The Ricochet Podcast - Rearranging the Deck Chairs

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Britain is on its seventh prime minister since bidding adieu to the EU a decade back. There's news of once-unimaginable crimes and ethnic strife, and even preeminent citizens like scholar-slash-philanthropist-slash-world-class athlete Jason Arday are having a hard go of it. For the lowdown on the British political crisis, we're joined by our new pal Dominic Green, historian and commentator. Plus, the regular hosty blokes see plenty of problems on our side of the pond, especially after the DSA proves that they can win statewide primaries outside coastal enclaves. But there's always plenty to be cheery about: like do-it-yourself burritos, roaring roller coasters, and albums so familiar that you can spot the covers from miles away. Opening sound this week: Hasan Piker says, “(Screw) Black people!” James Carville says “I’m outta here” to Fox News, and UK MP Rupert Lowe says, “Everybody has to go!”Closing music: "God Save the Queen," by Ian Post (via MotionArray)Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ricochet-podcast--5817275/support.

I don't know what black people care about. Oh, black people care about this. Black people care about that. Like, shut the fuck up. That's not how politics works. And I can't sit here and tell you for certain the audience is going to turn out. But the one thing I can tell you for certain, Hassan Piper and James Cargill of going to be in the same political point.

One of us is going to lead. It might even be me. It's the Rikoshae podcast. I'm James Lillik's with Charles C.W. Cook and Stephen Hayward. And the question today is Britain. Is there any hope? Well, we're going to ask our guest, Dominic Green. Let's have ourselves a podcast.

ending mass immigration is not enough. The hour is just too late for that. It must be reversed. As you know, Restore Britain has taken the unprecedented step of publishing the most comprehensive deportation policy ever produced in British politics. Welcome, everybody. It's the Rickettshire podcast number 801. I'm James Lillikson, rainy Misty Edina.

I'm joined by Charles C.W. Cook in no doubt Torpid Florida and Stephen Hayward somewhere. I'm guessing in California. We span the nation we do. And gentlemen, elections. Elections, Michigan comes to mind. Somebody tweeted out the other day, something interesting is it, why do all the Democratic primaries now look like a match between Quirk Chungus H.R. Lady and Mohamed Atta's cousin, which I just thought. It's absolutely right. Abdul El-Said wins a Senate nomination to face Mike Rogers in, who sounds like, you know, Captain America hero, Michigan. Steve, Charles, thoughts on this development. Well, yeah, what people are saying is,

look, this election was really close when the polls showed Syed way ahead, so big polling error, except one thing to note is that the turnout was really high. In fact, it was presidential primary election year high, which shows you the interest in it. And polling primaries is often hard. So I think here you give the pollsters a little bit of a pass. But the fact that he won is, well, two things. He won overwhelmingly in Ann Arbor and Lansing, Michigan State University of Michigan. He did poorly among the black population in and around Detroit. And so you're setting up that it's, you know, again, white liberals who are backing him.

I did see one polymarket, you know, betting line that actually has Syed favored to win. those things used to be kind of probative and often accurate, the closer you got to the asymptote of the event. But I think now more people piled into those prediction markets, and so I'm not sure they're any good anymore. But still, it's something to track and worry about, I think. Meanwhile, what have I been saying lately? I'll restate something I've said a couple times before, which is the New York Times reports here late yesterday. Democratic moderates are assembling a $15 million war chest to attack the DSA. I thought, okay, but the problem is the Democratic Party has a autoimmune disorder when it comes to socialism, right?

Because they essentially sympathize with all of its main points and are inarticulate and where exactly and how they differ from them. But you do have this woman. The other thing I've been writing recently is that the progressives have a bipolar problem. On the one hand, they say Trump's a threat to the Constitution. And then the next sentence is, but the Constitution stinks and we need to, you know, throw it out or revise it. abolish the Senate, abolish the electoral college. So, you know, which is it? But now you actually have a candidate in Wisconsin, this Francesca Hong,

who's literally a bipolar person, at least so she claims, right? So you have the perfect constituencies here, an inarticulate, mute, so-called mainstream Democratic Party and people who now represent in some ways an awful lot of the constituency. Last thing I'll say is, I just saw the announcement this morning, I think it's Michigan, Michigan, University of Michigan said, I think it was them. We're now no longer going to report grades for first year students, any first year students,

because we think it causes stress and this will be, will help with the mental health crisis on college campuses. That's your Democratic Party constituency today. Charles? I think we ought to be much nicer to bipolar Americans. No. I think these people are. Me too, but I would add a different answer.

me that yesterday. Sorry, I don't mean to make fun. I've known people and the rest of it. It's just the idea that somehow you are better suited for politics because you have a mental disorder and you have a disability is, you're right, it's the Democrats. I'm sorry. No, you're less well-suited for politics and it's not to stigmatize anyone to say that quite clearly. It's a problem. We shouldn't be mean to people who have problems, but it's not a credential. But more seriously, I must say, I find it increasingly annoying that so many of the people who are dead set on abolishing the Senate or packing the Supreme Court, or in the case of the broader DSA, it seems abolishing the presidency as well, are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. As an immigrant myself, I find this incomprehensible. and shameful and a sign that something has gone wrong.

