The Ricochet Podcast - All About Boris

Episode Date: July 26, 2019

When something happens across the pond, we immediately call on the great John O’Sullivan to explain what it all means. He stops by for a complete data drop on the appointment of Boris Johnson to 10 Downing Street. Also, is Mueller time finally over? And does it kill impeachment? All answers lie within the confines of today’s Ricochet Podcast. Music from this week’s show: A Foggy Day by Louis... Source

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think you missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lannix.

Today we talk to John O'Sullivan about Boris Johnson. What more do you need to know than that? So let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 457, and absolutely nothing, I repeat, nothing is outside of my purview. You got that? We've got an all-encompassing purview going on here. In addition to having, well, Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Hey, guys, how are you doing? Just fine. Rob? I can't. Could, guys, how are you doing? Just fine. Rob?

I can't. Could you repeat that question? I can't answer that. Right. You don't want to answer that. That's very good. We've gotten two lame japes out of the way. Obviously, we're talking Mueller here.

I was listening to this this week, of course, as we all were riveted by every second of the pulse-pounding perorations that were going on. And I thought, you know, if he says he doesn't know what Fusion GPS is or Mr. Simpson is, he's either lying or he's daft. Or he just sort of wrote his name on top of this dossier that was presented to him by other people. We don't know who they are. Which was it? Lying? A bit out of touch?

Figurehead? Or all of the above? Rob? Peter? Peter? It's sad because I feel like we're looking at somebody who probably has declined. It's not sad. It's outrageous that this

man permitted himself to put the country – to be used to put the country through two years of – I'm just trying to be nice to people who are getting on in age, Peter. Oh, thank you. Well, I appreciate that. You're welcome. As far as I'm aware, the dementia hasn't started yet. I know I can count on you and James to point it out the moment it does. So – OK. So I'll just spill it out. My thought, first, my thought was, wait a minute. Clearly,

Mueller, he's old. He's actually having trouble following the conversation. He's unfamiliar with the report. First question that struck me was, wait, who wrote this report? Who has been in charge during these past two years when we have been told over and over again, including by people whom we respect and like our own Andy McCarthy said, no, Mueller's a straight up guy. He's in charge. This is going to be a clean investigation. Mueller cannot have been in charge. He wasn't in charge of himself during the hearings. That's the first question. Then I have this big file folder in my mind entitled, who's been running American intelligence? Brennan is a crazy person.

Clapper, you look at him on television and at any moment, I have the feeling that his head will pop open and a cuckoo bird will fly out. James Cone's fighting words. I know what you mean. I have the feeling that his head will pop open and a cuckoo bird will fly out. James Combs. That sounds like Satan words. I know what you mean. We think that it's Bernard Lewis from the great Bob movies, and it turns out it's Herbert Vaughn from the later stage Peter. Yes, yes, yes. Patrick Luceau movies. It's exactly.

Remember that? It's the Pink Panther returns. And then James Comey, self-righteous, smarmy, not all that smart, as his book makes clear, doesn't get his arguments lined up as well as he should have, even though it's a book in his own defense. And now we see that the man who was supposed to have been the rock in the intelligence – American intelligence community for the last decade and more, Robert Mueller, is – he's just not – Yeah, he's not – I mean it's a progressive problem. I mean the people who taught – Andy McCarthy and the people who worked with him in the past, it isn't as if they were lying or they were deceived in some way. This is a man who's clearly gotten on in years and should have – or someone close to him should have told him not to take this job um on the other hand it there is something sort of fantastic about it all because the reason

that you could be checked out of this investigation and the reason that you could in fact have this strange non-report report, non-echo echoes of it in front of the house, is because it was about nothing. And it was ultimately about a few emails maybe in a meeting between some total amateurs and some grifters or two grifters together. It ultimately required you to believe that the hacking of the dnc emails was somehow a campaign idea or that the twitter bots in moscow or somehow somehow under the control or in the influence of the trump it required so levels

of fantasy so great that that i think actually muller probably did as the report would have been the same had he been doing it 24 7 there's nothing here so so well i think there except hopes well so one more point and then i'll just shut up and i want to hear what james has to say but there is something there in the following sense. It overturns the presumption of innocence. That is very, very serious. Very serious. In a major document produced by a special prosecutor under the aegis of the United States Department of Justice, the rules are if you're a prosecutor, you either press charges or say nothing.

And in the second part of that report, which went on for 200 pages – That is not Spoon Miller's precedent. That's Comey's precedent. No, no. Well, Comey's guilty of it as well. I agree. But Mueller is the one who put it in this formal document and had no answer whatever when the question was under what Department of Justice guidelines do you fail to exonerate? That's not the standard.

What's the answer? Could you repeat the question? He had no – that's a serious matter. It undermines the presumptions of innocence. Well, that just strikes me as really serious and it wasn't bad. And of course the Democrats are all in favor of that. That's exactly what they wanted, to elicit more more of that i actually think it's pretty serious but he's he's he's permitted himself to be used to do very bad stuff it is serious i think there are two things

going on here one you had at the at the hearings you had the democrats eager to tell everybody all the bad things that the russians have been up to and i heard one of them say and list off the numbers of the internet research agency i had put out something like a million tweets, a million tweets, more than that. They may have been responsible for up to 375,000 memes. And their basic point was the Hillary Clinton voter was so stupid that they could be easily persuaded by a bad Photoshop or a piece of fake news that would just whip their head around and say,

well, I'm abandoning every single ideological precept I've held all my life, and I'm voting for Trump. So, okay, file that one to the side. The other point has to do with whether or not this was some sort of internal insurance policy to assure that Donald Trump would not remain in office. And if that's the case, and Comey learned very early on that there was nothing here, and what's more, this entire thing was predicated on intelligence that had been bought from the Russians

and paid for by the Democratic National Committee, that actually the idea of a Republican collusion was superseded by the truth and fact of Democrat collusion, and yet he kept going with this. Well, what exactly was the point there? Might not the... The one thing that we want to drill down to is whether or not there were people in the government doing their best to get rid of a duly elected president. Because if so, that's a precedent, and I'd like to think it's a precedent that we don't want to let stand and needs to be exposed and blasted with the sunlight and the clear lights of truth and all the rest of that stuff because it's bad.

