Tomorrow - Episode 59: Felix Salmon Explains The Brexit

Episode Date: June 27, 2016

Oh Britain, what have you done? No, seriously, what have you done...? Because not only does this "Brexit" stuff not make any political sense, but your friends across the pond are still a bit fuzzy on the details. To get to the bottom of all this, Josh enlisted Felix Salmon, one of the UK's finest, host of Slate's Money podcast, and a Senior Editor at Fusion, to explain all of this to us as best he can. Why would anyone do this? Why was any of this even on the table? Is this whole thing legally binding? Will Scotland and Northern Ireland leave the UK in the dust? Can Americans finally feel superior to the Brits for the first time in decades? In Episode 59, Felix helps us find as many answers as any person can on this sloppy, sloppy planet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to Tomorrow, I'm your host Josh Wittipulski. Today on the podcast we discuss Ireland, England, and Scotland. But first, a word from our sponsor. Listen and look, I mean pay attention. Real watch collectors don't pay retail prices and neither should you. Crowning Calibers the smartest way to buy or sell your luxury watch. You know what certified pre-owned means when you're buying a luxury car, and with crowning calibur you now have the same level of confidence when buying or selling a certified pre-owned

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and is in fact a British person. I'm of course talking about Felix Salmon. Felix Salmon. Thank you for being here. I'm very happy to do this. Yes, listen, when England decided to leave the European Union, I said to myself. And by the way, you are absolutely right to use the word England there rather than Britain or the UK. Right. Or can I say your British though, is that fair? Yes, I am English man, but it was England who made this stateful decision. It was not Scotland who was overwhelmingly in favor of remaining in Northern Ireland.

Because they're very reasonable people in Scotland. Yeah. And by the way, if you're wondering why you're, if you're, if you're, if you're your birds, Felix is in a, a beautiful, where are you coast of mesa? Coast of mesa, California. A beautiful sunny region of the United States. It's actually sunny here now, so I can't complain. Anyhow, so, okay, so let's talk about, I was basically like, you know, look, Felix would be perfect to talk about the Brexit.

First of all, what's your level of comfort with the phrase Brexit? Because I find it extremely annoying. Am I the only person who feels this way? I feel like it diminishes the importance of the event. It makes it into a monster troc rally. So Brexit is a word that was invented in the financial markets as a kind of like, well, if we take this to a logical conclusion, there was this thing called Grexit. You remember the Grexit, sure.

So Grexit was the Greek exit, which never happened. Did not happen. I mean, it's all incredible. Think about how fucked up things were in Greece, and yet they stuck. I guess they needed to stay, actually, for them. But yeah, so Grexit was a real possibility. And people were talking about Grexit and the financial markets were terrified of Grexit

for very many good reasons. And then during the Grexit debate, there was this kind of running joke of like, well, if you could have Grexit, you could have Grexit. No one really took it seriously. And so it kind of began life as a joke, but then because there wasn't a better name for it, it kind of clost over that line

between sort of financial jargon into every, it is the word which everyone is using. Yeah, that the official Twitter hashtag was EURF, which was so much worse. Yeah, way worse. No, Haunted, did the idea begin as a joke or just the term? Just the term. Okay, it wasn't like, wouldn't it be funny

if England left the European Union? And then somebody was like, hey, actually, because that's how Trump really started. I mean, I think Trump in this country was like a joke and then it turned out to not be a joke. But okay, so let's do this. Assume that people listening, many people listening. I think we all understand what's happened, basically, at this point. Like,

and I'll give you my, you know, obviously, I know, I hopefully know a little bit about this, but I'll say to my basic understanding is, there was a referendum of, essentially, a vote for the citizenry of England. Or actually, actually breton actually it's a bit more complicated and that i think it was it was the popular it was the population of the u.k. uh... which basically means anyone who was living in the u.k.a.a. European citizens so you could have been a french national

in the u.k.a. or german national in the u.k.a. an irish national in the u.k. certain commonwealth nationals as well could vote. And UK citizens living abroad could vote if they had been abroad for less than 15 years. It's not just UK citizens. Let's say it's a bit largely. I mean, it's people in the UK and those associated with living in the UK The but essentially there was a vote and the vote was this should be remain as part of the European Union

Which was and crack my phone, which was founded in 1993, right? No, no, no, the European Union is is a post-war project. The actual EU was not... So I went and read up on this. So there are forms of the EU that start post World War II. Right. So it started as something called the European colon steel community. Right. Which is much more specific.

ESE. ESE. ESE. And it then transformed into this huge and noble political project which was basically born out of the ashes of World War II to say that this continent which had spent so many centuries in bloody wars must never again again, set nation against nation, and have people fighting each other. And the way you do that is by building, first of all, trade ties and commercial ties,

and then bringing people together politically as well. And so there was a sequence of things that was, you know, starting with the ECSE and then going through European Commission and the European Economic Area and now the European Union and eventually the Eurozone. Which is the single currency which Britain is not a member of. The Schengen Group, which is the group of countries where you can move around freely without having to get your passport out every time you cross the border.

So there's a bunch of these political and social and economic groupings. And yes, one of them, and the biggest and the most important one is the EU. Right. Okay, so they came up with the EU name at least in 93. Is this correct? Because I was reading, I was sort of like boning up on this and the actual European Union as a named entity did not exist until relatively recently. But you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I might be wrong. I mean, based on my Wikipedia readings, it's possible. At any rate, yeah, I mean, so what happened in 93 just to be clear, is this thing called the EEC,

became this thing called the EU? Right, okay, so it's just a name change. It's an, I mean, there was a little bit more than just a name change, but really it was basically a change. But, okay, so for, okay, so this is only as a backdrop here, just to say there is a, this group of European countries, they've been together for a very long time, essentially, with some, it starts with, just to say there is a, this group of European countries, they've been together for a very long time,

essentially with some, it starts with, it's an economic sort of agreement or arrangement which leads into like a cultural arrangement in many ways, right? Can you just explain, let's just assume that's a baseline here. Can you explain how, let's just assume that's a baseline here, can you explain how England leaving the EU starts?