It hasn't gone to miss on me that a lot of the gun control bills that have been passed recently have also been written by immigrants or the children of immigrants. The experience I have in Florida is very different. If I meet somebody who moved here or whose parents moved here, they're usually Cuban or Venezuela or Colombian and they love America and they're desperate to keep its, institutions intact. But that is not the case here. And you would think that that would form some sort of indictment of immigration. But what is so interesting about the DSA candidates in question is that it seems that they are backed almost exclusively by middle class white people and that they're the only minorities in the room. If you look at the parties they hold, the candidate, is an immigrant or a child of an immigrant.

And then everyone else is a white college-educated weirdo. And then you look at the results, and the candidate only appealed to other white middle-class weirdos and did not appeal to minorities or to the working class. So the whole thing is extremely strange, but it's also extremely destructive. The big part of this that interested me is that this is happening in Michigan and Wisconsin. And I say that because the argument that has been advanced by those who are defensive of the Democratic Party thus far

is that this has been a phenomenon of the left-wing enclaves. Well, yes, of course it happens in Madison, Wisconsin. And yes, this, of course, happens in New York City. Okay. but Trump won Michigan twice and Trump won Wisconsin. And while this Francesca Hong character is from Madison, she's running for governor statewide. And while Al Sayyad is most popular in the university towns,

he's running in Michigan statewide. And that represents sort of escape, if you will, from the enclaves. And I think it's going to be very, very interesting, and actually very important what happens to those two, because if they win, and maybe they win just because it's a particularly good year for Democrats, but if they win, the Democrats are going to draw the conclusion that that's the future of the party. If they lose, and instead the Democrats who win are moderates in Alaska and North Carolina, for example, then the party will draw a different conclusion.

So it's very, very important, aside from the fact that I don't think Michigan should be represented by that terrible person, that they lose. The left has decided that Islam is equivalent to progressivism. I mean, if a candidate says I'm a Muslim, they say, oh, well, then you're our natural ally. And that's not going to last. Well, what's interesting is they seem to be making a calculation where they're perfectly happy to blow off the African American community in favor of this new block that they're. think. And I'm wondering exactly how that, what happens to the African-American community and leaders and political guys who say, wait a minute, hold on a second. Supposedly, you've been on our side forever for good reasons. And now you don't care. You're going with these people who have a

social program and ideas that are not exactly what we and the folks in our community like. That will be interesting to see how it plays out. There's, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a block there that, you know, is apparently up for grabs more than we would think. and Hassan Piker, who seems to show up at every event for all of these people, has been quite clear that he thinks that the African-American bloc within the Democratic Party is a drag and ought to be removed. And that, if it comes to fruition, will be absolutely fascinating because, Steve, sorry, just before you get in, because there is a shift underway. I don't think it's going to be decisive. But there is a shift underway in the Democratic Party that is moving in the opposite directions

that did in the 1950s and 60s. In the 1950s and 60s, older Democrats who were, sorry, older African Americans, stayed with the Republican Party much longer because their memories were of Lincoln and were of a Republican Party that fought against Jim Crow. Now it's older African Americans who are sticking with the Democrats, but younger African-Americans, Americans, because they didn't live through the civil rights movement, feel much less attachment. Now, they're still, by and large, vote Democrat. But if you start getting loud and influential voices on the left within the party saying, we don't want you, which is the Hassan Piker message, and leave aside the consequences of the elections themselves, oh, wouldn't that be a fascinating shakeup in American life?

So, Charlie, I have a question for you, Charlie. We've thrown a lot of shade of Democrats for what's happening to their party. But I wonder if it's working. reflecting a little bit on an aspect of how conservatives and the Republican Party may have played a role that no one has talked about. And it's essentially this, right? That's been said by, you know, back years ago, by Pat Buchanan and others, the Republican Party should go further to the right on cultural issues, but it should move left on economic issues. And, you know, the, and, you know, we've commented that Trump is doing a lot of things that if a Democrat were doing it, we'd be screaming from the rooftops, you know, taking public ownership of countries, you know, tariffs,

lots of other things. And, you know, our NatConference, a subset of them want industrial policy and things we attacked Walter Mondale for 40 years ago. And, you know, J.D. Vance has embraced a lot of this agenda, right? So my question is, to the extent that Republicans have moved to the left, so to speak, on economic issues, has that made it easier? Has that relieved some of the pressure on the Democratic Social swing of Democrats to then push their agenda further? Another whole spectrum has moved. Yeah, I think it has. I'm not in favor of Republicans moving left on economic questions, mostly because I just don't think that we can afford it. I mean, we have $40 trillion of debt. We have an entitlements crisis about which we've done nothing that is now really coming up to a threshold of pain.

I think it's what, 2032, 233, there'll be automatic cuts at this rate. We're now spending more an interest on the debt than we spend on defense. And I just don't think it works, right? I mean, this has been this really ill-tempered debate in the last week or so about burritos. But I don't think that... You know what, Charles? Hold that thought. Hold that thought.

Think of a curry burrito. We've talked enough about how America has its problems. Perhaps it's time that we talk to somebody else who knows America and knows another country that is going through a bit of a patch. Dominic Green, historian, contributor to the Wall Street Journal, columnist for the Washington Examiner in the Jewish Chronicle, a fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute and at the Center for American Culture and Ideas.

He's here to talk with us about Britain and beyond. The West's prospects. Are they ruin? Are they rebirth? Is Britain the crucible in which the future will be decided, if you decide futures in crucibles? Dominic, welcome. Hello from London. Thank you. All right, so people here are seeing a kaleidoscope,

or it seems to us at least, of prime ministers cycling through. That fellow with the gray quiff of hair and the black glasses is gone, and there's some other fellow who seems rudely cheerful and blokey and all the rest of it. Tell people what they might expect from the Mancunian who is going to be occupying 10 Downing Street and whether or not this is the last gasp of labor before they're swamped by the Greens, just as in America, the Democratic parties are having trouble with the DSA, or whether or not he can chart some sort of middle ground and bring England back to former glories. It is true that Britain is going through prime ministers at a rate not seen since Italy in the 70s.