But here's my final point. What – stroke page the rest of them stuff because it's bad but here's my final point what stroke page the rest of them what were they opposed to trump about remember now this was the time when we thought he was going to roll in like an authoritarian did they actually honestly believe that they were electing hitler here what were they opposed to trump about that's what i'm keen to know well why do they hate him well i mean His supporters have figured it out, which is that he was anti-elite and they were elites and they're this sort of

bipartisan, shadow state elite that wants to protect itself and that can easily do business and maybe unhappily do business, but easily do business with a conservative Republican establishment figure, but can't do business with a crazy man.

Did they figure that's what he was going to be, though? I mean, did they actually think that he was going to come in and be the swamp drainer that he said he was? It's possible, but it seems an overreaction, don't you? Let's wait and see how this guy plays out before we start to attempt to completely destroy his credibility in presidency. I agree that it is. i think it did happen i believe it is an overreaction and that makes me even more alarmed about the so-called intelligence community they whipped each other up into a state of hysteria right i mean this to me yes i'm with kim strassel in the wall street journal today and she's been out that it's very important for the attorney general to get to the bottom of this and the bottom and kim strassel's judgment is what was the inception

right of all of this where did that dossier who got used all that is true however i might willingly used though yes i'd like to go even farther i don't even know quite what the question is except that somehow or other the american intelligence these are people to on whom we spend billions of dollars and give the right to do a lot of stuff in secret these people's judgment was completely unreliable that i don't know quite how you get at that but that to me is the issue is an even bigger bigger problem two things I should say two things. One, the hilarious thing I loved was that the Democrats were so prepared for this. They had rehearsed all weekend, and they had all this language. Thank you.

Thank you, Director Mueller, for your service. First of all, I'd like to say, before we even go any farther, I just want to thank you for your service. They had built him up as this hero. They had built him up for this hero they had built him up for the past couple years is that you don't know they would say you don't know what muller knows i mean if you watched msnbc what you'd see is this constant refrain is a chorus of voices saying you don't know what he knows he's in a lot of people like they were they're like they're like essentially the left-wing version of q anon right you there's's happening. It's going to come. It's going to go. It's Mueller

time, right? So the total deflation just made me laugh because that just kind of thing makes me laugh. But the second thing is I, as you know, take the long-term view. This is, and I think in many ways, the Trump administration is the revenge of

the non-experts or the revenge of the non-elites this is not new that the intelligence uh uh community has made some kind of weird piece a weird uh bargain with politics it's not new that they've been getting something totally wrong um you know we invaded iraq because they told us there were weapons of mass destruction and there weren't. There really weren't though. And so at some point we have to kind of, we keep going back and forth between left and right, Democrat, Republican, which part of the establishment you hate today. But there is a kind of a weird reckoning happening now

where we're starting to see things like well i mean in my in my in my lifetime there has been all yes let the record show while rob adjusts his background noise because apparently he's writing he's he's dialing in from an a horn and hard art today uh that the let the record show that the uh the moderator lilacs tiresomely believes that uh tiresomely believes that that there was weapons of mass destruction. Most of them were shipped to Syria and that we did find an awful lot, but it wasn't reported for reasons of the Bush administration. We're stupid. Go on, Rob. We don't know if Rob is actually at the Horn and Hard Art or the Automat.

We just know that there's so much ambient background noise that we can't get to him. We'll get to him in just a few minutes here. I mean, what we're hearing is the sound of, a i believe a coastal elite who's hired somebody to come in yes and clean up for oh you're back finish that point though because you're actually saying something fascinating and deeply pro-trump more even probably even more deeply for trump than you suppose that is no i think it's it's it's not pro-trump it's more of an analysis of the trump phenomenon oh yeah okay there is a hangover now all right we are experiencing i think a hangover That is – no, I think it's – it's not pro-Trump. It's more of an analysis of the Trump phenomenon. Oh, yeah. OK. There we go.

There is a hangover. Stepping back from it now. All right. We are experiencing I think a hangover and that is kind of the Trump – the Trump presidency is a reaction to a lot of things that we kind of swept under the rug. One of them I think – James and I disagree was the Iraq war. One of them is what happened after the financial collapse of 2008. One of them is, I think, this bizarre, crazy weaponization of

the independent council, which liberal Democrats thought was Lawrence Walsh. I'm sorry, not Lawrence Walsh, Kenneth Starr. But conservative Republicans believe started with Lawrence Walsh, who investigated the Iran-Contra affair, which I still find absolutely baffling what they suppose happened.

So we are – this is a continuum of American politics. This is not new. It's a continuum. It's just the amplification and the extremeness of it. So maybe this is the big wake-up call. Maybe this is the big wake-up call. Maybe this is the big alarm bell. Now maybe people will realize that we shouldn't be opening independent counsel investigations over nothing. think is a good idea uh we should probably just back down from our strange and i mean i hope that the humiliation and the and the red face that even liberal democrats feel now today is instructive the one line i will say which i have read in the new york times this morning which made me laugh

very hard because it was said with a straight face, is Democrats are now facing the truth. I'm paraphrasing here, but it's very, very close. Democrats are now facing the fact that the only way to get rid of President Trump is to beat him in the election. This is news. I agree that this must be news to them. But it should not be news to anybody. That is how you remove an American president. You simply vote him out.