Can you give me like the cheat sheet on where this begins and how it got to the point where it became a real vote and how it, and how we ended up with it actually happening, which is a thing that I believe that I thought, like this is one of some absurd thing, you know, like Trump becoming president. This is an absurd thing that'll never happen. Correct. Can you just get, like assume that people listen in and frankly from me, like I'd like to hear

your version of this, but like how did this happen? Where did this come from? Sure, so the first thing I wanna say is, be careful when you use the word England. Because England is one of four countries in the United Kingdom. Right. You know, it's the United Kingdom which is leaving the EU as the first thing. Although the one of the repercussions of this vote is that probably Scotland is going to vote to leave the UK and so Scotland's going to become an independent country which then may or may not be able to join the EU

and its independence. But yes, let me answer your question which is that in 2015 we had a general election. We have a general election every five years and as scheduled the prime minister, you know, that there was a general election, the domain parties, the conservative party and the Labour party and they were fighting it out to see who would be able to get a majority in Parliament. In the end, that election was kind of big and important because there was this huge swing to the Scottish National Party in Scotland, which kind of wiped out a lot of the labour votes. But in any case, while the election was happening, it was not at all obvious that the Conservative

Party would be able to get a majority of the votes. The conservative leader David Cameron wanted that but no one thought it was very likely. And so in an attempt to shore up his own party because there was this big split in the Tory party, the conservative party, between the EU skeptics and the EU believers. And in the intent to sort of head off this threat from the right, there was this sort of crazy right wing racist party called UK Independence Party, which was threatening to take a lot of Tory votes. And so, do you like the Tea Party of the UK.

Right. And so what he did, this is a kind of taxical, electoral move, was he said, I'm going, if I win, if I become Prime Minister, I'm going to offer a referendum on whether we should stay in the EU. And he reckoned that if he made this promise, then that would placate the Eurosceptics in his own party, and that it would also mean that people who are inclined to vote for UKIP

might be slightly more sensible and pro-fertilatories. And so he made this fateful promise, not because he thought that a referendum was particularly important, or because he believed that a referendum was particularly important or because he believed that the people must speak, or even because there was any particular demand in the country for a referendum. No one in the country was really calling for a referendum at the time, but he just decided that making the promise was going to give him a little bit of an electoral advantage in the 2015 election,

which it did. Right. And by appealing to the isolationists and the racists in the country. Well, it wasn't even that. It was just that they kind of said, okay, fine, we'll get a referendum. But no one cared about it that much. And it was a stupid tactical move, which everyone kind of looked at him and said, are you serious?

Because we all remember just a couple years earlier There was a Scottish referendum on just one year earlier There was no it's just a reference. Yeah, and and and he'd done the same thing in Scotland in order to again Get a sort of tactical advantage in general election. He'd promised an independence referendum and so on. But they held a vote for that, I mean that happened. But the point is that that vote was way closer than it should have been. And you know what it meant was that you had 3.6 million people in Scotland who essentially were Had control over whether the United Kingdom would remain a country or not right and there was 64 million people in the UK It was it was crazy

You allow these three this tiny like three million three and a half million person minority to have complete control over the future of the country and it was a very close run thing. And most sensible people thought after that Scottish independence referendum, that Cameron would have learned his lesson, which is that the referendum's have released stupid things and you never called them. But unfortunately, David Cameron is, I believe, the technical term is a fucking moron. So he went and did the same thing again. But on a much grander scale. And with much higher state. Right. And lost. I mean, but okay, so, so, so let me just, let me just, by the way, the,

um, thank you for that succinct background on it. It's really, you really sounded up beautifully, but also in hearing you tell it I can't help but think of the parallels between the UK and America right now the US rather in in this sort of I Don't know what it is this I mean we talked about a little bit before we started But this I this this everything has gone off gone off the rails. It just feels like the control that seemed to exist at the center of a nation,

the control that seemed to exist in the government where you felt like the people, the leaders at least had a handle or control of situations have gone completely off the rails and seem, and everybody seems a little crazy. Like what you're describing to me sounds like a crazy ploy, like a desperate crazy ploy, and it has had the probably most negative result

it could possibly have for the country, which is. And for all of Europe and probably for the world. I mean, this has horrible repercussions in France, in Spain, and you know, in the world. I mean, this has horrible repercussions in France, in Spain, in the world. And what you're talking about, I think, is basically this move from democracy being a system of government, which has worked really quite well in the West for a long time. To democracy being a system of voting. It's like, no, democracy is not about voting.

Democracy is about finding representatives who are going to be grownups and who are going to govern. And calling a referendum is a way of abrogating that responsibility and saying, actually, I'm not interested in governing. I'm just going to play, like, you know, I'm going to be like the dice man. I'm just going to sort of go to the people and pull the plebiscite rather than doing my job, which is to govern. What is it is, but it also reflects the, I think that the lack of confidence in a certain

segment of the public, right, of the people of these nations saying, I mean, certainly, like Trump's rise and the complete destruction of a reasonable Republican party in this country. And some of the extreme of the left as well in the US, I think is, it certainly is born out of this idea that a governing body is a bad idea or that it somehow is fundamentally flawed. It must be stripped

apart and put back together. They hate the technocrats, they hate the elites. This is a real phenomenon. If you go back to the presidential primaries in the US, you remember that they wasn't let alone go, we were down to a final four. The final four candidates, I'll are remind you in case you'd forgotten where please trump cruise

clinton and sanders three of those four candidates were explicitly running on a platform of we hate the elites of both parties right no and and and and promises to the elites of both parties. Right. No, and promises to dismantle significant portions of a system that has actually worked. This is the thing that drives me insane when you talk to, I mean, even smart people now have this idea of the government as a problem. And it's like, well, how did we, how do we get to a point where you're able to bitch about the government right now? I mean, somebody had to build this thing. They had to put a system in place.

People had to govern so that you drive your car somewhere. And it's like all of these things that have been put into place, these basic things and also things that are quite complex, everybody assumes that they just appeared out of the ether and would naturally happen, whether there was a governing body or not. That to me is this weird threat of you just dropping logic out the window.