And they're calling it Brittily, not because of the food or the weather. The upside is that the system in Britain allows for you to turn over the prime minister if he's no good. The bad side is that it's happening so often. There's been only a couple of moments of which this kind of turnover has happened. Once was in the early 1760s when George III couldn't find someone he would work with. And the other time was at the end of the American Revolution when no one wanted to take the poison chalice from Lord North. So that gives you an indication of where we're at.

There's a real erosion of legitimacy as a result of this because people keep voting for change and getting more of the same. Have we bottomed out yet? No, not yet. Are we getting there? Yes. I think the impact is coming quite soon. As for the new man, Andy Burnham, and he's always Andy, never Andrew.

replacing Kea Stama, who was never Sir Kier, though he really was. I think you're looking at no change except in accent and manner. Stama was a cold fish, and Andy Burnham has the manner of a children's television presenter. This will no doubt help, you know, pass the longers as we slide ever faster downhill. But the realities which will assert themselves very soon, I think, are those of massive debt massive interest on the debt and immigration and crime. All of these issues have been cooking for a very long time.

The Conservatives contributed hugely to it, as much as Labour have. And the reckoning for all of this is coming. And I suspect there will be a fiscal crisis, which will then force Britain to shoot the rapids. And at that point, the question is, well, are we going to come out into calm waters, or are we just going to go off the cliff? Well, with Labour and the driver in the wheelhouse,

it would seem that they're go-to, solution is to raise the rates. And so you have mansion taxes. You have, and I'm not sure where the inheritance on farm tax is at this point, but that was rooted about for a long time. Do you think that it's the only arrow they've left in their quiver? They seem less likely to say, no, it's going to be austerity and cuts, because that would sort of make them look like they're taking a page out of Thatcher's book. Yeah, we're already, the Laffer curve is in sight in Scotland, where they tried to tax everyone and simply, you know, got less tax at a higher rate. We're losing our millionaires, which obviously people are, you know, delighted because they're so twisted and resentful. But again,

it's a leading indicator of a bad bet that the British economy is no longer, you know, a good place. Britain is not a good place to be parking your money or yourself. And so the number of people who can contribute to the fantasy tax expenditure of the government is going down. So the numbers simply don't add up. Luckily, nobody in the government has any experience in economics. And so they're perfectly happy to continue with their current policies. I have a question for you. The number of prime ministers as you know is unusual. And the explanation you hear from politicians is that the problem is who has been chosen. That is to say, it's the leaders themselves. Now, the politicians can't say this, of course. But I wonder if you agree with me that the problem here ultimately is the

British public. And I don't say that with any joy, originally being from Britain and with the family still in Britain. But the British public seems to me, Dominic, to be completely incoherent in its desires. Because it seems to want energy prices. to go down, but also net zero. It seems to want taxes that yield innovation, but also that are fair or equitable. It seems to loathe the National Health Service as it exists, but love it in theory. It seems to want Britain to be proud and strong, but also to spend no money on defense, if that means cutting welfare. And I have come to the conclusion, and you correct me if I'm wrong, that there is at present no politician who can succeed

because the public's expectations are impossible to bring to fruition. Am I wrong? Yes and no. I have to say that because I can't say yes. Move on to the next thing. Yeah, basically what we had was, as you know, there was a period of high consensus, and people voted for what we have unquestionably in written.

There's no doubt about that part of it. There was a period of high consensus, which they were happy to outsource all the, difficult decisions and were told that there would be, as they say, jam today and jam tomorrow. The point of which the jam run out actually was around 2008. If you look at a lot of the indicators for the economic health and of the country, after 2008, there's not a single positive one. So it's nearly 20 years in the fact that they have been sold promises by fraudulent politicians and as you said, have chosen to believe them and chosen to expect a level of service which they're

they're not able to justify with their taxes or their productivity. As for breaking out of it, the only politician who could change this is, or an agenda even, that would reprioritize the issues on which voting turns. And obviously, the political class, as it's constituted now, doesn't really want to do that, well, most of them. But as I said, I think that events are going to force different issues to the top of the list, that we're all going to be experts in the provision of energy, for instance. Britain is, you know, energy deficient and is heading for blackouts

and is dependent upon France, for instance, for its energy. Stuff like that. I think that the hitting the wall, which I believe will happen quite soon, and those of you can remember the 1970s will remember that's exactly what happened at that point. It has a wonderful sobering effect. And in, say, 1975, for instance, Margaret Thatcher had perhaps half a dozen MPs, who really got what she was talking about.