The idea that this is news to media and to liberals and to Democrats is – well, I mean it's good news that they learned it at least once. Right. But of course that would be in normal circumstances. These are not normal circumstances because we have ultimate Hitler in charge. We have death camps. We have Nazi Germany 34, 35, 36, 37, right under our noses. So you can't do the normal things. These are extraordinary times.

You can't do normal things with the climate because these are extraordinary times. We're all going to die. Everything must be done now. all the norms are gone and when we've got what we wanted then we can let the norms back in right guys right no that'll never happen ask the romans around the time that caesar was crossing the rubicot hey listen i go on and on and on and on and you'd say oh we'd love to hear you talk for five more minutes but if you're a parent you know that the term okay five more minutes turns into about five more hours right right? Your kid wants to go to bed. Oh, can I just watch five more minutes before I go to bed?

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commander of the order of the British Empire. I wish. John, America is getting its first taste of Boris Johnson, if we didn't pay attention before. Going around today has been the blistering remarks that he gave in the House of Commons the other day when he faced Jeremy Corbyn and called him what he was, in addition to other things, what seemed like a very long peroration. Interesting stuff. What are we to expect from Boris next? Let me ask, what do you think of his cabinet first? Oh, I think it's impressive. I think he's done a clever balancing job, but with all of the top positions occupied by people who are going to support him on Brexit. That's very key. The

three top ministries of state, the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Treasury. One is held by Sajid Javid who's the son of Pakistani immigrants. The Home Office is held by Priti Patel who's the daughter of Ugandan Asian immigrants.

And finally, the job of Foreign Office is held by someone who is the son of a Czech refugee who came over in 1938 fleeing Hitler and what was going on. Now, a lot of people have been talking up the diversity cult. Frankly, I don't care whether the cabinet is composed entirely of women or entirely of Asians, provided that if they're all women, they're all Margaret Thatcher, and if they're all Asians, they're all Lee Kuan Yew.

I don't care that kind of balance. But it's obviously important in modern politics, and he's done it very well. Secondly, it's the youngest cabinet in history, as well as being the most ethnically diverse. And it's also, I think, very well balanced in terms of leavers versus Remainers. I think there's a little bit of misunderstanding that goes on when people talk about Leavers and Remainers.

If you go back to the time of the referendum, virtually more than two-thirds of the parliamentary party, the Tory MPs said, were Remainers. Why? Because that was government policy under David Cameron. And secondly, because they thought there was no doubt that Remain was going to win. So no one was going to sacrifice their career on the basis of something that was just not going to happen. Now, so when you see these figures saying leave, this guy a leaver this is a remainer if they're leavers they're pretty well certainly leavers because they those guys in 2016 were taking a risk with their careers they would have had to really believe in it and um whereas the other guys some of them are passionate remainers we know that they exist in very large numbers um i think they're a third of the parliamentary Tory party.

But they're not as numerous as the raw figures of how you voted in 2016 in the referendum would suggest. They're just not. So he's got a cabinet which is, I think, it looks 50-50, but every single one of the cabinet members and everyone else in his

administration has signed on to the deal. If we don't get a deal, we'll leave with no deal, and there'll be no kind of agonizing or rebelling about it. John, Peter here. I looked at YouTube yesterday and watched Boris in his first prime minister questions. And of course, the transformation of the cabinet. And then I looked at the British press. By the way, I thought, you're the expert. I'm merely a layman here. I have had the feeling that up until now,

Boris was good on the hustings, but not so good in the chamber. But yesterday he was absolutely dominant and quick-witted and in command not only of the benches facing him at corbin just sat there as if he were being physically pummeled he was even in command of the speaker he burko tried to strut a little bit here and there and fine boris let him have him have his moments but i just thought he was utterly dominant all right half the press said this is just noise boris still has a majority in the house of only four votes no deal deal the european the european union still says it will it refuses to

renegotiate half says it's just noise but about the other half of the press says, no, this is significant. He has proven such a whirlwind in the first 24 hours that he's creating his own political climate. People are engaging in all kinds of recalculations on the fly. If he takes it to the country in a general election, the feeling is he's more likely to win than the feeling was 24 hours ago. Is that what, is he creating his, how significant is this big first 24 hours? It is significant because you're quite right. Previously in the House of Commons, Boris had not been a star performer. I mean, he's a star performer generally, but in the House, he had faltered. He had never, never been a disaster, but he'd never been a star.

We know, however, he's a great debater because that's how he started, in the Oxford Union. If you read people who knew him in Oxford, he dominated the Oxford Union, which in many respects is at least as hard to dominate as the House of Commons. But people like Michael Deacon and the Telegraph, who succeeded me many years ago as a sketch writer there, he made exactly the point that this is a man who seems to have rediscovered himself

and is completely different from the amiable but bumbling figure of before. I think, frankly, Boris did not really want to put himself out if he was going to lead a rebellion against the former Prime Minister

because there's nothing much in that for him except eventually winning. Until he won he wasn't going to be a star of rebellion. He doesn't want to encourage that sort of thing now. I think you've got to remember about the divided press.

It's this. Most of the people who are saying it's all noise are protecting a number of things, one of which is their own previous political forecasts. Virtually every member of the mainstream press,

except those who are strongly dedicated to Brexit or very strong Tories, have been saying for ages, Mrs. May will eventually get her deal through, her withdrawal deal through in the end. It will happen. It's bound to happen. It has to happen.

