can't literally resign and hand over the job to William. The only way he can do that is by dying. No, he could abdicate, right? He could take the Benedict option, couldn't he?

Well, yeah, I don't think he's going to do that. Those of us here in the States have been seeing him from afar through various lenses most people through his marriage to diana but i there's a couple of things that i've always found interesting about him one he's a painter sony records a few years ago put out 20 years ago 30 put out a collection of sony classical records all of which had a different watercolor and they were meretricious to the extreme by by by the now king which was interesting and he's also known for his feelings on architecture, which have earned him the ire of the modernists who believe that he's stuck in the past.

So that stuff is interesting. And I would like to hear more about the traditions of England, especially the visual traditions. On the other hand, there's always been a curious Islamophilia about Charles. Could you talk a little bit about that and whether or not you actually wouldn't be surprised to find some elements of Islam, either doctrinal or musical, find their way into the coronation ceremony? I don't know if they'll find their way into the coronation ceremony. There may be some Muslim potentates at the coronation. But I think the one worry is that Prince Charles's big issue is climate change. He's very much behind the net zero agenda.

And until now, that's been a fairly politically uncontentious issue because it's had cross-party support. But Liz Truss, our new prime minister, seems to be departing a little bit from that consensus. There's now a review to see whether we should pause net zero. She's announced she's going to lift the ban on fracking for shale gas and with the energy crisis approaching and energy bills rising obviously net zero becomes more politically contentious so the test for Charles is going to be can he dial down his support for those policies now that they've become politically quite contentious when he ascends to the throne because if he can't then he risks being sucked into the kind of argy-bargy of politics which is never great for the monarchy. No, I imagine not. Doesn't wear well. Speaking of things that wear well, yeah you know

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and branch for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast uh but william where does he stand on these issues as well i mean is it going to be handing off the baton to somebody who's more vital and can represent a new youthful britain but essentially it has a lot of the same old progressive policies that uh that that that may fill the heart of charles Do we know? William is a sort of environmental activist as well. I mean, he doesn't actually, you know, lie down in the middle of the M25 to stop lorries driving past. But he also seems to have, he seems quite keen on net zero. Mental health is his other big issue. And not just since Megan joined the family. But, yeah, I hope that he'll dial down his enthusiasm for environmentalism like his father,

now that, you know, he's playing a more prominent role. I mean, I think the tricky thing is they want to find an issue that they can get stuck into and make their own and not just seem like, you know, completely shallow, superficial figureheads. They want to kind of be taken seriously, so they want to, you know, be able to sound off about an important global issue. And they landed on climate change because they thought there was cross-party consensus about that, completely uncontroversial. Everyone's concerned about climate change. Everyone thinks net zero is a good idea.

And now that that consensus is beginning to crumble, they're either going to have to, you know, find another issue or shut up. Well, shutting up would be a good idea for them, don't you think? I mean, I agree with you on the subjects of The Crown on this podcast. I mean, shutting up is almost never a bad idea certainly if you're no no the the queen chose as her obsession horses which really are uncontroversial there's no anti-horse movement in the uk that she could have got on the wrong side the use of the cavalry and colonialism was one of the ways in which the library will and destroyed local initiative

so what do you think i mean charlie from here and toby from there what do you do you think britain's gonna look different in a year or two i mean besides this aside from the stamps and the currency and the the the, the, the adjustment people are going to have to make, like it's a new year to the new year on their checks of saying, you know, God save the King and, you know, King's council and on his majesties,

his, all that stuff. You think it's going to be different now that that sort of load star North star is gone. I think, I think the country may feel a little more vulnerable um for the reasons i said out earlier um and may be attacked more frequently for being colonialist um a relic of a bygone era there may be more pressure to break up the Commonwealth and the Union. And our institutions will feel that much more vulnerable, I think, particularly those with royal patronage. But I do think

that the monarchy will endure. I mean, there are such good arguments for the monarchy. You know, it provides a degree of continuity between different regimes different administrations um it it it's a great it's great for the tourist trade um when people talk about abolishing the monarchy or stripping down the monarchy they talk in a kind of socialist way imagining that the assets of the royal family belong to the nation and could be kind of taken away from the royal family but actually they don't they belong to the royal I mean, they're not going to just... We don't get the palaces or the crown jewels if we abolish the monarchy.

They get to keep them because they're theirs. People don't quite grasp that sometimes. But I think really importantly... I did once have an argument with a British friend of mine who's very royalist, and I said, well, shouldn't she pay taxes? And he responded very angrily, to whom should she pay it?