Yeah, I mean, we know what life looks like when you don't have a government which works. You're welcome to move to Venezuela if you want to. But no one would do that. Right. It's completely insane. it's completely insane. It's completely insane. All right, so, okay, so let's, so let's, so now we, so there's the vote happens, the sub-served vote happens.

Now, was there an expectation? And you must have, you must have, you must have had a sense. When this, when the vote took place, what was the expectation of most of the people in the UK? What was the expectation of economists who were watching this unfro all like what was the expectation of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson the leaders of the leave campaign? Everyone thought that the leave vote would lose and that is crazily

Why they voted leave. They, a huge number of leave voters didn't vote leave because they wanted to leave the EU. They voted leave because they wanted to moan and protest. And they wanted to send a message to the government. They were fed up with this and that and the other. And they thought that the best way to send that message to the government would be to vote leave, safe in the knowledge that ultimately they would lose. And then they woke up in the morning saying, oh my god, what have we done? So even one has a plan. There was this classic, my friend Faisal Islamist, the political editor of Sky News in the UK and he talked to a leave MP, one of the leaders of the leave campaign and said, so you what's the plan?

Now that you've won, you must have a plan for your going to do. And this guy who was running the leave campaign got appointed to the leave headquarters and said, oh no, we didn't have a plan. We were counting on 10 downing street. We were counting on the prime minister who was voting remain to have a plan. And they don't have a plan. No one has a plan. So nobody put in place.

So using nobody put in place, like, okay, here's what happens on the economic side. Here's what happens on the sort of social political side. Here's what happens on the cultural side. These are our, these are post-leave winning. winning yeah we have this is what we said in emotion the only person with a plan was Nicholas Durgeon who's the first minister of Scotland she's like I have a plan if they vote leave I'm going to ask the Scottish independence which makes perfect sense sure although I was

completely opposed to Scottish independence during the referendum, now I'm with her. I'm like, well, I mean, I mean, you got to like, you know, for these English people would completely insane. I mean, if you're being dragged into a shitstorm, I mean, you want to get out of it. Beyond that, there is no plan. So for instance, there's this whole question about Article 50, which you've probably seen referenced a million times. Yes, but if you're free to explain it. And so there's only one way for a country to leave the EU. And that is for the country to formally notify the European Commission that it is invoking

something known as article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and say, we are leaving the EU. That is the way you have it done, by the way. Is it a letter? Do you deliver a letter? You can, you can do it by letter. You can do it by facts. Wonderful. Do it in person. There are these meetings of the European Council.

And, you know, you can do it in person at one of those meetings. Right. But as long as you just basically say the magic words, which is, you know, I am invoking article 50 and I'm declaring that we want to leave the EU, that's basically what you need to do, and that's the only way you can do it. And so, does part of the flow, someone in the leave campaign would have had an idea about how and when article 50, that would happen. Like a tie a tie a tie a tie.

But everyone in the leave campaign is not going around going oh yeah um yeah we there's no rush we we don't really need to do that. So you do think no one people like if we if they just don't do weather it's going to happen because like you know Boris Johnson and the rest is the leave Tory is none of them are in any rush to invoke this which means there's a very good chance that this could drag on for years with the Britain remaining in the EU but just having voted to have left. So I mean people could you could conceivably everybody could just kind of stall indefinitely. Yes, I right. I mean there's no timeline. There's no like no forcing agent here

where somebody will say, oh, it's been two years now, you've only got 90 days remaining to, or you just get pushed out of the, like that doesn't happen. Like the vote actually doesn't mean anything until somebody does something about it. Is that correct? Correct, it was a non-binding referendum.

So it's just like, it was just complete bullshit essentially. The idea is like, it wasn't like that you're giving people any power. You're just saying like, hey, what do you guys think? And then you can decide to take their advice or not take their advice. Except if you don't take their advice, they will start like stringing you up from lampposts and people will they? Will they? Well, there's some of a lot of them, a lot of what's known as the regret for, you know, the people who voted leave, but now

I changed their mind and said, oh my god, like, I actually believed all of the lies that the lead campaign was spewing and now I realize that their lies and I want it all back. You know, who knows? If there was, okay, hold on, I want to take a break, man, because I have a, this is an interesting moment that I wanted to ask about coming up So let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with Mark Today, nearly anything is possible, and if we can dream it, teams can build it. So how do you bring everyone together to create what's next? Here's a solution.

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Exactly. Actually, I could go for a fish right now. Okay, so we're talking about Brexit and we're talking about, okay, here's the big question. So you were just saying that it isn't really, there is nothing in place now technically that forces the UK to leave the EU. But the populist could be very angry because there was quite a bit, what was the percentage of leave to stay? 52, 48. Or quite a bit, I mean, what was the percentage of leave to stay? 2248.

So it's like pretty, you know, notable gap there. Although, like, as I say, a large chunk of that gap has now changed this mind. Well, people were like, oh, I was just kidding, or I didn't really know what it meant. I mean, apparently there were several stories written. I don't know if you should do one or not, but I saw a bunch of stories. But people furiously googling in the UK, people furiously googling, like, what does it mean to leave the EU? Right.

That's just fucking, or even, what is the EU? Yeah. You want to know, but yeah, the leave campaign was based on liars. I mean, it really was. It's no two ways about it. They lied about the amount of money

that Britain was sending to Europe every week. They lied about the amount of money that this would free up for like the National Health Service. They lied most importantly about immigration. They basically said that if we leave the EU, then we can massively cut down on the amount of immigration into this country because Britain, a little bit like the US, is in this kind of crazy anti-immigrant phase. And what no one in the leave campaign said before the referendum, but they're perfectly happy to say now, is, oh, actually, even if we do leave, that doesn't mean we're going to cut down on immigration because we're going to want to retain our trade ties with Europe. So that means people are talking about the Norway model or the Switzerland model or something like this where basically you retain trade

ties with Europe without being a member of the EU, which is all well and good except for one of the conditions for attaining those trade ties is precisely that you have to continue to allow European citizens to live and work in your country. Which is like, why leave the EU in the first place since you already have that in place? It's like, the question is, do you want to be a member of the EU and have a seat at the table and be important and help to steer the shit. Or do you just want to leave the EU and be at the mercy of whatever the EU wants to do and have no say in that?