It's the only logical outcome. Well, it hasn't happened. Three times it was rejected, sometimes by massive majorities. They're now trying, it seems to me, a fourth time to say, Boris will now have to do that deal. And I think that Boris himself wants to do a deal, but he doesn't want to do that deal. And that's why right out of the starting gate, he made it plain that, among other things, there'd have to be the abolition of the backstop, to which, as you probably know by now, Michel

Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, has said, no way, Jose. It's out of the question. His very words, I think. So there's going to be a clash, and I think we could profitably discuss what Boris is going to do when that moment of truth finally arrives um but he has bound the uh met the the former remainer members of his cabinet like amber rudd he's bound them to support a no deal by a blood oath more or less and it's very hard to see how they can remain either um in the conservative party or in the House of Commons if on this final occasion, this final moment of truth,

they renege on the clearest possible pledges. So I think his cabinet unity will survive. There might be a couple of resignations, but no rebellion would be my guess. And he can get this... Okay, so let me quote the finest observer of British politics I know, a man called John O'Sullivan. I don't have the quotation from him, but this is going to be a pretty close paraphrase. You can correct me. That the conundrum runs as follows.

Boris cannot win an election unless he has accomplished Brexit, but he cannot accomplish Brexit without winning an election. What happens over the next 100 days? Well, I'll tell you, and I've tried to deal with that conundrum before. The answer is that it's not out of the question that he'll get no-deal Brexit through. First of all, it's not out of the question that he won't get some sort of deal. One has to say that for the record, and it's possible that he would accept a less than good deal. In my view, if he does that, he might be able to say later, oh, well, I got Brexit. But if it's not recognizable as Brexit to his own supporters, and particularly if it's not recognizable as Brexit to Nigel Farage

and his new party, then there's no way that Boris can win an election. In a way, the most powerful figure in British politics might be Nigel Farage now, because what he says about any deal that Boris gets will have enormous influence on how about 20% of the electorate, maybe more, vote. I don't believe in an election campaign Boris can survive doing that. So what does he have to do? He must first of all, in my view, reject a deal which is unsatisfactory,

which is Mrs. May's deal in light disguise. So then he's faced with no deal or not. I wouldn't rule out that Boris would not be able to get that through the Commons. Yes, there are going to be rebels on the Tory side, not all that many, when faced with the prospect of an early election, an immediate election, which is what might well follow

a confidence defeat in the Commons. But the losses on the Tory benches, modest in number, probably I would say at most about 12, those losses are going to be to some degree counterpoised by the fact that some Labour MPs who are going to vote for him. How many? Well, I would think it could be a substantial number. There are about 70 Labour MPs in the House of Commons who represent constituencies that didn't just vote leave in the referendum, but voted heavily leave. But as many as seven zero.

That's astonishing. I did not know that. It's huge. And so a number of those people, not all of them, of course, because some of them have their own views which are strongly pro-Remain, and others will just be a bit nervous about abandoning the Labour Party, though that, of course, is not such a serious matter at the moment. The party is visibly shriveling. And so he might get it through. And if he gets it through, he's home and dry. Then he has to, of course, govern the country well for a couple of years before he can go to the country.

But what happens if he neither gets an acceptable deal nor gets no deal through the commons? There's going to be an election almost immediately. And then, it seems to me, he has to have some sort of electoral deal with Nigel Farage and the Brexit. Absolutely. He has to do that because the argument against him from the Brexit party, if he doesn't do a deal with Nigel, will be, yes, Boris says he's going to do this.

If he gets back, he's going to really finally leave. He's going to really finally deliver Brexit. But the fact is, Nigel would be able to respond with, you can't trust the Tories. They promised this last time. They didn't deliver. So that's going to be a very powerful argument. And there's an enormous number of people now, lifelong Tories, who would vote for the Brexit party rather than vote for a bad deal represented by Boris. Boris has done a great job in bringing the party together and giving it confidence and optimism. And that, of course, is a fact in itself, but nonetheless against a strong critical response from Nigel and the Brexit party with candidates standing in any number of seats against sitting conservatives, and he would definitely stand against strong remainers, then I don't think Boris can win.

I think it's possible that the Tory party would face absolute disaster with about a 20% vote for the Brexit party and the Tories getting about sort of maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but not enough to win the number of seats they've got now or anything like that. Hey, John, it's Rob Long. Thank you for joining us.

Hello, Rob. Hi. It sounds a little like American politics where you have a very strong chief executive, a new chief executive, who's going to make a lot of noise and is sort of sending a message to his audience overseas that there's a new sheriff in town. And that the people once again have reaffirmed that they're not they have not changed their mind. Right. I mean, that that has been the strategy for the Remainers since the referendum, which is if we wait, they'll change their mind. And they clearly haven't, or have they? No, they haven't changed their mind. What I think is clear is this, that the 52-48% split isn't the one we see now. It's probably like 48-52 in the polls.

Still pretty good. Well, it's very good because, of course, the barrage of Remainer propaganda disguised. Although some will simply say, oh, I support leave. There is a hidden vote, and I think most that you've already described that Boris has had, the almost American effect. People are now much more, I think, happy about saying, I support this. He's doing a good job. I want to go along with him. I want to see if we finally should do this. It's the most important thing at all, of all. And this is why Nigel has got greater strength than people realize, is that the

factor of, do you believe in democracy, is a hidden question in this one. And if you believe in democracy and you're outraged at what the MPs have done in trying to use every tactic to block, delay, and prevent Brexit, then

you're going to vote for the party that represents that. Now, if the parties, if there's a deal, and Boris can say, I completely agree with my friend Nigel that democracy is on the ballot paper as well as Brexit, and that's why I'm so strongly determined to get this thing done and represent your good fulfiller, then I think he wins hands down. And, of course, but Nigel probably got to go along with that, because if he doesn't, if Nigel says we in the Brexit Party are different from the Tories, yes, we both believe in Brexit, but we stand for democracy, and we know that they haven't done that in three years.