It's Her Majesty's government. And I thought, oh, okay, well, that's a bit of a trick. She does pay taxes. She does, actually. She now does pay taxes. She does pay some taxes. But I think just to finish up, I think one of the strongest arguments for the monarchy is that it creates within British public life a kind of apolitical space which is very important and one of the shortcomings of America for all its great strengths is that so much of American public life is politicized there doesn't

seem to be much much space in the public realm which is free of political conflict whereas you know when politicians when prime ministers they swear fealty to the Queen their civil servants Swear an oath to the Queen as do the police our armed forces It's something it sort of preserves this Space in our public life, which is free of political conflict and that's very important. I I think, if we can, to try and keep going. I'm always struck, though, when subjects of the crown talk about, you know, sort of monarchists like you two, talk about the queen. It's very respectful.

And I'm sort of, you know, you look at the pictures this morning of the gatherings outside of Buckingham Palace. It's extremely reverential. She clearly was a beloved figure. But the British sense of humor and culture is remarkably brutal. I mean, it's the brutality to the way the British have talked about the royal family is something that we don't even do about our presidents here. There's a kind of another side to it i mean i was just thinking about the british show the windsors

which is it's this incredibly brutal profane attack on the royal family and it um it's somehow never the queen never appeared in the windsors she was always just off stage somewhere off screen but do you think that's going to change, at least for the next, while the feelings are a little bit raw for the next year or so? Because nobody's meaner and tougher on the royal family than

her subjects. Well, funnily enough, Rob, I think that's why a monarchy works in Britain. And this is not a new insight, but the propensity toward humor and gallows humor often renders the chances of a dictatorship in Britain really slim. You're just too funny? It's too ironic a culture. It's too ironic a culture and people who behave like that are laughed at.

I mean, one of the great literary examples of this is Roderick Spode and P.G. Woodhouse, who was based on Oswald Mosley. People did laugh at Mosley in the streets. And Roderick Spode is a figure of fun because, although the real one was not, of course, funny at all, Hitler, had he spoken English, would have sounded utterly ridiculous. And I think the upshot of that is that it's quite easy for British people to coexist with a monarchy, which is, in some sense, is a ludicrous idea in the modern world because of that sense of irony.

And I don't think that that is likely to change. I mean, notwithstanding, you know, comedy skits about the Queen's sex life, certainly my British friends are absolutely willing to laugh and joke about the monarchy because they don't really see doing so as undermining it. It's self-deprecation on a national level and i i suspect that charles if he plays his cards right will benefit from that because he

is a figure of fun in some ways but if it looks at all that he's in on the joke or that he's above it then i don't see a problem what do you think toby yeah i i think i think that um there is something very irrational about the monarchy and it doesn't seem to make much sense you know in a modern liberal democracy for the head of state um to be um an inherited office. And for the monarch to have even, you know, passive powers, as our monarch does, seems absurd. What is the democratic legitimacy for possessing those powers? But it's the very irrationality of the institution, the fact that it is so out of step with modern times that makes it so romantically appealing and it makes it so eccentric and makes Britain unique and the idea of turning Britain into a kind of modern republic in which all power flows from the demos and tradition and ceremony and pomp is diminished or put in its

place um that's not very appealing i mean why why turn britain into you know um a second-rate republic when it can be a second-rate monarchy well i mean i guess the because it makes the argument is i i think i'm not i'm not making for you, but there's a, the idea of a queen or a king is sort of this, you know, wise person that has a political function, which gives the prime minister all sorts of advice, constitutionally is required to um but also kind of represents the british character in some way right that that for all of like the you know the pomp and circumstances being of the english monarch um they were kind of low-key right i mean they they sort of they weren't even the grandest aristocrats is that fair to say and they i mean she drove herself and yeah that is you know they kind of they had this ridiculous these ridiculous christmas traditions and they they liked it the the the kind of the most crass kind of humor that was kind of what they laughed

about you know bodily functions and etc they didn't i mean the interior of trump tower is a lot more gilded and polished and shiny than the interior of now i think you're confusing two ideas here i think that the the british royal family has assiduously avoided becoming like some of the modern royal families you see on the continent where they take the subway bicycle cycle around the street and so forth um i think what uh you're mistaking here is the british aristocracy's penchant for understatement with uh humility and well no because i mean it With humility. Well, no, because, I mean, it was funny. I'm not an aristocrat, but I had this sweater when I was at university and it got a hole in it.