And by 1979, the whole party was behind her because the public had shifted and politicians chase after the public. Now, is there a couple of political figures in Britain who could have that effect of shifting things? Perhaps do either of them have a coherent agenda of the kind that the Thatcherites had prepared in that long period of opposition and catastrophe

in the mid to late 70s? No, I don't see that. Dominic, you know, I thought the first first sign of trouble that Britain had turned a corner was several years ago when I read the news that I forget which prime minister set it up, but they were setting up a new ministry of loneliness. You know, social scientists say loneliness is this big problem these days. And of course, I immediately thought that's just going to be a rubber room for former prime ministers like Theresa May and Liz Truss, right? And, you know, nowadays you have to add Boris who will serve the drinks and

Kier Starrmer, who will glower at them and clean up afterwards. But you mentioned you think there's a crisis coming, a fiscal crisis. I think that sounds sensible and a good reason to think that. You know, our friend Andrew Roberts, I'm sure you know Andrew some. He's been saying for quite a while, I think may still be saying that he actually thinks there's considerable doubt the Labor Party can make it to 2029, to the next general election, despite their huge majority. So part one is, what do you think about whether that the crises could be more than one will precipitate a collapse of labor's ability to govern and have to call an election. And two, the opposition is pretty divided. You know, we have Nigel Farage out there. You know, Cammy Badenox trying to keep the Tories from

sinking under the waves, which is just amazing to think about. And then what is a couple new factions of people coming forward? And it looks like the opposition is chaotic. And so brittily, really is I hadn't heard that term. But boy, is that ever the scene we're seeing right now. Well, I mean, what I would say is, I think we're seeing the swan dive in, in the sense. an empty swimming pool of a whole way of running the state. And you could, and the padded cell or whatever, the rubber room that they were going to, you know, the ministry, which sounds like like something, like something from George Orwell, rather than something you'd actually like to go into. This is the kind of therapeutic role that the British state has assumed.

When, you know, the idea of, you know, losing an empire and struggling to find a role is not, is no longer true. The British state's role is basically to assuage the negative feelings of, you know, of British subjects while fleecing them for everything it can. And this won't go on. As for whether they'll last or 2029, they have a majority. There's nothing to stop them changing prime ministers another three or four times. But if I was an advisor to whoever it is in charge, I would say, look, these are your numbers. It looks like the Titanic. They're not going to get better. You have a choice between calling an early election. And while the right is split and in disarray, as you say, call an early election, you can probably cobble together a coalition with the other left-wing

parties, of which there are many as well, and perhaps even then pass a law shifting the electoral system from first past the post to PR, which would really be the Italian move. And so therefore, I've been saying for a while that I expected an election in late 26, and most people I said this to ask me if I needed the padded cell. But in the last few weeks, I've noticed that people say, years possible, 26, 27. Because if you look at the right, it's chaos. Farage's numbers are up and down. He is undergoing now what I think we could reasonably describe as lawfare of the kind that President Trump faced in 2020 and subsequently. They are absolutely out to get him. And again, this may sound familiar, it's his own damn fault. It's his own sloppiness, which is

giving them the opportunity to do it. Kelly Badlock is doing a very solid job, I think, of winning the kind of centrist media argument for the conservatives after they so totally disgraced themselves. But whether that translates into the public trusting the Conservative Party, I don't know. I take myself, of course, to be an entirely representative version of the British public, and I don't trust them at all. Apart from Conservative peer Lord Andrew Roberts of Belgravia, obviously I trust him for now. Right, right. So the right, are totally split.

What I would say is that the Rupert Lowe, who is the kind of the hard, right option. Until we have a proportional representational system isn't going anywhere. He's an internet phenomenon. Right. Let me shift gears here. I want to bring up Cambridge University, and I thought I'd ask, I'd spare Charlie the Payne as an alumni of Cambridge University. I'm not an alumni of Cambridge University. How dare you sir. How dare you say. I am an alumnus of the University of Oxford, the far superior institution. But I'm from Cambridge. I'm from Cambridge. That's why you got it from? Oh, I profusely apologize, Charlie. I don't know why I got that confused in my head. But look, I mean, this Jason, Jason Ardei, is that his name? I mean, where to even start?

He turns it's his name. They might not even do his name. Right. I mean, as somebody pointed out, never mind his plagiarized scholarship. If you read what is apparently written originally by himself, it's just ridiculous. Well, okay. The problem here is, you know, every once in a while we'll hear these spectacular stories here in America of somebody who's a complete fraud and they, after defending him, the universities will quietly shuffle them off or whatever and there's lots more like them. You think there's going to be any reckoning it came? By the way, I should add that I've thought for a long time looking from afar that the situation in British universities is actually worse than American universities. And so I wonder if you

think that's true. And B, is there going to be any reckoning at Cambridge or anywhere else in England about how far the woke rot has gotten? I'll take that in reverse order, if I may. I think the rot is less bad in some ways in British universities because they don't have any money. So they were not able to set up an entire vertical of DEI and they then hire large numbers of people. They have hired lots of pointless people, but generally speaking, they are downstream from

what is effectively an American phenomenon and good or bad, lots of American stuff is being imported into Britain all the time, whether it's... or, you know, wokeness or whatever. And so we've got a, it's basically like a cabaret parody. It's like being trapped on a cruise ship during COVID, sailing round and round in circles with people impersonating American academics. And this is their crude impersonation of it. So it is our fault. Okay, good to know.

Well, it is. And it's the downside of being basically, you know, the 51st or 50 seconds, say, which is how people like it. As for what happened Britain's second best university, again, I, you know, I weep for them. You know, I mean, these people, as we know, are sanctimonious, they're preachy, they are always contriving small ways

in which to spoil other people's fun. And they've told us that we're all appalling racists, and then they've demonstrated what should be happening by hiring someone who has indeed seen the world entirely in racial terms and managed to fleece them. And I kind of, I think we should give him some credit, actually, and thank him for exposing the rot so massively from top to bottom and give that man tenure at Harvard, I say. Yeah, I'll sometimes say that I see people like this and say, how did Carl Rove manage to sneak these people into our universities?