It's a very strong pitch. And so I think that Boris has to do this, by the way. Now, the fact that he has to do it doesn't necessarily do a deal, doesn't necessarily mean he will do a deal, because there are strong forces against that, too. Since the referendum, the Remainers have said Brexit will be a disaster for Britain financially, and the British economy will crater. Theresa May has worked for many years for a deal, didn't get a deal. But it still was – the idea was still it was going to happen in some way. And then Boris Johnson comes along, and it seems like it was going to happen in some way. And then Boris Johnson comes along and it seems like it's going to happen. The way you set out his political mousetrap I think is very, very compelling.

So just assume, just put your market hat on. And by the way, Boris Johnson has said, the prime minister of Britain has said this is going to happen within 100 days. Another echo of sort of American presidential politics. If that were that the case, wouldn't you start to see tremors and cratering of the British economy now? I mean, if you believe, if you're a money manager and there's a lot of money going through London all the time, if you believe that this is going to happen and it's going to be a disaster for the British economy, wouldn't you be taking actions right now to protect yourself? And I don't see any evidence of that.

No, I mean, there are one or two cases where people have... There are a number of cases where businessmen have threatened, very few where they've done something, and quite a lot of evidence that money investment is still coming into the country in a major way. And indeed, the other economies at the moment in Europe are doing worse than the British economy. I don't think British economic policy is everything it should be, but nonetheless, the economy is doing well, not despite Brexit, but despite government. But having said that, and I have to say there's an important point here. First of all, there were predictions about the catastrophic effects of merely voting for Brexit.

None of those panned out. In fact, the opposite happened. So now the same arguments are being made. Anyone who's looked at these arguments in detail tends to be highly skeptical, except the people who are committed to the notion that Brexit would be a disaster. That's not something which is open to rational debate with a lot of people. It's quite extraordinary. And in a sense, it's an act of courage to stand up against what is essentially a form of intellectual snobbery as well as social snobbery.

No sensible person believes this. But you've got to simply ask a few questions. What is the average tariff wall that the British would face outside with no deal with Brexit? Well, it's about 3.5% to 4%. Well, you know, a fall in the pound could outweigh that in the morning. Secondly, are there some really serious tariffs embedded in that average? Yes, there are, particularly, for example, for automobiles. I think the British would face very considerable tariffs.

But at the same time, if they put up tariffs of equal size, then the Germans would face terror. Germans sell a lot of cars. Germany sells a lot of cars in Britain, as it does in America. And that would be a disaster for an industry that is already reeling at the moment, both from the fall in the German economy in general, which is doing badly, on the verge of, it seems, of a recession,

and secondly, because of the scandals that have arisen in the last few years in the German car industry about the way in which they ignored fuel regulations and so on. So I don't think the British are without cars. It's an odd situation

this because the EU itself, the Barnier, the people in Brussels, the new successor Mrs. van der Leyen, to Paul Juncker as the chairman of the commission, they talk a very aggressive and hostile game. But when you get down to even the French government and others, they're somewhat more cautious because they obviously don't want their economies damaged. So I would say that the problem that anybody faces who's asked me the question you just asked me is this.

So many people now on the remain side are protecting their own reputations for honesty and accuracy in financial and economic reporting. Because if there is a no-deal Brexit and it's not a complete disaster, they're going to look like people who are either outright fools, thus reversing the present snobbery, or deceitful bastards. It does seem, I mean, is it fair to say, and I know that James wants to get in,

is it fair to say that, obviously we don't know what we don't know, but the uncertainty and the projections and the sort of financial forecasting of the disaster of Brexit has already been priced into the British economy and the price is actually pretty low? Well, that's my view.

Of course, I might be proved wrong. I mean, I'm not an expert. But the thing is, in a more general sense, take somebody like Roger Bootle, who is a distinguished British economist, doesn't come from the right. I don't believe. I think he was earlier sympathetic to Labour, but he's somebody who says, look, the problem with this debate is that within companies and within the economics profession and within institutions like the INF and the Treasury, what you've got is people who confirm each other's confirmation bias every time they discuss the question. So you don't have an open debate in a real sense. Even when there's a debate, nobody wants to sort of say, I'm the idiot in the room who believes in this will work.

So the debating field is tilted in favor of expecting a disaster. If there isn't a disaster, then an awful lot of major institutions are going to have to go back and examine their behavior. And these institutions, the Treasury, for example, in Britain, is probably the single most important institution of government. And if its leading figures have been married to an idea which they shared with the Confederation of British Industry and all of the representative institutions of

economic forecasting and so on, if that, they're all wrong. They prove to be wrong or even grotesquely exaggerated because I think we all expect some disruption for about a year or so at the beginning of the Brexit process. But if they proved wrong, well, there has to be a completely serious reexamination of what's gone wrong with Britain in a more fundamental sense.

Peter Robinson John, Peter here. Really quickly, closing question from me and then over to James. By October 31st, will he have got Brexit through the House of Commons, and will he be as you put it, home and dry, or will he, in the very first

days of November, be forced to call an election? What's your prediction? Well, there's a third possibility, but I'll come to that. My guess would be he will just get it through. What's your prediction? but enough to get him home and dry and to get some members, maybe quite few, 10, 20, elected for the Brexit party. Now, what's the other option that I mentioned? Well, the other option is that he will go for an amended Theresa May withdrawal agreement. Now, the problem with that is anyone who does that does it for a quiet life. They think this is the way that they can achieve Brexit without it being a disaster with their minimum disruption.