It's obvious that Britain is better off in the EU than out of it. It's just, this is a protest vote. This is an anger vote. This is not a considered policy vote. Right. So, I don't want to get to sort of what happens now, but I want to talk a little bit about what happened immediately following this vote. So the global economy immediately started spiraling out of control. I mean, the British UK economy, the pound dropped in value a massive amount in several minutes. What was it?

Several hours. Well, I mean, when one of the early results came in from Sunderland, the pound plunged in the space of seconds. But yeah, in the space of just a few hours, between when it was generally considered that remain had won, to when it was pretty obvious that the ev'ed one, this is the basically the exact amount of time that I spent in the Churchill pub on 28th and pub, drinking pint after pint of iced rosé. Don't ask me why I'm interesting but the But the in the space of that time the pound dropped from over

$1.50 to the pound to like $1.33 Yeah, it's a major currencies do not do that. I saw one person tweeting that this is you're you're an ex-bloom bear guy. You will know what this means. One person tweeted that this was a 16 sigma move in the pound. It's it is phenomenal because I think when you look at it you say, oh well it's just 10 cents or whatever, you know cents or 12 cents, whatever the fuck it was, is massive. When you look at the capital that is out there and the movement of these markets,

it is so, I mean, I think a person who doesn't think about it much or it hasn't had to sit, let's say, at a terminal, this is a major event. This is not a minor thing. This affected every market in every part of the world. Asia, the Asian markets started sort of spiraling. I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the because the Labour Party, I mean, it's crazy the amount of chaos this has caused domestically. The Tory Party was already completely split and throched and

leadilist, and now the Labour Party is two. There might well be, despite the fact that the UK now has fixed elections every five years, there might actually be an early election just because there's no credible government anymore in the UK. The repercussions of this are not just about Britain and the EU. They're also narrowly about like there's no one in charge and no one has a clue what they're doing. Right, which is exactly what's true of all governments everywhere, but it's just been

like completely exposed. I think we, I assume that everybody's everybody's making it up as they go, but usually there are enough people making things up that it feels like you're sort of covered. In this case, it's actually, yeah, but the fact is that Britain hasn't historically worked like that. Britain has historically, and if you've ever watched Yes Minister or Yes Prime Minister, you'll understand this, Britain has this permanent civil service which basically runs the country and the politicians are there for show except for now the politics has managed to

sort of trample the technocrats to the point at which they are increasingly powerless right like the sort of the sort of uh to the point at which they are increasingly powerless. Right. The sort of the boring, safe, predictable version of the government has been destroyed in some way by this passionate and also largely meaningless portion of it. It's sort of insane to me. So obviously, bad for the economy, it's sort of insane to me. So, okay, so obviously bad for the economy, everybody's economy, not just, I mean, everybody, it's not just like the, you know, the UK's

screwed. It's actually the entire world is screwed in some way, not completely screwed. It's not like we're, you know, in free fall, but it's not good. But there is talk now of a second vote. And I want to understand how this works because there's a so there was this guy who's a supporter of the leave campaign he wanted the he wanted Britain to leave the EU and he could see which way the lit wind was blowing and he liked the rest of us was pretty much convinced that remained was going to win. And so what he does, he started this referendum, I mean, this is not this referendum, he

started this, what was it called, petition on under UK law, if you start a petition and you get more than 100,000 votes, then you can force a debate in parliament. That's why we had a debate in parliament about whether we should allow Donald Trump into the country because there was a petition which got more than 100,000 votes, saying like, the UK should ban Donald Trump from the country.

So he starts his petition saying, like, if the referendum is closed, if it gets less than 60% of the vote, or 70% turn out, then there should be a second referendum. Because he's like, I want to second-vite at this cherry. And then what happened is that leave one and he was super happy, but his petition still existed online. And now all of the remainers are signing it because it was closed

and so now it has over three million signatures and you know literally millions of breads including myself have signed this petition but it's a largely meaningless exercise I think the probability of having a do-over is minuscule because there's like no appetite to relive the nightmare that was that particular referendum campaign. But what about, so, but I mean, if the country is like, wait a second, we screwed up.

If everybody who voted, not everybody, but lots of people who voted to leave didn't understand it and didn't understand the repercussions and and now they do hypothetically couldn't this swing it back in the other direction, and everything would just return to normal. I mean, isn't there a possibility that now having seen the error of their ways, or is it just too much, you think it's too much drama for the UK to handle? the UK to handle. So the more likely outcome is that if there was an early election, that will be contested by not only the two main parties, the Tories and Labour, but also by the Liberal Democrats who used to be a force, but then in 2015 kind of got wiped out. Still, they exist and they have now said explicitly, they were always at the repro-European party and they have said explicitly, we are going to run on a platform of staying in the EU, of saying,

like, you know, referendum is all well and good and we understand that people are angry and all the rest of it, but we are not going to invoke Article 50 and we are not going to leave the EU. Right. And if there is an early election and if someone with that kind of policy becomes the government, then Britain won't leave the EU. And at some point, the referendum becomes nothing more than a memory. Right. Right now, it's still very salient. It's a fresh wound.