What a great stunt. Okay, I'm done. Well, it speaks to something else. The rule of these boffens, these sociology professors, these vacuous, empty ideas which have infected every single level of elite thinking. and I say elite, of course, with a standard sneer in my lips. So even if the government manages to get things right and the tax money is flowing in and Britain is prosperous again and industries are coming back and ships are being rebuilt, who knows,

there's still the matter of the culture. And the culture seems right now to be split between the people who are insisting that everybody put up with, except love this new concept of a multicultural Britain while they themselves are isolated in neighborhoods that don't have any of the effects. The people who are putting these programs together in encouraging them

castigating anybody for being a racist that they object to their little village being remade do not live in a place where the high street is all vape shops and Turkish barbers. So you have, I mean, the England that I experience is not what I read constantly on my feeds when people are talking about, you know, Manchester, they're talking about other cities. But I read enough of it to know that there's a great unease with what people seem to believe has been the loss of a national identity. And the government's response has been to point to people to put the white and red flags out and call them the worst possible

sorts or send the police around, you know, bother them about a tweet. Where does this go? Or, as Charlie may have told us from time to time, is there just simply a quiet, sullen acquiescence to it on the part of the British people as their national identity fades away and there's not

they can do? It is. I just find it very hard to believe that they will go completely into the dark night without, you know, objecting at all. Lots of people object, of course, by leaving, which is always an option, you know, as I did, and I think as Charlie did, I've come back for a stretch as, as, you know, like convicts do. But what we really have here is, and this is one of those words they probably, in fact, Jason

R, they wouldn't know what it was. What we have here is essentially, two rival ontologies. We have two different ways of looking at the world. And that's what we mean when we say the culture war. And we have a battle here between basically the bureaucratized, institutionalized, managerial upper-middle classes. And then the vast majority of people, who wanted to get on with their lives and now are finding themselves faced with a, what is, and it's not, it is actually existential. And I don't mean in terms of like they're all donning black polo necks and smoking French cigarettes. I mean, are we going to carry on as we have been, or are we going to become an entirely different country?

And at one end, you have people who are doing the demographic calculations. And demography is one of the most reliable predictors. It's certainly more reliable any of the economic predictors the British government's put out in the last, 40 years, but it's not an absolute cast iron one. So the possibility comes of the clips of European nations on their own territories. Belgium is probably more advanced than this. Sweden is coming up fast in the rails, but Britain is also set for this where the white English quite possibly become a majority in their own country within the next 30, 40 years on current track. And if you look back in 30 years, back to the 90s.

Well, it's not that long ago, actually, that, you know, none of this was a problem. So that's the worst case scenario. And there isn't a case in history that I can think of where people are subordinated on their own territory in this manner without fighting. And then the question becomes, well, what is the nature of the reaction and how people are going to do it? And I personally, I'm afraid to say, having been back in Britain for about 18 months, I have come to the conclusion that the pessimists are right about this. It's baked in. A civil conflict is baked in.

And what it will look like, I'm not sure, because warfare is always changing. But something not unlike what we saw in the troubles in Northern Ireland is already, I think, brewing and very close. All the signs are there. And when you speak to people who know people who know people about these things, the stories of weapons coming into the country, of paramilitary preparation, of, you know, just general breakdown and extremism. It is, I'm afraid, as I said, baked in and it's going to happen. And the question is, to what extent and when?

There's been riots at a migrant housing. I can't remember the town for the last three nights. But the story that really caught my eye in the last four. Yeah, in Norwich, okay. I just want to interrupt and say on that point, say 20 years ago, when you had like skinheads in what it used to be East Germany, fire to migrant hostels. Everyone in Britain was like, look at these people. They've learned nothing. They're barbaric. This would never happen here. And yet, look, here we are. You know, we are, honest, one of the weird things that happened with Brexit, it was like a fast forward into becoming

more of a European state. So it's not just Brittany in economics. We've also got the sort of social tensions of East Germany. Yeah. If it happened in Norwich, it'll happen in North Norwich. And that's Ellen Partridge's apartment. But there was the, there was a lot of, there was The other, there was the other story, though, that caught my eye. It was a town that had voted to secede because a population of 1,200 was about to be trebled by England. But it's the most English-sounding name of a town anywhere. Pitting, Piddlington, Oxford, sure. It's just, it's adorable, and I can only wish them well.

But you can't not look at their situation and say, no. They have every right whatsoever to say the character of our lives will be changed forever. the nature of our lives, our town or neighborhood, if you do this. Yeah. Stephen, you had some of it. Or Charles, you had... Yeah, so I was going to preface this question by apologizing to you for it's being awkward and provocative.

But given that you just said, you think Britain is ineluctably destined for civil conflict. I don't feel the need to do this anymore. So one of the things that I hear a lot in the United States from people who haven't been to England or who aren't familiar with it is that it's now a Muslim country. And this is, of course, nonsense. and so is the claim that everywhere is full of hijabs and burqers. Certainly where I'm from in rural Cambridgeshire, it could be if you didn't see the power lines 1780. But there is a change afoot.