But there's maximum political of the European Court of Justice or discussions of a new set of regulations in Brussels, which the British have accepted that they will mimic in their own regulations, there's a row in politics. So the picture I would put in your minds is, you know that famous Roman statue of the Lao Kun, of this guy and his sons striving to escape from the coils of these huge serpents, well, that would be the British government. That would be Boris Johnson. And it will not be a very attractive picture to the voters who think,

who will have been told they've left, but whom every day the pages of the Financial Times and the Times and the Telegraph tell them, well, we're really still embedded in this structure which we don't control, in fact, which we control even less than we did as members. John, ironic that you bring up the Lacoon statue because that's in the Vatican Museum, I believe, which Britons will no longer be able to go to because they'll need a passport. Everything's wrong. And that brings home our last question, perhaps, and it'll be rambling and unformed, so glean from it what you can.

They're the people who are opposed to Brexit because they fear the financial repercussions, even though I bet that every one of them would invest in London real estate today if they had the opportunity. But the second is the whole cultural aspect. There are some people who believe that it's necessary to bind Europe to the future of Europe, to the culture and the ideas of the EU. But there's also some people on the Brexit side who have a British mentality, born perhaps of having a channel between them and the continent, of wanting some distance. And Farage was recently criticized, I understand, for saying something that was regarded as anti-immigrant bigotry.

And the immigration aspect of Brexit is one of those things that stamps the Brexiteers with that taint because we're told that opposition to any form of unlimited immigration is a sign of an old mind that cannot deal with the realities of the 21st century. And I believe what Farage said was that he wanted to give British shopkeepers an option to hire a Briton ahead of a Pole. And to an American mind, this sounds horrible. It's like, no, that's like the old no Irish need apply sign here. But what he's talking about are people who are not citizens, who took advantage of the movement that the EU provided to set up residence in London and have, shall we say, the equal opportunity as a Briton. And a lot of people, I imagine, walked into their stores. I can't go to a bloody Cafe Nero without everybody in there being Polish. Maybe we should hire the Briton citizen first before we hire the Pole. Now, regardless of the merits of that, is that actually a popular opinion in England, and is that something that people have been afraid to say because they regard themselves?

They'll be branded as a bigot if they say Britain first, dare I say. Well, I think in both countries, the law reflects the kind of hostile attitude to that attitude. And people think that, I think ordinary people have always thought, well, we're all one, you know, I have a bigger obligation to you as an American because I'm an American. I have a bigger obligation to you as a Brit because I'm a Brit. You come first. And I don't think that's unreasonable.

In fact, I think if we didn't have that instinctive attitude, we'd be in a bad way. I mean, societies would have ceased to have any kind of internal cohesion, any natural set of loyalties. You can go too far, obviously, in carrying that out. I mean, obviously

as you say, hostile, bigoted attitudes to particular groups of immigrants are unattractive and immoral. But the actual preference that you should show other citizens in a general sense, however we regulate it, it seems to me a healthy and decent one, and I have nothing against it. I've always thought the kind of ranting against nativism tended to disappear when you explained what nativism actually was. But having said that, I do think there are complications here. It's not the case, in my view, that the people who in favor remain are kind of broad-minded people who want goodwill all around.

No, they actually tend to be for a start somewhat anti-American the desire there's a desire in the establishment to have all kinds of important new relationships with

Europe that will in a sense tend to keep America out of the arrangements. And that's why, for example, you have so many people supporting the otherwise completely ridiculous idea of a European army, which apparently you're not going to spend money on. We're going to rely on Europe to defend itself without spending money on defense. That's the essential romantic nonsense we get from many people in the establishment, including some people who were in the May government but who now mercifully have departed. So the Brexit, the leave side, the Brexit side of British politics tends to be more pro-American, and it tends to be more pro-commonwealth, pro-the

countries, the settler countries, which stemmed originally from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and so on. Now, in fact, the opinion polls show that if you ask people do they favor immigration, they come down, basically, people don't want mass immigration. But if you ask them, how do you feel about immigration from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States?

They're much more favorable. I mean, they are favorable. I think that is an interesting factor. Now, you can't put that down to race because all of these countries, including Britain itself, are now multi-ethnic countries. But they're successful multi-ethnic countries. More than most countries, they've

managed to adapt to immigrants coming in and making them full members of society. And that's not as true in continental Europe. So I think what you've got to bear in mind is that this is a very complicated question, the question of immigration. It's not a simple question, and it's one in which a move towards Brexit probably means, among other things, a move away from open immigration for Europe, but towards easier immigration

for other countries outside Europe. John, we know you have to jet off to some terribly civilized Middle European city and have cherry wine besides the Danube or something, or cherry brandy, I forget which exactly it is. So we'll let you go. And thank you again, as ever, for keeping us up to speed in what's going on. We'll talk in the months to come as Boris tries to blast through or backstop or whatever we're going to

do with this thing. Thanks, John. We'll talk to you later. Thank you, John. Give our best to Mrs. O'Sullivan. I will do that. Okay. All the best. Well, if John is indeed in New York in the summertime, then he's probably putting up with some rather conspicuous

and remarkable odors, if my subway memories are correct. How do you clean out a subway like that? Well, probably in the old days they used the worst sort of chemicals because in the old days when they cleaned things, they used harsh, poisonous, toxin things. You know, some of our parents did too. It was all-purpose cleansers that your mom used to use full of harmful chemicals that have been linked to everything from respiratory problems to cancer. You don't need that today. You don't need toxins to have a clean home, not with Grove Collaborative. Oh, no. What's that? You ask? Well, Grove Collaborative is the online marketplace that delivers all natural home beauty and personal care products directly to you. Grove takes the guesswork out of going green. Every Grove.co.