But I mean, essentially, so this could shift politics in the country back, I mean, in a significant way. Am I crazy in thinking that? I mean, in that there was certainly there's a threat of like isolationism and nationalism and I mean, the people who voted to leave. Certainly, yes, maybe there's an economic, there was an economic argument,

like this money, this lie about the money was a 350 million pounds being given to the EU every week, was that the number that they were saying? Yeah, yeah, we're saying, yeah, they wheeled that number out all the time, even though they all knew that it was a lie. Right, so there's a possibility now that that party That pushed this or the anyone that actually pushed the idea of that leaving was a positive could be

Diminished significantly by the fact that it clearly was a shitty idea I mean it seems seems fairly obvious at this point right even to people who must have who must hate immigrants And what I think this is a great way to keep them out of the country, even though that's not true. That would, oh, maybe in some way, enhance the idea that this is not a good vote either way. Okay, so like if you're talking about the diminishment of the LEAF campaign, this is actually a really important way of, you know, part of what's going on here is that

the leave campaign was supported, you know, I'm going to be very snobby and elitist here. And that's just because I'm a snobby elitist. Yes, please do. The leave campaign was basically supported by old white people living in the countryside who are in very large part racist and voted leave because they want to literally, and I'm not making this up, kick the immigrants out. Right. They have said this over and over again, and if you look at the interviews with these people and if you look at what interviews with these people and if

you look at what they're posting on Facebook, they're saying, this is great, we voted leave, we can kick the immigrants out. If you are Polish in England, then there's a lot of polls who live in England. Your experience of living in England over the past couple of days has basically been people coming up to you and going You have to leave now. Yeah, and their story has been on this and the and the point is that no one But no one in the leave campaign not even Nigel Farage has ever suggested not even Nigel Farage has ever suggested that legal immigrants to the UK who are legally in the UK right now should get kicked out.

This was like a dog whistle which they got a whole bunch of racists to vote for them on the belief that if they voted leave, then all of these immigrants will get kicked out of the country but they didn't say it but that was certainly the undercurrent was it not exactly that was the undercurrent of what they were saying and they knew that was a lie and they should have come out and said much more firstly look we're gonna vote for leave all of these people who are here are gonna stay here because they're legally here when we're not gonna kick them out they never said that during the campaign you You've been out there saying it, and now all of the leave voters are looking at the leave politicians and saying,

hey, why did I even vote for you? I've managed to lose a large amount of money. I can't go on holiday abroad anymore because my account is worthless. And I'm not even going to get what I wanted, which is to kick all of these immigrants out. I mean, I just have to go back to this. I know I already said it, but the mirror between this

and what's happening in the US is really striking, because this is Donald Trump. This is the wall. This is the ban on Muslims. I mean, this is, you know, this, I mean, of course, Trump, unlike your politicians, perhaps, who are slightly more subtle, Trump is saying it outright, but these are bullshit promises.

Even if Trump wanted to ban Muslims, it would be impossible. I mean, it would be relatively impossible. And if he wanted to build a wall, which is, I think, is completely bullshit on a technical level as well as a philosophical level, he would be almost impossible to do. I mean mean really is not a thing that you can do. Has anyone told him that we have net migration from the US to Mexico right now? There are

more people emigrating from US to Mexico and there are emigrating from Mexico to the US. I mean what would be the point of telling somebody like Donald Trump something logical or reasonable? I mean what would be the point of telling anybody who thinks this way, something like, I mean, you can't reason with, I mean, the thing that you're describing is so outrageous. I mean, it is such an outmoded and dying frame of to think about the world where you're like, oh, let's get these immigrants out of here. I mean, what UK, what is the version of England that they're imagining that they want to live

in? Like, what year was that that they think that they're thinking about? Okay, so that's a good question. In the US, I think people want to revert to like the 1950s. 50s, of course. In England, I think they want to revert to like the 1890s. Which is, yeah, which in, by the way, not that great of an era. I mean, really.

But this is, no, no, yeah, which in, by the way, not that great of an era, I mean, really. But this is, you have to understand, especially among leave voters, generally believe, that the era of empire and colonialism was the greatest point in British history, and they would love to have that back. They are like pro-colonialists. Right. I wouldn't have been able to say for a certain segment of the populace that's very true. I'm sure just like in the 1950s for a certain segment of the populace. I mean in America, if you were middle class, middle to upper class and white, you were having a pretty good time in the 50s, you know, which is just not the entirety of the country. It's a small frankly like not the, I don't know if it was even the majority, but the country, not it's a small frankly like not the, I don't know if

it was you in the majority, but the point is that it's a fantasy based on a reality that doesn't exist and never really existed, it's just like a limited viewpoint. And so it's so insane to me that we're having these fucking conversations. I can't believe we're having them in both countries. What's strange is that like... It's not just these two countries either. These atavistic nationalism are cropping up all over the world in extremely poisonous ways and increasing me across Europe. I mean, look at Hungary. It's terrifying.

I mean, so what do you... Don't we talk about this little... Look at Turkey. I mean, you know, it never, then we talked about this little... Look at Turkey, I mean, you know, it never ends. How much of this is, how much of this is to do with... Well, we talked about this a little bit, and I've talked about this several times in the podcast, which is the death, this is the death rose of sort of the white...

Classic sort of white power in the world, and you know, obviously there's, it's different in every country, but I'm curious how much you think it's sort of okay that let's say white male power is waning in the world. And there's an ascendant power that looks very different, I think. And then you've got, but then how much of it is actually triggered by the past, what is it? 15 years of whatever this phantom war is that we've been in with radical, you know, with fundamentalist fundamentalism, essentially, Muslim and other wives.

So I have to say that in terms of Brexit, the referendum would not have been called and the racist undertone, so it probably always existed, would not have been called and the racist undertones, which probably always existed, would not have become like the racist overtones that they became, were it not for the flood of refugees from Syria into the European Union and increasing me from North Africa as well. So the turmoil in the Middle East was in some ways the cause of this referendum and this result. So yeah, there was a connection there. And the European Union has been really bad dealing with this refugee problem and the migrant issue. The Germans have been kind of steering the ship but doing it in a very uncertain way.

They kind of said, we want, we'll allow you to apply for European refugees status and then once you're here, you can go anywhere. That no one really knows how to deal with it. They did this really kind of unspeakable deal with Turkey where they were like, we'll pay you $6 billion to not send us refugees. There's a lot of this kind of stuff going on. And so yeah, the, that sort of issue about what's going on in, in Syria, and that region is definitely connected to the vote and the outcome, but at the same time, this is, this is bigger than that.

And this is ultimately a self-inflicted wound. I cannot blame any kind of, you know, Muslim extremists for what happened in the UK. This was a bunch of English people getting it wrong and white English people getting it wrong and it's their own fault. Right and I mean and do you think that is there an awareness? I mean you're saying that people going around saying you've got to get out of the country. In fact I actually retweeted a story today a Bloomberg story that they're now like they're suddenly people are starting to see just Now, there's suddenly people are starting to see just blatant racism, like a day following this vote or whatever, that people are now being outright racist to people in the UK, which sounds like a bad trend, you know, like a very, very destructive trend that's going

to be successful. And you know what, to happen in the UK, like, it used to happen in France, and we in the UK used to be like, feel a little superior to the French, because you know, there's idiots in the South of France in like, you know, Marseille or whatever would be like overtly racist and vote for someone called Le Pen.