And I thought, well, I don't really want to buy a new sweater, so I just kept wearing it. And this girl came up to me and she said, well, you must be an aristocrat because you've got a hole in your sweater. And it's actually a very instructive question because uh the the queen is not going to do out her palaces like the inside of trump tower right she's going to have wellington boots and barber jackets and um she's going to keep it traditional but um that does not mean that there is no space between where she and her family are and where the sort of average middle class is.

That's an astonishing amount. So I think maybe that's a reminder that luck plays a hugely important part in how well you fare in life how much you possess the kind of life you live people who make the argument for a more rational democratic system seem to imagine that if they do that they'll remove the element of luck and britain will become a much more meritocratic fairer society because this symbol is a symbol of something so unfair but life is unfair luck does play a huge part will never be a perfect meritocracy and one of the attractive things about an aristocratic hereditary head of

state is that they they're aware of that and so they do their best to try and compensate for it either by being as unostentatious as possible preserving what remains of sunday lunch in tupperware and putting it in the fridge as the queen is apparently want to do doing her own washing up but also sort of that sense of noblesse oblige of having to perform public duties and revering public service because you have to do something to show that you deserve your incredible good fortune and the one of the shortcomings of america when i lived in america in the late 90s was all these people you know uh who'd been born on third were convinced they'd hit a triple they thought their unbelievable good fortune was entirely deserved because they

imagined quite wrongly that america was this meritocratic society and so if they had all this amazing wealth and power they thoroughly deserved it whereas they didn't but in britain i think people who are rich and powerful perhaps are more aware of that because of our hereditary head of state. It's also irrational to keep what works. And there's a small C conservative case for the monarchy on that basis. If you look at the institution

from the perspective of, say, a French revolutionary, it's hard to argue for. But it has survived, and there is virtue in that. And even the American Revolution understood the importance of tradition. I mean, the founders, for a start, they weren't particularly strongly anti-monarchy. They were anti-george the third and uh second their ideal form of government um was the parliamentary system that had been created by the glorious revolution where there is this balance and that's of course why they include a president in the constitutional

order because they want that executive they just just want Parliament to be supreme, although not, ironically enough, as supreme as the British Parliament now is. And the difference there is between a revolution that is grateful for its ancestry and a revolution such as the one in France. It just wants to sweep it all away. So, you know, even the difference between Britain and America, I think, can be overstated in this regard. I like all the jokes, too.

Of course, July 4th, I live here, I get them all. And because I'm such a partisan of the revolution and that era and our system here, then I sometimes elicit strange looks when I defend the monarchy. But it is not rational to take a system that has worked for centuries and of which the vast majority of the British people are fond and get rid of it. That's not a rational thing to do. And that's one reason why even the Labour Party, even the British left, has moved from, in the space of 50 years, a position in which a good number of its prominent members were Republicans to a position in which that is rare. It's not of the argument. They've always maintained that the Queen could still be the Queen of an independent Scotland.

They could somehow break away but remain part of her dominion. Perhaps by becoming members of the Commonwealth, who knows? They know that it would be unpopular. The Queen, even amongst people who support Scottish independence, was a very popular figure. Toby, when an old person who's famous dies, they take with them one of the last few remaining connections that we have to an era when clint eastwood dies we're going to have a you know big national sorrow that will encompass the 60s the westerns the the look the the masculinity that he embodied that will seem less accessible to us today um of course with the queen going it's one less link to the finest hour and the rest of it just as you know russia as we learn has this preposterous narrative that they have of the

great patriotic war the mirror image of that would seem to be the british response to it which is which is generally genuine and accurate heartfelt and part of the national psyche or is it is is that sense, is that part of England that she seemed to represent so well and carry into the 21st century for so long, still have great cultural resonance, or is it becoming less and less and lost to generations subsequent? Well, yeah, I mean, one of the interesting things about her is that she was one of the last public figures in British life who had actually served during the Second World War and the last of that generation. I think one of

the things I'm concerned about is that what the Queen embodied, which was a sense of duty, of public service, of patriotism, that used to be what gave people in public life who weren't directly involved in politics a sense of meaning and purpose. They were serving the you know they were they were serving the public they were custodians of our heritage um that that that ethic i fear will die with her i mean it was already withering on the vine and had been replaced by you know equity diversity and inclusion as the what gave people in public life outside politics a sense of mission and purpose and I worry that