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I love Mrs. Meyers. I've been using that stuff for years because I clean the kitchen. I like the way it cleans. I like the way it smells, to be frank. And if I can get that, it tells me that they are willing and confident about their products to stand up next to everybody else's stuff. So you order a whole collection of things, what you need, and it comes in an amazing box that you're convinced has been prepared by somebody who was the international Tetris champ. It means you don't have to shop multiple stores and search endlessly online to get all the natural goods you want for you and your family. Join over half a million families who trust Grove Collaborative to make their homes happier and healthier. And shipping's fast. Shipping is free

on your first order, too. For a limited time, Ricochet listeners, go to grove.co slash ricochet, place an order of $20 or more, and you'll get a free five-piece cleaning set from Mrs. Myers and Grove. That's a $30 value. It's great stuff. You'll find it at grove.co slash ricochet. And that's where this exclusive offer lives right now. But act fast, grove.co slash ricochet. And our thanks to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. podcast you know there are fewer chemicals about and that's probably a good thing i mean i grew up in a household that always smelled of gasoline because my dad sold gasoline and would come home smelling of gasoline and he didn't know it because his sense of smell was gone but the rest of us did

but the smell of gas was always smell of money and i like that and some people have asked how the funeral went for my father american hero that he was and it was you know how can you say if you know a funeral was fantastic but it was there are those where you can imagine that everybody's you know black crepe and sobbing and the rest of it and i understand but when you've just spent a couple of days talking about a life that was so extraordinary and everybody telling tales that made everybody smile, there's an element of a celebration to that. And even though I'm kind of an Irish wake sort of guy, prop the body up in the bar and drink and tell tales, you want the obligatory moments where it hits you, and those are hard. But on the other hand, we had a convoy of some of my dad's trucks, number two, number eight, the big semis, going from the funeral home to the grave.

And the grave was in a small little church, 140 years old, in the plains of North Dakota. And it was quite the sight. And as all of the trucks wound their way past my father's gas station and oil depot, they all laid on the horns. And all the trucks that were in waiting to be fueled themselves, they weren't my dad's all laid on the horns, and all the trucks that were in waiting to be fueled themselves, they weren't my dad's, laid on the horns. And as we passed the work, there's a huge, big construction project

with the highway guys, and some of them looked down and saluted and handed over the heart as they saw the flags go by on the trucks. And the whole convoy moved its way north onto a line, a street, a road that was built before the highways, long before the highways.

And there, we got stuck behind a a train on the Prosper Spur, apparently, very not very commonly used rail line, my brother-in-law said, in barrels of Burlington, Northern Santa Fe, BNSF, 110 car train rolling past, thundering past, clattering past on its way to the place where my father's trucks that couldn't make the convoy were waiting to refuel it. So this is perfect. We're all waiting here, stopped by a train that is eventually going to go to the place that needs my dad's fuel. And everybody had to laugh.

My brother-in-law said, it's like, Ralph, call the station master in the sky and had him send this one out special when it had finished and the gates clanged open we went to the funeral to the interment where there was a color guard the vfw fired their ammunition into the sky and taps were played and the very intimate ceremony of the folding of the flag which i've never seen close up with all of these careful precise gestures i presented the flag to my sister-in-law. And then it was over. Or my sister. And then it's over.

And you walk away. And it's done, but it never is. Because there are all these stories you have yet to tell and all these memories you have yet to revive and remember and somehow keep going. It leads you to believe that, you know, what exactly do we do, guys? Do we print the photos off and hope that our relatives carry these books, these small books, with them generation after generation after generation?

Do we ship it to the Library of Congress and say, please take care of this and hope we don't get nuked in 500 years it's still here? Do we put it in the Internet Archive? Is there any way, really, aside from a stone on the ground, which itself is fairly impermanent, that we can assure that the stories will be remembered and not forgotten?

Rob? Peter? Well, I was at a party last night for a friend of mine, a college classmate of mine, who has become a rabbi. He was ordained a rabbi after 10 years of study. And I am furiously Googling the word. I don't know.

I can't remember what it was. He said there was a tradition of writing your book of morals as an older person. You know, what you've learned, what your wisdom is, what you've learned what your wisdom is what you've thought about and you you you wrote it and you're supposed to write it and pass it on to your descendants or your your children and your children's children and their children um and then pretty soon that's you know it's a library filled with books of people who've told you what the lessons are they learned it's hard with a generation that doesn't you know your was older than mine, but when my father died, he wasn't the kind of person to sit down and write a book, tell you what he knew. But it is an interesting question of what that wisdom would have – if you could somehow record it, how would you record it, and if you and can't you? We have all of these sort of tricks and devices to record things and to photograph things.

And we're always recording and photographing. We're always recording and photographing and posting. And we're always posting and sharing. It would be interesting if we instead of posting, sharing our thoughts, we sort of recorded the thoughts of people in our lives and just save them for such a day. Well, one of the things that my father impressed upon me was don't get into debt. And if you do, get out of it quickly. And if you must get into debt, make sure that the terms are good. And I agree.