And we would never do that. Right. And now what is happening on the streets in the open and it is depressing and terrifying and incredibly regressive. And you know, like, you and I basically grew up in a world which was getting better. Yes. You know, the equality was widening and, you know, women were becoming more equal and ethnic minorities were becoming more equal and LGBT minorities were becoming more equal. And

LGBT people were becoming more equal. And everything was becoming basically better. And everyone could say, this is the best time to be alive because like, you know, in the past, it was obviously worse for all of these groups of people. And now I don't know. Like now I, now it's we're moving in the wrong direction. But, but we're not actually moving in the wrong direction. I mean this is the I mean if you look at the spread of the age and the vote for the Brexit It's the old the old Citizensory of the country are voting for this a Great deal more than than the young people are I mean and this to me is like when you see the support for not that

There aren't young people who support Trump because there are. But in my opinion, and this is sort of like my, I don't own this, but my grand unified theory of where we're headed as a society is that we're headed towards a more liberal, more progressive, more open-minded, more global, more understanding. I think that we actually are moving in that direction. I think that the the the era that we've grown up in is that's a reflection of reality that is the trend line. And yet there is a force moving against it, but the force moving against it is a force

from a different age that is trying to return to that age. I mean, I think that and I think that there is a there is age is a factor here, you know, and I think if we were in a Logan's run situation where everybody at 30 was trying to, you know, was going, entering Carousel and trying to get to renewal, I think we'd be all sad, I don't know if you understand my Logan's run reference whatsoever. But I think like, I was starting to come around to the idea that we should all be burned up in some kind of fancy, fanciful game when we hit 30 and then this would never occur. I mean, there is an age factor here. Is there not necessarily in the UK?

Absolutely, there is an age factor, but the point is that if you look at the demographics of the US and the UK, there is a huge number of old people. And what's more, those old people vote in much, much larger numbers than young people. Well, this is the aggravating piece, is that, you know, it's like for every Bernie supporter who tweeted something about Bernie, or, you know, it's like I actually had arguments with

the people about, you know, Bernie versus Hillary, and people who were, and very vehemently anti-hillary, saying, well, she's, you know, stealing this thing and blah, blah, blah. But if you look at the numbers, it's like, who's coming out to vote? Like, the numbers aren't there. The turnout's weren't, I don't even think they were as good as, I don't recall the full numbers, but I'm not sure the turnout's were as good as they were in 2008. So, I'm trying to understand, you know, how, what is the justification? The young people aren't coming out and voting.

I mean, that's part of the issue, isn young people aren't coming out and voting. I mean, that's part of the issue, isn't it? That's absolutely the issue. It's so fucking annoying. I mean, it's such a lazy, what a lazy generation. Honestly. If the young people had voted in the UK at the same rate as the older people, then remain would have one.

So just to be clear, you're saying that, I haven't looked at turn to be clear that you're saying that that and i haven't looked at in turn out numbers but you're saying there was a lower there was a low turnout for you youth vote lower yes lower you know and that's that's depressing what's insane is that it's i mean partly it's because of the constituency system i mean there are there are sort of

structural reasons why that's the case because young people are much less likely to actually live in their constituency on the day of the vote than old people. Old people just stay put and never go anywhere. Young people are traveling, they're working somewhere else, they're staying with their parents or whatever. And so it's a little bit more difficult for them, necessarily, to be able to reach the polling station on the day.

But that's no excuse. I don't think it's a excuse. I feel like it's not an excuse. bit more difficult for them necessarily to be able to reach the polling station on the dates. But that's no excuse. I don't think it's an excuse. I feel like it's not an excuse. I feel like it's, this is, I feel like one of the problems with having grown up, as you just mentioned, in this sort of era where it seemed like things were getting better, the world was getting better, I do think it is induced a kind of laziness where you assume that there's a mechanism that is functioning that doesn't require your attention.

Correct. And the complacency about the power and danger of those old people, because it turns out that those old people, when they are in their death throws, can be unbelievably dangerous. Right. Well, as we're seeing now, it's just terrifying. Okay, so let's talk about what happens now. What do you think actually happens now? You don't think there's, from what I'm hearing, you say you don't think there's gonna be another vote.

No. Oh, well, I mean, there's a good chance that there'll be another vote as in a general election, and of course the general election, the single biggest issue in the general election, will perforce be Brexit. You can't have a new election. You can't have a new election in the UK without that being the front and center number one issue. Right. And I also feel that absent a mandate, it's going to be very hard for any prime minister

of the UK to invoke Article 50 and basically set the clock ticking on leaving the EU. The point being that it is possible that you know Boris Johnson or some other Tory will take over from David Cameron who said that he's leaving the premiership in October or so. Right. Great move. He will be replaced by someone else, but that someone else will not have been elected Prime Minister by the people. That that someone else will just have been elected the leader of the Tory party by Tory MPs. And it's and probably that person whoever it is will not feel that that is enough of a mandate to do something as momentous as signing basically Britain's death warrant

by invoking article 50. So they're going to want to go back to the people and say, elect me as your prime minister with that mandate to invoke Article 50, and then I will do that. So, you know, so then what you have is an election about Europe. It might not be another referendum, but it will be another election. For all intents and purposes, but you're saying that there are, is there still a strain in the party, even in this very conservative, on the very conservative side of things, where they would push the issue to leave now, having seen, I mean, having first of been essentially caught with their pants down, where they didn't

really have a plan at all, and weren't really serious. But what part of the party is at Boris Johnson, would he be the person who would get up there and say, I mean, who would say let's keep trying to leave? Let's invoke Article 50 at this point. Yeah. So, what would that, yeah. So, if you have Boris Johnson or Michael Gove or Theresa May or someone who's a lever