I flew into London on October 8, 2023. and by the time I'd landed, the attack in Israel was over, and I then took my dad to an NFL game at Tottenham's Stadium. I forget what it's called now. It used to be Whiteheart Lane. Anyhow, we walked through that part of London, and that is a very Muslim part of London, and already we saw Muslims who I assume were mostly British citizens,

saying some pretty grotesque things about Jews. And I hate that because when I grew up in the 90s, I think Britain was arguably the least anti-Semitic place in the world. I just didn't see. I just never saw any anti-Semitism. And yet there is anti-Semitism in Britain now. And there are also political incentives for anti-Semitism. We saw this with the case.

of the Maccavis v. Aston Villa game, where members of Parliament argued that this Israeli soccer team's fans should not be allowed into the country. That's a shift, and I don't like that. And while I don't like the idea of having a system that discriminates against people based on where they're from or their religion, I also don't think it's a good thing for Britain to become anti-Semitic. So how should Britain deal with that? I mean, there are three million Muslims in Britain. What should it do? There's more.

Yeah, what should it do about that? Well, yeah, to put it in perspective, at the last census, there were 3.2 million Welsh people and 4 million British Muslims. And as you know, the Welsh field their own sports teams. They have their own Senate.

In other words, they are a political nation, functioning as a political nation within the United Kingdom. And it is my theory that we've actually, in addition to the four nations of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, we effectively have developed a fifth political nation in Britain, which is that of Pakistani Muslims in particular. And what Britain can do, therefore, I think should be construed in those terms. we can either say welcome have effectively the same national rights

which is the sort of thing how this is how the British Empire administered multicultural or multi-religious territories or we can say no you cannot function as a political nation and the split of what we call now the independence or the Gaza independence who's split off from labour since the October 7th attacks shows the maturation of that political nations because it's developing its own political party too, like a Michelle Welbeck novel, in fact. So to my mind, this is probably the greatest threat to the legitimacy of the British state in centuries. Certainly more serious. I mean, if you look at the IRA in the 1970s, 1980s, depending on which source you look at,

had between 3 to 500 active operatives who actually prepared to take up weapons and actually commit crimes against the people and against the state. The leaders of the security services say they have as many as 35 or 40,000 individuals under surveillance at any one moment. And the majority of those, as many as 80% of them, are engaged in some kind of Islamist conspiracy. The scale of this is such that this is one reason why the pessimists would say, A, there's nothing you can do, just enjoy it, or that there's going to be a violent, ab-reaction. And what one thing you can do in the meantime, I think, to take the temperature down is actually for the state to enforce its laws. There is no question in my mind that Britain has

adopted what people call two-tier policing, which is a colonial method. This is what they used in India and various other places as a way of managing these tensions, rather than have a head-on confrontation with a very large, growing, demographically vital, quite aggressive and, of course, a group fully supported by human rights law and the legal apparatus, which is the intermediary between the state and the people, rather than confront British Muslims, the state is suppressing the objections of the vast majority of the people. And that, of course, is exacerbating it. So the first thing is to enforce the law.

And the second thing is to undo as many as possible of the deranged immigration and work-related and asylum-related policies of recent decades. So, Dominic, I've got a very particular curiosity of mine I want to ask you about, and it's about whether there is any reconsideration or change in the legacy and reputation of Enoch Powell. I got curious about this question because, of course, I know generally about the famous Rivers of Blood speech and how he was turned into, you know, the British version of David Duke or Pat Buchanan. You know, Pat Buchanan's kind of had a renaissance here. And by chance last year in Dublin, I found in a used bookstore, the Robert Shepherd biography of Powell,

which was never published an American edition that I can find. And so just last week, I decided to read the chapter about that speech. And among the things that jumped out at me, so that was what, I think July, May or July of 1968, so a long time ago now. But one of the things that struck me in reading that was the numbers being talked about then, about, you know, 50,000, what they say, Asian Kenyans. And those numbers are tiny, you know, as the movie would say these days, those are rookie numbers. You've got to bump those numbers up.

And, you know, there was a – and then, you know, the Shepard does report, I think, quite well. The sympathy – it sounds like, you know, a precursor to Trump in modern times and around Europe, right? Powell was a hero for a lot of people whose voices were not being listened to. So anyway, back to my opening question, is his reputation being resuscitated, revived, rehabilitated to any extent and yeah, stop there. I think large numbers of people never stopped believing that, as I say, Enoch was right. Enoch was largely right, but he was wrong in a couple of critical things. Enoch, because he had been in British India, had this romantic view of the people he had ruled in the Raj,

and therefore completely underestimated the ferocity of Islamism. He generally thought Islam was a force for good. Secondly, the Asian Muslims of which he spoke, they were the middle class, a lot of them that were expelled from places, there's the British decolonised, and actually reintegrated and succeeded very quickly in Britain, because they came with skills and even some assets sometimes. I think the 50,000 net immigration figure for Britain pertained until 1997, and it was only after 1997 that the Tony Blair's Labour government adopted a high immigration model, which was the wisdom of the age. It's very easy for us all to be wise after the fact, but in the 90s, apart from Pat Buchanan, the wisdom of the age was that GDP is the measure of success and happiness and that raw numbers of people represented a GDP boost.

And what has become very obvious, and it's not just the people that we've had coming in, who are frequently unskilled, semi-skilled, or in the case of health workers, carrying entirely fraudulent documents issued by governments which wouldn't be able to issue a certification as a doctor-in-ear-e. in the case of places like, you know, Zimbabwe. It's not just that.

It's just we have an economic environment, as I said, for nearly 20 years, which is a low-growth one. We have a general confusion over what you're meant to be assimilating people into. You know, who are we and what are we for? So, yeah, so Powell has come back into acceptability, but he never ever went away. I have to say that. You know, my grandparents were the people who said, like, Enoch was right.