And you probably do, too. And as much as I hate to make this sort of wisdom a segue, well, my father would understand business is business. You've got to pay the bottom line, which brings me to lending clubs because for decades, credit cards, and my dad was not a credit card kind of guy. He was a cash kind of guy, and I like that. Credit cards have been telling you to buy it now, pay for it later with, of course, interest and lots of it, and despite your best intentions, that interest gets out of

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sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Well, out we go. Predictions for the next week, guys. Impeachment, I think it was something like 99 days between the release of the Star Report and the beginning of the impeachment proceedings. Is that what we're going to have here or, as we said at the beginning of the podcast, have they realized finally, we're not going to get them on this and oh, maybe we can do the taxes.

Yeah, the taxes! Everybody forgot about the taxes, didn't they? There will be no impeachment. There's just nothing to impeach him on. Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to impeach. It's just not going to happen. As for the taxes, I take as my instruction on this, the big New York Times expose of what was it, Rob, and I, we talked about this, or maybe it was you talked about it on Glopp, John Podhore. In any event, there was a big New York Times expose, what, six months ago, something like that, on the Trump family's real estate dealings. And nobody cared.

Nobody paid any attention. It didn't start a Twitter storm. It wasn't picked up on cable news. People look at this guy and say, I really – there's nothing that's going to come out of his taxes that would surprise me. I just don't, whatever they find, no, people will shrug.

I think. Yeah. We'll get, we'll get to Rob's take on that. But first I have to tell you, because otherwise, if I end with this, you'll just think the show's done and you'll quit.

And it's not. This podcast was brought to you by Lending Club, Grove Collaboration, and Circle. Please support them for supporting us. And might I add, if you went to iTunes and gave us a nice review, five stars, let's say, and that let more people find us and might i add if you went to itunes it gave us a nice review five stars let's say and that let more people find us and that let more people find

ricochet and that let more people contribute and join ricochet and money flowed into it we'd all be very happy with you and we thank you very much in person if we could now having said that rob you were going to say yeah i was going to agree with Peter. The good news and the bad news are the same. If you want to get rid of Trump, the good news is that we live in a democracy and you just all you need to do. Is to win 270 something electoral votes, really, that's all. That is a hard thing to do, but it is a lot easier and a lot more honest than trying to gin up all sorts of charges for this or that. And it's ultimately better for your health. That's the one thing I – I started on a sympathetic note and I will end on a sympathetic note.

I feel sorry for them, the faces of the Democrats who thought this was going to work. They look so crestfallen and ill. They've made themselves ill with this. And I believe I have zero evidence of this, and this is probably incredibly improper to say, but, you know, I don't think Mueller is well. So they've been they've been made ill by what is, in fact, something that should not make you ill. The good news is we live in America.

We're going to be OK run somebody and win that has happened before it will happen again conservatives run and win and then they run and they lose and liberals run and win and then they run and they lose run somebody that america likes and you will all of your troubles will be over how i learned to stop worrying and Love the Trump by Rob Long. I can see him on the nuke right now, slapping it in the side with his 10-gallon hat, yeehawing his way all down to ground zero. Yeah, it is not a recipe for happiness

to be constantly caught up in the miserabilism of this thing. But again, if you've convinced yourself that this is 1937 Germany, it's like I feel sorry for them because they're going to be so disappointed when it turns out that there's not Nazi rule under one party with a charismatic leader who is in office in perpetuity. At some point, Trump will go. At some point, all of their fears will not be realized but of course for them right the future begins today everything everything began this

morning and in the meantime as rob has often pointed out he's a weak president yeah he his margin in the senate isn't that big half the the Republicans in the Senate don't like him. He doesn't hold the – he's a weak president. Relax, liberals. I mean the people should be worried of the conservatives because the pendulum swings back and forth a lot. is actually the easy part, but what it does require you to do is to present yourself to Americans in all 50 states and convince them that you are interested and are motivated by a desire to solve the problems of ordinary Americans in all 50 states. Now, that is extremely difficult for some people on the left because they seem to be

obsessed with the problems of, you know of things you can't relate to. But it is a useful tonic for any political party, left and right, Republican and Democrat, to have to face the voter in all 50 states. And it is not by any means institutionally biased on one party or the other. Both have failed utterly to do that and both have succeeded very well at doing that you just have to you have to win and the way you win is you appeal to america and that that's that's just the way it's always been it's very strange it's a strange time to to to observe people because they just seem to be going bananas and now to conclude the podcast

and to confound people who've already jumped into the comments and said something without listening to the end, I probably got the name of the actor wrong at the beginning who played Q, not Q, M, in the James Bond movies. Got that wrong. I'm admitting to it, and if you're saying so in the comments, then you haven't listened to the end here. However, if you're already saying Rob Long says we're a democracy and we're not,

then you got to the end, and we thank if you're already saying Rob Long says we're a democracy and we're not, then you got to the end and we thank you so much. Really. So go to Ricochet, talk about it, join, give us money if you haven't because that's how this enterprise keeps going and we want to thank everyone who listened and joined and downloaded and given us reviews and what more can I say except

we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, boys. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas. I was a stranger in the city Out of town with the people I knew I had that feeling of self-pity What to do, what to do, what to do The outlook was decidedly blue

But as I walked through the foggy streets alone It turned out to be the luckiest day I've known a foggy day in London town had me low and had me down. I viewed the morning with alarm. The British Museum had lost its charm. Atlas is chum.

How long I wondered, could this thing last? But the age of miracles hadn't passed. Yes, for suddenly, baby, I saw you there Through the fog in London town The sun was shining Everywhere A foggy day in London town Had me low and it had me down I viewed the morning with alarm

The British Museum had lost its charm How long, how long I wondered Could this thing last But the age of miracles hadn't passed. you there and through foggy London town the sun was shining everywhere ¶¶ How long I wondered Could this thing last But the age of miracles Hadn't passed Ricochet.

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