that's That part of our culture and our national life will die with her Well, we trust people like you to keep it and keep it going to remind us what we need to be reminded of Toby It may all fall on your shoulders so so again it's doomed in that case yeah we're no england's in good hands toby young thank you for joining us today and uh regards to blighty and uh talk to you again down there and by the way everybody listen to the podcast here in the ricochet network and uh that'll do thank you sir thanks james thanks toby at least we don't have it you

know it's been a long time since the british have had a you know a proper revolution right i mean what was said is that the uh the tree of liberty must be refreshed by the blood of patriots and the rest of it well that doesn't seem to be what is going on in britain at the time but you in your backyard if you got a tree, you're probably not refreshing it with blood, I'm guessing. Nice. Even if it's some thing that has in its Latin name, arborus liberatus or something like that.

No, you give it water, the rest of it. You may think, it's a little late for trees, isn't it? No, no, no, it's prime, prime planting season. And I know that I've always wanted to take my entire backyard and just plant nothing but trees, like 50 of them. Why do I have to have a yard when I could have a forest? Yeah, I'd have to wait too long for it to grow. No, not if you get your trees from fast growing trees. I don't know about you. I spent a lot of time making the house feel like a home. And my wife, she's out there with the shears. She's pruning. She's doing all the rest

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FastGrowingTrees.com slash Ricochet. And we thank Fast Growing Trees for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Speaking of Ricochet, Rob is here to tell you about a few things that are coming up. And of course, we're going to talk to Charlie a little bit. Being in Florida, we're hearing more about the Death Santa's fascist authoritarian jackboot regime doing things, and we need to know if he's okay. But first, Rob, tell us what's coming up.

If you are a Ricochet member, you'll know all about this. And if you're not a Ricochet member, all you have to do is go to ricochet.com and join, and you can come to the Texas Tribune Festival. That program is coming soon. Texas' Breakout Politics and Policy Ideas event is happening September 22 and 24 in Austin. With a lineup full of big names you know and others you should, including one of our own from the Ricochet Network, catch David Drucker as he interviews Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson live on the TribFest stage on September 23rd.

Kind of like a mini get ready for 2024, it sounds like. Explore the full program. Grab tickets at tribfest.org. Tribfest, all one word,.org. If you'd like to attend the event, use our special discount code for a one-time 15% off discount. For one general admission ticket, go to tribfest.org. Enter code RICOSHAY15 in the promo code box at the bottom of the registration widget and click apply. And we will see you there.

Also, if you remember, there are meetups. We're coming back strong. Ricochet meetup schedule is hard to keep up with. So you got to go to the site, ricochet.com slash events. Keep an eye out for what's coming up. Upcoming meetups right now on the official schedule will be happening in Williamsburg, Virginia and Huntsville, Alabama. That's happening in October. And we've got one set for New Orleans next year during French Quarter Fest, which is going to be a lot of fun.

If you're not in the Southeast and those dates don't work for you, just join Ricochet. Give us a place and time, and the Ricochet members will come to you. It's part of the fun of being a member. Again, for details on both Texas Tribune Festival and the Ricochet meetups, go to ricochet.com slash events. Or find the module in the sidebar on the site. And we will see you IRL very soon. They may come to you. I'm tempted to start one in an ice house somewhere in January and just see who shows up.

Probably. I don't know. Where are you going to find one of those in Minnesota? Yeah. Well, you go to Lake Millac and there's entire cities that that pop up there's streets there's signs there's wonderful houses with us with satellite dishes all sitting on the ice with corners with the corners in the ice drilled in all the the corners of the place which seems structurally unwise but uh they usually don't fall in usually until the ice gets a little on your slushy side i've driven out in a pickup

truck on the ice to one of these houses, which is, which was really quite remarkable. I mean, you walk into the house and it's hot. It's like you built a house on the ice and then you heat it and you're not worried about ending up in the drink. Nobody is, they know what they're doing. Charles, you're in Florida. We saw, we saw an ad that should probably go nationwide. I found it interesting. It's a bunch of people thanking Ron DeSantis for this, that, and the other, thanking him. You know the ad of which I speak,

and how do you see this as a sort of go-forward, a sunny tone of competence and freedom that might be testing the waters to rule something like this out beyond the borders of your state? Well, I liked the ad, and that surprised me, because although I like most of what DeSantis has done, I haven't usually liked his ads. The build-the-wall ad he ran during the primary I thought was grotesque. The Top Gun ad wasn't grotesque, but it left me cold. And on top of that, I really dislike ads full of people thanking politicians, because usually what they're saying is,