Absolutely. And they were the first generation of their families to be born in Britain. They were just adamant that he called it. And this is a pattern which, of course, which we've become very familiar more recently. They lived in the areas which were affected by it. And, you know, in the US, of course, you can always have the luxury moving. If you don't like the neighbours, you can simply leave the city and move 200 miles. But in Britain you can't.

And Charlie, it's interesting when you talk about rural Cambridge because in the outlying villages we are now seeing these atrocious crimes. We are now seeing, you know, things which have never, even the wildest. imagination of Miss Marple, you know, murders and killing. It's never happened before. And it's a small country, there is nowhere to hide. And I think there is, that realization is driving a great deal of not just the reassessment of Enoch Powell, but making it possible to say in public that, you know, we simply have people in this country who should not be here. Last question. Americans have, in general and specific, a love of England for a lot of reasons, cultural,

historical, we see ourselves mirrored in you, we see ourselves as bound by language and culture, but at the same time, there's a lot of people who are coming up now saying, look, they dug their own grave, I'm not exactly sure why we should care about it.

This is what they wanted, is where they got. Tell me it matters. I mean, make the case. Stephen, Charlie, we all know that England matters, but then again there are those who say what really does it matter to us or the rest of the world?

England falls? Yeah. Well, I mean, look what happened with Byzantium. You know, the Western Roman Empire fell and Byzantium staggered on, but it was never quite the same. No. It wasn't epic in that way. And I see the relationship between the U.S. and it's not an original thought. The British ruling class keeps always said it and tried to exploit it, as that between not Greece and Rome, but actually between Western Rome and Byzantine or Greece and the later Byzantium.

Why does it matter? It is symbolic. I think if the United States is cut off from the sources of its law and language and also from the land where most of its people came from, then I talk about the British Isles and the bigger sense.

I include Ireland in that. Then it is diminished. But, you know, I don't think Britain deserves some special pleading. You know, the British have got themselves into this mess, not for the first time. And I do believe, actually, they can dig themselves out of it. I don't think it's actually too late.

I think that as Charlie was saying, it was not so long ago that we were actually a very well-integrated and, you know, productive society. And I think we can actually get back to it. But it's going to be very hard. Does the United States gain from that? Well, obviously, in terms of strategic, you know, it's great if we rearm, you know, have a military. And so the Russians can't just sail up the English channels, as they've been doing lately. That's obviously good for the US. But, you know, we have to earn it.

Britain has that, you know, if it doesn't deliver, then it's not going, it doesn't deserve any special support. The British have to decide, or rather the constituent nations of the British Isles, have to decide, you know, who they are and whether they want to continue. They had a great run. Do they want to disappear? That's, that's a question. And I just find it hard to believe that they will. There are people who disappeared by force from history. You know, they're murdered or enslaved or driven out or whatever. But we would be on, we're quite new territory to have a people who disappeared because they couldn't be bothered to turn up, which is the paradigm now. So for this reason, and also because you don't underestimate the sheer bloody-mindedness of the British or the Irish, for that matter. They are people who will, you know, complain and complain and do nothing and then simply dig in and say no further.

and we haven't yet reached the point whether we find out they've actually complained themselves to death or whether now, and again, if you watch politics, it feels like an eternity, it feels like I've been watching this all my life, saying to people, why don't you wake up, wake up, wake up, but I do think that there are strong signs that this is happening. Good, we'll cross our fingers, we'll hope, we'll continue to visit, we'll send more money, we'll send more money, that's exactly what I do, I plan on coming and spending as much as possible, doing my part for the British economy. Dominic Green, it's been a great pleasure as ever. We could talk for another hour or three, but we'll have you back as soon as possible. So regards to Blighty. You know, a long, long time ago, at the top

of the show, we were talking about, well, Charles was talking about burrito discourse, which is once again taken over TwitterX, for those of you who aren't on those hellsides as they like to be called. I personally don't call them hellsides at all because I love it. There periodically is this efflorescence of boomerism, castiating

young people for ordering all their food. That's why you can't afford a house. It's the new version of avocado toast. You're door-dashing everything. You're spending $20 on burritos. Why, I have a family of 15 and I fed them all burritos for $1.98 yesterday. You know, when I was your age, we had a house. I had two cars and the wife, but the wife used to make Coca-Cola and a big galvanized vat downstairs and put it up for the winter and so we didn't spend money on your pop and the rest. I mean, it's back and forth and it's not progressive it's not productive at all unless of course there's something here to be said about it charles you mentioned the twenty dollar burrito a while ago and so your thoughts well i was just going to say in the context of discussion about whether the

republican party moving left had good or bad consequences that i'm fairly classical in my economic views i think that the reason that burritos have become more expensive which they have They haven't hit $20, more like 10, unless you have them door dashed, which I don't. But if you accept, which I do, that they're more expensive, it's largely, in my view, because of our monetary policy, dumping in massive amounts into the money supply and sending money out to Americans willy-nilly in combination with increased labour costs and at the margins tariffs and possibly a little bit. from the Iran War as well. So I would give the dinosaur answer, which is deregulate, move to sound money, fix entitlements,

and so forth. But yeah, I do think that this has helped the DSA because it has allowed them to argue that we all want the same thing and we're just debating how to do it when I don't think we do. Stephen, how does that work in the midterm the idea of a party out there that can wave a wand and like mandami and his groceries cut the bill by 30

percent why not yeah well i'm going to watch that to fall in its face although it may not happen quickly and so it's a short-term benefit for them i suppose you know look price control subsidies mandates um they never work i'm in heated agreement with everything charley just said i'll just say that um you know here in california i think in other places like seattle the evidence on the minimum wage mandates that pushed it way higher than the labor market would set has played a role in all this. So I'm a big fan when it comes to burritos of the McDonald's sausage burrito, which you used to get for a dollar at their drive-thru window. And that's long gone. And I think that's a function of the wage rates and any of the other things, the inflation of raw materials

and so forth. I make my own burritos, by the way. I love making burritos. So breakfast burritos, lunch burritos, and you make your own, the cost is quite a bit less. end with something that we all can agree upon. And that is, Charles is a lunatic when it comes to roller coasters. You can't strap me in one of those things if you gave me thousands of dollars in the cost.