as the leader of the Tory party, they are going to run in the general election on a platform of we want to leave the EU. And then it's up to the Brits to decide whether that's something that they want to vote for. Certainly Scotland, which is still the member of the UK for the time being, would vote overwhelmingly against it, and will vote probably as they did in 2015 for the Scottish Nationalist Party. So you'll get a whole bunch of Scottish Nationalists in Parliament in the UK, none of who would ever vote for leaving the EU. So, you know, there's already a sort of hurdle to overcome there. I don't know, I mean, the problem is that there isn't really an opposition the problem is that the labor party the main opposition party in the u.k. is even

is in even more of a shambles and the tori party right now it's basically completely lead a list and rattle this and has no idea what the hell it's doing so like the alternative to voting tori is voting for you know a bunch of mackets

so i mean is, is it likely, do you think it's likely then that whoever comes into power by vote, it's going to be of some of those pushing remain? The permutations and combinations here are kind of endless. And it's not at all obvious that there actually will be another election, you know? Really? Yeah, I mean, we actually have an act of law which says there is not going to be another election until 2020. So it's not easy to overturn.

You know, it's amazing is, in a way, which really the greatest thing to come out of this, at least for me, I'm speaking personally, is it makes, I'm not saying this is a good thing, by the way, but it just makes America seem slightly less insane. I mean, it makes the US seem, you know, like we have problems, but it's, there's not some fluidity, like there's going to be

a presidential election and somebody's going to be nominated and And then that's going to stick for at least four years. It's very unusual. You've got a prime minister just resigned, right? Which does not ever happen here. It's happened one time in modern't... there seems to be a volatility to the UK that makes the US as insane as it is right now with Trump and his supporters almost seem stable, which is like, you know, very depressive for you and for your brethren in the UK, but for me, I think it also makes us, I think we're not so alone in the world. Everybody is having their own turmoil, which shouldn't be a honey bet it is. This is the point. Thursday was the point at which all of my smug Britishness just deflated out of me. I spent 20 years living in the US,

kind of smugly thinking to myself, you know, I'm Britain, we kind of can be, at least we don't have these crazy tea parties and the dysfunctional legislature and the idea that you could like, you know, have an eight member Supreme Court and refuse to appoint the nine member for like no good reason and all of this kind of dysfunction. You know, I'm like, that could never happen in the UK. I was like, you know, little sort of undertone of the smug English to the way I looked at the US. I was completely gone out the window. No, it's fantastic. Oh my god, where even was?

This is a fantastic moment for people in the US. I think that we should really embrace it. And whenever you're around, someone you know who's British. I mean, I really feel this. No, I mean, the sense of superiority is palpable when you're... But, right, that's all back in the wound, you know? No, really.

No, really, because how long has it been, I mean, the feeling of utter superiority has been, I mean, since really, I mean, at least in modern, in my, in the modern era here, like, since George W. Bush took office, I think there's been a real sense that we are in some way a diminished democracy that we are, and also our populace is sort of stupid, you know, because it's a high-due vote, you know, which is twice.

Everyone from Europe, you know, when when when gay marriage finally passed in the US, they were like, oh, well done. We've got years ago. Yeah, like patty now it's on the head. Yeah. But you know what? Now, now it's all come full circle hasn't it? You've got you've got Boris.

But he's Boris Johnson. He's the one with the kind of Trump style hair, right? Yeah, he's the one with the Trump style hair, right? Yeah, he's the sort of blow-hard blonde. Yeah, but he wasn't, he at some point kind of seen as an interesting and radical, sort of progressive. I mean, am I crazy? But was there a moment a while ago where Boris Johnson seemed like, I mean, did he go more conservative or was he always very conservative? He was always conservative.

What happened was that he was mayor of London, and as you know, being mayor is not really a party political job. You can't, as Ferella La Guardia said, there's no Republican or Democratic way of taking out the trash. Right. The being mayor is much more sort of technocratic. It's about, you know, bite lanes and buses. And he was kind of a good mayor, right? Am I crazy? He was not a bad mayor.

And so I think people forgot how ideological he was precisely because he wasn't in an ideological job that's what i think he's gonna be honest with me in the york it's like it was a close one thing like he agonized about whether to uh... support the leave of the remain camp you know it like he most of britain was surprised when he came out and said he was gonna support leave

everyone was everyone thought it was just going to be Nigel Farage and a bunch of winglets. Then Boris came out and said, I'm going to leave him. Oh wow, Boris is leaving. Now it's actually a fight. That was close. If he hadn't done that, if he had done the sensible thing, just, you know, stuck with supporting remain, which he almost did, then remain what everyone. All right, so listen, I mean, we could probably talk about this for several hours, but we should wrap up, but I want to ask you a personal question. Since you live in the U.S., the U.R. British citizen, are you not?

I am, yes. Does this, you know, how do you feel personally? Are you, I mean, I know obviously your sense of superiority has been stripped away, that's clearly, you know. But does this, do you feel that the UK that you know, the Britain that you know, has changed fundamentally? Is it a place that you still feel a part of or has it all... Is this just a moment of stupidity, I guess, as my question, or is this a

trend line which suggests a kind of a turn in the country? As far as I'm concerned, Britain and specifically England just voted to fall into the sea and become an irrelevant island off the coast of Europe, which I have I don't even recognize. Like the 52% of the UK who voted for leave is not my Britain has no alignment with anything that I believe in. And yeah, I mean, whatever loyalty, the sort of like weird vestigial loyalty I had to the UK as a British citizen. I have to say I don't have that anymore.

I mean, who are these people? But you feel like, just to be clear, you feel like if this, if the article 50 were to go through and the UK left the EU, it would be the long term effect would be the long-term effect would be disastrous. Yes. Is that right? Yes.

Economically, socially, in every way. Yes. And you think it would make the country irrelevant. Yes. You believe that wholeheartedly. Yes. So it's very bad. Yes.