thank you so much for stealing other people's property and giving it to me. Or thank you so much for sending men with guns to places that I like or dislike and forcing them or encouraging them to behave in the way that I would like them to behave. But actually, in the case of this ad, the vast majority of the people saying thank you were saying thank you for not being a tyrant yes thank you for not allowing others who have bayonets to be tyrants and i think it's a great message it was one of the best things about living in florida during the the lockdowns was that our lockdowns were short-lived and limited in scope and driven by a rational evaluation of the trade-offs in question and people should be

thanking the government for that uh because the alternative was new york so i like this ad a lot i think it's a really good way of reminding people both in florida and elsewhere that the government of florida largely got covid right and that if we had had a Democratic governor in Florida in 2018, and we nearly did, Andrew Gillum came pretty close to winning that election, then things would have been very different. Florida has not suffered the economic deprivation nor the urban violence that we saw in the Northeast in cities like Washington, D.C., which, of course, in 2020 was just a hellhole of flames right outside the White House. A justifiable anger, mind you, but of course, still unrest. And we all saw it on television.

Now, however, there's a real public emergency in D.C. The D.C. mayor has declared a public urgency because migrants are arriving on buses. It's a baffling story how they got there in the first place. But I believe, Rob, that you're interested in this tale yeah i just love it because it just it it it just shows the tone deafness of the politicians who are not on the border i mean to talk about a mayor bowser's not talking about a border crisis and what are we going to do with all these people uh and saying things that you know if she was wearing we're wearing a maga hat the same words would be reported in a very different way um so although it's you know it's a it's kind of theatrical mischief that the

governor is playing the governor yeah governor Abbott is playing but you but it it Abbott and Ducey both are on the front lines so they they are are acting in the interest of their citizens and saying, we are bearing the brunt of this unfairly. And this is what the federal government is supposed to do. If it's not going to do it, we're going to do something ourselves and spread the trouble around. And for that, I think whenever you can get your opponents to say exactly what you've been saying with shock and outrage uh i think it's a win um and and and and also just incidentally hilarious i mean it is fun to hear these democratic politicians saying things like we've got to do something about the border this is crazy um so i've been enjoying it it's not just that they're saying exactly the same things as

have been said to no avail in the border states is that they're saying them in contexts that are so profoundly different as to make what has been said in the border towns seem much more important i mean it's absolutely ridiculous to hear the mayor of new york city which has what eight million people in it saying boy they've sent us 7 000 people this is really gonna stretch our budget how can we possibly house these people meanwhile there are border towns that get 10,000 people a day that have 20,000 people to start with. So, you know, if you want to make the point that this crisis at the border is a drain on resources

and makes it difficult to run a city like New York, what on earth do you think is happening down there? New York budget is 101 billion dollars that's so i think that's bigger than the state of florida's budget i think so but it is so carefully calibrated and so wisely apportioned there's absolutely no room for error we're loving our services here yeah indeed i know you're right it is it is a delight to see and you hate to say delight when you're playing with a you know human lives here because people yeah but it is voluntary that's true they did volunteer to come across the border and there they are no I mean they're being moved voluntarily

they're not being picked up shackled and put in the back of an aircraft carrier you know they're put on a bus and asked if they want to go and actually it sort of helps them too because it's easier to escape the further you get into the country. I did hear this. I don't know. It's an apocryphal story. I know we have to wrap, but this is just... I couldn't track it down,

but it's too good to check, as we say, that some people on one of the buses heading to New York City demanded that the bus stop short of New York City. They didn't want to go to New York City because they'd heard there was so much crime there, which is sort of a perfect story it'd be better if they were from sinaloa or you know some some place that's been wracked by this sort of stuff there and say you know that's right well um we are ending and we are ending for a very good reason because uh you know we could sit here and

ramble on forever and ever we could could talk until Peter Robinson comes back, which I presume he will at some point. But it's been great to have Charles with us. It's been great to have you. It's been great to have Bowling Branch, Policy Genius, and Fast Growing Trees with us as well. Support them. You support us.

And you make your life immeasurably better. And if you could just take a minute to give that five-star review at Apple Podcast, we'd really appreciate it. That's only the 608th time that I think that I've said that. 610 is going to be the charm. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Rob, Charles, we'll see you everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0 next week. Next week, fellas. Ricochet.

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