$100 bills. No, I can't abide them. I really can't. I design them. No, well, I love to design them in video games and roller coaster, the rest of it. But no, there's a little bit of agoraphobia and all the rest of it that comes into play. But you've written about the loss of apparently Bush Garden has closed down some.

It's iconic, right? It's somebody's called it iconic. Oh, James, I'm so sad. It's the right called Kumba, which. Kumba? Is that because people say, yeah, when they're going down? Actually, it's the translation of the word raw, at least Bush Gardens claimed it was. in one of the African languages,

and the park in Tampa is themed to Africa. But this was really an iconic ride. It was built in 1993. It was the first really modern looping roller coaster with proper computer-aided design in its development and the new way of manufacturing steel. It was smooth. It was loud, hence the name.

It was beautiful. The turquoise track and these red supports. It was revolutionary at the time. And now, of course, all roller coasters are like that, although I think not as good. So I was very sad. I'd had an obsession with this ride since I was about 10 when I looked it up on the internet. My parents 28 bit per second modem. And I got to go with my 10-year-old who was tall enough and ride it just before it close.

but it's now gone August 2nd rest in peace. A wonderful American moment, wonderfully told by an American. Well, gentlemen, we've spanned many subjects. We've chewed up an hour. There's not for me to do, but guess the albums that are on Charlie's shelf behind him. And I'm having a hard time here because for one thing, your head has been covering them up. But I think I'm going to be two for four here. On the left, that's easy.

Oh, you? You've got some sticking out there. I moved them closer this week, James. Last week they were too far away. I moved them up a bit. Okay. Well, for you, the one on the left on the top, is that wind in the weathering? No.

No, it's revolver. This month is the 60th anniversary of the release of revolver. Oh, okay. All right. And that's important. I'm surprised Charlie doesn't have his revolver cover out. Well, let's see. We've got a little left for Charles.

We have Hotel California by the Eagles, right? Yes. The next one baffles me the only thing that I can. possibly think of, but the square is too small would be architecture and morality, but it's not that. No, it's Graceland by Paul Simon. Ah, there you go. And then, of course, we have magical

mystery tour by the Beatles. Yes, can you see the angled one? The angled one, I can't tell. Nope, not at all. So you use that one for next week, if you wish. And then the one in the absolute right, I don't know. It could be a Grateful Dead album cover, but it's not, I don't know.

it's too indistinct. I mean, I am looking at you literally as though you're coming through that 2800 bod modem through. No, no, no. That isn't an album cover, so you get away that one. Oh, that's another, that's another drawing of Spider-Man from my son. Oh, good, from your son. All right, good. All right, see, so yes, I see a revolver now and below that, I, it looks, it could be

with a mess in the colors. Below it, it could be Jerry Rafferty. Yeah, no, it's actually, I just grab it at random and I probably rush. No, no, it's a very, your band out of Laguna Beach in the 70s called Honk. And they're notable in the 70s for doing the soundtrack for what I think is still one of the great surf movies called Five Summer Stories. It was the McGill, it was the first film by McGillivray and Freeman who went on to do a lot of the much better known adventure documentaries. And anyway, they had a different sound. By the way, Five Summer Stories had honk and also Beach Boys.

And they weren't, they were very different from the Beach Boys and a very distinct sound. They never made it very big. But I'm still. still fond of them. And I'll bet maybe we have two listeners who may know a honk. And so, well, let's have more. Drop a video in the, drop a video in the comments, if you would, Steve. Oh, I'll find something from YouTube and have the fun that we always have, which leads me to the question I asked Charles in the way out. Will it be easier to embed videos in RICOChy 5.0 when it comes out? Yes, in fact, that works absolutely perfectly. For YouTube, Vimeo and Rumble, is Nathan. Oh, good. We can put all the Steve Inman compilations that we get in there. Yes, I always like the websites where if you just drop in the URL, the video just appears.

No, that's how this works as well. And the same with Twitter, Truth, Social, and Blue Sky, plus links. Well, all of this is just reminded me that I forgot to update my substack, which is supposed to go out to everybody at 11 o'clock today. Oops. Well, it's Friday, so we're a little bit lax. Folks, what you want to do is sign up at ricochet.com and enjoy 4.1. Why you can, because it's going away. and it's going to be replaced by a brand new

Whizbang model that will live on your phone that will give you the full Rurcache experience in ways. Well, if you're new to the site and it's possible you are, you're going to realize, wait a minute, this is what I've been looking for all of my days on the internet. These guys, these people, this place. Give us a review if you would.

Patronize, of course, all RICOA audio network sponsors if you wish. And we will see everybody in the comments at RICO4.0 in its last final days. And to Stephen and Charlie, I say thank you. Thank you all for listening. and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.

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