I mean, I just say because it seems like, okay, yeah, I mean, everything seems like, well, we'll get over it. You know, if Trump actually built the wall, which of course he cannot do physically, he can, they can, it cannot be done and will never be done. But if Trump were to somehow do it, it would be like, okay, well, there's a wall now, you know, but we'll survive. Or we'll keep going, something will happen. But do you think that like, this is like really puts the UK in a place

that if it's... If the UK leaves you, not only as a disaster for the UK, not only does it mean, I grew up being able to live and work and love and everything anywhere I wanted to in the entire European Union. That goes out the window. I suddenly now as a Brit become this tiny like insular confined to this dreadful racist

island off the coast of Europe, I mean, they want that, right? But it's not, but it's worse than that. Because if Britain leaves the EU, what that does is it triggers a set of, as I say, these are theistic nationalism's across europe if this referendum took place in front tomorrow probably they would vote to leave as well you're gonna get spain all these like national system spain the cattle and the bats they're going to the demand independence

the european union i mean that is a i talked a little bit about Hungary, like Greece, all of these countries in Europe, Europe is going through a very tough time right now. Everyone needs to come together, but the reaction of the people of Europe is to split apart. No point in European, in modern European history, in my lifetime, can I remember this level of mistrust within Europe, especially between Germany and Greece, but generally between the North and the South. And if Britain leaves, that is going to exacerbate all of those fractures and make them much bigger and much more seismic. And I fully believe that that would be the beginning of the end of Europe as a whole. So it's not just Britain, which is deeply,

deeply damaged by this. It's the entire European project, the postwar project of peace and prosperity and unity within Europe, which is going out the window. I mean, we could... That is why it's so heartbreaking. I mean, I have to say that's the way you just framed it is terrifying. I mean, because it does feel like it's limited to this, oh, it's a bad mark on the UK, but you could see over the next 20 years or so, this could spiral into serious. I mean, we can be back into a major sort of war scenario

between some of these countries, given like these, I mean, now maybe 20 is too short But we could be looking at it at a Europe that's actually embattled like physically embattled in some ways perhaps Because of these divides. I mean it's weird. Do I do I need to remember? Do I need to remind you that you know we had one European country Successfully invade another European country not so long ago well Russia invaded Crimea both Russia and Ukraine the European countries right well i mean but but i mean that's

sort of with russia you sort of expect a certain level of i'm just saying like i don't think that you know it all go back to you know the you know Or go back to the disaster that we saw in the Balkans and the Sieges, Harry Yavo, like there has been wars in Europe in a recent past. And those were, I mean, but I'm saying the trigger here could be much larger. If you've got this total disintegration of what seemed to be working, that's the strange thing, is that the EU for I'm sure it's got its problems. I don't live in Europe.

And I'm not a member of the EU. I'm not personally in the EU. But you know, it seems like Europe, I mean, for all it's the hardships that it is going through and that's clear that it is economic and otherwise. Am I crazy in thinking that the EU has been very beneficial to those countries? Yes, I think the problem is that the Euro has not. And since the introduction of the Euro, people have started blaming the EU. And yes, the Euro is an EU project, and it's been an unsuccessful EU project to put it mildly. Right. But yeah, net, net, I feel that EU has been, and the European project has been obviously and clearly beneficial, especially, and this is the crazy thing, to Britain,

of all the countries in the European Union. I've written this pretty much at the top of the list of the countries which has benefited the most, and if we are voting to leave, then you can only imagine what, like, you know, Portugal is thinking right now. Right. Huh.

Well, listen, it's a terrifying, terrifying vision of the future you've presented here. Felix, I have to say, I now, I now feel like, can I, can I merely just end with, you know, a plea to, to, if you, if you meet a on the streets. Don't rub salt in the wounds. Give them a hug because they need it. Oh, yeah, I feel bad. Please don't take this moment away from us. I mean, I feel like it's unfair. I feel like it's in some way unfair to request that we be kind to you in this dark period because I feel you're owed something.

Some kind of snark at the very least. Maybe just a light snark and then an embrace, I think, would be fair. It does suck, though. I will say that. I mean, it's terrible whenever any set of reasonable people seems to become unreasonable, and I feel like this is what's happened with the UK. The Scotland leaving, I mean, the crazy idea of Scotland leaving and then becoming a separate country and part, I mean, they are separate, you know, separate, but they're not, they are part of the, anyhow,

just the idea that that would just completely break apart what we think of traditionally as the United Kingdom is an insane idea to me. I'll tell you one thing that Americans might be happy about. There was a genuine possibility now, I wouldn't say it's a probability, but as we have seen, you know, possibilities can become a reality with astonishing speed. There is a genuine possibility now that Ireland will reunify. The Northern Ireland will, you know, face with the alternative of leaving the EU will vote instead to leave the UK and reunify it with the Republic?

Is that, and does that go to bad? I wouldn't blame them. I mean, I would vote for that. God, it's insane. I like that the country can be completely reshaped. Just the whole thing with some stupid vote. Some of those seems like maybe it was started largely largely as not a joke, but largely as a straw man sort of, I mean, it's a device more than anything. It was a device. It was David Cameron's idiotic plan to make you keep and the leave campaign seem irrelevant

and boy, did he fail. Yeah, he's blown it. He's blown it for you. No, look, you've got to walk through life as sad. No, by the way, I also need to say the exception to my like, give a Brit or hug rule is that if you're working down the street and you see David Cameron, do feel free to punch him in the face. He's not popular. Not a popular guy. He's really blown it.

Well, that's a great point to leave it on. Felix is advocating violence against David Cameron if you run into him, so please take his advice. Maybe mention his name when the police question you. Felix, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. I feel like there's almost no one better who could have explained this with such a succinct and poetic quality.

And I deeply appreciate you taking the time. And you've got to come back. We have to do this in person, because we're doing a risk guide, which is not, I think, but not have the same. We need to be drinking. Let's do this over a pint of iced rose, and that's good.

No, I don't know if it says the ice goes in, it goes in the rose. I would do this over a pint of iced rose. No, I don't think the ice goes in the rose. That's a conversation for next time. Yeah, it really is. Thank you so much and do come back. Thank you. All right. Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week with more tomorrow.

And as always, I wish you and your family the very best. Though you're a racist, xenophobic, isolation as family just Brexited and I'm afraid they're not coming back. you